Zeno of elea biography books

Greek philosopher (c. 495 – c. 430 BC)

This article is about the presocratic philosopher famed for his paradoxes. For founder of Stoicism, see Zeno of Citium. For other uses, see Zeno.

Zeno of Elea (; Ancient Greek: Ζήνων ὁ Ἐλεᾱ́της; c. 490 – c. 430 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea, in Southern Italy (Magna Graecia). He was a student of Parmenides and one of the Eleatics. Zeno defended his instructor's belief in monism, the idea that only one single entity exists that makes up all of reality. He rejected the existence of space, time, and motion. To disprove these concepts, he developed a series of paradoxes to demonstrate why they are impossible. Though his original writings are lost, subsequent descriptions by Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes Laertius, and Simplicius of Cilicia have allowed study of his ideas.

Zeno's arguments are divided into two different types: his arguments against plurality, or the existence of multiple object

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Zeno of Elea

1. Life and Writings

The dramatic occasion of Plato’s dialogue, Parmenides, is a visit to Athens bygd the eminent philosopher Parmenides and Zeno, his younger associate, to attend the festival of the Great Panathenaea. Plato describes Parmenides as about sixty-five years old, Zeno as nearly forty, and Socrates, with whom they converse, as “quite ung then,” which is normally taken to mean about twenty. Given that Socrates was a little past seventy when executed bygd the Athenians in 399 B.C.E., this description suggests that Zeno was born about 490 B.C.E. He would appear to have been active in Magna Graecia, that is, the Greek-speaking regions of southern Italy, during the mid-fifth century B.C.E. There fryst vatten otherwise little credible resultat about the circumstances of his life. Diogenes Laertius’s brief “Life of Zeno” (D.L. 9.25–9) is largely taken up with stitching together conflicting reports of his involvement in a brave

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Quick Info

Born

about 490 BC
Elea, Lucania (now southern Italy)

Died

about 425 BC
Elea, Lucania (now southern Italy)

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Summary

Zeno of Elea was a Greek philosopher famous for posing so-called paradoxes which challenged mathematicians' view of the real world for many centuries.

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Biography

Very little is known of the life of Zeno of Elea. We certainly know that he was a philosopher, and he is said to have been the son of Teleutagoras. The main source of our knowledge of Zeno comes from the dialogue Parmenides written by Plato.

Zeno was a pupil and friend of the philosopher Parmenides and studied with him in Elea. The Eleatic School, one of the leading pre-Socratic schools of Greek philosophy, had been founded by Parmenides in Elea in southern Italy. His philosophy of monism claimed that the many things which appear to exist are merely a single eternal reality which he called Being. His principle was that "all is one" and that change or non-Being are imposs