This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel War Burton.

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Where does Western philosophy begin? The common answer might be Plato and Socrates,

but these two were predated by some significant thinkers, known logically enough as the pre-Socratics. The greatest pre-Socratic of them all was probably

Parmenades. His reputation rests on his only known work, on nature. It's a poem which may

originally have had 3,000 lines, but of which only 150 remain.

Yet these few lines have entranced many of his modern readers.

As well as being a retired professor of medicine, the Polymath Raymond Talis is author of many works of philosophy, including one on his hero Permanides.

Raymond Talis, welcome to Philosophy Bides.

Good morning and thank you for having me on the program.

We're going to focus on Parmenides.

Not many people know very much about Parmenides.

Could you just begin by saying a little bit about who he was?

Certainly it's a great shame how little is known about him.

He's probably the greatest of all the Western philosophers without a doubt.

In a sense he actually set the agenda for much of the subsequent philosophising.

We always think of Whitehead who once said that the history of Western philosophy is

footnotes to Plato.

I disagree with that.

I think Plato was one of Palminidies' greater footnotes, because in many ways of Palminides greater footnotes because in many ways

Palminides format of the disk upon which others wrote their files.

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