QuestionsDoes time really exist?What is neither comes to be nor passes away: becoming is only a name
Does time really exist?Passage is an illusion

What is neither comes to be nor passes away: becoming is only a name

The Way of Truth; motionless being; "it is now, all at once"

Parménide c. 515 BC · c. 450 BCWhat is, is; what is not can neither be thought nor said: being has neither birth nor end.
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What it claims

What is has neither past nor future: it "was not and will not be", it is now, all at once, one, continuous. Becoming and the passage of time are only names that mortals have laid down, believing them to be true.

Why

What is cannot come from what is not, nor go back to it: so there is no birth or ending, and becoming is only a name.

The same idea through history
Parménide480 BCIn his poem a goddess teaches Parmenides that what is "was not and will not be" but is "now, all at once". Coming to be, passing away, change of place or of colour are, she says, names that mortals give to what cannot happen.
J. M. E. McTaggart1908McTaggart also concludes that change and the passing of time are unreal, but by another road: a logical proof about past, present and future, without the ban on not-being.
In short

"What is neither comes to be nor passes away: becoming is only a name" is an argument by Parménide (On Nature, fragments B7 and B8 (c. 480 BC), 480 BC) on the question "Does time really exist?" (answer: passage is an illusion). Its claim: What is has neither past nor future: it "was not and will not be", it is now, all at once, one, continuous. Becoming and the passage of time are only names that mortals have laid down, believing them to be true. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4, P5). AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

On Nature, fragments B7 and B8 (c. 480 BC)
Valid with an implicit premise

A thing is born, changes, disappears: this seems obvious. Parmenides of Elea, nearly 2,500 years ago, holds that reason forbids it. For a thing to be born it would have to come out of what is not; for it to perish it would have to go back there. But what is not can be neither thought nor said. So what is has no beginning and no end, no past and no future: it is "now, all at once". The passing of time, with its births and deaths, would be only a set of names. The reasoning reaches us through fragments of his poem, quoted by later authors; the French translation we quote is Tannery's (1887), old and free, the English Burnet's (1920). This is the most radical thesis on the site about time: it does not only say that past and future exist as much as the present, it denies that what is has a past and a future at all.

P1There are only two roads for speech: "it is" or "it is not". The second cannot be followed, because what is not can be neither thought nor said: only the first is a true way.
P2If what is had begun, it would have come out of what is not. But that can be neither said nor thought, and no need would explain why it began later rather than sooner.
P3Nor can what is "be going to be" one day: if it came into being, it is not, and it is not either if it is going to be in the future. Birth and death are therefore ruled out.
P4 · implicit premiseAll becoming, whether coming to be, passing away, change of place or of colour, consists in passing from what is not to what is, or from what is to what is not.
P5 · implicit premiseThe passing of time would exist only if there were becoming: a future that becomes present, a present that becomes past.
P6Our eyes, ears and habit show us births and changes, but they must not be trusted: we must judge by reason.
Therefore what is has neither past nor future: it "was not and will not be", it is now, all at once, one, continuous. Becoming and the passage of time are only names that mortals have laid down, believing them to be true.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, one can accept P1 to P3 and still say that things change: a leaf goes from green to yellow without drawing anything from nothing, becoming other while remaining what it is. Without P5, one can grant that there is no becoming and still keep a passing time, like a series of states replacing each other.
The argument is valid with the hidden premises P4 and P5. P1 rules out not-being; P2 and P3 conclude that what is neither comes to be nor perishes; P4 makes becoming in general a form of birth or death (the step Parmenides takes when he also lists change of place and colour); P5 says that the passing of time requires becoming. P6 gives the method: reason overrides the senses. Mind the scope: Parmenides does not say that past and future exist like the present (the block-universe thesis), he says that what is has neither past nor future. The debates concern mostly P1 (the senses of "is" and "is not") and P2 (does every beginning come from absolute nothing?).
Analogy. A film on a reel: all the frames are there, whole, at the same time; the motion is only the effect of their running past the eye. Parmenides goes further than the image: for him even the running is a name, and the reel alone is true.

Objections

4

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Plato 360 BC · attacks premise 1

In the Sophist, the Stranger from Elea quotes Parmenides' prohibition and says that we have gone further than he did: we have shown that not-being is, but as "other" and not as the opposite of being. To say that a thing "is not" such and such is to say that it is other than that. So the words "is not" have a perfectly thinkable sense, and the second road is not a dead end.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in -360, after the author's death (-450).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Parmenides had died long before. His defenders note that Plato's "not-being" is a difference ("is not tall"), not the absolute nothing from which what is would have to come in order to be born. If so, the argument about birth and death is not touched, but it is made more precise: it targets absolute not-being only.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: almost everyone accepts that Plato distinguishes two senses of "not being". Still open: is absolute not-being really unthinkable, or only hard to speak about? See also the argument on nothing, which takes up this debate (parmenide-neant).
Aristotle 350 BC · attacks premise 2

In the Physics, Aristotle sets out the reasoning of the early thinkers: what comes to be must come from what is or from what is not, and both are impossible. He accepts part of it: nothing comes from not-being without qualification. But he holds that a thing may come from not-being "in a qualified sense": it comes from the privation, for instance bronze that does not yet have the shape of the statue, while the matter remains present in the result. So change is not an emergence out of nothing.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in -350, after the author's death (-450).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary (a reconstructed reply): a Parmenidean would say the problem is only moved. The bronze remains, but the shape of the statue was not: the privation is still an "is not". Aristotle answers that the shape was already there "potentially", which requires a third term between being and not-being. If one accepts it, P4 loses its force: not every becoming is a passage from absolute not-being to being.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: a deep disagreement. For Aristotle the substratum makes change thinkable; for a Parmenidean one must still say where the arriving forms come from. The debate has no recognised winner, but Aristotle's solution was kept by most later traditions.
Aristotle 350 BC · attacks premise 6

A physicist cannot let himself be stopped by an argument that denies motion. We must take for granted that natural things are in motion, all or some of them, and induction, that is repeated observation, makes it plain. He also says, a few lines earlier, that in Melissus and Parmenides "their premisses are false and their conclusions do not follow".

Parménide replies
P
Parmenides 480 BC · Parmenides (earlier text)
The poem anticipates this kind of objection: the goddess forbids Parmenides to let habit drive him along the beaten path with his aimless eye, deafened ear and tongue, and bids him judge by reason.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: this passage of Aristotle sets aside the discussion with the Eleatics rather than conducting it, and Parmenides' answer was written before the objection. The question remains whether experience can be doubted in the name of a reasoning; the moderns have done so, for instance in physics, when reason corrected the senses.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: a disagreement of method, never settled. Each side keeps its rule: experience judges reasoning, or reasoning judges experience. Modern physics has vindicated each side, depending on the case.
Henri Bergson 1907 · attacks the conclusion

In Creative Evolution Bergson judges that the arguments of Zeno, Parmenides' disciple, against motion rest on a confusion: movement is applied to the line traversed, which can be divided as one wishes. This absurdity vanishes when we adopt by thought the continuity of real movement, which each of us feels when lifting an arm. Lived duration is not a series of stops.

no reply
see the argument
We have not yet found a direct reply by Parménide in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Bergson answers Zeno, who defended Parmenides, more than Parmenides himself, whose argument about birth and death does not go through the division of the line. A Parmenidean would say that lived continuity is precisely the appearance that reason must go beyond.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: an open point. Bergson sets the inner experience of time above logical arguments; Parmenides' heirs reply that experience does not prove becoming.