Pre-Socratics

GREEK PHILOSOPHY They were interested in finding the unity in life-in both the material world and the spiritual world. WHO AM I WHAT IS THE WORLD COMPOSED OF WHERE DID I COME FROM WHAT IS RIGHT AND WRONG WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE

Humanism in Philosophy The social, religious, and political atmosphere made Greek philosophy possible. The world is orderly (by observation) and Greeks search to figure out why Unity within diversity-what holds reality together The search for the unifying factor would lead the Greeks to search outside the divine realm and focus on what people can do. Hesiod (both divine will and human will)Heraclitus (divine logos/thought allows us to understand reality)Plato (the forms are a perfect reflection of reality; humans know the imperfect world via the knowledge of these forms; therefore reality is a reflection of human thoughts/reason)Aristotle (Plato’s student; reject forms; only know reality by material world; like Heraclitus, the world is changing; human workmanship can mimic the changing world therefore human work is an extension of the divine) Cosmos is orderly and philosophy is seeking to find that order. What is the unifying substance to reality? Pre-Socratics began to look at the material world rather than divine. All the major philosophers had different ideas Heraclitus: logos is the unifying factor in reality. It is a reflection of our thoughts. Our rationality is perfect given by a perfect god therefore humans are capable of creating our own destinies. Aristotle extended the divine to include material products of humanity because it was able to mimic the changing world. The humanism would influence the Renaissance 2,000 years later and see the perfect as an outgrowth of human achievement.

Causes of Philosophy Miletus: Ionian city-state Freedom of Thought promoted by: Religion: Not state-centric but dealt with in families Homer wasn’t dogma (not quite like a Bible) Politics Written laws promoted rational debate Written language not class specific Miletus: Ionian city-state Contact with Greece and the Near East Astronomy, Orientalizing pottery, alphabet, religion Continuous Greek culture passed down through the Mycenaean period “Homeric” social structure, language, epics, and culture Wealthy polis (shipping, trade, industry) Aristocratic and secular More causes for the beginnings of philosophy, science, and humanism/independence Freedom of though in absence of organized religion. Reason promoted through written laws Wealth encouraged specialization and leisure Written language not class specific Contact with other countries

Three types of Greek religious views Upward or heavenly looking (doing good for the sake of gods) Appeasement of the gods Downward or earthly looking (doing good for the sake of gods and people) Both gods and humans control the environment Mystical or inward looking (being good for the sake of yourself) Upward: homer, Hesiod, Olympiad gods, most ancient gods (near eastern and Egyptian) Transgression oriented. Hubris, required obedience or moderation Appeasing the gods Downward: early pre-Socratic and Archaic age: creation is viewed as a balancing act between good and evil. There are two opposite components that the world relies on and needs to balance…we start to see more Eastern thought so this falls towards the end of the Dark Age. Human wrongdoing curses humanity and destroys harmony. People must purge evil from their surroundings. Murderers are exiled because the blood of the murdered destroys the harmony of the ground and thus people. The murder of Clytemnestra by her son is blood relational and thus pollutes the ground and thus was very controversial when Athena overrode the furies. Hesiod was a part of the early Archaic Age. His work reflects the movement towards social justice based on both Zeus and humankind. This type was still focused on appeasing the gods but doing so harmonize the community. Mystical: late pre-Socratics and Socrates Mystical Goal is the quest after the one Not of what is the world made but “what am I” People are cut off from the One by human self-will the desire to be good rather than do good.

Hesiod vs Thales the dark age and archaic connection Wrote Works and Days and Theogony these works give us the daily life and religion of the Dark Ages More concerned about divine causes rather than natural causes (very oriental-copied Enuma Elish) But order is seen as an outgrowth of human motivation rather than divine will Early vestiges of Greek independence and arête. Mixture of both divine will and human will The gods ruled the world and Hesiod didn’t attempt to explain the world naturally However, people were rather in charge of their own destiny Humanism: humans are responsible for their own lives-not the gods

Pre-Socratics

Pre-Socratics: Humanism Natural origins of life. The divine wasn’t abandoned, however. The search for the unifying factor would ultimately come down to the Logos and the Forms. Humanism in the actual philosophy Moved away from the Near Eastern ideas that the divine was a part of the general makeup of the world. For those in the Near East, gods were inseparable from the physical word. The sky was a god. The earth was a god. A god didn’t exist until it had a physical function and vice versa. However, they weren’t abandoning the divine all together. They would develop a concept that a divine being was in charge of imbuing the material world with part of its divinity. Thales: Water was the origin of life. In all things, seen in all three states. No beginning and thus divine Pythagoras: Math was perfection. The soul was perfect reflection of god-a perfect being-therefore the soul was perfect. Only the soul is perfect and all material life are reflection of the perfect being. Heraclitus: Logos is a unifying soul present in all things. It is the rational thoughts present in humanity and given by the divine. It is through our rational thoughts that we can understand the imperfect world. Even though, all things change we can still understand the world by understanding these divine rational ideas present within us. The search for the unifying factor would lead the Greeks to search outside the divine realm and focus on what people can do. Hesiod (both divine will and human will)Heraclitus (divine logos/thought allows us to understand reality)Plato (the forms are a perfect reflection of reality; humans know the imperfect world via the knowledge of these forms; therefore reality is a reflection of human thoughts/reason)Aristotle (Plato’s student; reject forms; only know reality by material world; like Heraclitus, the world is changing; human workmanship can mimic the changing world therefore human work is an extension of the divine)

To be or not to be; whatever is, is the Beginnings of Greek thought Quest for order (Cosmos), unity within diversity, and monarchy Searched within the material world and abandoned the divine Early beginnings of science What is the monarchy? Physical one or many Immaterial one or many

Thales Founder of Greek philosophy and science Water was either the main material or the main source of all things Has no beginning and thus is divine Three states of being and all things need it (therefore all share in the divine) A “soul” connects all things and is the cause of motion Eclipse: year only according to Herodotus’ account. Probably came from Babylon either by Thales visiting or vice versa. Math: perhaps introduced the concept of proofs

Heraclitus “All things are in flux” The only constant is change represented by fire He is still looking at the material world for a unifying composition Logos: what connects all people Logos=Word/Reason/Thought Thoughts were seen as part of the divine; perfect representations of reality given by “god” and therefore humans can understand reality Logos is related to the word “to speak” word, statement, or story and because to speak is related to reason, rationality, thoughts, arguments…etc. it can also be used for these things. Language mirrors reality Fire is the unifying principle

Parmenides What is not-is not. What is-is. What is not –is not and can never be. Something can’t come from nothing. Coming into existence and ceasing to exist are impossible. The appearance of the world is deceptive Reality is “the one” unchanging, ungenerated, and indestructible Movement and change is deceptive Only truth is reason (logos) not senses Parmenides' only known work, a poem written in hexameter verse around 475 B.C. and entitled "On Nature", has only survived in fragmentary form, with approximately 150 of the original 3,000 lines of text remaining today. It is divided into two main sections, describing the two ways or two views of reality, "The Way of Truth" (which accounts for most of the surviving lines) and "The Way of Appearance/Opinion", along with an introduction. Parmenides argued in favour of the Way of Truth and against The Way of Appearance. In the poem, Parmenides argued that the every-day perception of the reality of the physical world is mistaken, and that the reality of the world is "the One", an unchanging, ungenerated, indestructible whole. Likewise, the phenomena of movement and change are simply appearances of the real static, eternal reality. He further asserted that the truth cannot be known through sensory perception, only through pure reason ("Logos"). Parmenides set out the heart of his case in a worldview that (even by the standards of philosophy) is, according to Aristotle, "near to madness". He argued as follows: "What-is-not" does not exist. Since anything that comes into being must arise out of"what-is-not", objects cannot come into being. Likewise, they cannot pass away, because in order to do so they would have to enter the realm of "what-is-not". Since it does not exist, "what-is-not" cannot be the womb of generation, or the tomb of that which perishes. The "no-longer" and the "not-yet" are therefore variants of "what-is-not", and so the past and future do not exist either. Change, then, is impossible. Equally, his argument continued, multiplicity is unreal, because the empty space necessary to separate one object from another would be another example of "what-is-not". And since things cannot be anything to a greater or lesser degree (which would require "what-is" to be mixed with the diluting effect of "what-is-not"), the universe must be homogeneous, a single, undifferentiated, unchanging unity. Also, it must be finite and spherical, for it cannot be in one direction any more than in another (and the sphere is the only figure of which this can be said). Thus, by a strictly deductive argument, Parmenides asserted that change is impossible, and that coming-into-existence or ceasing-to-exist are likewise impossible, so that everything that exists is permanent, ungenerated, indestructible and unchanging. His argument refutes all accounts of the origin of the world, and represents an early type of Monism. Parmenides therefore made the ontological argument against nothingness, essentially denying the possible existence of a void, which led Leucippus and Democritus to propose their theory of Atomism (that everything in the universe is either atoms or voids) specifically to contradict his argument.

Pythagoras Later Gnostics merged his philosophy: Soul is divine Math was perfection; Geometry was the beginning of all things Music was mathematical Soul and world consisted of geometric shapes Soul was perfect but if body was out of alignment soul would be tainted Transmigration of souls (reincarnation until you recognize Truth) Soul was the perfect reflection of “god”; body imperfect Later Gnostics merged his philosophy: Spiritual and Physical dualism (spiritual is perfect while physical imperfect) Augustine would use Pythagoras and Plato’s idea of the soul and body to understand Christianity From samos 570. His followers identified three types of people: gods, people, and people like Pythagoras Died out in the 4th century except with the influence of Plato from the tyrant Archytas in Tarentum Neopythagoreans in 50 BC through third century AD (religion superstitions, and numerological aspects and combined Plato) later absorbed into the Neo-Platonists in the third century Divine soul continuation with the other pre-Socratics (all their unifying characteristics were made to be eternal and thus divine) If the soul becomes to connected with the body, if the body become ill it will also die…however the soul was perfection and thus would survive outside the body at death. Need to care for all souls because we are all connected. Strive for the best possible care of one’s body/self to promote unity with the divine and stop reincarnations. Christian thought: complicated! There was an intertwining with the early Christian fathers (Augustine and Aquinas) as well as others into the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Research task: separate out what is scriptural and what is Greek…