Here in the Mediterranean, 25 centuries ago, an unexpected and fragile way of dialogue was born, which is called philosophy. This philosophy, the classical one from the 6th to the 3rd century BC, has developed an enormous power of conviction and direction, it has founded our way of thinking. Moreover, he created science, he invented democracy and individual rights. But from what characteristics does this fragile philosophy derive all this power? These ancestors of ours, Zeno and Gorgias, and then Chrysippus, move in the footsteps of Parmenides, who had hypothesized three things, then often forgotten: a) The word is not the thing, the sentence is not the fact, the language is not the world. And not even an image of them. b) Our thinking is unfounded, because the initial concepts, let's say the axioms from which we start to think, are not based in turn on anything, since they are precisely the first. c) Thought and language are the same thing, logos, a single word indicates one and the other. If we read a fragment of the work "On Nature" by Parmenides di Elea (today Ascea), we clearly see the beginning of everything: "Because there is or will be nothing else outside of what is (...). Therefore they will all be just words, the things that mortals have established, convinced that they were true; birth and death, being and non-being, the change of place and the change of brilliant color "(Parmenides, fragment B8, 37–41 Diels-Kranz). Here, from this sentence of Parmenides, the great classical philosophy originates. The "what is" for Parmenides is the universe. Outside of "what is", outside the universe, there can be nothing. It is so by definition, because the universe is all that exists. Parmenides tells us here that to be and not to be are only words established by men, symbolic products of our intellect, created by discourse, by logos. Representations, only representations. I'm not the truth. Never, according to Parmenides, can human discourse touch the truth. We can talk and reason about the products of discourse, about birth and death, about being and not being, about motion and colors. “Convinced that they were true” indicates the truth, the Truth, the goddess Alètheia as a reference. What does Parmenides mention here? The phrase “convinced that they were true”, in the previously cited fragment, indicates the truth, the Truth, the goddess Alètheia as a reference. The Truth, Alètheia for the Greeks, is not veiled, it is the not hidden, that which is luminous. So it is in Parmenides, in Empedocles and also in Heraclitus. What does Parmenides mention here? To everything. Truth is "what is", the Universe. The Truth is the Universe.

The Truth is the Universe

Parmenides: “Convinced that they were true” indicates the true, the Truth, the goddess Alètheia as a reference. What does Parmenides mention here? To the whole. Truth is "what is", the Universe. The Truth is the Universe. If we meant by Truth other than the universe, for example the appearance in our eyes of the real nature of "what is", we would enter a forest of inextricable contradictions.

My latest philosophy work is called "But is this hen eternal?" Published by PSE of Florence in December 2019. In this book we find the ancient foundations of our culture, lost by many people, who come to support obvious absurdities, showing them as absolute and modern innovations. Let us think by finding our roots in classical philosophy from the sixth to the fourth century BC.