(Although in Parmenides himself no starting from the present = presence, yet the priority is now sufficiently clear and thus the endeavor of my interpretation.)
β) All absence lies in the sphere of presence
We would do well to investigate once for ourselves. What do we mean by presence and absence? παρεόντα—παρά, here beside [da-neben], here by [da-bei]; ἀπό, away [weg]; here and away! Where is here? Here before our eyes, here within range, at hand, lying in immediate reach. Yet how far does this reach extend? What is here has presence. Where is the boundary separating what is still here from what is already away? My hat, e.g., is not at hand here, it is away, although in my office. It is away from here, yet it is still here in the university. And thus in many cases; for instance, what is otherwise far away is “here” on the telephone or radio. Manifestly no fixed boundary exists between here and away; anything is both, but relatively—depending on the circumstances, depending on the person. That which for sensory perception is not immediately accessible, is away, is nonetheless still here for immediate presentification, e.g., the Black Forest, the North Sea, Berlin. In this regard, we do not need to recall having once seen the place; it is here at hand to sense quite free of recollection, and indeed in the present. Then is there any absence at all, if we take the sphere of presence so broadly and indeed such59 that everything is here at hand at once? Assuming there are absent things, and there are such things relatively, then even they can be absent only within a sphere of presence. Something is absent only in the sphere of presence; insofar as something absent “is,” it “is” only qua present—but it does not need to be perceived.
That is what Parmenides is trying to say! He is not trying to find a determinate boundary between individual present and absent things; on the contrary, he is striving to say something about absence and presence as such. Namely, that the former is incorporated into the latter. Moreover, that this encompassing presence is related to νοῦς; here no further “depending on circumstances”! For νοῦς, i.e., for its presentifying, everything that is nevertheless absent is already determined by presence—assuming that the absent precisely is. Yet we indeed said that Being tolerates no “not”; therefore what is absent, what is away, precisely is not. And yet it can be, without detriment to the relative absence; indeed it must be, precisely if and because it is absent. Precisely as absent it must have presence!
59 Relatively near—altogether no “away”—over and against astronomical distances.