GREEK PHILOSOPHY

1.1  RELIGIOUS ORIGINS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Two aspects of Greek religion are selected for their significance:

Anthropomorphic religion of the gods of Olympus – made familiar by the Homeric epics…Gods exhibit, on a most majestic scale, human passions and concern for the affairs of human beings. The Homeric conception of the Gods as subject to fate may have contributed to the attitude of mind that produced the first Greek philosophy: the Milesian natural philosophy of the sixth century BCE

Religious revival of sixth century BCE – associated with mystery cults. Mystery cults – local forms of gods: symbolizing individualism…the Dionysian cults join with the Orphic: doctrine of the immortal soul and its transmigration…perhaps incline toward philosophy – especially metaphysics – and especially to religiously oriented philosophies of Pythagoreans, of Parmenides and of Heraclitus

1.2  GREEK PHILOSOPHY: ORIGINS

1.2.1               Early Greek philosophy

1.2.1.1          Problem of Substance [Metaphysics] – and The Philosophy of Nature

Thales c. [624-550 BCE]: water is original stuff [possible observation: nourishment, heat, seed, contain moisture], out of water everything comes –but Thales does not indicate how

Anaximander c. [611-547 BCE]: the essence or principle of things is the infinite – a mixture, intermediate between observable elements, from which things arise by separation; moisture leads to living things…All animals and humans were originally a fish. All return to the primal mass to be produced anew

Cosmology: physical: sphere of fire leads to eternal motion: separation: hot, cold leads to hot, surrounds cold on a sphere of flame: heat: cold leads to moisture leads to air: fire leads to rings with holes: heavenly bodies: sun [farthest], moon, planets

Anaximines [588-524 BCE]: first principle is definite: air; it is infinite. From air all things arise by rarefaction and condensation – a scientific observation

These three philosophers – Thales, Anaximander and Anaximines, of Miletus, represent advance from qualitative-subjective to quantitative-scientific explanation of modes of emergence of being from a primary substance

Pythagorean School: Pythagoras of Samos [c. 575-500 BCE]. The Pythagorean School was concerned less with substance than with the form and relation of things. Numbers are the principles of things – number mysticism. Origin, in astronomy, of the dual: systematic, fixed stellar system and chaotic, dynamic – terrestrial – world. Ethics, too, rooted in number-mysticism

1.2.1.2          Problem of change

…arises from the intuition that something from nothing is impossible

Problem of Change:

Qualitative Theories of Change: Empedocles [495-435 BCE] and Anaxogoras [500-428 BCE]. Quantitative theories: Atomism: transition from teleology to mechanism: Leucippus and Democritus [460-370 BCE]. Metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, theory of knowledge, theology and ethics

Heraclitus [535-475 BCE] born Ephesus: [1] Fire and universal flux, [2] opposites and their union, [3] harmony and the law

Eleatic School: Xenophanes [570-480 BCE] Colophon, precursor, first basis of skepticism in Greek thought, Parmenides – founder of philosophy of permanence – change is relative: combination and separation [becoming]…paradoxes of being and nonbeing, Zeno [of the paradoxes] [490-430 BCE] and Melisus of Samos are defenders of the doctrine

Democritus: same concept in atomic form. Metaphysics, ontology: space: nonbeing exists; motion in space: atomic. Psychology, theory of knowledge: information from object to sentient: propagation of actions through toms in air, soul atoms: the finest in-between body atoms

1.2.2               Age of sophists

The development of Greek thought led to a spirit of free inquiry in poetry: Aeschylus [525-456 BCE], Sophocles [490=405 BCE], Euripedes [480-406 BCE]; history: Thucydides [b. 471 BCE]; medicine: Hippocrates [b. 460 BCE]. The construction of philosophical systems ceases temporarily; the existing schools continue to be taught and some turn attention to natural-scientific investigation… The resulting individualism made an invaluable contribution to Greek thought but led, finally, to an exaggerated intellectual and ethical subjectivism. The Sophists who were originally well-regarded came gradually to be a term of reproach partly owing to the radicalism of the later schools: their subjectivism, relativism and nihilism. For Protagoras, all opinions are true [though some “better”]; for Gorgias none are true [there is nothing; even if there were something we could not know it; if we could know it we could not communicate it]. “Sophists exaggerated the differences in human judgments and ignored the common elements; laid too much stress on the illusoriness of the senses… Nevertheless, their criticisms of knowledge made necessary a profounder study of the nature of knowledge.”

1.2.3               Socrates and the Socratic schools

Socrates [469-399 BCE], Xenophon: “The Socratic problem was to meet the challenge of sophistry, which, in undermining knowledge, threatened the foundations of morality and state.” Socratic method: includes the elements: [1] skeptical, [2] conventional, [3] conceptual or definitional, [4] empirical or inductive, [5] deductive… a “dialectical” process for improving understanding of a subject

The treatment to this point has been more detailed since [1] I am relatively ignorant of it, and [2] a detailed study of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle – a natural study of the tree supreme Greek philosophers – is left for later

Ethics: knowledge is the highest good. Knowledge is virtue