Parmenides And The Transition Of Early Greek Philosophy Toward Ontology

Greek philosophy is the source of Western Philosophy, early in the 6th century BC, people in Greek had given up the practice of interpreting natural phenomena by religion and mythology. They begin using their reason and interpret nature by itself. Philosophers as such contain Thales, Anaximander, Aanximenes, Herakletitos, and so on, they propose the problem of "arche" basing in empirical observation. This problem is about the basic element that constitutes all things and the reason of their generation and motion. So their philosophy is called Natural Philosophy, also called cosmology. However, their philosophy is simple and intuitive.Later, Pythagoreans propose a new arche which is different from former philosophers', he believes that figure is the arche. Figure is more abstract compare with water, fire, air, and apeiron, however, Pythagoras still believes that there are many arches. After Pythagoras, Xenophanes of Eleatic school proposes that arche must be "One". Both of their thought are very different from former natural philosophers', and begin the transition towards ontology. Cosmology inquires arche of all things, it is in search of basic element which constitutes them, while ontology inquires the principle and nature of all things. Under the influence of Pythagoras and Xenophanes, Parmenides proposes his theory about "Being".Regarding to Parmenides'theory about "Being", some scholars claim that his theory is the very first kind of ontology, while some other scholars protest that it is not Parmenides but Plato who really inaugurates ontology. To make clear whether it is Parmenides that inaugurates ontology, first of all we should understand what ontology studies, and what characters it has, after that, then compare Parmenides'theory about "Being" with it, and we can find that the object which Parmenides studies and the method he uses are consistent with ontology, so we can conclude that it is Parmenides that inaugurates ontology.After Parmenides, through the efforts of Plato and Aristotle, the transition from cosmology to ontology has been completed. Plato establishes the question of ontology via his idealism, and Aristotle provides valid method via his theory about category and formal logic. And their efforts hang together in middle age when ontology walks up to maturation. By the time of Descartes, epistemological comes to be the mainstream of western philosophy, and the two main wings are rationalism and empiricism. They are opposed to each other all the time, then Kant try to mediate them and establish his system of Critical Philosophy. Kant criticizes traditional metaphysics and negates the possibility of knowledge about ontology. After Kant, Hegel still builds a quite strict and magnitude system of ontology, however, this is the highest and last stage of traditional ontology. Hitherto, the ontology inaugurated by Parmenides comes to the end.