Özet:

The aim of this paper is to sketch the standard interpretation of the Eleatic philosopher Zeno’s personality, his philosophy, and especially his famous “paradoxes”, in light of Laks & Most’ 2016 edition of Early Greek Philosophers, in order to point out the shortcomings of this interpretation, and to suggest a solution. This standard interpretation of Zeno reduces his philosophy to his paradoxes, and his paradoxes to their argumentative content, while failing to sufficiently account for their unity, their overall purpose, and their number. These problems give rise to further difficulties relating to both the historiography of Ancient Philosophy and its pedagogy. After outlining this standard interpretation of Zeno’s philosophy and its consequent problems, the third part of the paper appeals to accounts issuing especially from the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition in Laks & Most’s edition in order to construe an alternative interpretation accommodating the aforementioned problems. Thanks to the emphasis in these accounts on Zeno’s practical life and his identity as a dialectician, a reading of Zeno’s paradoxes as dialectical arguments enables us to consider them not merely as arguments instrumental in upholding or refuting a doctrine, but as practices intended to summon the rational capacity of the reader or student. This alternative interpretation not only differentiates Zeno more clearly from eristic, sophistic, rhetoric or skeptic thinkers, it also suggests, in terms of the teaching of philosophy, that these paradoxes are not gratuitous riddles, but arguments demanding the student’s rational participation, and that philosophy cannot be construed without reference to the uninterested pursuit of truth.

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