- Lived:
- c. 490–430 BCE · Elea, a Greek colony in southern Italy
- Tradition:
- Pre-Socratic; the Eleatic school — Parmenides' brilliant, dangerous pupil
- The Big Idea:
- If you take the everyday world of motion and many things seriously, you can be led step by logical step into pure absurdity — so maybe the everyday world is not what it seems.
- In their words:
- "That which moves, moves neither in the place in which it is, nor in the place in which it is not."
- If you remember one thing:
- Zeno never argued for anything. He borrowed his opponents' beliefs, ran them to their logical conclusions, and let them explode — a weapon called reductio ad absurdum that philosophy has carried ever since.