Ancient Philosophy and Pre-Socratic Thinkers Overview

Introduction to Ancient Philosophy Introduction to the course Overview of the pre-Socratics The Milesians: Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes

Social and Cultural Context Sense of wonder at the world Trading and colonisation Mathematical and scientific discoveries Exposed to new cultures (emergence of anthropology, cf. Herodotus) Religious detachment and indifferentism Freedom from physical labour

Pre-Socratic Philosophy Philosophy (philia = love; sophos = wisdom) Didn t think of themselves as philosophers Pre-Socratics misnomer Asked questions about the cosmos Physis Rational explanation of the world Shift away from cosmos towards man Physis and nomos

Reading the Pre-Socratics Fragments Second-hand sources Language Writing styles Audience

Questions to ask about the Milesians 1. How did their approach differ from those thinkers who came before them? 2. What is it that they said? 3. What is it about their thought that is philosophical?

Hesiods Theogony Hail, children of Zeus, grant a sweet song and tell Tell me this, you Muses and tell which of them first came into being first of all came Expanse; and then wide-bosomed Earth and from Night came Ether and Day whom she conceived and bore after joining with Darkness in love Earth bore first, equal to herself

Thales the earth rests because it can float, like a log or something else of that sort (for none of these things rest on air, but they can rest on water) (Aristotle, On the Heavens) He held that water is the principle of all things (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers)

System-builders In asking what single thing explains everything? Thales is searching for impersonal, general laws Thales was the first to offer a logos of nature The Greeks had a very strong desire to systematise When you take one fundamental matter water and claim that everything else is a differentiation of that matter, you have constructed a system. It s a system because everything is explained in terms of this one thing

Thales new kind of thought Doesn t account for the world in terms of anthropomorphised gods, he explains ( logos ) things in terms of natural causes Impersonal forces and the search for general laws Everything is a formal differentiation of water Systematic thinking in ancient Greek thought

Aristotles Definition of a Principle That from which all things have their origin and that into which all things are dissolved A principle (arche) is: i. The source or origin of all things ii. The final goal of all things iii. The permanent sustained or substrate of all things

Aristotles Definition of a Principle Three characteristics of a principle (arche): i. It encompasses everything ii. It steers everything iii. It s divine Note: divine is meant in a natural, not a spiritual, sense.

Anaximander First to use principle as a technical term Apeiron (= infinite, unlimited) The problem with Thales principle of water Separating out from the mass Importance of heat and constant movement

Recap: The Milesians asked two key questions: What is the world made of? How did the world originate? They made sense of the world by reducing it to a principle They offered an entirely different conception of reality Scientific advances in Anaximander s thought

Anaximenes for everything comes into being from air and is resolved again into it. For example, our souls, he says, being air, hold us together, and breath and air encompass the whole world. (Plutarch, Opinions of the Philosophers on Nature 876AB) Air is close to the incorporeal; and because we come into being by an outflowing of air, it is necessary for it to be both limitless and rich because it never gives out. (Olympiodorus, On the Divine and Sacred Art of the Philosopher s Stone 25)

Explains the Generation of Things The primary principle is limited, unlike the things it generates The things that are generated are qualitatively different Condensation and rarefaction (rational explanation)

Next Lecture: Heraclitus Questions to ask: How does Heraclitus principle of reality improve on the account given by the Milesians? How does he account for change? How does he account for the principle (arche)? Is Heraclitus writing for everyone? Reading: Heraclitus chapter in Barnes