Le très curieux silence des Doxographes à propos de l'incompétence des auteurs des opinions chez Parménide

Abstract

Since the Goddess of Parmenides presents the two ways to explain the reality that must be faced by this who want to become a "man who knows", the truth and the opinions of mortals, she makes clear that the opinions (dóxai) are not "reliable". Later, when he describes in detail how the makers of opinions really are, the description is devastating: they are the people who are incapable of judging, who are astonished, who do not know how to use sensations, and who have a misguided intellect. Consequently, when they express their opinions, they present only a "misleading set of words. However, already from Aristotle onwards, this way of conceiving reality is attributed to Parmenides himself, and not to "the mortals". Theophrastus echoes this interpretation of Aristotle and, with him, the totality of the Doxographers. Obviously, in order to attribute the "opinions" to Parmenides himself, any reference to the incapacity of his authors is absent from the comments: no Doxographer mentions it.