Will Desmond

“What kind of mystic Parmenides was may be impossible to determine given the relative lack of evidence. A surer conclusion that one can draw from the poem is that it highlights and recommends the solitude of the philosopher. As the poem begins, the horses and divine charioteers speed the lone Parmenides, "the knowing man, above all cities.''10 The relentless speed of the divine chariot (fr. i.1-10) is in contrast with the aimless wandering of twoheaded mortals-that blind, dazed, undiscerning tribe (fr. 6 ) . For they drift about enslaved to the senses: they believe that things come into being and perish, change place, have color (fr. 8.39-41). But in order to learn the astonishing truth, the goddess urges the mortal "boy" (fr. i.24) to attend to her words: "if now I speak, you attend and listen to my word" (fr. 2.1; cf. 6.2).
Protreptic language is strong as the goddess exhorts him to keep his mind clear of normal ways of thinking (fr. 2.2, 6.3, 7) , and not to let the "the habits formed by much experience" force him back into the haze of senseexperience (fr. 7.3-6) . Such exhortation is necessary, because it is a long and difficult road from darkness to light. 1 1 The truth lies far indeed from the paths of men (fr. i.24-28); few fly free of the nets of sense-experience and social tradition. But the mind is its own place and has its own distinctive realm ("path") and object. That is, thinking is for the Eleatics itself nonempirical. Not for them the doctrine that "whatever is in the mind was first in the senses," and that the ears and eyes lend the brain all its concepts. For in truth, there are no things, no becoming, death, motion, color, multiplicity.
What is seen does not truly exist. The sole reality is Being, ever-living, motionless, one. An individual cannot experience this Being like some object, and yet it is more present to the mind than any thing is present to the eye or ear. This idea cannot be denied or avoided. It haunts the mind. Those who explore its depths will be transformed by it.”
― Will Desmond, The Greek Praise of Poverty: Origins of Ancient Cynicism

“This continuity between Cynicism and Socratic thought can be expressed in an another way. Socrates made a sharp differentiation between the self and external objects as moral ends. External objects are morally neutral and hence cannot serve as ultimate ends; material wealth is neither good nor evil in itself, but wise use makes it so.50 Aristotle adopts this view in a more complex way, opening up at least the quasi-Cynic possibility that wisdom is self-sufficient and in no need of externals. For Aristotle, the highest life we can imagine is the life of God-pure thought and actuality, selfsufficient, unmoved, wholly non-material. Such a God has no need for wealth, for Hesiod's plough, ox, and slave-girl. In certain intense moments, one may begin to "immortalize" oneself and become like this God; through contemplation, the philosopher becomes at least psychologically more selfsufficient, less dependent on community.51 Only a god or animal may live without community,52 and, unlike the Cynic, the Aristotelian philosopher is more god than "dog." Yet, like the Cynics, Aristotle stresses the ontological difference between this highest state and materiality. God's well-being is not caused by externals, and analogously the thinker's most powerful experiences have nothing to do with material possessions. Wealth is not constitutive of perfect virtue and well-being as such; instead, it is a merely accidental feature of human life as ordinarily experienced. Therefore, Aristotle speaks of wealth as the material through which virtues like magnanimity express themselves; generosity is not caused by wealth, but has its origin elsewhere and so is in itself autonomous of wealth.”
― Will Desmond, The Greek Praise of Poverty: Origins of Ancient Cynicism