Greek Philosophy Part I (PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY)

near the Mediterranean Sea.
The main part of Greece in on

a peninsula.
A peninsula is a body of land surrounded by water on three sides.
The rest of Greece is made up of islands.

Greek history lasting from ca. 1100 BC (Dorian invasion), to

146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece (Battle of Corinth).
The seminal culture which provided the foundation of Western civilization.
Greek culture had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of Europe.
The civilization of the ancient Greeks has been immensely influential on language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science, and art.

of reason and inquiry.
Many philosophers today concede that Greek

philosophy has shaped the entire Western thought since its inception.
Clear unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers, to medieval Muslim philosophers, to the European Renaissance and Enlightenment.
Early Greek philosophy, in turn, was influenced by the older wisdom literature and mythological cosmogonies of the Near East.
Nonetheless, philosophy is a Greek creation.

1st half of V с. BC),

ІІ – Classic - Classical greek philosophy (2nd half of V – ІV с. BC),

ІІІ – Hellenistic - Late antique philosophy (end of ІV с. BC – V с. AD).

Stages of the development of ancient Greek philosophy

Socrates or contemporaneously, but expounding knowledge developed earlier.
It is

sometimes difficult to determine the actual line of argument some pre-Socratics used in supporting their particular views.
While most of them produced significant texts, none of the texts have survived in complete form.
All we have are quotations by later philosophers and historians, and the occasional textual fragment.
Pre-Socratic philosophers rejected mythological in favor of more rational explanations.

(love of knowledge and wisdom)
Began with natural explanations (logos) replacing

supernatural explanations (mythos).
Cosmology
The explanation of origin, structure, and processes governing the universe (cosmos).
The universe was orderly and thus, in principle, explainable.
They began a process of asking questions, defining problems and identifying paradoxes.

where does everything come?
From what is everything created?
How

do we explain the plurality of things found in nature?
How might we describe nature mathematically?
Others concentrated on defining problems and paradoxes that the basis for later mathematical, scientific and philosophic study.
Later philosophers rejected the answers they provided, but continued to place importance on their questions.

of thought founded in the 6th C. BC.
The ideas

associated with it are exemplified by philosophers from the Ionian town of Miletus, on the Aegean coast of Anatolia
These philosophers introduced new opinions contrary to the prevailing viewpoint on how the world was organized.
Natural phenomena were explained solely by the will of anthropomorphized gods.
They presented a view of nature in terms of methodologically observable entities, and as such was one of the first truly scientific philosophies.

discovery of nature and the rejection of mythopoeic explanations

explanations while minimizing supernatural ones.
The universe consists of natural

substances and is governed by natural principles.
Universe is knowable and understandable.
Thales searched for the one single substance from which all others were derived- the physis or primary element.
The physis was water.
He ushered in the critical tradition – the criticism and questioning of others’ teachings and views.

the source of all things.
He called it "apeiron", which

means unlimited, indeterminate, or infinite
Anaximenes (585 -525 BCE)
Probably a younger contemporary of Anaximander, whose pupil or friend he is said to have been.[1]
He held the Physis to be air (translates to mist)
Everything is air at different degrees of density, and under the influence of heat, which expands, and of cold, which contracts its volume, it gives rise to the several phases of existence.

a constant state of flux or change.
Physis is fire because

it transforms all things into something else.
World is always “becoming” – never “is”
All things exist between polar opposites – must have opposites.
Epistemological question
How can one know something if it is always changing?
The veracity of the senses began to be questioned.
Rationalists believe that there are knowable things in the universe, while empiricists believe that everything is constantly changing and thus incapable of being known.

philosophers at Elea (a Greek colony in Campania, Italy)
Founded

in the early fifth century BCE by Parmenides, with Zeno of Elea his student.
Parmenides (510-440 BCE)
All things are constant; change is an illusion
One reality: finite, uniform, motionless, and fixed
Knowledge comes only through reason (rationalism)
Sensory experience is not real, not to be trusted

logical arguments (paradoxes) to show that motion was an illusion

to support Parmenides.
The paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise
Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 feet.
If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 feet, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point.

Tortoise
During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter

distance, say, 10 feet.
It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead.
Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go.
Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise.
Simple experience tells us that Achilles will be able to overtake the tortoise, which is why this is a paradox.

influenced by mathematics and probably a very inspirational source for

Plato and Platonism.
Pythagoras (582-496 BCE) and the Pythagoreans.
First to use the term philosopher and call himself a philosopher
Explanation of the universe is found in numbers and numerical relationships
Applied mathematical principles to human experience
Numbers and numerical relationships were real and influenced the empirical world

was thought to result from a disruption of the body’s

equilibrium
Nothing is perfect in the empirical world; perfection is in abstract mathematical world and known only by reason
The Pythagoreans proposed a dualistic universe
One part abstract, permanent, and knowable (similar to Parmenides)
One part empirical, changing, and known through the senses, but senses cannot provide knowledge (similar to Heraclitus)

Pythagoreans lived a strict, disciplined life.
They crusaded against vice, lawlessness,

and bodily excess and believed that experiences in the flesh (senses) were inferior to experiences in the mind
Affected Plato’s views and impacted early Christian thought.

the hidden substance in all physical objects consists of different

arrangements of 1) atoms and 2) void.
Both atoms and the void were never created, and they will be never ending.
Democritus (460-370 BCE)
First completely naturalistic description of the universe
All things were made of tiny particles called atoms
Characteristics of things are determined by shape, size, number, location, and arrangement of atoms.

and events, animate, inanimate, and cognitive can be reduced to

atoms and atomic activity.
Atom’s behavior is lawful (determinism)
All things explained by atomic activity (elementism)
Events and phenomena explained in terms of another, more elemental level (reductionism).
Described sensation and perception in terms of atoms emanating from the surface of objects and entering the body through the sensory systems and then transmitted to the brain.

5th C BCE, particularly at Athens, "sophist" came to denote

a class of itinerant intellectuals who:
taught courses in "excellence" or "virtue”
speculated about the nature of language and culture
employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others.
They held that truth is relative – no single truth exists
But claimed that they could find the answers to all questions.

perceiver.
Perception varies from person to person because each perceiver has

different experiences.
Truth is partially determined by culture
To understand why a person believes as a person does, one must understand the person.
Agnostic toward the Greek gods
Philosophy of relativity of truth is still present today in postmodernism.

more extreme position than Protogoras – all things are equally

false
There is no objective basis of truth – nihilism – one can only be aware of one’s own experiences and mental states – solipsism.
He came to three conclusions:
Nothing exists
If it did exist, it could not be comprehended
If it could be comprehended, it could not be
Spoken words had power but they were essentially deceitful.

religion before the Sophists
Xenophanes stated that religion is a

human invention. His evidence was:
Olympian gods act suspiciously like humans
Gods of different peoples look like the people themselves
Humans create religion – moral codes come from man
He was not an atheist
Postulated a god that was unlike any other described during that time.