The Essence of Everything Is One

Parmenides is the first western monist, and he's not just a substance monist. That's someone who thinks that everything is at base made of one kind of stuff. He's the real deal, a full-blown monist who denies any multiplicity or change. The sections which survive from the way of truth are among the all-time classics of pure reasoning. But I do want to argue what is obvious to anyone reading the poem in Greek. Pure reasoning in Homeric meter and vocabulary is very different from pure reasoning in dry philosophic prose.