Study guide - presocratics Flashcards
Anaximander
- He thinks water is too determined, doesn’t explain the variety and changes, he says that the Arche is the boundless and indefinite, this is what moves other things, moves itself, it’s eternal, and because it’s eternal, it’s divine
boundless, indefinite - is the principle for all
monist
Thales
- First of the philosophers in the west
- One of the people that aristotle refers to as Phusikos (someone who studies nature)
- From Miletus, a polis on the coast of modern day Turkey
- Famous for predicting an eclipse (585 BCE)
- Thales - water
- Thales claimed that the principle for all was water
monist
Anaximenes
- He thinks that the boundless and the indefinite is too indeterminate, rather air is the right thing for the arche, it moves, it moves itself and other things
anaximenes - air is the principle for all
monist
Pythagoras
- Archai are numbers (or numerical rations, proportions)
- Not trying to figure out the material things of the world, but the form and the arragnnement or order of the world is stable
- And the stable nature of all things is the principle
- Numbers are what don’t change - a changeless principle
- a dualist???
Heraclitus
- From ephesus - present day turkey
- Referred to as the riddler - he wasn’t very clear - quite obscure and vague
- “All things are an exchange for fire and fire for all things” - not sure why fire may symbol for being stable through constant flux
- “Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different water flows”
- Change is the only thing that’s constant - everything flows
- “Nature loves to hide”
- “The road up and the road down are one and the same” - Unity of opposites - there is nothing that is stable and unchanging - stable is the constant flux
- Change each thing undergoes results in it being a different thing after that change, it’s a claim on the nature of reality - there is no permanent object
For Heraclitus: the logos seems to be ruling, divine organising force in the universe (cosmos), perhaps a ‘principle’ as in the Second Principle of Thermodynamics - something that is exemplified eg when something goes from a state of order to disorder
- monist
Parmenides
- Nothing flows
- Change is an illusion, or at least unintelligible
- All there is, is being
- And all that you say about what is, is “it is”
- Parmenidean Dilemma
- Change must either be from what is, or from what is not
- Change cannot be from what is, and it cannot be from what is not
- So, we cannot explain change. We cannot understand it. It is an illusion.
The parmenides dilemma argues that change is an illusion because if change was real it would have to come from what is or what is not and since change comes from neither then there is no change
monist
Empedocles
- He wrote philosophical poetry
- He wrote in poetry in meter, one thing, because it makes it easier to remember
- Aristotle is quite critical of Empedocles
- Clepsydra (“water thief”) - this is what Empedocles based off his idea of how we breathe
- Empedocles spoke of these four roots (elements) (Stoixeia) (Earth, Air, Water, and Fire)
- These four roots don’t come and pass away, they are unchanging
- Also two motive forces: Love and Strife
- We aren’t generated out of nothing, we are combinations of those real stuff
- pluralist
Anaxagoras
- Anaxagoras of Clazomenae
- Principles are “seeds”: of all in all
- Nous (mind) steers all things, and is separate and unmixed - that which causes all the changes - neds to be unmixed, can’t be along with all the other things, because if it was mixed up with all of it, it could not rule
- Lived in Athens for 30 years
- When we eat there is some invisible blood in our food, that becomes visible in our blood when we eat
- When water becomes cool, it’s just that the cold that was already there that made it more prominent
- pluralist
Leucippus
Atomist
Atomism:
- The really real stuff: atoms and the void
- “Uncuttables”
- Atoms are invisible building blocks, unlimited in size and shape and have distinct motions
- Properties like redness that you perceive are due to underlying atomic structure
Democritus
Atomist
- The really real stuff: atoms and the void
- “Uncuttables”
- Atoms are invisible building blocks, unlimited in size and shape and have distinct motions
- Properties like redness that you perceive are due to underlying atomic structure
the Sophists
- Itinerant teachers (of some sort)
- Charged a fee for their services (maybe like motivational speakers today?
- Taught virtue, how to live the good life (being good at public speaking would be important)
- Famous Sophists that we will see again soon include Protagoras and - Thrasymachus (and we’ll see how Plato depicts them)
- Seem to have had a bad reputation
Depiction of the sophists in the Apology:
- “Making the worse argument the stronger” - this is a description of the sophists
Sophists:
Threat to traditional societal structure
Charlatans teaching youth to be charlatans (and not always successfully) - teaching them to be persuasive, rather than virtuous - would also make the false, seem true, hence making the worse argument, stronger.
Protagoras is a sophist
