Parmenides

Born in Elea, Parmenides is known for a single work his poem titled "On Nature". Even this only known work only exist in fragments. With the little we have from Parmenides it is the importance of what exist that speaks for his brilliance. He saw reality as unchangeable, uniform, essential and timeless in nature. These ideas would later become one of the most influential concepts within western philosophy and some say although they were known in Parmenides own time it was their influence on Plato that really caused his views on reality to become world known and respected. By using poetry to explain his philosophy, the story of his quest to the true nature reality is unlike that of most other philosophers.

Parmenides thoughts on the uniform and unchangeable aspects of reality seem to limit the abilities of not only the world around human beings but human beings themselves. By implying that reality is unchangeable it promotes the idea that one has no reason to continue to work or improve because things will happen how they are supposed to. Without a pursuit or an end goal individuals and society as a whole loses a reason to improve. The boy that works at Canes will not give the same effort if he is told that no matter what he does his life will going the way it is meant to. In contrast that same boy if promised opportunity for a more important job with a higher pay has a much higher chance of causing him to work harder whether his goal be to make more money or one day be the new Ceo of Canes. I agree that reality could quite possibly be timeless and essential, his concepts of the uniform and unchangeable aspects seem to be the "easy way out" and overly simplify the complexities of the universe and the ideas which make it up.  I am a firm believer in the abilities of simplicity as a key to knowledge but Parmenides ideas seem to be a bit lacking.