CFP: The Language of Being, the Language of Nature: Parmenides and His Reception

The international conference "The Language of Being, the Language of Nature: Parmenides and His Receptions" invites researchers to submit their papers for presentation at the event, which will be held from September 29 to October 2, 2025 at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), in a hybrid format.

Parmenides is not just the first thinker to ever consider the notion of being in itself in Greek thought. He also associates this Being with a specific kind of knowledge (Aletheia) and a specific “persuasive” language that would account for it. Indeed, his poem constitutes our first document in the philosophical tradition that presents deductive arguments in Greek philosophy. This innovation explains why several critics consider Parmenides to be either the first philosopher, if one defines philosophy by its use of a certain kind of argument, or at least the one who gave philosophy a new starting point. However, Parmenides’ language is not entirely innovative, both because of his use of epic hexameters and style and because of the physical description of the world that follows the examination of being, which is similar to what we may find in previous Pre-Socratic thought.

For a long time, the studies on Parmenides and his reception have focused almost exclusively on the question of being itself and its nature. In this conference, we intend to concentrate on Parmenides’ language, in all its dimensions (stylistic, argumentative, rhetorical, predicative…). Our aim is to see both how this approach may bring new perspectives on much-discussed issues like the relationship between Being and Nature, Truth and Opinions, and how Parmenides’ kind of reasoning shaped the language that philosophy, in particular ontology or metaphysics, used in later thought, which includes Parmenides’ immediate successors up to late Antiquity.

Confirmed speakers

Alberto Bernabé

Bernardo Berruecos

Gábor Betegh

Nestor Cordero

Gabriele Cornelli

Nicola Galgano

André Laks

Arnaud Macé

Maurício Marsola

Miriam Peixoto

Barbara Sattler

Stephen White

Organizers

Bruno Conte (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo)

Mathilde Brémond (Université Clermont Auvergne)

Liliana Carolina Sánchez Castro (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)

Pedro Garcia Dotto (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo)

Sponsorship

Capes

Submission Guidelines:

• Abstracts should be 500 words or less.
• Submissions can be made in English, French, Portuguese, or Spanish. The abstract should be submitted in English or in the author's native language, and an English version should be accompanied.
• The deadline for submission is February 28, 2025.
• Submissions should be made on the following page: https://eventos.pucsp.br/evento/login?evento=parmenides-sp&lang=en 

Topics of Interest:

• Antecedents to Parmenides’ language;
• The stylistic aspects of Parmenides’ language in all parts of his poem;
• The relationship between Parmenides’ physical discourse and the one from his Pre-Socratic predecessors;
• The development of deductive reasoning in Parmenides’ poem and its reception;
• The logic of predication in Parmenides’ thought and its reception;
• The distinction between the language of aletheia, doxai, and physics in Parmenides’ poem and its reception;
• The use, reappropriation, and criticism of Parmenides’ deductive arguments

Papers will be reviewed by an international committee of experts, and selected authors will be notified by early May 2025. We encourage the participation of both national and international researchers to foster a rich and interdisciplinary dialogue.