I Philosophy in its Infancy
It started of with Greek culture in the 6th century before Christ (ending with the foundation of
the Roman Republic). Pythagoras was the first to bring philosophy to the greek world. He
founded the idea of metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls (reincarnation as another
living being).
Milesians (6th century BC)
Names: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes
Pythagoras was succeeded by Thales, who also proposed mathematical theories, as well as
theories about nature (physis, in Greek) and the cosmos. Anaximander was his pupil, who
made the first map of the world and was an early proponent of evolution, for he believed that
human beings could not always have existed (since they need a long period of nursing
compared to other animals - if humans had originally been as they are now they could not
have survived). Later Anaximenes came into play. All of them believed in some infinite
constituting element: Thales believed it was water, Anaximander believed it had to be
something with no definite nature (neither water nor fire), while Anaximenes believed it was
air. They resemble modern scientists more than philosophers.
Xenophanes (6-5th century BC)
Xenophanes was more of a philosopher, and the first philosopher of religion. He did not
concur with the pictures drawn of gods that they would steal or lie, since people only drew
gods like that because people draw gods as like themselves. He believed there was one
god, altogether non-spatial. What distinguishes Xenophanes is that whilst others had
believed there was just one god, they took their stance on the basis of a divine oracle -
Xenophanes however, offered to prove his point by rational argument.
Heraclitus (5th century BC)
Heraclitus had written a notoriously difficult to understand treatise of philosophy and politics.
He was more like our present understanding of a philosopher as a guru than as an
academic. He believed that fire was the sole constituent of everything, and that looking at a
river you can never see exactly the same moment twice, that in fact you can never step into
the same river twice. The latter idea influenced greatly the philosophers after him.
The School of Parmenides (5th century BC)
Names: Parmenides, Melissus, (Zeno)
Parmenides was the founding father of ontology: the philosophy of Being. Being means
whatever is engaged in being - that is, this being does not necessarily need to exist, if you
can say “is” about it it already is a being (like a unicorn: it does not exist, but since you can
say “a unicorn is an horse-like being, it is a being). Beings can be anything at al: being
yellow, or blue. The Unbeing cannot be thought of, since if you think of it it comes into being.
Being air or water is like running fast or slow: just different phases of being, but still the same
being. Parmenides poem contains two parts: the Way of Truth (about being) and the Way of
Seeming (about the senses/appearance).
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,Parmenides, travelling with Zeno, met Socrates at 450 BC (5th century BC), the start of the
Golden Age of Greek philosophy.
A student of Parmenides, Melissus believed that a vacuum was impossible since it implied a
piece of Unbeing (and thus, that motion was impossible, since it would imply that a body
which occupied space would have no room to move into). Zeno, a friend of Parmenides,
proved through paradoxes that movement was impossible.
Empedocles (5th century BC)
Empedocles can be said to have given a synthesis of all of Ionian thought. He believed that
all was not made out of one element, but rather of a combination of elements: earth, water,
air, fire (or: solid, liquid, gas, plasma nowadays). The forces of love and strife brought these
elements together or drove them apart respectively. He believed in Pythagorean idea of
metempsychosis.
The Atomists
Names: Democritus, Leucippus
Democritus, and his teacher Leucippus, are often mentioned together. They came with the
invention of atomism in trying to reconcile the data of the senses with the Eleatic monism:
that there was only one everlasting, unchanging Being. Atomism is the theory stating that if
you keep on dividing something, at some point you will come to something indivisionable
(atoms), since otherwise that which is left after the division is so small it holds not space and
thus is not a Being anymore (the proof is similar to Zeno’s paradoxes). Atoms and void are
the only two realities. The sensory qualities are just conventions relative to us, not belonging
to the nature of the things themselves. Democritus also wrote a bit on ethics, albeit not really
groundbreaking.
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,II The Athens of Socrates
The Athenian Empire (5th century BC)
It started with the revolt against the Persians. Athens took the lead in the revolt, and later
became the leader of Greece. Athens was highly democratic, and this had an influence on
later philosophers’ opinions about the merits and demerits of democratic institutions. The
times after the war with the Persian king Xerxes, son of Darius, who had destroyed much of
Athens, breeded a lot of culture and tangible inheritance (temples like Parthenon) - truly the
flourishing of the great civilization of the city of Athens.
Anaxagoras (5th century BC)
He believed, that at the beginning, all things were one; and that now there is in every single
thing a portion of everything else. He believed that Mind was something entirely different
from matter, and that the sun was a fiery ball.
The Sophists
Names: Protagoras, Gorgias, Socrates
Since there was no public schooling, one often hired a Sophist to teach one’s kids (for
example: rhetoric). Critics assess that the Sophists were too much focused on rhetoric and
persuasiveness, and not enough on truth (and thus no true philosophers).
Protagoras was the most famous sophist, he was agnostic in religion and more of a
humanist than a theist, and believed that the objective truth does not exist (but critics
asserted that that itself is an assertion of objective truth). Gorgias, a pupil of Empedocles,
was the first teacher of rhetoric.
Then, Athens got into war with, among others, Sparta. Having, in the end, lost, the
leadership of Greece went to Sparta. But, the best philosophers of Athens were yet to come.
Socrates
Socrates was a brave, upright man. He was a Sophist, but an unusual one, for he did not
charge his students and he educated them not through instruction, but through asking
questions.
According to Socrates, moral knowledge and virtue were the same thing. If someone knew
what was right and what was wrong, that person would have no reason to do wrong since
(presumably) everyone wants to lead a good life. Therefore, he believed people should be
instructed, not punished, after unintentional wrongdoing.
Through his probity (~moral sainthood) and puncturing of reputations, he gained many
enemies who ganged together to accuse him and get a trial. The trial was won by the
accusers.
Some of the most important works about Socrates are the following:
● Euthyphro - jury J ust before this trial, Socrates was waiting outside the courthouse
and met. Although possibly fictional, Socrates’s cross-questioning methods are very
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, clear in this conversation. In this conversation, Socrates comes across as rather
atheist, and it can be understood why he was seen as a danger to the youth by
religious folk.
● Apology During the trial, Socrates held his Apology speech, to convince the jury that
he was innocent. One of his two main arguments are that it is unlikely that he would
willingly educate students wrongly, for who would want to live among bad people?
The second is that his mission as a philosopher was given to him directly by god, so
he couldn’t be an atheist.
● Crito & Phaedo - A fter the trial, awaiting his execution, he held the dialogues of Crito
and Phaedo. Especially Phaedo gives an interesting discussion of the (im)mortality of
the soul, with well structured step-by-step argumentations, which even up to today
gives rise to questions and discussion.
III The Philosophy of Plato
Life and Works
Plato was born in the last days of the Athenian Empire. He was raised in Athens, and lived
for some time in Sicily. Later, he founded “the Academy”, the first university-like institution.
He always wrote in dialogue form, and it is therefore hard to know what he exactly believed.
His dialogues fall into three categories:
1) Socratic dialogues: Socrates appears as a questioner, not as an instructor. His
cross-questioning brings to light what knowledge in fact is mere prejudice.
2) Now, Socrates is no longer an attorney prosecuting prejudices; rather, Socrates is a
teacher expounding elaborate philosophical ideas.
3) Finally, Socrates’s role diminishes, and discussions are given about the definition of
knowledge, pleasure, and government.
The Theory of Ideas
One of the central themes within the 2nd group of dialogues, is the theory of ideas. The
theory of ideas holds it that if some group of entities have something in common, then there
is an external or objective thing in which they share, “The Idea (or Form) of X”.
The problem is still discussed, and four notions can be distinguished
1) Concrete Universals - A characteristic is treated as something scattered through the
world, but empirically/a posteriori can be found in the world. For example, water
would be that part of the world which is aqueous, but the notion could not exist
outside of space or time.
2) Paradigms - Or, a characteristic can be compared to a paradigm or a standard. So,
when you have a standard of water, you can compare your entity with how watery it
is. However, again, this standard could not exist outside of space or time.
3) Attributes and Properties - For example, take the attribute of humanity: even if
humans stopped existing, humanity as an attribute still exists. Thus it does transcend
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