he is not to gain sundry truths, in case there are such, but is to grasp the essence of truth and the essential truth.
The truth about δόξα, however, is obviously to be gained only on the way of truth. But the converse also holds: only if insight is gained into the truth about δόξα can the prospect offered by the way of truth be fully surveyed.
πάντα, everything, includes: 1) the essence of truth; 2) the essence of δόξα. But is this actually everything? No; ἀλήθεια and δόξα—what about the “and”? That is, why at all next to ἀλήθεια some sort of untruth? Why and how next to ἀλήθεια does δόξα come to sovereignty, so much so that it commonly draws humans onto its way? That must be clarified. Only then is insight gained into ἀλήθεια and δόξα. Therefore, the πάντα is not exhausted by the ἠμέν—ἠδέ; instead, it goes on: ἀλλ᾽ ἔμπης καὶ ταῦτα. “But in all this you must also gain insight into how the semblant in its own manner, according to its essence, comes to be all-sovereign.” Only when this is experienced is the entire way of the goddess measured out.
The genuine meditation on the ways, on method, is the question of the essence of truth (this, however, is the question of Being! understanding of Being) and of the essential possibility of truth in relation to untruth. The one who would grasp this must understand untruth, must not avoid it, but instead must enter into the most intimate confrontation with it. The decisive insight is announced here right at the beginning of the didactic poem and is actualized in the poem’s content proper.
Thereby we repeat: this way of Parmenides has nothing in common with myths and mysteries, for characteristic of the initiate into raptures and transports, who appeals to his special apparitions, is that he is carried off into his own private realm and feels sheltered there. Sheltered and protected from all untruth. But the way of Parmenides proceeds into the open realm, where it is precisely the entire opposition between truth and untruth that first comes into the open. It is a matter of the way that the one who is open opens up and keeps open—it is a matter of method pure and simple.
§20. Interpretation of fragments 4 and 5
a) First meditation on the ways of questioning
If we keep present before us this comprehensive outlook of the way of the goddess, then it is easily shown that the verses which now follow in Diels (1, 33ff.) and which Sextus Empiricus also had already