Chiara Ferella

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

Chiara Ferella is Graduiertenkolleg and adjunct lecturer at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Previously, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Edinburgh. She has published Reconstructing Empedocles' Thought (CUP, 2024), co-edited Living Bodies, Dead Bodies, and the Cosmos (Mohr Siebeck, 2024) and Paths of Knowledge: Interconnections between Knowledge and Journey in the Graeco-Roman World (Berlin, 2016) and published many articles on ancient cosmology and metaphors in ancient philosophy in Classical Quarterly, Mnemosyne, Rhizomata and elsewhere.

Abstract

From the Derveni Papyrus to Plato: The Cosmological Context of Parmenides’ Mounogenes Being

Parmenides’ B8.1–4 opens the philosophical account of Being with a programmatic catalogue of defining markers (sēmata): its ingenerate and deathless nature, wholeness, stillness, and perfection. Among these, mounogenes stands out as both conceptually rich and semantically elusive. Traditionally understood to support strict monism or internal uniformity of Being, the term has often been subsumed too readily into broader ontological frameworks, without sufficient attention to its specific meaning.

This paper re-examines mounogenes on its own terms. A methodological difficulty arises from the outset: unlike other markers, no explicit verbal cue in the extant text of B8 clearly elaborates this adjective, leaving scholars divided over which lines develop the concept. To address this, the paper turns to external sources for semantic insight. It first explores earlier uses of mounogenes, focusing on its mythological resonance in Hesiod and the Orphic theogony of the Derveni Papyrus. With this background in place, it then returns to B 8 to identify lines that align with this enriched semantic field and proposes a renewed interpretation of Being as mounogenes. Finally, a retrospective reading of Empedocles’ Sphairos and Plato’s Timaeus highlights the enduring significance of motifs that may trace back to the Parmenidean formulation.

Thus, spanning early myth to Platonic cosmology, the investigation positions mounogenes as key to grasping the ontological distinctiveness Parmenides attributes to Being.