Moira (Parmenides VIII, 34-41)

Thinking is thus identical with its Being; for there is nothing outside of Being, this great affirmation.

For Hegel Being is the affirmation of self-productive thought. Being is the product of thinking, of perception, in the sense in which Descartes had already interpreted idea. Through thinking, Being as affirmation and as the positing of representation is transposed into the realm of the "ideal." For Hegel also—though in an incomparably more thoughtful way, a way mediated by Kant—Being is the same as thinking. It is the same as thinking in that Being is what is expressed and affirmed by thinking. Thus, from the standpoint of modern philosophy, Hegel can pass the following judgment upon the saying of Parmenides:

In that this saying gives evidence of ascending into the realm of the ideal, genuine philosophizing began with Parmenides; this beginning is of course still dark and indefinite and does not further explain what is contained in it; but just this explanation constitutes the development of philosophy itself—which is not yet present here. (pp. 274 ff.)

For Hegel philosophy is at hand only when the self-thinking of absolute knowledge is reality itself, and simply is. The self-perfecting elevation of Being into the thinking of Spirit as absolute reality takes place in and as speculative logic.

On the horizon of this consummation of modern philosophy Parmenides' saying appears as the very beginning of genuine philosophizing, i.e. as the beginning of logic in Hegel's sense—but only as a beginning. Parmenides' thought lacks the speculative, dialectical form which Hegel does however find in Heraclitus. Referring to Heraclitus Hegel says, "Here we see land; there is no sentence in Heraclitus which I have not taken up into my Logic." Hegel's Logic is not only the one and only suitable interpretation of Berkeley's proposition in modern times; it is its unconditioned realization. That Berkeley's assertion esse = percipi concerns precisely what Parmenides' saying first put into words has never been doubted. But this historical kinship of the modern proposition and the ancient saying at the same time has its proper foundation in a difference between what is said and thought in our times and what was said and thought at that time—a difference which could hardly be more decisive.

The dissimilarity between the two is so far-reaching that through it the very possibility of comprehending the difference is shattered.

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