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Single Idea 450

[from 'fragments/reports' by Parmenides, in 10. Modality / A. Necessity / 8. Transcendental Necessity ]

Full Idea

Powerful necessity holds Being in the bonds of a limit, which constrains it round about, because divine law decrees that Being shall not be without boundary. For it is not lacking, but if it were spatially infinite, it would lack everything.

Gist of Idea

Necessity sets limits on being, in order to give it identity

Source

Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1-

Book Reference

'Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers', ed/tr. Freeman,Kathleen [Harvard 1957], p.44