History of Philosophy

Mythology is a way of ordering and explaining what is perceived. The origin, the idea and major problems of philosophy. The significance of the early Greek thought. Mythology and philosophy: the irrational and the rational. Criteria of rational knowledge. Mythology is a way of ordering and explaining what is perceived. Mythology is a mixture of both reason and unreason, of reason and passions, of perception of the world around us and fantasies about it.

Philosophy is an endeavour: to separate the rational from the irrational, to define what is rational knowledge, to explain what is a relation between the rational and irrational.

Two general assumptions of philosophy, usually called the criteria of rational knowledge: 1. objectivity or inter-subjectivity of results of the quest for knowledge (truth) 2. objective or inter-subjective testability (justification) of the results.

Inter-subjective – between knowing subjects. If a knowing subject (e.g. a knowing man) is able to articulate and communicate his knowledge of something to another subject, and this piece of knowledge is well understood, we can say that this piece of knowledge has been inter- subjectively communicated.

From an etymological point of view philosophy is the love of wisdom (from Greek phileo [I love], and sophia [wisdom, knowledge]). We are told that Pythagoras (b[orn] c[irca] 570 BC) was the first philosopher to use the word in this specific meaning, but he was by no means the first man who was a philosopher.

The idea of philosophy: love of wisdom and the contemplation of the divine order Concepts: philosophia, theoria, kosmos, chaos, logos and nous. A Greek noun theoria, and a verb theoreo, [to look at, to behold, to observe; to consider, to contemplate, to examine; to perceive], has a root theos [god, deity, divine being], means “the contemplation/to contemplate the divine”. Therefore, the original meaning of the notion of ‘theory’ or ‘to theorise’ was ‘the contemplation of the divine’ or ‘to contemplate the divine’.

The ancient Greek thinkers were convinced that wisdom is the contemplation of the divine. But what was the divine? The overwhelming order of things or of the universe they called kosmos. Kosmos was the opposite of chaos - the unordered, unformed, undifferentiated beginning of things. Chaos is one of the most important notions in the Greek mythology, as Greeks believed that chaos was in the beginning of anything existing before time [chronos, Kronos] and matter - ‘the stuff’ of the universe/reality.

Contemplation is an unbiased, disinterested (selfless) attitude towards sth one wants to know. It is a striving to understand the superhuman order, its regularities or laws, and therefore its rational nature. This is the reason why Greek thinkers thought of kosmos as logos [word, statement, principle, law, reason, proportion], or nous [mind, reason, the faculty of intellectual vs. empirical apprehension].

We can know the rule-governed, rational universe because there is a fundamental affinity between human reason and rational nature of kosmos. This is what the ancient as well as the early modern and modern theorising have in common. Hence philosophy is a love of wisdom, i.e. a quest for true knowledge of the whole of being and its contemplation.

Philosophy according to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates (c. 470-399 BC) According to Socrates (c. 470-399 BC) lovers of wisdom (philosophers) are seekers after wisdom. They are between the ignorant, who are not interested in wisdom, and gods, who are wise already.

Plato (428-347 BC) Plato, Republic, 484a and 490a R. Waterfield’s translation, Oxford: OUP, 1993 “[P]hilosophers are those who are capable of apprehending that which is permanent and unvarying, while those who can’t, those who wander erratically in the midst of plurality and variety, are not lovers of knowledge… [A] genuine lover of knowledge innately aspires to reality, and doesn’t settle on all the various things which are assumed to be real, but keeps on, with his love remaining keen and steady, until the nature of each thing is in itself has been grasped by the appropriate part of his mind – which is to say, the part which is akin to reality. Once he has drawn near this authentic reality and united with it, and thus fathered intellect and truth, then he has knowledge; then he lives a life which is true to himself.”

Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982a Aristotle (384-322 BC) Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982a J. Warrington’s translation, London-New York: J.M.Dent & Sons Ltd., 1966 “Wisdom is concerned with first causes and principles.”

The origins of philosophy according to Plato and Aristotle According to Plato philosophy is the quest for truth, but he also thought that astonishment is the beginning of philosophy: “for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. He was not a bad genealogist who said that Iris (the messenger of heaven) is the child of Thaumas (wonder).” His disciple Aristotle repeated his opinion: “For through astonishment men have begun to philosophise both in our times and at the beginning" (Metaphysics, A 2, 928 b12sq).

The origins of philosophy: (being and non-being, Zeno’s paradoxes) Ionian natural philosophy, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Eleatic philosophy and the beginnings of western metaphysics (being and non-being, Zeno’s paradoxes) The Greek thinkers, who lived in 7th and 6th c. BC mostly in Greek colonies, mainly in the cities of Colophon, Miletus, and Ephesus, in Asia Minor (Ionia), i.e., in today’s Turkey, and in the city of Elea, some 100 km (approx. 60 miles) south of Naples, in southern Italy. The famous city of Athens in Attica, in the Peloponesus (Peloponnesus), became the capital city of philosophy in 5th c. BC.

Thales of Miletus (c. 624-545 BC) Anaximander (c Thales of Miletus (c. 624-545 BC) Anaximander (c. 610-546 BC) Anaximenes (d. 528 BC) They tried to explain whether the multitude of things have something in common. For Thales, one of the Ionians, who came from the city of Miletus, water was the stuff of the universe, its beginning and the principle, therefore any material thing was a form of water. He was also convinced that matter is by nature alive (‘all things are full of gods’). Anaximander of Miletus had more abstract mind and for him the beginning and the principle of all things - arché as it was then called by Aristotle, was infinity, the boundless, the unlimited (Greek, apeiron). A disciple of his, Anaximenes of Miletus, taught that the primary substance was air (Greek, aer).

Pythagoras (b. c. 570 BC – d. about 475 BC) Pythagoras and his disciples, however, argued that the arché are numbers, because any relation of things in the universe is a geometrical proportion or symmetry; the whole of the kosmos can be explained in terms of harmonia or number.

The fundamental form and the root of nature is the tetraktys or the Great Four, which is the decad (1+2+3+4 = 10) ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● On each side of the triangle there are four points and one in the middle. When counted from top to bottom the number of points increases by one, and together they make ten. Thus the triangle is formed out of ten points. Pythagoras was the first philosopher, who broke from an idea of prime matter and concentrated instead on form, explaining natural things in terms of geometrical structures.

Heraclitus of Ephesus (d. after 480 BC) Heraclitus of Ephesus (d. after 480 BC) seemed to claimed that in order to understand the nature of the kosmos we have to assume that there is the ‘flux’ of all things, i.e., all things change. But the guiding idea of his philosophy was that of the logos (law, principle, reason), which unifies the opposites, therefore the whole - kosmos is in a state of harmony, in a state of dynamic equilibrium.

Parmenides of Elea (b. c. 515 BC) Parmenides of Elea (b. c. 515 BC), the founding father of the western metaphysics, undermined materialistic philosophy of the first philosophers, and argued that being (Greek, to on) is one, perfect, unchangeable and spherical (the perfect geometrical solid) and is (exists), while non-being is not (does not exist), because changes constantly. Being can be known only by reason, non-being is perceived by senses. The idea of the perfect being is the model-concept for the philosophical concept of God.

Zeno’s of Elea paradoxes – arguments for the nonpossibility of motion Zeno of Elea (c. 490 - 430 B.C.) Zeno’s of Elea paradoxes – arguments for the nonpossibility of motion The Dichotomy: The first asserts the non-existence of motion on the ground that that which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal. (Aristotle Physics, 239b11) Achilles and the Tortoise The [second] argument was called “Achilles,” accordingly, from the fact that Achilles was taken [as a character] in it, and the argument says that it is impossible for him to overtake the tortoise when pursuing it. For in fact it is necessary that what is to overtake [something], before overtaking [it], first reach the limit from which what is fleeing set forth. In [the time in] which what is pursuing arrives at this, what is fleeing will advance a certain interval, even if it is less than that which what is pursuing advanced … .

And in the time again in which what is pursuing will traverse this [interval] which what is fleeing advanced, in this time again what is fleeing will traverse some amount … . And thus in every time in which what is pursuing will traverse the [interval] which what is fleeing, being slower, has already advanced, what is fleeing will also advance some amount. (Simplicius(b) On Aristotle's Physics, 1014.10)

The Arrow: The third is … that the flying arrow is at rest, which result follows from the assumption that time is composed of moments … . he says that if everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always in a now, the flying arrow is therefore motionless. (Aristotle Physics, 239b.30) 1. When the arrow is in a place just its own size, it’s at rest. 2. At every moment of its flight, the arrow is in a place just its own size. 3. Therefore, at every moment of its flight, the arrow is at rest.

The Stadium: The fourth argument is that concerning equal bodies which move alongside equal bodies in the stadium from opposite directions—the ones from the end of the stadium, the others from the middle—at equal speeds, in which he thinks it follows that half the time is equal to its double…. (Aristotle Physics, 239b33)

Empedocles (c. 492—432 B.C.) According to Empedocles there are four 'elements’ of matter, or ‘roots’, which have a creative potential: earth, air, fire and water. These are able to create all things, including all living creatures, by being 'mixed' in different combinations and proportions. Nevertheless, each of the elements retains its own characteristics in the mixture, and each is eternal and unchanging.