Class Notes on the Pre-Socratics

(Originally Written August 31, 2006 in History I)

Class Notes

"Chris' [paper] is a bit wordy and while he produces warm feelings in my heart, he gets the same amount of points" - Jim Spiegel

Major periods of Ancient Philosophy:

1. Pre-Socratic (6th-5th Century B.C.)
- interested with cosmology and physical philosophy

2. Socratic (5th-4th Century B.C.)
-Socrates, Plato & Aristotle
-mostly focused on ethics

3. Hellenistic (3rd century B.C. - Middle Ages)
-Stoicism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism

4. Philosophy of the Roman Empire (1st Century B.C. - Middle Ages)
-Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, Early Christian, Neo-Aristotelian, Hellenistic branches

Pre-Socratic Problems:

1. The problem of the one and the many
-Metaphysical: one substance vs. many substances
-Epistemological: universal vs. particulars (what do I know?)

2. The problem of permanence and change
-Metaphysical: flux vs. permanence (What is reality?)
-Epistemological: How do I know perpetual flux or permanence?

Milesian Philosophers:

Thales (circa 624 BC - 546 BC)

-contemporary of Jeremiah, alive during the fall of Jerusalem
-did not write anything
-predicted an eclipse of the sun in 585 BC
-redirected a river for the Ionians during a struggle with Persia
-geometrician of note
-cornered the olive oil market
-very few fragments of his teaching survive:
 "all things are water", "all things are full of soul"
-he was a monist, monism: all reality is made of one stuff
-for Thales, the one stuff was water
-he was a materialist, nothing beyond the physical world exists, everything is matter.
-he was a hylozoist, hylozoism - all material substances have life in them
-he was a naturalist, using naturalistic explanations and mechanistic approaches to problems

Anaximander (circa 610 BC - 545 BC)

-pupil of Thales
-engineer/traveler
-first Greek cartographer
-invented the sun dial
-believed in a catastrophic flood because there were marine fossils in the mountains
-believed that life began in the moist of the world
-early evolutionary theorist
-wrote a treatise
-he was a monist, "apeiron" (the boundless) was his one substance.
-The boundless was natural matter with no determinant qualities, it was an eternal substance
-held a cyclical cosmology - periodic creation and destruction of the universe
-he was naturalistic and mechanistic in approach

Anaximenes (circa 585 BC - 525 BC)

-he was a monist, air was his one stuff/substance
-he accounted for change: Fire <-> Air <-> Wind <-> Water <-> Earth <-> Stone
-he was naturalistic and mechanistic in approach
-he was a materialist

Other Pre-Socratics

Heraclitus (circa 544 BC - 484 BC)

-From Ephesus
-aristocratic
-poet/philosopher
-taught Cratylus (Plato named a dialogue after Cratylus)
-wrote in aphorisms
-known as "the obscure"
-pantheistic to varying degrees
-held a low view of humanity and was very pessimistic

1. Basic Cosmic Elements were not primary
2. Divine Fire - most basic/primary substance (Restless fire)
3. Flux - the constant change
4. Logos - the pattern of life, "formula", "Ratio", "Word", "Pattern"
5. Tension of opposites - strife
6. Human Nature - Ethics, the human soul is part of the Divine Fire and will return to the Divine Fire after death