ABSTRACT
The interpretative difficulties that arise when we try to take the verb as exclusively existential or predicative recommend an understanding of estin as fused. In order to get a handle on the sense of not-being at issue in Parmenides, we must first examine difficulties surrounding the interpretation of Parmenides's poem. Post-Parmenidean Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle contend with the consequences of Parmenides's two ways by attempting to mitigate and qualify Parmenidean not-being, suppressing the understanding of not-being as limitless indeterminacy. By way of contrast, I will show that both ineffability and indeterminacy as the condition of possibility for complete human emancipation are arguably embraced in several textual traditions of Indian and Chinese Buddhist philosophy. The other values on the four-value scale of interpreting Parmenides, definite determinacy, determinate indefiniteness, and definite indeterminacy, may also prove to be an effective tool in parsing the different senses and levels of emptiness that thinkers such as Sengzhao and Ngrjuna and his commentators employ.
