Ordering the universe in speech: Kosmos and diakosmos in parmenides’ poem

Abstract

What if the consistency of the Goddess’s account of the cosmic order according to the opinions of mortals, in the second part of Parmenides’ poem, was the very sign of its own deceitful character? This chapter attempts to show that Parmenides’ use of the terms kosmos and diakosmos refers to the use of these terms and their cognates in epic poetry and that this source is the best one for us to reconstruct the missing steps of the Doxa part of the poem. Parmenides transposes the Homeric vocabulary of dividing and ordering troops, arranging collective occupations, into the field of cosmology in order to illustrate how the words of men are swift to order a beautiful representation of the universe. Parmenides’ goddess delivers the most complete cosmogony and cosmology of the Archaic world, while also stating that it is merely words. The shaping and ordering of the universe are an arrangement of words, given all power to build a world by their own means. They are all the more consistent as they are demiurgical and deceitful.