“…For the same thing is for thinking and being.” --Parmenides
As Parmenides shows us, the problem of mind-body dualism is by no means a new one. Parmenides often rejects sensory experience in favor of the reasoned mind as we can see when he tells us:
“for in no way may this prevail, that things that are not, are. But you, bar your thought from this way of inquiry, and do not let habit born from much experience compel you along this way to direct your sightless eyes and sounding ear and tongue, but judge by reason the heavily contested testing spoken by me.”
The body is clearly rejected in favor of the mind. This rejection of the sensory experience in favor of the thought processes helps to better grasp what Parmenides means when he says:
“That which is there to be spoken and thought of must be.
For it is possible for it to be,
But not possible for nothing to be.”
Parmenides’ view is geared towards the assumption that there are no negative values. For example, one might say that there is no such thing as a one-horned, one-eyed, flying purple people eater—yet the mind’s faculties of imagination immediately conjure up an image for its thinker. On some level, this existed.
Still, one wonders how this picture came to be. Is it really imagination? Or has it all existed before in such a way that only the mind can still conceive (imagine) it despite the lack of its truth in the body (eye, sensory experience)? Parmenides seems to ask us, push us---to question the mechanisms of what we perceive as reality. In short: What IS metaphysics?
Parmenides would tell us: “thinking.”
While examining the pervasiveness of thinking, it will be helpful to turn to a phenomenological accounting of the “loss” of the body and dependence upon the mind. In 1995, Jean-Dominque Bauby, the French editor of Elle experienced a massive stroke which completely paralyzed him, except for his left eye. Subsequently, Bauby shared his story through the blinking of his eye (morse code) and wrote a compelling memoir entitled The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Parmenides’ poem entitled On Nature could probably be summarized through Bauby’s words: “My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly” (5). While Parmenides’ appears to be speaking of transcending the body completely through death when he speaks of the veiled daughters of the sun bringing him to the “the gates of the ways or Night and Day […] and Avenging Justice keeps the keys that open them” (lines 5-15). Parmenides’ goddess also offers to educate him in the true beliefs which mortals cannot hold (line 25-34). The poem outlines the limits of knowledge and experience and essentially continues the denial of any truth within the sensory experience.
Bauby does not deny sensory experience but is, in many ways, denied of sensory experience. Parmenides’ Goddess appears to offer perfect knowledge that is beyond the grasp of mortals—i.e. that true knowledge is related to thinking rather than being a body. In a manner of speaking, Bauby’s body is “dead”. However, his mind’s connection to the body is not. On the subject of bath time, Bauby comments on his new experience of the body through the mind:
“One day, for example, I can find it amusing [bath time], in my forty-fifth year, to be cleaned up and turned over, to have my bottom wiped and swaddled like a newborn’s. I even derive a guilty pleasure from this total lapse into infancy. But the next day, the same procedure seems to be unbearably sad, and a tear rolls down through the lather a nurse’s aide spreads over my cheeks. And my weekly bath plunges me simultaneously into distress and happiness. The delectable moment when I sink into the tub is quickly followed by nostalgia for the protracted immersions that were the joy of my previous life. Armed with a cup of tea or a Scotch, a good book or a pile of newspapers, I would soak for hours, maneuvering the taps with my toes. Rarely do I feel my condition so cruelly as when I am recalling such pleasures” (17).
It is through memory that Bauby is struck by the physical pleasures (bath time, tea, Scotch). All of a sudden, Bauby’s knowledge of the world, of his body, is strictly limited to the former experience—memory. Through his memory, the experiences live on. Granted this is a painfully optimistic interpretation of a bleak situation, but Bauby also show us the freedom he gains through the faculties of the mind in the process of recalling memories.
Through the various efforts of collecting memories, Bauby seems to write himself into those memories in the sense that re-writing his memories marks his task for the day. This is particularly sardonic because he frees himself from his body by changing his past conception of how he behaved in that body. The implications are enormous.
Recall, for instance, that Parmenides tells us “for the same thing is for thinking as it is for being”. In the chapter entitled “The Mythmaker”, Bauby speaks of a particularly imaginative friend who created movies of his own. While delving into the various stories invented by Bauby’s friend Oliver, Bauby tells us of his feelings towards his friend:
“I should not feel morally superior to Olivier, for today I envy him his mastery of the storyteller’s art. I am not sure I will ever acquire such a gift, although I, too, am beginning to forge glorious substitute destinies for myself. I am occasionally a Formula One driver, and you’ve certainly seen me burning up the track at Monza or Silverstone. That mysterious white race without a brand name, a number, or commercial advertisements is me. Stretched out on my bed—I mean, in my cockpit—I hurl myself into the corners, my head, weighed down by my helmet, wrenched painfully sideways by gravitational pull” (117).
Through the superior faculties of the mind, Bauby continues to exist, to think, to create. Fictional or not, this is closer to the Truth for Bauby than the truth of the body. Even though Bauby was never truly a Formula One Racer, Bauby’s alter reality existed through the faculties of the mind. It exists because he thought it. It may not exist out in the material world, but it does exist in the realm of the mind.
Like Parmenides’ longing, Bauby also longs. The final lines in his book ask us:
“Does the cosmos contain keys for opening up my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking. I’ll be off now.”
Bauby’s final questions wound up being quite similar to Parmenides—knowledge is freedom, but mortal knowledge is limited.
