Parmenides
of Elea c. 515 BC

On Nature

Discourse and exchange in the spirit of a "free and public enquiry"...among the olive trees

What generally goes on

The Parmenideum is a philosophy retreat [1] and a place for people who are interested in Parmenides' question and other "big" questions of philosophy and science to meet, discuss, debate and exchange ideas in the natural settings that were those of Parmenides himself. In addition, there is a risk that you may enjoy being there.

A general glimpse of a day in the life of a Parmenideus [2]

• Breakfast of organic foods and juices (nutrient bombs, delivered durectly to your neurons) at your accommodation. Passage given to the day's meeting point by your host (if you so wish and if it is at another location).
• Collective debate and discussion till everyone's had enough or it's lunch time, which ever arrives sooner.
• After lunch, people can either continue at leisure, or remove off to the groves or do whatever else they please.
• Further debate and discussion, and argument if necessary.
  Sleep/beach/whatever (you will be allotted your own personal olive tree to sleep under)
• Dinner
• Live music, local or Neapolitan theatre or any movie without guns.
• On days when no formal talks are given (if you have chosen a week that includes talks), there will be opportunity for personal presentations on the topics followed by debate and discussion. Presentations can be short and concise or long and rambling, and everyone is free to escape to the beach or mountains, or go and sleep under their olive tree.

If your week includes talks by guest pilosophers, scientists and other academics there will be two days devoted to these talks.

Some of the topics to be covered over the coming meetings are listed below, but these are by no means restricted to any particular meeting or week and can be addressed at anytime - as can any other topic in philosophy and science. After all, this is a philosophy retreat.

• The mythologists: Hesiod and Homer
• Philosophy (general): Meet the Philosophers of the Ancient World
• Theology: Meet the bullshitters as well
• Thales, Anaximander and Heraclitus: ludicrous but wholly admirable
• Pythagoras: "the sinfulness of eating beans"
• Parmenides: Why is there something rather than nothing? The Two Ways.
• Zeno’s paradoxes: don't leave because you'll never arrive
• Socrates: mirror mirror...who is the wisest of them all?
• Plato: there is an ideal cat in heaven.
• Aristotle: if water choke thee, with what wilt thou wash it down?
• The Stoics and Epicureans: austerity or pleasure?
• The fate of the Universe: Big Crunch or Big Pfizzle?
• Quantum Mechanics and other ridiculous delights
• Quantum Philosophy: Philosophical implications of Quantum Mechanics
• Consciousness: the Grand Illusion?
• Free Will: Epiphenomenalism’s greatest trick.
• Protagoras and the Selfish Gene
• Truth, Liberty and Justice, and other dirty words

The list is not exhaustive by any stretch. Moreover, though each topic will serve as the topic on a week by week basis, conformity to this ideal is not rigid and consensus among visitors (once arrived) will probably prevail.

These and other topics may from time to time be treated in a formal context in addition to informal discussion and debate beneath the olive trees and at the dinner table. Please see The Seminars for more detail.

To summarise the driving concept that lies behind the Parmenideum, would be to say that it is ultimately concerned with the following areas of inquiry:

• Why does Something exist rather than Nothing?
• What is the fundamental nature of All that exists?
• How do we come by knowing that what we know about why and what nature is is correct?
• What is the nature of Consciousness?
• Do we possess Free Will?
• If we do possess Free Will, what should we do with it? That is ow should we live our lives.

[1] This is a little misleading since the concept behind the parmenideum is hardly a retreat but an advance at full charge into the realm of knowledge, worthwhile rational knowledge that is; the type of knowledge that can debunk bullshit and elevate truth to its proper place. What is truth's proper place?..

[2] A Parmenideus is a person attending, or who has attended, the Parmenideum. He or she can prove this fact by means of the certificate of attendance attached to the bottle of wine (and olive oil) they are given as a parting gift. It looks like an ordinary label, but has Parmenideum written on it.