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LOENEN, J.H.M.M., Parmenides, Melissus, Gorgias. A Reinterpretation of Eleatic Philosophy. Van Gorcum, Prakke & Prakke, Assen, 1959. (II),207p. Original burgundy gilt titled cloth with dust wrps. Dust wrps slightly wrinkled to upper edge front cover. Upper edge a little bit foxed. Pages slightly yellowed. (Rare). 'Dr Loenen' aim is to establish a new interpretation of Parmenides, Melissus and Gorgias (and by implication of the Eleatic movement and its effect) by the double method of considering what the Greek of our sources might mean, and what the philosophical issues were, and letting the one illuminate the other. His book is for experts only: his thesis, that 'the fundamental Eleatic tenet' was 'ti estin', where 'estin' is to be taken in 'the strict sense's that its subject becomes a 'necessary being' in (for example) the Augustinian sense of 'ens necessarium'. (...) We have to read the Eleatics as employing or recommending a technical concept of 'is' which is not intended to apply to the totality of things, but only to one special entity: for Parmenides (...) this is 'what we now call the idea of being'(p.43), for Melissus 'an absolute Being' reached by a prof 'similar in character to that found later in the so-called ontological argument' (p.142). (...) Much of what he (Dr Loenen - ND) says will stand. Melissus and Gorgias are doing very much what he makes them do, I think; it is true that there is a technical sense for 'sinai' invented by Parmenides and the focal point for discussion thereafter; it is true that all this has been widely misunderstood (even by Kirk and Raven (...), and that a reinterpretation on these lines a now overdue. (...) One can still be grateful for an approach which will lead to better things.' (DENIS GREY in The Journal of Hellenenic Studies, 1961, pp.184-186). € 145.00 (Antiquarian)