Parmenides (c.

485 BCE) was a Greek philosopher from the colony of Elea in

southern Italy. He is known as the founder of the Eleatic School of philosophy which
taught a strict Monistic view of reality. Philosophical Monism is the belief that all of
the sensible world is of one, basic, substance and being, un-created and
indestructible. According to the ancient writer Diogenes Laertius (c. 200 CE),
Parmenides was a student of Xenophanes of Colophon (who some claim as the
founder of the Eleatic School) but left his masters discipline to pursue his own
vision. Even so, the stamp of Xenophanes teachings can be seen in the work of
Parmenides in that both assert that the things in life which one thinks one
understands may be quite different than they seem to be, especially regarding an
understanding of the gods. Xenophon's insistence on a single deity, who in no way
resembled human beings, seems to have been the basis for Parmenides' claim of a
single substance comprising all of reality. Parmenides was a younger contemporary
of Heraclitus who claimed that all things are constantly in motion and change (that
the basic `stuff' of life is change itself). Parmenides thought could not be further
removed from that of Heraclitus in that Parmenides claimed nothing moved, change
was an impossibility, and that human sense perception could not be relied upon for
an apprehension of Truth.

According to Parmenides, There is a way which is and a way which is not (a way of
fact, or truth, and a way of opinion about things) and one must come to an
understanding of the way which is to understand the nature of life. Known as the
Philosopher of Changeless Being, Parmenides' insistance on an eternal, single Truth
and his repudiation of relativism and mutability would greatly influence the young
philosopher Plato and, through him, Aristotle (though the latter would interpret
Parmenides Truth quite differently than his master did). Plato devoted a dialogue to
the man, the Parmenides, in which Parmenides and his student, Zeno, come to
Athens and instruct a young Socrates in philosophical wisdom. This is quite an
homage to the thought of Parmenides in that, in most dialogues, Plato presents
Socrates as the wise questioner who needs no instruction from anyone. While
Parmenides was an older contemporary of Socrates, it is doubtful the two men ever
met and Plato's dialogue is considered an idealized account of the philosopher
(though accurate in portraying his philosophy). Zeno of Elea was Parmenides' most
famous student and wrote forty paradoxes in defense of Parmenides claim that
change and even motion were illusions which one must disregard in order to
know the nature of oneself and that of the universe.

Doxa
For other uses, see Doxa (disambiguation).Doxa (from ancient Greek , "glory",
"praise" from dokein, "to appear", "to seem", "to think" and "to accept" [1])

is a Greek word meaning common belief or popular opinion. Used by the Greek
rhetoricians as a tool for the formation of argument by using common opinions, the
doxa was often manipulated by sophists to persuade the people, leading to Plato's
condemnation of Athenian democracy.The word doxa picked up a new meaning
between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC when the Septuagint translated the Hebrew
word for "glory" (, kavod) as doxa. This translation of the Hebrew Scriptures was
used by the early church and is quoted frequently by the New Testament authors.
The effects of this new meaning of doxa as "glory" is made evident by the
ubiquitous use of the word throughout the New Testament and in the worship
services of the Greek Orthodox Church, where the glorification of God in true
worship is also seen as true belief. In that context, doxa reflects behavior or
practice in worship, and the belief of the whole church rather than personal opinion.
It is the unification of these multiple meanings of doxa that is reflected in the
modern terms of orthodoxy[2] and heterodoxy.[3][4] This semantic merging in the
word doxa is also seen in Russian word (slava), which means glory, but is
used with the meaning of belief, opinion in words like (pravoslavie,
meaning orthodoxy, or, literally, true belief).