For the Parmenidean monist, there are no distinctions
whatsoever-indeed, distinctions are unintelligible. In The
Parmenidean Ascent, Michael Della Rocca aims to revive this
controversial approach on rationalist grounds. He not only defends
the attribution of such an extreme monism to the pre-Socratic
philosopher Parmenides, but also embraces this extreme monism in
its own right and expands these monistic results to many of the
most crucial areas of philosophy, including being, action,
knowledge, meaning, truth, and metaphysical explanation. On Della
Rocca's account, there is no differentiated being, no
differentiated action, knowledge, or meaning; rather all is being,
just as all is action, all is knowledge, all is meaning. Motivating
this argument is a detailed survey of the failure of leading
positions (both historical and contemporary) to meet a demand for
the explanation of a given phenomenon, together with a powerful,
original version of a Bradleyan argument against the reality of
relations. The result is a rationalist rejection of all
distinctions and a skeptical denial of the intelligibility of
ordinary, relational notions of being, action, knowledge, and
meaning. Della Rocca then turns this analysis on the practice of
philosophy itself. Followed to its conclusion, Parmenidean monism
rejects any distinction between philosophy and the study of its
history. Such a conclusion challenges methods popular in the
practice of philosophy today, including especially the method of
relying on intuitions and common sense as the basis of
philosophical inquiry. The historically-minded and rationalist
approach used throughout the book aims to demonstrate the ultimate
bankruptcy of the prevailing methodology. It promises-on
rationalist grounds-to inspire much soul-searching on the part of
philosophers and to challenge the content and the methods of so
much philosophy both now and in the past.
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