Moira (Parmenides VIII, 34-41)

Parmenides' subordinate clause—in reality his "sentence of sentences"—runs (VIII, 37 ff.):

ἐπεὶ τό γε Μοῖρ' ἐπέδησεν οὖλον ἀκίνητόν τ' ἔμμεναι:

since Moira bound it (being) to be a whole and immovable.

(W. Kranz)

Parmenides speaks of ἐόν, of the presencing (of what is present), and of duality, and in no sense of "beings." He names the Μοῖρα, the apportionment, which allots by bestowing and so unfolds the twofold. The apportionment dispenses [beschickt], (provides and presents) through the duality. Apportionment is the dispensation of presenting, as the presencing of what is present, which is gathered in itself and therefore unfolds of itself. Μοῖρα is the destiny of "Being," in the sense of ἐόν. Μοῖρα has dispensed the destiny of Being, τό γε, into the duality, and thus has bound it to totality and immobility, from which and in which the presenting of what is present comes to pass.

In the destining of duality, however, only presencing attains a shining, and only what is present attains appearance. Destiny altogether conceals both the duality as such and its unfolding. The essence of Ἀλήθεια remains veiled. The visibility it bestows allows the presencing of what is present to arise as outer appearance [Aussehen], (εἶδος) and aspect [Gesicht], (ἰδέα). Consequently the perceptual relation to the presencing of what is present is defined as "seeing" (εἰδέναι). Stamped with this character of visio, knowledge and the evidence of knowledge cannot renounce their essential derivation from luminous disclosure, even where truth has been transformed into the certainty of self-consciousness. Lumen naturale, natural light, i.e. the illumination of reason, already presupposes the disclosure of the duality. The same holds true of the Augustinian and medieval views of light—not to mention their Platonic origins—which could only develop under the tutelage of an Ἀλήθεια already reigning in the destiny of the duality.

If we wish to speak of the history of Being, we must first have considered that Being says: presencing of what is present: duality.

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