CONTENTS:
Notes on Early Greek Philosophy
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CONTENTS:
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The Big Questions
From beginning of human civilization, human beings have attempted to explain the meaning of existence. Why are we here? How did we get here? What is life all about? These are the questions that human beings have always struggled with, and out of which the religion and philosophy developed.
The questions that were of particular interest to early man were:
The Mythological Answer
The first attempts to answer the question, "What is the origin of the universe?" took the form of myths (or stories about the gods) that are found in every known tradition. Philosophy developed later on--only after human beings attempted to critically reflect upon the truth of these myths, at times validating them by use of supporting arguments and at other times undermining them completely.
The ancient Greeks of the eighth and seventh centuries developed a complex set of myths to try to explain reality. In his Theogony (literally the "birth of the gods"), written at the end of the 8th century BC, the poet Hesiod draws upon older traditions to account for the origins, not just of the gods, but of all things. At the beginning the universe was nothing but a formless mass (chaos). Out of this chaos, Earth appears and gives birth to Heaven. The union of these two creates the first of the gods--the Titans. Eventually, Zeus, the son of Kronos, the mightiest of the Titans, overthrows his father and set himself up as the king of the Gods. Zeus, along with the other god's (most notably Poseidon, who rules the seas, and Hades, who reins in the underworld) establish a kind of natural and moral order in the universe.
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Read a selection from Hesiod's Theogony |
The First Philosophers
The Presocratic philosophers were a group of thinkers who lived in Ionia (Western Turkey) and southern Italy before the time of Socrates (between 500 and 400 B.C.). Unlike the poets we examined earlier, these thinkers sought to understand the world in natural (rather than supernatural ) terms. Because they were intent upon using reason to try to explore nature, they are considered the first true philosophers in the Western World
Examining the world around them, these thinker recognized that there was a fundamental connection between permanence and change. Take a tree, for example. Although during the course of the four seasons the tree will undergo various transformations (from being covered with leaves in the summer to being relatively barren in the winter and every stage in between), there remains something constant about the tree that makes it remains a tree despite the changes that it undergoes. The fact of permanence in an ever changing world led these thinker to speculate that there must be some kink of arche--and underlying or first principle--of all things.
Major Pre-Socratic Thinkers
There are several important Presocratic thinkers that are worth examining in our attempt to understand early Greek thought:
1. Thales (c. 624-548 B.C.)
One of the first attempts to explain the nature of the universe in philosophical terms was undertaken by Thales of Miletus. Despite the apparent diversity of the natural world, he maintained that everything was made of water. Although this view may seem a bit primitive to us today, the selection of water as the primordial stuff of the universe makes quite a bit of sense if you come to think about it: after all, most living things are comprised mainly of water and the world in which we live is filled with the stuff.
The importance of Thales in the history of Western thought cannot be underestimated. He was one of the first thinkers to attempt to understand the world through observation and by use of reason, as opposed resorting to stories about the Gods. It is for this reason that he has been called the father both of philosophy as well as science.
2. Anaximander (c. 611-547 B.C.)
Alaxamander, who also came from Miletus, rejected Thales view. He saw the universe as comprised of four elements--air, water, earth and fire. These elements, he believed are in opposition to one another and are constantly trying to increase themselves in terms of quantity. During this struggle for dominance, the elements continually transform one another, thus accounting for change in the natural world.
3. Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.)
Heraclitus, who was nicknamed by his contemporararies as "the Riddler" and "the Obscure"because of his often paradoxical pronouncements. Heraclitus viewed the world in terms of perpetual struggle and strife. "All things are in flux," he maintained; everything in the universe is constantly in a state of change. One can't he said step into the same river twice, since the river never remains the same. The only thing that is permanent in the universe is principle of change itself.
A later disciple of Heraclitus, Cratylus, took this idea once step further, arguing that you cannot step into the same river even once, because by the time you have stepped into it, it has already changed. Since everything is constantly in change, you can't really discuss anything, since by the time you've finished speaking, what you are talking about has already altered, rendering your speech meaningless.
Read some fragaments from Heraclitus' On Nature
4. Parmenides (c. 515-450 B.C.)
Of course, Heraclitus' position makes doing philosophy rather difficult. Parmenides countered his view by exploring the fixed/unchangeable features of reality. Since this underlying base of reality is permanent, it cannot move, divide or separate. Ultimately it can have no other properties than existence, since any other properties would suggest change. All that we can say, therefore about this reality is that it is. Everything else in the world of flux, he maintain, is in a state of change and therefore cannot belong to this permanent realm. Since only what is permanent exists, the changing world must be non-existent.
Parmenides believed that we come to know reality, not though the sense experience (which is deceptive) but through the use of reason. This view, as we shall see, will later be taken up again by Plato.
5. Zeno of Elea (c. 490 B.C.)
Zeno, a disciple of Parmesides, took his master's ideas one step further by maintaining that the concept of change itself is impossible. Zeno is well known for his famous paradoxes, which he believed demonstrated that motion cannot occur.
One of these paradoxes holds that in order for an object to move from one place to another, it must first move half the distance involved. But to move this half distance, it must move half of the half, and so on infinitely. Since it takes at least some amount of time to move any distance, to move an infinite number of distances requires an infinite number of time intervals. No movement, therefore is possible at all.
The point of Zeno's paradoxes was to show that motion, and therefore any sort of change, is ultimately impossible
6. Democritus (c. 460-370 B.C.)
Democritus tried to reconcile the conflicting views of Heraclitus and Parmendes by mainatining that the universe was both changing and unchanging. He maintained that the basic element of the universe was the atom (literally "that which cannot be divided"). Atoms, according to Democritus, have a fixed character, which always remains the same. But these atoms also continually moving through empty space, endlessly colliding with eachother. This view, Democritus, believed could account for both the reality of change as well as permanence within the universe. The atoms themselves always remained the same, but their motion explained the changes that we perceive in the world.
Suggestions
for Further Reading
Department of Philosophy | Sophia Project | Plato Page
© 2000, M. Russo For more information contact: mrusso@molloy.edu
