Question
According to Barbara Cassin, this “signifier of the signifier” is a “false cut,” since it was coined by removing two letters from an Ancient Greek word for “nothing.” For 10 points each:
[10h] What Ancient Greek word has been translated by the neologism “hing”? The primary attestation of this word is Fragment 156 of Democritus, which claims that “Empty space is just as real as [this word].”
ANSWER: den (Democritus may have removed the negative prefix me from meden, meaning nothing, to get den; by analogy, the not is removed from nothing to get hing.)
[10e] Democritus coined den to avoid hen, a term central to the poem in which this thinker proposed strict monism and outlined the “way of truth.” This thinker founded the Eleatic school.
ANSWER: Parmenides of Elea
[10m] Cassin argues that this thinker semi-jokingly rebutted Parmenides with a triple assertion in his lost work On Non-Existence. In a dialogue titled for this man, Socrates argues that tyrants are pitiful because they inflict evil.
ANSWER: Gorgias
<AK, Philosophy>