Development Of The Human Soul

Appendix 4. (1048).

The word 'faith' (*), which means persuasion, was used in different ways by the ancients. Parmenides divided human knowledge, or rather that about which human beings reason, into truth and opinion. Karsten, in his work Philosophorum graecorum veterum praesertim qui ante Platonem floruerunt operum reliquiae (Amsterdam, 1830), thinks that Parmenides attributes faith to truth, and error (*) to opinions. Plato thinks the opposite, that is, he attributes faith to opinion (Tim., p. 29; Rep., 6, p. 511), and criticises Proclus for saying that Parmenides distinguishes faith from certain knowledge (In Tim., p. 105). In my opinion however faith, understood as a synonym of persuasion, as the Greeks understood it, is something distinct from but not contrary to information.

Indeed, I have often tried to distinguish accurately the faculty of knowledge from the faculty of persuasion. Parmenides, in the fragments we have of his work, speaks about faith in the truth (*), which simply means the persuasion that comes from truth. Similarly he calls truth a persuasive good (*): its correlative is persuasive evil. He thus distinguishes good and true persuasion and its correlative non-good; Parmenides does not deny that opinions give persuasion, faith, but denies that they give good, truthful faith (*). When Plato therefore attributes faith or persuasion to opinions and appearances, and contrasts it with truth ((*), Tim. p. 29), he speaks of persuasion without qualification; he does not say, as Parmenides does, that it is good and true, but speaks about persuasion alone, considered in itself, separate from any other element and therefore an abstraction from truth. Persuasion without truth, because it is blind, certainly contrasts with truth. In this way Plato's affirmation is not as irreconcilable as it seems with that of Parmenides.