Gadamer’s Return to Parmenides

According to Gadamer’s hermeneutical “principle of the history of effect (Wirkungsgeschichte),” in order to understand Parmenides’ thought, it is necessary to examine not only the traces left by the historical impact of his poem, but also the unrealized possibilities of development that did not influence the subsequent history of philosophical thought. Gadamer himself explored one of these unexplored “lines of effects” when he revisited the poem during a conference dedicated to Parmenides held in Velia in 1988. He did so by analyzing the role and function of the “nameless goddess.” This study examines how the German philosopher developed this “line of effects.”