Parmenides challenged philosophers by introducing the impression that change is logically impossible if the materials that lay the foundation of the world are said to be entirely static. These ingredients are the first principles that pre-Socratic philosophers moreover agreed to be originating substance of our universe. Thales believed it to be the element water, Anaximander believed it to be the non-material property of the ‘indefinite’ or Apeiron, Anaximenes sought air, and Heraclitus deemed it to be fire. Heraclitus assumed the most definitive matter to be fire because it appeared to be the element that underwent the least amount of change and had potential to be the constant in a world that was ruled by logos. In opposition, Parmendies …show more content…
His problem of knowledge states that the senses cannot be trusted because sensory experience can mislead one to believe that change is real. This entails that truth can only be accessed by reason and our perception of what’s real can be deceived by our senses. This makes the difference between observed properties and actual properties of materials inherently important. Plato thus used common properties, representative of specific objects, to categorize matters into their class. These attributes that must have existed prior to creation, defined whether certain objects were in fact those certain objects. It is the same justification that humans still remain humans despite qualitative differences. Plato emphasizes how the basic form of humanity is more real than individual humans. This is why Plato created two realms; he wanted to defend the existence of fundamental forms by assigning two different levels of reality. The underlying reality was a realm of material perfection and the appearance of change was due to the surface realm imperfectly replicating that material. “This primary realm contained forms that were incorporeal, intangible, and insensible that all shared the property of eternality,” (sn). This supported Parmenides idea that something cannot come from nothing because these fundamental forms have always existed and have pre-established the base for every ‘being’ thing. These were the resources that God, or as Plato calls it the Demiurge, had available to craft all units out of. The Craftsman was limited to these materials and from them was able to yield a template of the highest conceivable beauty and rationality. The key to grasping the concept of existence is recognizing that in order for something to exist, it must have properties that constitute its way of existing. The second realm struggled in reproducing these forms, for it lacked a divinely cause and