This biography chronicles the life and works of the ancient Greek philosopher, Zeno of Elea. Born in the 5th century BC, Zeno was a pre-Socratic philosopher who is best known for his paradoxes. He was a student of Parmenides
Zeno of Elea was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea, in Southern Italy. He was a student of Parmenides and one of the Eleatics. Zeno defended his instructor's belief in monism, the idea that only one single entity exists that makes up all of reality. He rejected the existence of space, time, and motion. To disprove these concepts, he developed a series of paradoxes to demonstrate why they are impossible. Though his original writings are lost, subsequent descriptions by Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes Laertius, and Simplicius of Cilicia have allowed study of his ideas.