Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Homer, Hesiod, The Milesians, Heraclitus & Xenophanes

(Originally written August 30, 2006 in Book 10)

Book 10: History of Philosophy I

This note book, or at least the beginning of this notebook is dedicated to the readings for History of Philosophy I.

The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones

Chapter One: "Pre-Socratic Philosophy"

When did Western Philosophy begin?
-In the 6th century B.C. with Thales. Thales is the father of Greek and thus, Western philosophy.
-"But, the history of philosophy itself does not have a definitive starting point" (Jones, 1).

It's impossible to pinpoint a time when there was no philosophy; thus no pinpoint of a beginning. Philosophy began as a gradual continuum and exists in that state today.

God and Nature in Homer

Zeus is not the omnipotent God in Christianity. He is "dominated by the members of his household" (Jones, 4).

The Homeric State was a monarchy, but no king was to be absolute. The nobility and warrior class played a part in limiting the king's power. But, a king often overrode the nobility and nobody complained.

Nature was not viewed as cyclical by Homer. Yes, there were regular occurrences, but when irregularities occurred they were attributed to the gods.

The gods were impulsive and that nature was the cause of life's irregularities.

While the gods were impulsive they operated under some form of rationale. (i.e. they punished Achilles for his excessive anger).

Lack of moderation and hubris (insubordination) were great iniquities for Homer. Arrogance came out of men of excess or hubris. Arrogant men were rarely tolerated by the gods.

In the Illiad Achilles is punished for his lack of moderation: Agamemnon is not punished for his infliction of misery and suffering, but for his violation of the god's regulations.

Homer does not make the gods to be moral role models. He does not believe the divine rules were established by the gods for the benefit of man.

The gods were egotistical, lustful, selfish, vain, unscrupulous, dishonest and childish.

Homer's men worship the gods because they were powerful, not because they are good.

Worship is a business transaction between a god and a man.

Homer's gods are causal agents. They are the cause of the regular state of affairs and the disruptive irregularities of life as well.

Above the dos is a blind will known as fate. Fate was above both gods and men. It was impersonal and unresponsive to anybody's volition.

God and Nature in Hesiod

Hesiod was probably from the 8th century B.C.

To Hesiod, Zeus was justice and justice would eventually punish the wicked and make restitution for the abused.

Homer saw the greatest sin of man being hubris (insubordination) or "not knowing one's place". Hesiod contrastingly saw man's worst iniquity as the oppression of the weak by the strong.

Zeus was moral and powerful enough to enforce the divine law in Hesiod, not the impotent, immoral god of Homer.

"Fate became the concept of a pervasive moral law" in Hesiod. (Jones, 6).

Hesiod sets man apart from the rest of nature. The Greeks took pride in their humanity and believed that humans had to live up to a higher standard than animals, a human responsibility.

Moderation is one of the great differentiators between humans and animals.

Despite Hesiod's innovations, his cosmogony is very anthropomorphic.

Thales

Thales was from Miletus, a Greek colony in Ionia (on the coast of Asia Minor)

He predicted an eclipse in 585 B.C.

He believed water was the cause of all things and that all things were filled with god or filled with soul.

Thales marked a chance for science to be founded; prior to him everything was attributed to the gods. Thales' belief of water as the cause of all things shifts causation from the supernatural to the natural and thus, under the scope of science.

Thales is remembered because he was the first man to answer the question: Why do things happen as they do? without giving a total answer of because of the gods...

Thales assumed that:
1) There is some one thing that was the cause of everything else (monism is born)
2) That the cause was in fact a thing or the "ultimate stuff"
3) The ultimate stuff is active and contains an internal principle of change

The third assumption is what Thales meant by stating that things are full of gods. Gods were causal agents in Ancient Greece. Thus, Thales was stating things happen because "things" change. Since things were causal agents and the common religion held gods to be the sole causal agents, by believing things to be causal agents he called them gods.

Thales marks a chance for an expansion of knowledge for Ancient Greece. It is actualized when Thales' successors acutely critiqued each others' hypotheses and moved from the stage of myth to philosophy.

Anaximander

Anaximander was a Milesian and a younger contemporary of Thales.

He wrote a book and a single sentence survived: "From what source things arise, to that they return of  necessity when they are destroyed; for they suffer punishment and make reparation to one another for their injustice according to the order of time" (Jones, 11).

Anaximander agreed with Thales in that:
1) There is a one "stuff"
2) There is a process by which this one stuff becomes the many individual things that exist.

He also added a third:
3) This process is a necessary one

HE believed this first stuff was not water or any other element, but something preceding the elements and this substance was "boundless"

Anaximander contended that water couldn't be the first substance because things that are dry would have to be made of water. This is a logical contradiction and Anaximander exploited it.

Anaximander noticed that the world existed in opposites: hot-cold, wet-dry, etc. Each of these opposites would become its own opposite.

A substance returns to the boundless and reemerges as the opposite or some in betwixt substance.

He believed the world to be overall disorderly and felt the orderliness of the world was an abnormality and needed an explanation.

Anaximander put forth a precursor to modern evolutionary theories to explain how the boundless stuff became the many things in existence.

Anaximenes

Anaximenes was the third Milesian philosopher and critiqued Anaximander's theory the way Anaximander critiqued Thales' theory.

Like the other two Milesians, Anaximenes believed in a one stuff.

Anaximenes doubted the boundless stuff because it had no characteristics. He rejected it because Anaximander's view held conflicting positions: a material evolutionary process and a boundless infinite stuff are incompatible.

He explained that qualitative changes were changes in the destiny of air:
Air dilated becomes fire
Air condensed becomes Wind
Wind condensed becomes water
Water condensed becomes earth
Earth condensed becomes rock

Neither Thales nor Anaximander nor Anaximenes knew anything of scientific experimentation and thus never tested their theories.

The Milesian philosophers were ignorant of scientific method (as were all Greeks) but the Milesians laid the foundation for the scientific method.

Heraclitus

Heraclitus was another Ionian.

HE held that the world was composed of an everlasting fire.

Heraclitus believed the problem of one substance becoming many substances was an insoluble one, as long as the "one substance" is taken to be a material thing.

He held that his one substance, the everlasting fire, was not a material thing, but a process of perpetual change.

Heraclitus proposed everything was in a constant state of flux. He then stated things appear to be still, but that is because the flux is constant. Heraclitus developed the notion of appearances and reality.

Moral and Social Theory

The Milesians were focused on the nature of the physical world. Heraclitus was primarily concerned with man and his destiny.

He believed the social world existed in flux, just like the physical world.

He held war to be the "king of all" and believed strife to be justice. He held this because without strife there can be no peace.

Strife was the hidden tensions between opposites.

His contempt oft he public masses can be summed up in his aphorism: "Asses would rather have straw than gold" (Jones, 17).

Religion

The men who accepted the Milesian science rejected the old religion of Homer and Hesiod. Heraclitus was Milesian in thought and looked down on the public for their adherence to the old religion.

Heraclitus was not an atheist. He believed god was connected to the everlasting fire. He believed this god to be indifferent to men.

His rejection of a personal god, but acceptance of the universal nature of god laid the foundation for the concept of natural law.

Despite his rejection of common Greek religion and a personal deity, his theological concepts of "logos" and man's chief good as being "listening to the logos" were absorbed into Stoicism and Christianity.

Logos was the process for Heraclitus.

He was both a scientific and religious philosopher.

Xenophanes

Xenophanes discovered every man makes god in his own image.

Xenophanes was an Ionian and followed Heraclitus in his religious views.

Xenophanes believed in one God who is not in form or thought like men. This God sees all. But, he was probably still a pantheist like Heraclitus.

The religion of Xenophanes and Heraclitus cut away at the ancient myth religion of Greece and caused the undermining of the Greek society. The collapse of the ancient religion led to the decline of morality in Ancient Greece.

Axiomatic Geometry

The Greeks took a basic geometric understanding from he Egyptians and developed it.

Axiomatic Geometry slowly formed over the 6th and 5th B.C. The Earliest complete text is Euclid's Elements written about 300 BC.

Axiomatic Geometry starts with self-evident statements (axioms) then uses logical reasoning to produce theorems. Theorems are then combined with one another to form more complex theorems and so on. Euclid had a large demonstrable book by the end of his reasoning.

Axiomatic geometry pushed Greeks to rely on reasoning rather than sense perception.

Euclid's theorems were not challenged until the 19th century. "Most of Western Philosophers have regarded it as the paradigm of human reasoning" (Jones, 20).

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