Il parricidio occidentale

Abstract

In this essay it is highlighted that philosophy, born with the intention of being the true remedy for man’s anguish towards the changes of the world and the death, was already expressed in its maximum power with Parmenides: the “formidable father” poses the most tremendous problem of all: only Being is. The world (the multiplicity of entities and becoming) is denied, because the voice of Truth affirms it peremptorily. The world must be saved by the same truth that had the task of saving it. Parmenides must be killed. Through a detailed analysis of Parmenides’ two parricides, i.e. the well-known one by Plato and the more recent one by Severino, it can be proved that the only truly successful patricide is the one carried out by Severino, who manages to move beyond Western nihilism, in which instead Plato’s patricide is a resurrection of the father Parmenides.