Parménide croyait-il dans les signes de l’Être ?

Remarques sur l’énonciation et la délocution au fragment 8, vers 1-11

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to introduce an alternative reading of the lines 1-11 of Parmenides’ Fragment 8, focusing on the pragmatics of enunciation, instead of relying exclusively on the logico-analytic linguistic paradigm which, tacitly or not, still dominates contemporary research. The paper begins with a study of the vocabulary of the sign (sêma) in Hesiod, Heraclitus, Herodotus and Homer with the aim of showing that Parmenides’ intention was to solve what must be called a “sematological crisis”, that one may find strikingly exemplified in the Odyssey. It is then shown how, in order to avoid this crisis, Parmenides gives the word “Being” a self-referential and “delocutive” meaning, but at the cost of a pragmatic contradiction.