Monday, October 11, 2010
Pop Quiz #2
Pick from any of the Pre-Socratic philosophers (Thales, Anaximader, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, the Pluralists, the Atomists or the Sophists)and discuss how their worldview(s), specifically their cosmology, i.e. their understanding of the origin/arche of all things, influences or leads to a particular moral understanding of nature, the divine or humankind itself. Be sure to pick the one you most readily relate to as it may in fact be easier to write about.
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Known as the “Father of Rationalism,” Parmenides believed that the universe is composed of an eternal and motionless Being. Unlike Heraclitus, he argued that the world is unchanging, rather than fluctuating. This changeless world is intelligible and can be fully understood by man. In order to comprehend the universe, one is able to remove himself from his physical senses in order to think intellectually. According to Parmenides, there are only two paths of thinking in which to understand the world. The first path, called “The Way of What Is,” contains everything that passes through the mind. All words, thought, and existence are grounded in what is. The second path, called “The Way of What is Not,” is impossible to travel. Because a thought comes into existence as soon as it passes through the mind, Parmenides argues that it is impossible to think nothing. Therefore, “The Way of What Is” is the only path of thinking that will lead to wisdom.
ReplyDeleteParmenides’ belief in an intelligible world leads to his understanding of mankind. His texts are written as poems, expressing his opinion that philosophy should not be deducted from a series of analytical proofs, but philosophy serves as a helpful guide to mankind. Because truth can be known, the life of man is a continuous journey in pursuit of an end. This search for knowledge has intrinsic value and will lead from incompleteness to completion. According to Parmenides, the goal of philosophy is to discover the truth that is located in oneself. Self-knowledge is the key to understanding one’s purpose in the world. Justice guards the doors to truth; therefore, the process of pursuing truth is just. Parmenides also believes that divinity plays a role in this process, providing support and affirmation of the search for truth. Rather than viewing philosophy strictly as an intellectual pursuit, he argues that the search for wisdom gives meaning to the life of mankind.
Parmenides believes that being is motionless, eternal, and unchanging and cannot undergo any qualitative change. His major argument attempts to resolve the conflict of “Being” vs. “Nonbeing”. According to Parmenides, there are two philosophical paths of thinking, which are “the way of what is”, and “the way of what is not”. He asserts that one cannot travel on the way of what is not because as soon as one proclaims what something is not, something comes into existence. Since “what is” is whole, complete and unchanging, thinking and being are the same because thinking presupposes something that already exists. Furthermore, everything that is must always have been because there was never a time that did not exist. Parmenides rejects beliefs based on sense experience stating that one must instead follow the path that understands that not-being cannot be or even be thought of (35). The understanding that “what is” must be whole, unmoving and undivided leads Parmenides to the assumption that truth must be the same.
ReplyDeleteParmenides differs from Heraclitus in that he rejects multiplicity and instead offers that the universe is one. He rejects that life is a flux and instead offers that the universe is stagnant. Just as in I Heart Huckabees, Parmenides would offer that when a person stands in a field of dust, it affects the world, because everything is value laden. Parmenides rejects opinions, and resolves to the stance that being cannot change and that the world is intelligible by reason.
Parmenides’ worldview leads him to argue that man can understand the world through reason. Therefore, the pursuit of self-knowledge is value laden. One cannot know truth without knowing what value it adds. The search for “what is” becomes good because it allows man to go from incompleteness to completeness. Based on Parmenides’ cosmetology of the world, he believes in the existence of the gods, because after all, humans imagine the gods so they could not fall into the category of “what is not,” for what is not, cannot be, because when a thing is thought, something comes into existence and it becomes “what is.” However, he believes that humans should access all things to determine its’ truth rather than depend on the gods or beliefs for certainty.
The Pluralists’ arche is a universal one that encompasses four substances, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, to form a unified world. These four substances were representations of four gods; Zeus, Hera, Adonis and Hester. Since these four original substances, Anaxogoras believed that everything came from nothing and therefore everything was everything. This was due to spermata or seeds, which everything is made up of. The world then operated in two different ages; one of love and one of strife. Since this cycle is always moving, there is therefore a moral understanding that nature is always moving and only definable with another. In this case, nature is defined by love or strife, both which are defined by each other. The age of love is when all the elements are united, which defines strife as when they are separated. You must understand one to understand the other. Nature is then something that is always moving but not always changing since everything must fall into these two categories. Due to everything coming from these four substances, the world and nature only work when they are together and separated. As for the divine, the four previously stated gods are changeless and eternal. Though there is not a pantheon of gods to be judged by and have to honor, there are still four. This makes a difference between a god and a human, a distinguishable line of “Them” and “us”. This idea also then plays into the belief of humans as the other; that which is not eternal and subject to change, though not progression.
ReplyDeleteThe Atomists based their archaic on the understanding that human perception is flawed. What we see is not necessarily all that is. In this matter, I would have to agree with the Atomists, too much opinion these days, are based upon the arrogant notion that we are right because we view it be as such. Often our arguments are based on abstract thinking with no real concrete evidence to back our claims. As such, they become quite meaningless.
ReplyDeleteThe Atomists would probably disagree with this statement since to them, there is no such thing, as something with no purpose as conveyed in Aetius’s quote, “No thing happens at random but all things as a result of reason and by necessity.” As such unlike Parmenides who denied in the concept of nothingness the Atomists believed that everything which usually are defined as positive and negative (good and evil) are present not only because they have meaning but because that meaning can only be defined by the presence of atoms.
Like most Pre-Socratic philosopher’s, the Atomists were not immune to the need to over simplify things. However unlike other philosopher’s who depicted their theories through the elements of nature, the Atomists took it one step further and decided to break down the elements, nature, humans and everything else into tiny molecules we call atoms. The word “atom” it self translating from Latin as “uncuttable,” meaning they could not be split or defined by something else, because in fact they are the beginning and end of everything.
This theory is still present in modern day thinking. Scientists for example, would like to believe that “scientific measure” is empirical and based solely on logic rather than value and to an extent, it is very comforting to believe that nothing in life is random. Yet, at the same time it seems somewhat naïve to believe that anything can be calculated in a value free environment.
After all what was it exactly that made someone carryout research to say, cure cancer? Could it have possibly been because they saw the effects of Cancer (probably on someone the loved) and wanted to find a way to fight it? Does that not mean the experiments they conducted were affected by their values before it even began? Also, how can that value be related back to atoms?
In my opinion while it may seem logical to try and base reasoning simply on meaning, it simply limits us to the possibility that we might be wrong. Which is fine if we define things in philosophical terms as having no truth but rather the persuasion of others to what we think the truth is but at the same time The Atomists begin to contradict their theory as they only consider Atoms to have meaning and yet what about the force that moves atoms, that provide motion? How can something that doesn’t exist be able to manipulate something that does?
The world, which the Atomists claim can explain all facts, is not relatively true. I say relatively because to them quantitative measure is all measure therefore under their theory this claim makes sense. However in my understanding quantitative measure goes hand in hand with qualitative measure. The things we perceive; that revolve around ideas, hopes, dreams and emotion. Things which I suppose, are impossible to measure therefore are also unable to be proven makes The Atomists’ theory seem unable to be proven as well, at least not by their standard of using fact and simply fact alone.
To conclude, while I do see holes in the Atomists’ theory, I would like to say that the idea of reasoning by only taking in to account other facts can be very helpful and safe in terms of solving problems. It can also however be very constraining and hypocritical because facts at one point had to be ideas that were thought and then proven to be facts. As such to base a means of living our lives on this and this alone can prove to be very dangerous and somewhat boring.
The Pluralists, specifically Empedocles, denied unity as the source of being. Being, the origin, or arche came from Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, each which are changeless and eternal. These elements mix together because of love and strife, of which both unity and separation happen. Love and strife, unity and separation, happen in a cycle that allows for the world to be the way it is.
ReplyDeleteEmpedocles’ philosophy is very balanced. The four elements are included, which brings being back to nature, but they are put into action by love and strife, two forces that have always been exceptionally important to mankind. If the force besides the four elements were just love, then there would only be unity, there would be no need for change or no difference. If the force were solely strife, then there would be constant separation. With both love and strife, mankind stays in the age of intelligibility.
Empedocles, according to brief biography provided at the beginning of this section, was a medicine man, and balance of the four elements can be correlated to the need for balance in the four humors. This is an example of how everything can be balanced. The four elements are also shown as the Olympian Gods, Zeus as Earth, Hera as Air, Aidoneus as Fire, and Nestis as Water. Empedocles also states how the elements evolved into humans from love and strife.
Because Earth, Air, Fire, and Water created everything through love and strife, Empedocles’ arche includes that was how humanity came about. Through this cosmic cycle, life is made and can also be taken away. Empedocles’ anthropology shows that because of these elements, mankind was able to be, and time has been able to change in a linear fashion. Empedocles’ philosophy that everything is constantly changing due to the four elements through love and strife provides a certain understanding to what is the age of intelligibility.
Parmenides is one of the most controversial figures among the Pre-Socratics. He was said to have been a student of Xenophanes but did not follow him and was associated with the Pythagoreans even though he rejected their theories. Parmenides decided to create his own philosophy. A philosophy he used to explain the cosmology of “what is.”
ReplyDeleteAs an intellectual optimist, Parmenides based the foundation of his theory on his ontological arche “All is Being.” He argued that honest thought and knowledge can only be about “what is” because “what is not” is nonexistent. He further argued the epistemology of Being sets the ground work for one’s own intelligibility . How we reason is not based upon our sense experiences, for those experiences are mere illusions, but how we reason is once again connected to the understanding of being is and not-being is not and cannot be thought of.
This “Being” Parmenides speaks of is changeless and eternal. It cannot come into being or become nor can it pass away. In order to have knowledge of an object, we have to have a concept or idea of it to know what it is. As humans, we do not have the knowledge to use our senses and perceive a chair as a chair. Someone before us had to give us the concept or idea of a chair, so when we do see it, we perceive it as chair. Parmenides said the search for knowledge is just. Everything is connected by facts and values which were based upon concepts and ideas, the good.
Concluding, Parmenides leaves us with two ways of thinking: the path of “what is” and the path of “what is not.” The path of “what is” contains a persuasive truth. A truth only understood by concepts and ideas given to us. The path of “what is not” cannot be traveled. It is literally unthinkable. No one cannot think of nothingness and brings that thought into existence when they try to. The path of “what is” is the only path.
Philosophy is difficult for a lot of people to understand because it is such a different way of thinking. There are many times when I have to re-read assignments so that I can really understand where these philosophers are coming from. When we studied the Atomists, I felt as though I could connect to their ideas best because they are the most relatable to what we understand as the truth in today’s world. Science has proved to us that we are made up of atoms. Everything, for that matter, is made up of atoms – the chairs we sit in, the people we shake hands with, etc. Today, we associate best with anything that has metaphysical proof such as atoms, science and reason. The Atomists believe that reason and science are the answer to all questions of philosophy and life.
ReplyDeleteThe Atomists were the first to pave the way to modern science, which means they had to have something right seeing as all we believe in now is science and metaphysical proof. Everything is made up of atoms thus nothing is special, nothing changes, and there is no part of the world that is inherently evil or good. An atom cannot be good or evil so neither can a person or an idea, because they are all stemmed from atoms. Also, there is a unification involved with the Atomists because everything is made of atoms, so everything is connected. On the contrary however, everything is connected, but nothing is special. We are all ontic beings. The ontological idea of the anthropology of men and women that the Atomists believe to be true is that there is nothing special about a person, each person is a “blade of grass” and that they have no real meaning because they are simply made up of atoms. The Atomists have the most relatable, and concrete view of philosophy, because atoms are quantitatively measured it is mathematically certain that we can prove a fact to be true.
The Sophists
ReplyDeleteIn the world today a person that is well trained in the art of rhetoric is seen as a very important figure. The ability to be able to convey one’s thoughts is essential in today’s society. This could also be thought of as the art of persuasion, allowing your values to be the values of others by simply explaining to them your thoughts. In fifteenth century Greece, Sophistry and its Sophists were an important movement. This movement had everything to the with the thoughts of man, the ability to relay those thoughts and convince others that your thought are the thoughts that truly matter.
The Sophist had an arche that was that man himself was what is and what will always be, everything else has the ability to perish and change. This is to say that man and its existence is true, but nothing else is and can be altered. They centered themselves on the problems of knowledge as well as morality and injustice. The Sophists were composed of individuals that claimed to be wise, believed that they could teach virtue and charged pupils for services rendered. They seemed to believe that virtue can be taught; therefore every man was capable of knowledge. The Sophists cosmology was based on all things physical. They also went against traditional Greek values. Protagoras wrote (a famous Sophists), that he did not know if the gods existed or not, nor did he know what form they took on. From this statement I see that the need to question was of great value to the Sophists. They believed in the power of man and his ability to understand. According to the Sophists, what is is what is and that’s all it can be. Nothing more or less than what it is. As in, one believes wholly in one’s own understanding, and that being enough for one man. Therefore each man has their very own beliefs and no one can take that from a person.
Of all the Pre-Socratic philosophers we have studied, the Pluralists, specifically Empedocles, led to a very solid understanding of humankind. For me, Empedocles has the most concrete definition of humankind because his labels are the most tangible. Anaxagoras talks about the mind, and that “everything is together but the mind”. And proceeds to elaborate on how mind determines when things are mixed and separated. This thought process is very abstract compared to Empedocles. Empedocles talks about the action of Love and Strife, and the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water. According to Empedocles, love is the action that mixes elements together. He references a quote from Simplicius, “ As then Cypris, busily working on shapes [or, kinds of things] moistened earth in rain, and gave it to swift fire to strengthen”. Through love, Cypris mixes the elements together, enforcing the thought process of Empedocles. That leaves the second half of his theory, Strife. Strife is the action that separates things together. Empedocles reasons that Love and Strife resemble coming to be and passing away, and that coming to be and passing away of the elements is what makes up Earth and mankind. He further elaborates on how the fact that the sensible world depends on the elements proves that the sensible world is also subject to rational explanation and can be known, giving a solid explanation on mankind. Because of his use of tangible things such as the elements, and Love and Strife, things people can connect to, Empedocles has the best arche on humankind. It is the arche that I best connect with and understand, and I have enjoyed studying him the most of all the Pre-Socratic philosophers.
ReplyDeleteAlex Davis
ReplyDeleteTo Heraclitus, everyone and everything exists in a constant state of being, and the discourse resulting from the constant flux and changes brings about logos. Many of his viewpoints have subtle resemblances to the Eastern religions of Buddhism and Daoism; for example, Heraclitus mentions that many people are “asleep” to the commonality of all objects in the universe, much like the Buddha being a teacher who “wakes up” and becomes enlightened.
His idea of everything being in a state of constant flux and flow implies that systems of morality and ethics are not always permanent, hinting at an unbuilt form of nihilistic thought. However, one should realize that strife can bring about unity through the acts of creation an destruction. Heraclitus is an optimist, believing that adhering to the logos will bring about perfection and happiness. He also believes that although the logos is common to all objects, people often ignore it and suffer as a result. Instead of ignoring it, people should embrace logos and the unity of opposites, which creates a hidden harmony that flows with the natural order of the universe. So living a good, meaningful and ethical life would involve “speaking and acting in accordance with the truth” and keeping the status quo in check.
The theories of cosmology before the Pre-Socratic philosophers were all rooted in myth and mystery; however, Thales attempted to explain matter and existence with a more logical archae than the Titans, which was water. Thales was a metaphysical optimist and thought that all the world, all matter, was intelligible and capable of understanding. Water is a basic material that all human life is able to understand and cultivate. Not only is water understandable but it is also diverse and somewhat complex. For example, its ability to change from a solid to a liquid to a gas. These changes in state parallel the diversity of matter with water as the archae.
ReplyDeleteAnother ability that water has is its capability to stretch or mold to whatever container it is placed in. It is much like the human mind in that as water can take on all shapes the mind can expand to understand all things as we learn. Our minds are able to run through all things knowing them and understanding them. When water runs or moves there is no beginning or end, all the oceans are connected and all the water on earth comes from other water. Applying this understanding to people means that there is no beginning or end to human life either. We are all one and we are all connected and there is no beginning or end to life. Therefore, the ethics and morality that stem from Thales are the each individual’s actions are not as important because each individual life, each individual person, is not important. What is important is the interconnectedness of life and matter. Thales’ philosophy changed the Greek worldview of the of the time and inspired all other Pre-Socratic philosophers to search for their own intelligible archae to explain cosmology, but it is Thales who fathered the study.
Empedocles, a pluralist believed that the four elements along with two forces were responsible for the origin of all things. The elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water are unchanging and never cease to exist. He compared the four elements to the Greek gods, Zeus , Hera , Aidoneus and Nestis. By comparing the elements to the gods, Empedocles gave them a sense of divines and importance. By dong this he demonstrated that the elements, are just like the gods and they play a vital role in the cosmos. Mankind, on the other hand, is constantly changing and does cease to exist. Without the four elements and two forces man or earth would not exist, according to Empedocles.
ReplyDeleteEmpedocles, also believed that the two forces, love and strife were responsible for the coming together of all the elements and when united a great change appears. Without the presence of love and strife things would not come into existence. Both love and strife, go hand-in-hand and are needed in order for things to run smoothly. He explained that the forces love and strife are a cosmic cycle, that’s never ending. In love all the elements are united and while in this stage there is progress among all things. Moreover, in the stage of strife, the elements are separated and things are stagnant there is no progress among mankind or the earth itself. Until the elements once again, prepare themselves for the stage of love. This consistent cycle, of love and strife and strife and love, clearly shows that there is a death and rebirth within the cycle. Furthermore, each element or “root” has a unique nature and when combined with love and strife, it creates countless creations. Empedocles, choice to include strife and love as the driving force in creation is interesting. In today’s society we are dealing with wars, hunger and other countless issues, that are driven by love and strife. These two forces are present and will continue to present among men.
Thales
ReplyDeleteWater is one of the most powerful elements in the world. As humans, we use water to drink, eat, bathe, and clean. Water makes up a third of the earth and is used for a major means of travel. When considering our necessity for water, it is not hard to believe the “first” philosopher would reflect it as “everything”. Take in factors like Katrina or any flood, tsunami, or hurricane; water, in large amounts, is extremely powerful and can move about anything. Oceans erode land making water indeed the element of change. Thales’- who considered the first philosopher- proposed water is the root of everything and everything is made of water. This gives everything a sense of oneness making everything just as important as its other.
In places like India, the Hindu believe water is sacred because of its significance for survival but its purity (Africanwater.org). Water is an archetype that naturally represents purity. Water is looked at widely as the “root” and the “one”. If water makes up everything, we can have self-knowledge. We know what we are and we can relate to our neighbor, our animals, and even our inanimate objects like our house, or our clothes. This is where we factor in our value, and our meaning in life. How am I significant if I am of the same make-up of the chair I sit in? The answer is our reason. It is not irrational to believe that we all come from one- we are all part of the earth, and to ancient Ionian’s it was easy to believe the earth rested on water. We all grow from one and it is our job as reasoning beings (philosophers) to give the chairs we sit in, our house and our clothes identity.
Readers of Thales’ ask whether or not the water arche makes life meaningless. In no means is this possible. If all things of Earth are made from the same thing, we can see our common good and unite. Even if this is not used in a literal sense it still could represent a mentality human beings should consider.
Heraclitus deemed that all things including nature and beings are always changing. His work consisted of the worldview that everything is continuously changing, things that are opposite are really identical and everything is the same thing at the same time. According to Heraclitus “[It is not possible to step twice into the same river]… It scatters and again comes together, and approaches and recedes” (Fragment, 62) and “We step into and we do not step into the same river. We are and we are not.”(Fragment, 63). Based on these two fragments Heraclitus is trying to insinuate that nothing seems to stay the same and everything is always changing. The flowing river can be related to knowledge because everyday we are storing new material and storing knowledge. Although we are consistently changing, we are at some point the same person with more knowledge. Beings therefore are the same person but we are not, because we are constantly changing. These worldviews and understandings of nature and the universe in its self are called logos. Although the logos are a universal truth, human beings sleep walk through life and do not look for this basic understanding of nature. Heraclitus also believed fire is the origin of all things. In fragment 73 he said “fire lives the death of earth and air lives the death of fire, water lives the death of air, earth that of water.” Fire, water, air and earth are all interconnected. Fire is the origin because it is always change and still it returns to being the same. Fire, water, air and earth are all interconnected. Fire has the power to transform a substance then return back to its original state. In all the process of becoming and changing will never end. The moral understanding that we take from his theory is that the becoming of nature can also be taken as the moral laws for human beings. Human beings lack the understanding of nature so we see all as one unchanging substance. Heraclitus sees the understanding of nature and human morals as interconnected. If the laws of nature are consistently changing the human ideas and knowledge are also changing. We have to be able to accept this change and react to it by waking up from our arrogance.
ReplyDeletePhilosophy began in wonder. However, much time has passed for the deliberative human, pre-dating the Sophists. Sophists were pragmatic men—the kind of group Americans can assign tangible value upon. They did not attempt to glue together different principles of metaphysics or stick a cosmology up on their mom’s fridge based in evidence they did not have. Sophists claim they didn’t need anything more than man, for, “man is the measure of all things.” I don’t think that philosophers should give up on the possibility of describing and explaining an objective reality, but they should be the first to acknowledge that they are shaped by the currents of their own times. Love and strife existing empirically as the primordial forces of the earth seems a little over-zealous for philosophy, even in Ancient Greece.
ReplyDeletePhysicists, chemists, and other natural scientists often use mathematical formulas to summarize their general theories, but among humanists, theorems become less mathematic and more elastic. Sophism is an expansion on might is right. Go towards your advantage. Atomists get all tangled up in metaphysics and that led to anomie. Go towards your advantage at the ends of the day, for what is to your advantage, even if it is only a convention, is objective to the convention that is the individual. The only thing that matters is if one can persuade themselves and, thus, others to their version of the truth. Like Kurt Vonnegut once said, “we are what we pretend to be so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
Thales was a metaphysical optimist who believed that humans could have knowledge of the world around them and could know arche`, the origin or cause of all things. Compared to previous counterparts, Thales abandoned mythological explanations for unexplained phenomena in the world. Thales stated the arche` is one pure element, water. Thales stated that all things come from or are made of water leading to a unifying concept of “all is one.”
ReplyDeleteThales’ concluded that the earth rested on water through analysis of arche` being water. Thales may have also arrived at his arche` from observing the nutritive properties of water to create and sustain all life. Observing that life springs from water in the biological sphere, he concluded that the same must hold true of the entire universe. Thales believed the mind runs through all things and is fluid like water. The affinity between water and mind allows humans to grasp a greater picture of themselves, their interconnectedness with the universe. Humans are able to know their soul because souls are mixed in the universe. Thales’ evidence for souls being everywhere in the universe includes his examination of magnets. Magnets are inanimate objects, yet they have the power to move iron. If magnets have motive force, all things must have motive force, thus have a soul. Thales said the most difficult thing is to know oneself. Though difficult, he believed humans could achieve this feat. Thales said realization of the self as a part of the whole or unity allows for true self knowledge.
Thales also stated that everything is full of gods. His arche` of water seems to be representative of something greater, possibly something divine such as God. He was describing the God we believe in today, the entity which everything originates from and which everything possesses. Also, Thales’ belief that there is no difference between life and death makes me believe he was searching for a different arche, something deeper than water. For the time being something tangible such as water sufficed.
Thales
ReplyDeleteThales of Miletus, a Pre-Socratic philosopher, was an intellectual and metaphysical optimist. His worldview was rooted in the understanding that water was the foundation of being which led him to believe in a unifying nature of multiplicity.
Thales believed water was the arche because it could take the form of almost anything. Because of his observances that water made up the atmosphere, he reasoned that it also made up being in general. It was extremely significant to him that water could change from liquid, to solid, into gas. He compared the mind to water because of this transition. The mind, to him, was similar to water because just as water takes the form of objects, the mind takes the form of ideas. These ideas become the basis for defining everything around humanity. As water runs through all things, so, too, does the mind. This relationship proved a dynamic degree of affinity between the mind and water. Thales’ theory of multiplicity also relates back to his arche. The idea that the world is made up of different levels of water in being contributes to this idea of multiplicity. Although all being is made up of different levels of water, being is united in the fact that water is the fundamental element. Thales’ search for philosophical inquiry within nature and not the supernatural molded his stance on the soul. Thales believed that the soul was mixed in the universe and filled with gods. He reasoned that even inanimate objects contained soul. He supported this with the evidence that because a magnet can move iron, a magnet contained soul. Despite the universe consisting of a multiplicity of souls, the souls contributed to that certain unity of makeup. The intellectual and mobile capacity with which Thales appropriated to all beings showed his tendency towards optimistic metaphysics.
Anaximander is the philosopher that I relate to most. His arché was the indefinite. He believed that there is one thing responsible for the origin of the entire world, but it is not one definite thing. Any one thing that can be considered the source of the origin can be objected to, and thus, it is impossible for us to be able to know what the one thing that is the origin is.
ReplyDeleteBecause there can be no one thing that is the arché, Anaximander believed that things are, appear to be as they are due to a play on opposites. There could be no cold without hot and vice versa. Likewise, without wet, there could be no dry. This play of opposites is not a unity of things, though, because in unity, there is a melding of things together. Anaximander believed that this melding could not happen because any “coming to be” was an injustice.
Along with this play on opposites, Anaximander also gave reasons for the way things are placed in the world. He said that because it would be difficult for the earth to continue moving up and down and sideways, the earth sits at rest. This is the same for the sun, moon, and stars. He also makes claims about the rather extreme evolution of animals and humans as products of the interaction of fire and water. These ideas of astronomy and of evolution are, of course, not what I have learned, and because what I was taught seems more logical, I cannot say that I fully agree with Anaximander on these points. I still appreciate his thoughts and theories about these subjects.
Overall, Anaximander’s concept of the world’s origin is generally logical. His point that the one original “stuff” cannot be definite makes sense because it is impossible for all things to come from one thing without there being a full mixing of things. His focus on the appreciation of the mystery of the origin can possibly be what still inspires today’s scientists, astrologists, and cosmologists to study and work toward discovering more about the universe.
Paramenides believed that everything just is. He believed that nothing changed, and that our senses that detected change were actually an illusion. Paramenides also argued that there was no such thing “was is not” because once it was thought of, it automatically comes into existence, and therefore must have existed all along. If nothing has changed and nothingness does not really exist, then world, everything in it, and God(s) has always been.
ReplyDeleteIf one uses Paramenides belief of the changeless to explain God, the world, and everything else, then one must believe that everything just simply always has been. To explain God, one must believe that He just always has been, He was never born and can never be killed; God has simply always exist and is therefore eternal. In the case of Greek gods, a piece of them has always existed somewhere because if everything is changeless, then everything in the world has always existed in something else. For example, if a women gives birth to a child and it is a girl, Paramenides would say that child was on the left side of the uterus because that is where the goddess places females, so a female has always existed there. Paramenides also argues that nothing cannot be. Why nothing cannot be is because once an idea is thought of, it is automatically placed into existence. If one considers this, then the idea that everything exist some how is not hard to accept because once something is even though of it is there. If though a child is not born yet, a part of it is still in the womb. Even though a seed is not a tree yet, a tree exist inside that seed. Even though one can see an idea evolve, a child grow inside it's mother, and watch a tree grow from the ground, the idea that we see this change is an illusion, because in fact, it always been this.
In order to understand the world using Paramenides ideas, one must accept that it has always existed and it has not changed. Once that is understood, one can accept that world and everything in it has always been apart of something, and eventually came to be as we see it because our senses tell us that that is how things “evolved,”even though it actually has not. Everything is simply always what it is, and that the gods or God have always, and continue to, just be.
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ReplyDeleteAnaxagoras was a pre-Socratic philosopher whose worldview responded to that of Parmenides. His main argument for the cosmology responds to Parmenides idea of “creation ex nihilio” where he disagrees with Parmenides saying that everything is in everything. Everything, that is, except for mind which is the leader and ruler of all other things. He highlights that while such things never are created from nothing, “for how could hair come to be from not hair or flesh from not flesh?” (p 44)., they also do not perish but rather separate and form new mixtures.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Anaxagoras everything is in everything, unlimited in unity and size. Every “thing” is composed of spermeta, which are essentially seeds. From this idea the question arises that if two things are composed of the same things or spermeta, such as a weapon and an orange, how can they seem so different? This is so because some things are composed of different proportions of different spermeta- which can vary in shape, size, color etc. The dominating proportioned spermeta is what is thought to be the nature and dominating characteristic of said thing. These proportions are formed from the mind, showing that we form our own reality.
The only thing that is not in everything else is the mind. Instead, the mind is the ruler or leader of all other things. It is what orders and interprets all things to make life easier, its purpose and theological end. It is separate from all other things because if it wasn’t, it would not be able to order, organize, and rule “all things that possess life” (p 45).
When things are no longer, their mixture of spermeta is simply dissected or separated. Just as something coming to being is spermeta mixing together, perishing is when the spermeta, formerly composing said thing, separate apart. This reinforces Anaxagoras view that nothing can be created from nothing and that nothing simply vanishes or leaves the earth. This is so because, again, spermeta come together to mix and form something and the spermeta separate from said thing to disintegrate it and to later form a new mixture with other proportions of different spermeta, forming a new thing. This is the cycle in which Anaxagoras names all things infinite, impossible to come to being from nothing and impossible to vanish to nothing.
Because everything is in everything, Anaxagoras creates a lifestyle in which everyone and everything should treat everyone and everything else the way they would like to be treated, as they are a part of everything and everyone else.
Anaxagoras’ worldview creates a world of harmony and an infinite cycle of life where everything is interconnected and relative, composed of the same yet different spermeta, to other beings and things, all of which are ruled by the mind- nous.
Works Cited
Cohen, S. Marc., Patricia Curd, and C. Reeve. "The Pluralists: Anaxagoras And Empedocles." Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: from Thales to Aristotle. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub., 2005. 42-47. Print.
According to the Pythagoreans, the world is geometric and the world shows itself in this way. The Pythagoreans saw the things in the world to be made up of numbers due to noticing the ratios of the scales in music, so they assumed that was what the world is made up of. The entire universe is made up of both even and odd numbers; even numbers are limited, but odd numbers are infinite. The One, the great divine, is both even and odd numbers. Therefore, the One is everything and all things. The entire world is a harmonious arrangement that can be understood and made intelligible by numbers. Your unit, your number, is the divine. It is your soul, that unit, that is divine and that can be reincarnated. Your soul, what makes you up, is a number. Everything is also a number, so this leads to the moral viewpoint that nothing is better than anything else because all are numbers. “All that is alive must be akin…” wrote Porphyry in The Life of Pythagoras.
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ReplyDeleteThales was a pioneer of thought whom many regard as the first true philosopher in the Greek tradition. His understanding and emphasis of water as his cosmological thesis is one not to be overlooked when examining his philosophy of metaphysical optimism. Thales turned away from the philosophical practice of mythology and deriving theories with no real basis or explanation. He found that a great deal could be known about the world by simply what one observes from it. He believed that water was the arche of the universe, the origin of all things. This is similar to the teachings of Anaximenes, teaching that everything comes from air. Thales was fully aware of water’s significance, so much, that he found it to be the one sacred element. All aspects of biological life depend on water in some form of another for simple survival. Not only is water vital for life, but it also takes on an uncontrollable role of destruction. It was water that Thales found to be the accessible, tangible element that united all things. Not only did Thales find water to unite all things, he emphasized the way in which it could run through all things. Water cannot be created nor destroyed, this was something that Thales believed to be in common with our souls. He believed that there was ‘No difference” between living and dying. Static, dynamic, and extremely fluid, he found a sacred union between our mind’s and the element of life. While he believed that all of matter was made up of water, he believed that our souls were scattered throughout and that all things contained gods. The specific teachings of multiplicity and metaphysical optimism are not the essentials that one needs to always associate with Thales, but the way in which he appreciated and questioned the world around him. Thinkers and lovers of knowledge must try and appreciate the way in which Thales lifted the unreliable chains that had entrapped human thought for so many years before him.
ReplyDeleteI chose the Pre- Socratic Pluralists because I feel like I understand them better than the others. I agree with both Empedocles and Anaxagoras’ arche of all things and I feel like I can relate to them best. After reading both of their readings, I think I relate to both of them equally. I agree Empedocles’ arche that there are 6 basic entities and I also agree with Anaxagoras’ arche that everything is in everything and that it is all together except the Mind. They both have convincing arguments and a strong perception of the world.
ReplyDeleteEmpedocles’ arche is that everything is made up from Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Love and Strife. He believes that love in a unity that brings everything together and strife separates it all. Empedocles says that it’s always a constant back and forth between love and strife and it’s never one or the other but they both are needed in life. I agree with him when he says it’s never one or the other. I believe that love is not always forever, people change and they might not love you forever and that’s where strife and separation come into play. His cosmological theory is that the competition between Love and Strife is an unending cycle.
Anaxagoras’ arche is that everything is together except the mind. His theory is that the mind possesses all knowledge, power, and that it causes motion. I agree with him that the mind is powerful and that without the mind we would not be who we are or know what we know. I also agree with him when he says that everything is in everything because I believe that water is in almost everything and without it then most things wouldn’t be. Anaxagoras’ cosmological theory is that everything is made of seeds and that the mind is all powerful and that it is pure and independent.
Protagoras' Humanity
ReplyDeleteThe Sophist worldview, and specifically Protagoras' assertion that “man is the measure of all things […],” posits that the influence of moral understanding is simply the human being and is thus subject to the principle of advantage. This principle, that a person will derive a thing or action's value from its profitability to that person, is also often associated with nihilism and, more generally, with hedonism. However, these associations ignore the cosmology of the Sophists and ultimately bungle their metaphysically optimistic understanding of humankind. Protagoras' agnostic cosmology, though limited in scope and literal breadth, provide Sophism with its most optimistic metaphysics about one of its most essential moral subjects: humanity itself.
Primarily, the basis of Protagoras' agnosticism is derived from a phrase appearing in one of his lost works, appropriately titled On the Gods: “Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not, or of what sort they may be, […].” From this, we are able to discern that Protagoras believes that humans, such as himself, have “no means” of affirming faith in “the gods”; and also that their “sort,” or their qualitative identity, is similarly imperceptible. These connotations seem to suggest that their author describes his cosmology through a human experience limited to an unidentifiable arché without a “means” or a purpose to establishing an absolute identity with humanity, and vise versa. This metaphysical uncertainty often lends itself to a nontelic generalization; in that, devoid of purpose, each person becomes the standard of good and reason becomes a persuasive craft. In fact, this generalization is reinforced by Protagoras himself in his aforementioned assertion that “man is the measure of all things […],” and that her (or his) purpose, as well as his (or her) values, are subjectively defined by their advantage to those individuals.
Contrarily, limiting the totality of Protagoras' statements also limits the completeness of his metaphysics, and more significantly, Sophistry's metaphysical optimism. For instance, his statement concerning the the principle of advantage; that “man is the measure of all things,” is a sentence completed by: “of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.” Not only does the latter half of this sentence align his metaphysics with the likes of Zeno and Parmenides, both epistemological optimists, but it also encompasses a crucial aspect of optimistic metaphysics in general: that a thing's existence is manifested in our recognition of it. This optimism parallels Protagoras' agnosticism as well, evinced in the entire statement concerning his cosmology: “Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not, or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life.” While the words “brevity” and “obscurity” seem to further support a limited humanity, his optimism is revealed in the context of the subjectivism that it supports in general. Protagoras' humanity grants him the subjectivity of every person to perceive the world and its arché as he/she will, and therefore it allows him, as well as everyone, to contribute to and affect the reality shared by all perceptive beings. Not only is this cosmology liberating and metaphysically optimistic, but it conclusively reveals Protagoras', and all of the Sophists, most optimistic metaphysical suggestion: that humanity is god, and the world and its values are subject to it.
The Pluralist’s such as Empedocles and Anaxagoras had developed their views in response to Parmenides views. They take Parmenides thoughts on entities and claim that they don’t change as well as be combined and separated from each other. Empedocles believes in the idea of the elements in the world along with love and strife leads to the understanding that the world and how it is made. Anaxagoras also viewed it as the combining of everything into one thing.
ReplyDeleteAnaxagoras talks about how the “mind is said to know and to control all things” (Anaxagoras 42). This has some truth to it because the mind is necessary to understand how to work things so they can be controlled. He also says how everything, and in a sense that is true if we consider how human beings were created from earth by God in the Bible. Also, Anaxagoras says that all things posses a part of everything except the mind which is considered to be in only some things. This means that everything possesses some from of physical trait that is given from one thing to another. However, not everything possesses a mind as it is exclusive to animals and human beings.
Empedocles focuses on the four elements which are water, fire, air, and earth. He also focuses on love and strife as well, and considers all these things to be what makes up the world. These elements do mix together to help make up the world we live in. The elements also help to give life to living things together and one can’t be absent or it could lead to strife. Love and strife also play an important part in the world as it can represent pain and happiness which is a part of life. Everything has a role to play but it needs help from other things to reach its full potential so love and happiness can be more prominent than strife. The same applies to humans who need the power of the elements to live happily. They try to manage the power of the elements so they don’t suffer from things like floods. People control the elements so they don’t suffer from strife but also use them to maintain life.
Amended Post.
ReplyDeleteThe Pre-Socratic Parmenides is said to have explained the cosmos through his philosophy of “what is.” According to Parmenides, there are two philosophical paths of thinking, which are “the way of what is”, and “the way of what is not”. He asserts that one cannot travel on the way of “what is not” because as soon as one proclaims what something is not, something comes into existence. Since “what is” is whole, complete and unchanging, Parmenides concludes that Being is motionless, eternal, and unchanging and cannot undergo any qualitative change. He also states that thinking and being are the same because thinking presupposes something that already exists. Furthermore, Parmenides claims that everything that is must always have been because there was never a time that did not exist. Parmenides rejects beliefs based on sense experiences stating that one must instead follow the path that understands that not-being cannot be or even be thought of (35). Parmenides’ cosmology of “what is” explains his understanding of nature, the divine and humankind in that he proceeds from the ontological arche that “Being is unchanging” and concludes that human beings can understand the world through reasoning.
Parmenides’ worldview leads him to argue that man can understand the world through reason. Therefore, the pursuit of self-knowledge is value laden. One cannot know truth without knowing what value it adds. The search for “what is” becomes good because it allows man to go from incompleteness to completeness. In I Heart Huckabees, Parmenides would offer that when a person stands in a field of dust, it affects the world, because everything is value laden. Parmenides’ cosmetology of the world supports the existence of the gods, because after all, humans imagine the gods so they could not fall into the category of “what is not,” for what is not, cannot be, because when a thing is thought, something comes into existence and is then considered “what is.” However, Parmenides believes that humans should access all things to determine its’ truth rather than depend on the gods or beliefs for certainty.
Parmenides differs from Heraclitus in that he rejects multiplicity and instead offers that the universe is one. He rejects that life is a flux and instead offers that the universe is stagnant. Parmenides rejects opinions, and resolves to the stance that Being cannot change and that the world is intelligible by reason. Parmenides’ cosmology from the ontological arche that “Being is unchanging” leads the intellectual optimist to conclude that “what is” is all that exists, always, and that humans beings can and should pursue understanding the world through reason.
Anaxygorous observed that things come from not-like-things. Hair comes from scalp, tree from dirt, leaves from branches. He therefore posited that these things must be present in the things they are not. There must be hair in scalp, or else hair would not come from scalp. The ultimate theory Anaxygorous developed was that all physical things come from seeds, these seeds contain a little bit of everything, but more of what it ultimately becomes than anything else. This, to me, is scientific brilliance. It is an astonishing pre-Socratic notion of existence. This theory also guides our actions toward nature. If all is everything, than everything is human, and all is Max as well. What rights have I to dominate, destroy, objectify, or exhaust any other thing? This would not reduce me to a vegetable, bar me from eating, or demand that I live unsheltered; it merely encourages respectful, responsible utilization of my environment.
ReplyDeleteMore importantly, however, is its transferability into human traits. If I am thought to be intelligent, I can only be so through the fact that I at least sometimes act unintelligibly; or at the very least from my capacity to be unintelligent. Intelligence has some unintelligence within it. I do not think it would be unfair to say that this is a sort of precursor to existentialism (I am what I am because I am it, and that is only notable because I don’t have to be it or because you are not it). But also this allows each person to be each type of person. Within each of us is that which we are not, not because we could not be but because we did not become, for personal, societal or environmental reasons.
Parmenides’ arche was that of being. Parmenides argues in his poem that knowledge can only involve being. Non-being is literally unspeakable and unthinkable. For Parmenides, Gods must somehow exist, because people are able to imagine them. For example, the fragment in which he states that, "For you could not know that which does not exist (because it is impossible) nor could you express it." Parmenides argues the nature of being and non-being "It is necessary to say and to think Being; for there is Being, but nothing is not. These things I order you to ponder.” He says that thinking and being are the same. He argues that being cannot change or participate in the process of coming to be or passing away. For Parmenides, being of a thing is what it makes it intelligible. By using his two way of thinking, "what is" is and what "is not" is not, he comes to the nature of reality.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Parmenides, the senses are deceptive, and that only reason alone is the only way to the truth. The nature of the world can only be found at through rational questioning. For Parmenides, when one starts to question, there are only two possibilities: either you begin your questioning with the idea that the subject exists or you begin with that it does not exist. For Parmenides, questioning something that does not exit is utterly meaningless. Therefore, there is not a real possibility for it at all. Parmenides bases this claim of what is not in this fragment, "that which is there to be thought or spoken of must be". Parmenides restricts the questioning through which one can get at the nature of reality. This questioning cannot make use of any substance that involves non-existence. The questioning must begin with the "it is" and deduce the nature of reality from out of it. For, Parmenides "what is" is unchanging, perfect, one, and continuous. Parmenides argues against the possibility of generation. Parmenides says that there is a non being in birth because it birth comes from non existence.
Parmenides cosmological view is that of, where something is must have always been there because it cannot come out of nothing. This is supported by the fragment, "Thus it is necessary to exist all in all or not at all." Also, the fragment in which he says “you shall know the nature of the aether and all the signs of aether and the destructive deeds of the shining sun’s pure torch and whence they came to be,” he might have been referring to a process of change, and not any kind of creation. This is also supported, by his saying that the earth, sun and moon, the ether, the stars and the outermost Olympus "surged forth to come to be."
“For this reason it is necessary to follow what is common. But although the logos is common, most people live as if they had their own private understanding (pg 25).”
ReplyDeleteFor such a man with expounding views, Heraclitus argued that there was a single divine law of the universe which he called the logos. He attempts to show the interrelation between both the divine logos and human soul. Believing that the logos is the guiding rule for the cosmos, he spoke of how many people were unable to properly understand it because they were asleep or in a private world. Thus the separation between the divine logos and human soul remain an important subject for Heraclitus.
“I searched into myself” is one of the best fragments that describe Heraclitus’ view about the human soul and self-knowledge. Through this he argues that learning cannot teach understanding nor will it end in having more knowledge. Therefore, the value of understanding is insurmountable as so far as it allows humans to look deeper into the subject matter and identify the unity of all things, even opposites. It is the play of the opposites that presents an intelligible flux. However, the intelligible flux of the opposites follow an order (i.e. moving from hot to cold or from life to death). This presents a non-changing flux, but an actual permanent flux in which things are expected to change and therefore, has a permanent cycle of changing. A great example of logos is fire, which is an element that is both changing and unchanging. Thus once a person has gained understanding of the logos they have the ability to understanding the cosmos, they are intelligible.
The Pluralists, especially Empedocles, believed that the origin or arche of all things are from earth, wind, fire, and water. This worldview states that everything comes from a mixture of the four elements. Love and strife are seen as the force of union and of separation, respectively. The ages of love and strife are seen by the Pluralists as circular or seasonal. The movement from love is always followed by strife and the inverse. Empedocles thought that there was no progress in the world but a rotation of ages of strife and love. This worldview believes that there is no progress in the world. Conversely, there is no decline of a civilization in this worldview.
ReplyDeleteEmpedocles and the Pluralists taught the idea that earth, wind, air, and fire are changeless. These four elements are also paired with the gods who are seen as eternal. The world is split up into two ages, love and strife. The age of love is seen as a complete mixture of all elements where as the age of strife is a total separation of the elements. This worldview was an attempt to explain the diversity of the world. Empedocles pairing the four elements with the gods seems to be a way of truly defining the elements as changeless. The view that there is no progress in the world or decline places humans in a impotent position. The world does change from love to strife but it seems that man cannot keep the world in the age of love. Man is constantly attempting to better themselves and the world. Progress is important to modern mankind but to Empedocles it was generally an impossible feat. The Pluralist idea of the world seems to be nihilistic because if there is no progress or decline how can the world have meaning? Progress of society in a linear fashion gives humans hope and a yearning to further such progress.
Zeno is a defender of Parmenides in his hypothesis that thinking and using language enables what we perceive as existence. He is not an idealist, but a skeptic; he refutes the notion of plurality and multiplicity in the world. However, this did not necessarily mean that Zeno held that “all is one” either. Rather, to Zeno it was more helpful to view the world by confronting a series of paradoxes. Participating in this kind of “serious play” it allows one to come up with more creative ways to solve problems and explain the interworking of the apparent paradoxes of the world.
ReplyDeleteZeno thought that it was necessary to distrust our senses as the things that we perceive are not usually what they seem on the surface. This applies to perceptions of plurality, space, motion, and size. For example, the dichotomy of halves; how can we be any closer to a place or things if we’re always half way away from it? Halves can be infinitely cut in half without ever reaching zero. For this reason Achilles, in a fabled race behind a tortoise, can never beat it; the Achilles can never be in a spot the tortoise hasn’t already been in the past and the two can never be in the same place at once.
Motion itself in made up of very tiny incidence of stillness; if you were to take a picture of an arrow in flight it would appear completely still. How can multiplicities exist in a singular world? I think in Zeno’s view the world is united in its apparent multiplicity and there for cannot allow for true multiplicity because every individual thing in the world is part of a holistic structure.
Zeno’s methods of paradoxical analyzation influence later modes of philosophical thought such as sophism and informed Socrates’ methods of analyses. I think the use of reductionism to reduce serious more complex problems to absurdities allows for a more useful way to attack the challenges of life. When trying to figure out a paradox one must come up with more creative solutions and opening the mental space of “serious play” allows this to occur. While Zeno would agree that one cannot think what does not exist, using paradoxes allows one to think what was not at first clear. To Zeno, the being of a thing is what makes it intelligible, and the world intelligible.
There are many different ways people interpret what is nature, the divine or humankind itself. Some philosophers believe that nature is the arche of all things. Anaximedes, believed that air is the arche of all things and Thales believed that water is the arche of all things. Personally out of the two, Thales made more sense about water being the arche because of the way water is always changing and fluid. It is the gift of life and nutritive to all living things. With Thales arche being water, it is easy to see its connection to nature itself because it is considered to be a part of it. He believed that it was the principle origin of where things came to be which he personifies water as a god. Just like in other religion there is a god that is believed to be the creator of all things and for Thales it is water. It is fluid and accessible to humankind and it relates to human beings because humans need water to survive and the brain could be considered fluid and accessible. Anyone can access the mind and with its constant knowledge flowing through the mind it is has the same fluidity as water. One may never step in the same river twice because of the flow of its nature and the mind flows by continuously changing and growing. Having affinity makes the world intelligible and by knowing the soul humans know the arche because true self-knowledge becomes fluid like the water. Thales’ theory on water being the arche made perfect sense because majority of the world is covered in water; humans need water to survived and humans are made up of a large percentage of water, and water has the nutrients to create life. Humans cannot survive on stagnant water and if they were to let their minds become stagnant then they become unintelligible. “All is water”.
ReplyDeleteAnaxagoris’ view of the cosmos creates a unity among all things living and non-living because he believes that all things are together. All things being mixed or separated to give us the world as we perceive it and this mixture is set forth by the mind. Anaxagoris’ emphasis on the mind being separate and isolated gives it a sort of divine nature because he claims that the mind is in some things but it there is not a portion of everything in Mind. We can compare this to religion where God is the divine being. God’s power is much higher than that of any mortal person, but through His teachings and with faith followers can have a piece of God in them. The mind is given a similar sense of power by being in control of how we perceive the world.
ReplyDeleteAnaxagoris states that everything is in everything. At first glance this statement appears very broad, but a deeper look into it reveals many hidden possibilities. This statement can account for the similarities and differences found among humans, animals, and nature itself. Our mind is responsible for noticing these similarities and differences, how interact with other species. Yet our minds are unique and this gives us individuality. This allows for personal input and for humans to have different perceptions of things seen by everyone, individual differences can be made. In my opinion, Anaxagoris’ philosophy creates a unity among all things while also creating individuality.
Thales subscribes to an arche of water as the cosmology to the universe. For Thales, water is the basic principle which makes up all aspects of life and matter as the origin of the cosmos. He believed that all came from water, his basic component of the universe. His arche is one of unity and accessibility. All is similar and connected because all is water. Thale’s all is water approach leads to his metaphysical and intellectual optimism.
ReplyDeleteThales chooses water because of its many characteristics which relate to the outside world as well as its prevalence in the material world. Thale’s belief in the unity of all matter is founded in his singular arche. Thales uses this unified cosmology to bridge many philosophical topics and connect humankind to the outside world. This unity leads to many of Thale’s moral understandings relating to nature, humankind, and the divine.
Through this unity he deduces that one can know oneself through knowing the arche. The mind parallels water in many ways. Just as water is fluid with motion and can adapt, so the mind can change and move. Water is affected by outside forces without losing its own identity as the mind can reason to understand what is other than itself. There is always something more to humans than just one identity just as water can form to fit into many containers. Thales believes understanding water as the cosmology helps one uncover his or her soul.
For Thales, Understanding the arche also helps bridge humanity to nature and the divine. Because humans and nature are made from the same basic stuff they are connected inherently. One can understand that which is similar to itself. Thales also believes because all is one that all is divine or everything is composed to gods. Therefore we can know the divine because it is innately connected to humanity as a part of the one unity. Thale’s cosmology of one cosmos stemming from the same basic entity creates a unified and intelligible universe. The fluid arche of water creates bridges of understanding between humankind, nature, and the divine because all three are inherently the same and like knows like.
I particularly relate to the philosophies of the pluralist Empedocles. Empedocles’ ideas offer a return to the battle between Heraclitus’ view of the world as ever-changing and Parmenides’ view that all is constant. Parmenides believes that all change and “coming into being” is a result of the senses, rather than a multiplicity in the universe. Empedocles certainly draws on the ideas of both philosophers, and while he agrees with Parmenides that all being is eternal and constant, he also seeks to account for the changes and myriad of entities/experience in the world through his ideas involving the four elements, Love, and Strife. Empedocles sees the four elements as divine in nature; they serve as a material archae and are the cosmology and origin of all things. These elements create everything in the world by combining in various ways with the aid of an efficient cause—the forces of Love and Strife. Interestingly, Empedocles seeks to account for all changes by explaining that the different quantities and combinations of the elements are the factors that create qualitative change; in this way, Empedocles seems to be an intellectual optimist in that he sees the world as understandable through these quantitative relationships.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, Empedocles’ ideas seem to influence his worldview in other ways. His notion that the divine elements make up all things certainly leads to a worldview that all things, although different and changing, are sacred. According to this view, even humans are divine—perhaps Empedocles’ intends to express that fair and moral treatment of fellow humans is necessitated by the element of divinity in each person. In addition, it seems that Empedocles understanding of the world leads to the idea that the world is intelligible. As humans we are capable of reasoning and identifying the quantitative and qualitative relationships between things. Further, Empedocles idea of Love and Strife leads to a cyclic perspective of intelligibility in the world. According to Empedocles things can only be intelligible when both Love and Strife are present. All things are one in an Age of Love, and all things are scattered and separate in an Age of Strife. As a result, we can only discern entities in a time when both Love and Strife are active. I feel that this idea leads to an understanding of the world as a balancing act—perhaps it even leads to a moral understanding that nothing is ever pure Love or pure Strife, but rather that all humans and all experience require a combination of good and bad, of unity and discord, and of joy and suffering.
Michael Guiden
ReplyDeleteOut of all the readings that we have done thus far in class, I find the Sophists most interesting. This is because one of their primary interests was examining what the text calls “the issue of whether morality was a matter of nature or convention” (Cohen, Curd, and Reeve 80). Similarly, these philosophers, including Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, and Critias were interested in cosmology and the origin or arche of all things, but Protagoras was particularly aware that for mankind, “concerning the gods I am unable to know either that they are or that they are not” (Protagoras, in Cohen, et al (81). Protagoras saw the human as the measure of things that are and things that are not and Gorgias addressed questions of how what-is-not and what-is can coexist in the same universe (Cohen, et al 81). The arguments advanced by Antiphon include the belief that “time is a thought or measure, not a reality” (in Cohen 86), suggesting that reality is perceived only tangentially and not in relation to the totality of human existence and perhaps not even with respect to the origins/arche of life.
Perhaps Critias addressed the issue of the cosmos and the origin of all things most distinctly when he wrote that there was a time “when human life was without order, on the level of beasts, and subject to force” (in Cohen, et al 88). At the same time, Gorgias is credited with having written that “what-is cannot be generated” because if it was generated it would have to come “either from a thing that is or from a thing that is not” (in Cohen 82). The Sophists believed in an arche in which a what-is existed and from this what-is many other things that-are came into being. They seem to have appreciated a state of affairs that was chaotic prior to the existence of organized society in which human existence was necessary in order to create the laws and rules that would govern and shape society.
Their main contribution from my perspective is that they recognized as did Critias that “nothing is guaranteed except that which is born will die” (in Cohen, et al 88). Therefore, human beings should search for education and illumination by questioning the circumstances of their world and their being. Not everything can be known, but life can be accepted and the good can be pursued as can one pursue justice.
Anaxagoras’ worldview was that of, “everything comes from everything.” Everything that has come to being is related to something else. His cosmology is that everything created comes from something related to what it is. In his writings he states that, “Hair comes from hair” suggesting that hair cannot be created by anything else but itself. He claims that creation cannot come from nothing, but most come from a relate source. Brought about in his teachings is the idea of “ex nihilio” meaning, “creation out of nothing. To Anaxagoras, this idea is clearly impossible. All things created must come from something similar.
ReplyDeleteIn Anaxagoras opinion, everything created is connected in some sort of fashion. Although something like water might be comprised of two different elements, hydrogen and oxygen, those two elements are connect in some sort of way and are created from the same source.
His Arche is the mind. The mind is unlimited, there is never too much for the mind. It should not be ordered to what is good. The mind should not look for the good but the purpose of what is good. The mind should not be influenced but look through all aspects of life to find out what one truly believes and understands to be true. The mind can understand many things and can perceive many different views on each subject by observing and asking questions as to how things come about. Wisdom comes from understand all views for different questions asked by anyone trying to understand life and what their purpose is. Nothing is limited and all is connected to Anaxagoras. He states in his writing, “All things were together, unlimited in both amount and smallness. For the small too was unlimited. And when (or, since) all things were together, nothing was manifest on account of smallness. For air and aither dominated all things, both being unlimited. For these are the largest ingredients in totality, both in amount and size.”
Heraclitus
ReplyDeleteHeraclitus believed fire to be the arche of all things. He saw the cosmos as such: “The cosmos, the same for all, none of the gods nor of humans has made, but it was always and is and shall be: an ever-living fire being kindled in measure and being extinguished in measures” (74). According to this worldview, the world is constantly changing. The nature of the soul is unique and subject to change. Of all the pre-Socratic philosophers we have studied so far, I think Heraclitus has the best understanding of the human soul. As it was discussed in class, knowledge of the self leads to knowledge of the universal.
The nature of the universe as fire can be connected with mankind’s never ending quest for self-knowledge; “Fire is want and satiety” (82). Knowledge is always increasing along with man’s want for that knowledge. As a fire is unpredictable, so is the world. “Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow” (61). To me, Heraclitus’ argument that knowledge is always changing and increasing is much like a real fire. I think Heraclitus puts it best when describing the spontaneity of the universe: “The most beautiful arrangement is a pile of things poured out at random” (57).
For Heraclitus, the logos was a ‘gathering together’ or ‘unity.’ “Listening not to me but to the logos it is wise to agree that all things are one” (44). This can relate to I Heart Huckabees when Dustin Hoffman’s character presents the world as one giant blanket. No matter how unrelated two things may seem, they are somehow connected; “Things taken together are whole and now whole, being brought together and brought apart, in tune and out of tune, out of all things there comes a unity, and out of a unity all things” (45). Because of the unity of all things there is a play of opposites in the universe called a permanent flux. For example, in order for hot to exist cold must also exist. Another good example is that without disease, good health would not be as sought after: “Disease makes health pleasant and good, hunger satiety, weariness rest” (70).
Thales was the first philosopher to try to identify the source of the world and human origins. Thales also wanted to find a common unifier within nature. Thales came up with four principal worldviews to help explain the cosmology of the world. The first worldview for Thales is that the world derives from water, “water is the principle of the nature of most things.”(11A12). Thales believes that the whole cosmos came from water. Since humans are made of water, we are united with the cosmos and all things. This gives humans a since of unity with nature. The second worldview for Thales is the belief that the world rests on water, “Others say (the earth) rests on water.”(11A14). The third worldview for Thales is that the world is full of gods, “some declare that it (the soul) is mixed in the whole (universe), and perhaps this is why Thales thought all things are full of gods.”(11A22). All things are full of gods because of water. Thales believes that everything is made from water. Thales also believes water is divine because it can change forms and it is the source of the universe. The last worldview for Thales is the belief that the soul produces motion, “it seems that Thales, too, supposed that the soul was something that produces motion, if indeed he said that the magnet has soul, because it moves iron,”(11A22). Thales’ idea that the soul can produces motion and that inanimate things also have a soul is because they are made out of water and every thing that is made out of water is divine. Thales’ arche is water. Water is a natural source that humans can touch, eat and break down into atoms as oppose to the idea of gods, which is faith driven and something that is not intangible. For Thales, the entire cosmos emerges from water. This is an important point for Thales because it is shows that the source of nature is something physical and not just an idea. Thales is making a rational argument and is turning to science as oppose to having mythology answer the big question of where humans come from. Thales lays the groundwork for using water as the science to explain the nature and meaning of human existence.
ReplyDeleteHeraclitus expressed a worldview relevant to nature: the world is intelligible. Throughout life, there is a process of revealing and concealing; each time something is revealed, another thing is concealed, as well as oppositely, each time something is concealed, something else is revealed. This means that something will always be unknown, or in reserve and out of human perception. The world is alive and intelligible because there will always be something “more” out there to be accessed, but this something is constantly increasing. Knowledge of the world is inexhaustible, and so to find universal truth, one must first start with knowledge of oneself. Living is a process of assuming self knowledge; through this process, parts of the divine can also be revealed. The human body can be reduced to nothing but atoms, but there still exists a human soul to each entity—a logos that connects humans to the divine. Self-knowledge is available to anyone willing to access it, however most humans can go on without feeling alive or connected. It is as if they are half-asleep, unable to recognize the divine will or the logos that connects everything. It is almost inhuman to go on this way.
ReplyDeleteKnowledge of the soul is very possible, however it is an unending process because it is constantly increasing itself. To know oneself requires temperance and submission to universal logos. Self-knowledge requires virtue and truth; truth is not only spoken words, but more or less, action. To know the truth, what is said must be consequently acted upon. There exists a unity between humankind and the divine, just as there is unity to an individual and the world that surrounds him or her. The logos is an element of being conscious, which exists everywhere. Heraclitus chose fire as the arche behind his philosophy because it is similar to the human soul: constantly changing, adapting, increasing and decreasing, alive and flickering. He loved opposites because these juxtapositions revealed a constant flux of the universe. What is death will eventually become life. What is old will eventually become new. What is cold will eventually become hot. This flux reveals a harmony, or a unity of parts for an end. Everything has a balance.
I relate to Heraclitus the most out of all the Pre-Socratic philosophers because his method of finding self-knowledge as an access to universal knowledge seems accurate. Maya Angelou once said, "I continue to invent myself every day.” Individuals are constantly changing, evolving, revealing and concealing pieces of themselves to others and their own consciousness. Measurements of self knowledge are infinite, and are the increments that entitle us as human, because to constantly access them is to be alive. Bodies are disposable, in a sense, but the human soul—the logos—is the part of us that matters. This is something anyone can access; every single individual has a sense of self and so it seems to be a great equalizer among humanity.
Megan Devine
ReplyDeleteThales, The Pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus, was an intellectual and metaphysical optimist. Thales viewed the world through the understanding and belief in in the intelligibility of nature in all things. Water was the foundation for his arche and he believed that everything comes from water so therefore “all is water.”
The idea of water being the root of all things reflects the fluidity and unity of nature because it is an element that all life forms physically rely on and need to live. Also, Thales argues this arche to be true because the whole of the earth rests on water and water can take on different forms depending on it’s surroundings. Thales states that human beings can speak about origin knowledgeably because we have knowledge of particular things because of this arche. He relates water to the mind, both supple and fluid and running through all things. Because water conforms to whatever it is in, it is constantly changing and static just like our minds. Thales bridges the gap between divine nature itself and the human being through his affinity between water and the mind. This arche enables us to know nature and the world. Because water is constantly changing, constantly flowing, it has no starting or stopping point, which Thales believes is much like our mind. The fluidity of the mind allows us to explore the world through our thoughts alone and the knowledge we acquire throughout life and through our worldview. Thales believes that self knowledge is a necessary in order to know your place in the world and to be unified in the world, but that self knowledge is always in excess and is inexhaustible just like water. The mind, like water, flows through all things, while the soul of human beings is mixed in throughout the universe. Thales believes the soul is erotic, desirous, and craving of knowledge and that all objects in nature had a soul. He believed that the soul is deathless and like the arche, will forever move on. Thales worldview is based solely on the interconnectedness of nature, human kind, and the whole of the universe.
The Pre-Socratic philosophers known as the Atomists conceived that the origin of all things can be explained through their atomic theory and through the beliefs that nothing is random and everything has a reason. The Atomists thought that everything was made up of the “being” called atoms which continuously move through the “not being” known as the void. Unlike Parmenides and Xenophanes who did not provide explanation of what is not, Atomists’ believed “what is, is no more than what is not” and therefore considered the atoms and the void as “equally causes of what comes to be”. The atoms are infinite, uniform, indivisible, and come in all different shapes and sizes. Change in the natural world comes from a change in arrangement of atoms in the void. For example, the birth of a person would basically be atoms being drawn to each other and clinging close together until a more powerful necessity comes along and scatters them, which is death for that person but birth for others. Nature is one, which runs its course with all its separate pieces and unlimited necessity to keep moving on in existence. The Atomist believed that “there is no reason for the thing to be than the nothing,” therefore I believe that the divine is not involved with their cosmology because the universe is infinite, but it is humankind that makes up the divine to explain natural phenomenon. Humankind is disconnected with reality because atoms are unseen to the senses. There is no value but there are human perceptions of good and bad. For example, “by convention sweet, by convention bitter,…but in reality: atoms and the void. “ There are only conventions or perceptions created by humankind, not real value in terms of reality.
ReplyDeleteOf the many Pre-Socratic philosophers, Heraclitus is one of the most well known. Born around 540 B.C.E Heraclitus was brought up in an aristocratic family in Ephesus. Not much is known about Heraclitus’s life from the ancient biographies written about him, and most of the information about him comes from his book of fragments. More importantly, what can be discerned from this book is that Heraclitus had been deeply trying to understand human knowledge and that he had been exploring the prime moral truths of the universe. Heraclitus came to the conclusion that the universe, or cosmos, is ruled and guided by an unchanging divine law called the logos. In order to understand the workings and truths of the cosmos, Heraclitus claimed that one has to first understand the logos. One of the reasons Heraclitus came to believe in this divine law of the cosmos was through his understanding of the arche of all things that the cosmos is in a cycle controlled by an ever-living fire.
ReplyDeleteBefore Heraclitus, Pre-Socratic philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes believed that there is some original element or material that all things originated from. Heraclitus, however, does not believe that all things originated from fire or a single element. He believes that fire is what connects the elements and controls the continuous cycle which, over time destroys the universe and brings it back into being. The cycle begins in that the universe is destroyed by a massive holocaust and all matter becomes a mass of fire again. Over time, over of half the mass of fire transforms into water, half of the water turns into firewind, and half of the firewind turns into earth. This idea of Heraclitus is, in a way, an early form of the law of conservation of mass in that all the elements are balanced out.
What this ever-living fire has to do with Heraclitus divine law of the logos is that fire is the physical manifestation of the logos. The logos, again, is the divine law that is unchangeable but, at the same time controls change in the cosmos and unities all things in nature, including the human soul. Like the logos, fire is the physical element that controls the continuous cycle of the universe and connects or unities all the other elements but, at same time, fire itself is unchangeable. If the logos is the divine unchanging law that controls the cosmos and fire is the physical element that controls the cosmological part of the metaphysical world then it makes sense to think that fire is the logos in physical form, and vice-versa. With that in mind, Heraclitus cosmological understanding undoubtedly leads or at least influences his divine understanding of the universe.
The Pluralists
ReplyDeleteChange arises from a mixture so everything is unique. The only things that are changeless and eternal are the elements, air, water, earth and fire. When these are mixed together they can create something else, but they always remain the same. When we talk about pluralists we also talk about an age of love versus an age of strife. The age of love being when all elements are mixed together, the idea of a unifying love, and the age of strife being when there is a total separation of the four elements. Because the world is in a constant movement, you can pinpoint ages of love and strife strewn across the history of the world. Presently, we are in an age of strife, an age where moral compasses point due south most of the time and where we see that Love, a unifying force, has been deteriorated in an age of war and destruction.
We seem to be caught in a world of wanting to progress but usually regressing and repeating the mistakes we’ve made throughout history. Wars, attacks against nature, the marginalization of people who are different and the complete lack of respect for human life and rights has been seen before and has cause immense amounts of strife in our world. It is in times like this when we bring out the question of Teleology, the want to know what the purpose of the world is, why we’re here, why if everything is the same and we make no progress in our lives, why are we still here. I believe that this question is what brings in faith and God into the picture. This is why I believe that everyone should have something to believe in, whether it be the Christian God or the Muslim God, all people should believe in something. Bringing in the pluralists, wouldn’t you say that their description of all things being the same made up of the same unchanging things would be one with God? With the sayings that God created everything and so they all come from him, from the one (1).
The Pre-Socratic philosopher Thales believed that all things have a principle origin, or arche. Instead of presuming the gods to be the cause and origin of all things, this philosopher looked to nature. Thales's arche is water. Thales believed that everything is water in some form and everything began from it. This single substance, allows an understanding of Thales' views on nature and humankind.
ReplyDeleteThales believed that all things come from water, which is why he believed that the Earth itself rests on water. Thales's belief comes from observation of the world around him. Aristotle states that Thales might have gotten the idea of water as the principle origin from the fact that nourishment comes from water. Also water is the only substance that can be changed into a solid, liquid, or gas. Since this is the only substance that can change into different forms of matter, it is therefore the cause of all things.
Water, according to Thales, is equivalent to the human mind. Water is ever changing and can take on many forms. Considering that water is a part of all things, the mind too can take on many forms. Since the mind is mold-able, it is possible to know all things and because the human mind has the ability to know all, it puts mankind at the same level of the divine. Thales believed that “all things are full of gods.” This can be interpreted from the fact that Thales believed that all things have souls, including inanimate objects, because all things have the potential for motion and the cause of motion is the soul. Water, just like the soul, causes motion and is eternal, further proving that water can be compared to the divine because the gods were eternal beings who had the ability to cause things. Water, it seems, is the soul of all things.
Heraclitus is famous for many of his sayings such as “Cold things grow hot, a hot thing cold, a moist thing withers, a parched thing is wetted.” and “Pigs rejoice in mud more than pure water.” Based on these two sayings one can infer that Heraclitus believes that nothing is constant and everyone has their own perspective on things in this world. Other things we learn through his sayings deal with his cosmological beliefs and his views on humanity.
ReplyDeleteHe emphasized that the logos were very important because they are constantly being increased and they never stop. Everyone is capable of self knowledge. In addition to this, he often spoke of daimons, which are both human and divine.
Another quote by Heraclitus states that “Nature likes to hide.” Many of his quotes seem odd to those who have not studied his work, however, this quote has a rather deep meaning. It means that there’s always something about someone that is concealed-which is concealed even to that person. In addition to his quotes making little sense to those who have not studied him, Heraclitus self contradicts certain topics. For example, he says that what is can be what is not, and he speaks of disease and health go together. He uses images from nature in order to understand human beings by saying one cannot “know the valley without knowing the mountains” as well. This statement is assuming that one must go over the mountains to reach mentioned valley.
Atomists were the pre-figures of modern science because they developed a closer view of atoms. Atomists believe that there is no god or mind that controls the world but that the world is left to necessity and chance. Atomism sees atoms as quantitatively different, what sets them apart is their size, weight and shape. Atoms are believed to be changeless and imperishable. This leads to another important factor of Atomism which is that one must distrust the senses because change and what happens around a person is not reality. Atoms are invisible to the senses. This means that we, as humans, use taste or color to distinguish between objects.
ReplyDeleteAtomists’ mechanistic view has no sense of purpose. This shows that Atomism sees no aspect of the world as good or evil. This means atomists use a value-free mechanism, meaning that from atoms to products nothing has a good or evil purpose, to study the atoms. The only thing that matters is the size, shape and arrangement of the atoms. Atomism mechanism leads to their anthropology which is that man is nothing unique. Humans have different perception and see nothing the same except for pleasure, which is the humans’ only relativism besides the fear of pain.
The only difference that Heraclitus and Parmenides have is the distinction between non-being and nothing. Heraclitus believed atoms are being and that the void or empty spaces between and around the atoms are not being. He believes that in order to have a being, there must be a not being to allow the thought of not being to be its own term and distinguish from being.
The atomists believe that everything is qualitatively the same even if it differs quantitatively in size, shape or weight. Like the blanket theory in the movie I Heart Huckabees, the atomists believe that everything is the same and that it is all connected. The atomists differ from the blanket theory though because they do not give value to anything. They believe that there is no god or mind but just that everything is only actual atoms. According to atomists, humans are not able to understand reality because only atoms, which are changeless and eternal, are reality but atoms are invisible to the senses therefore, man cannot know reality. Things can only be known through the scientific method and even then they cannot be known as good or evil since there is no aspect of good or evil in the world. Only value free judgments can be made.
ReplyDeleteThe atomists’ view about the world leads to a similar view about humans. They believe that humans are not anything unique but just another form of the changeless and eternal atoms. There is no value difference between humans and a piece of dirt according to the atomists. This view of human nature leads to relativism which has no universal moral rules. So according to the atomists, it does not really matter what each man does since good and evil do not exist. The only thing important to atomists is the existence of atoms in all things.
The Pre-Socratic philosopher that I can relate to and understand the most is Pythagoras, the great mathematician. His philosophy appeals to me the most because he combines aspects of religion, because he was a part of a cult, and logic/reason, because he formulated his famous theorem, into his philosophy. Furthermore, his archae is directly connected with an understanding of nature, the divine, and mankind that I support and agree with.
ReplyDeletePythagoras’s archae is simple: numbers. But when he simply says numbers, he refers to the definition of elements, the limited, and the importance of unity. As a result, his Table of Opposites, which is similar but also different from Anaximander’s, explains that the good encompasses unity and the limited while the bad is associated with multiplicity and the unlimited (different from Anaximander). Instead of having a material archae like Thales’s water or Anamaximenes’s air, Pythagoras’s archae is more abstract, emphasizing that everything can be understood with numbers (showing that he is an Epistimological Optimist) and that quality is reduced to a number. His understanding of numbers appeals to logic and reason (math) and is directly connected to nature and mankind. For example, he explains that a family made up of three people is still one because the family is a unit; therefore, the family is one. As a result, although there are millions of people in the world, they are all connected in the family of mankind; therefore, we are all one. Pythagoras agrees with Anaximenes that qualitative difference can be measured quantitatively. Therefore in nature, animals and plants can be understood because everything has a quantitative measure, no matter if the qualitative measure is different.
When considering if this logical mathematician has any ties with the divine, his philosophy coincides with the religious concept of reincarnation and the immortality of the soul. For example, when in counting (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4), the number one is inherently apart of two, three, four, and so on. Furthermore, the one in each number is considered to always be present, but it is represented in a different form. (2+1, 3+1, ect.). For Pythagoras, the divine element (soul) of humans is the number one, which is always with us in each stage of our lives, whether it be in the two stage, three stage, thirty stage, or even the death stage. Because that one is always present, it is constantly reincarnated and present, only in a different form.
Although Anaximander falsely believed that celestial bodies were deities, his general cosmology is one that I can most directly relate to because it relies on science and physical evidence (albeit a bit archaic in modern terms). This is not to say that any mythological explanation of the origins or nature of the universe are false; rather, Anaximander used scientific processes to develop his theories, instead of simply relying on “God created it, therefore it is”.
ReplyDeleteAnaximander was also revolutionary in his ideas about the origin of life. After extensive study of fossils, his findings concluded that humans were bore from the sea at their earliest stage. While this is not entirely true based on the evolutionary tract of life on earth, he was correct in his thinking that life evolved from the sea; this we now know to be correct. In modern thinking it seems to be a bit archaic, but when one really examines the research, its impressive to think that 2500 years ago man was seeking to answer questions we still ask ourselves today, without relying on religious or mythological explanations.
This was quite brave of Anaximander. In an age of worship of the Gods, and religious practices being a part of daily life, his risk of putting himself into jeopardy is something that I can admire above all else. This is not to say that philosophers who relied on mythological explanations for the answers we seek took an easy way out; that is not my point at all. Rather, I think venturing out of the typical nature of society and developing controversial theories based on evidence and fact, no matter how unpopular it may be, is very noble indeed.
According to the Sophists, the Doctrine of Relativism and the sense of perception are the main teachings that the Sophists have helped share to humankind itself. Their cosmology, or understanding of the origin of all things comes from the belief that “man is the measure of all things”. The cosmology of the Sophists was that of the physical world as they strived for knowledge, morals, and ethics. Thoughts and ideas were more important to them such as perception and how one views things through the senses.
ReplyDeleteFrom the senses is how we judge our reality. There is nothing that is real, only what we feel and how our thoughts perceive things to be in a certain point in time. A perfect example provided in class was the “desk theory”. There is no such thing as a desk. One cannot have desk-qualities, deskness, or lack of desk. Instead, we have created a sense of what we believe a desk to be, what we think it looks and feels like, and therefore when someone mentions the word desk, we envision what we have come to call a desk. But in reality, a desk is nothing but atoms that make up an object we call desk. It is this concept of “nothing exists” that helps catapult the idea of the sophists and gives them their trademarks. Being that the idea of a desk might be different for one person as pictured in their head than that of another person, it is important to note that because of this, everything is relative. It is relative to how a person understands things to be. What might be difficult or hard for one individual might be easy or simple for another individual.
Relativism, sense of perception, morals, ethics, and justice are not only highlighted and preached in the views and understandings of the Sophists, but these are the ideas that help build the foundation of what it means to be a Sophist. This is also what I chose to be the best suitable topic that I can relate to so far in class.
WORLDVIEWS AND ETHIS POP QUIZ TWO FINAL DRAFT: HERACLITUS
ReplyDeleteHeraclitus conceived that “one cannot step into the same river twice" an expression which implies that he deemed everything in a state of constant flux. Heraclitus seemingly postulated that change and conflict are undeniable, fundamental and required components of the universe. In the following fragment, he explicitly corresponds conflict with justice:
“It is necessary to understand that war is shared, and justice is strife, and everything comes to be in accordance with strife and necessity.” [Fragment 80]
Nonetheless, there are several fragments in which Heraclitus was apparently searching for “a primary principle unifying the real multiplicity of things in the world, as apprehended by the senses, as portrayed in the following fragment:
“Things conjoined as wholes and not-wholes, convergent and divergent, consonant and dissonant; from all things one and from one all.” [Fragment 10]
This reflection demonstrates a reference to opposites/contrasts of various kinds, such as hot and cold, health and illness, wet and dry, etc, which indicates that he may have believed that each segment/ingredient of a whole, when in harmony with each other, originates from and constitutes a single thing:
“They do not comprehend how a thing agrees being at variance with itself; it is attunement which turns back on itself, like that of the bow and lyre.” [Fragment 51 ]
Heraclitus labels the unifying principle to be complementary to the logos"...the Logos is common". It is reasonable to conclude that he meant for “the logos” to be characteristic of both what he calls "this account" of all things [Fr. 1] and, more importantly, that which the account refers to, specifically a principle or formula which is at the same time free from yet embodied in the universe. He continues on to identifying this principle with fire-being the “primary element of all things (as divine):
“All things are exchanges for fire, and fire for all things, as goods for gold and gold for goods.” [Fragment 90]
This ordered universe, the same for all, no god nor man has made, but it ever was and is and will be: fire ever living, being kindled in measures and in measures going out. [Fragment 30]
This fragment interestingly enough illustrates that fire itself is always state of constant change.
It appears that he may even identify fire with god, as seen in fragment 64: "The thunderbolt steers all things". Additionally, he infers a ‘relationship between fire and the two other elements-water and earth’:
“The turnings of fire [the pure cosmic fire]: first sea, and of sea the half is earth and half burner ['hot air', 'fiery lightning'?] is dispersed as sea and is measured so as to form the same proportion as existed before it became earth.”[Fragment 64]
Heraclitus's moral philosophy (ethics) is constructed from his philosophy of nature, in that the individual should strive to gain understanding of and abide to “the logos as divine law, common to all” [Fragment 114]. The appropriate thinking and wisdom will produce the appropriate actions. "Man's character", he asserts [Fragment 119] "is his daimon [destiny]", by which he means to emphasize that one's future is under one's own control.”
Mary Mena