The Axial Period and Beyond

Beginnings: the Hellenic Age 800-400 B.C.

The Influence of Greece

Although we often think of this part of the history as simply ‘the Ancient Greeks’, the influence of the culture was vastAlexander would later spread it even as far as near east Asia into India, and the ‘Greek’ culture would take a life of its own far beyond its starting point

Explanations of natural events of early humans

Animismgiving life to nature and natural phenomena.

Anthropomorphismattributing human qualities and abilities to nonhuman animals and natural phenomena

Magicmethods developed to influence the spirits to change the situation.

Early Greek religionOlympian religion

Olympian Gods in the Homeric poems (preferred by the Greek nobility)

Gods personified orderliness and rationality and valued intelligence, similar to the beliefs of the Greek nobility, though were typically uninterested in the human condition.Unlike Jewish contemporaries or later Christians, no prophet or revealed truths or code of law handed down by the godsIdeal life involved the pursuit of glory through noble deeds, living according to nature

Early Greek religion

Dionysiac – Orphic religionAlternative to Olympianlegend of Dionysus, the God of wine and frenzy, and his disciple Orpheus (preferred by peasants, laborers, and slaves)

Transmigration of the soul was the major featurethe soul was locked in a physical body (a prison). The soul continued a “circle of births” inhabiting plants, animals, and human bodies until redeemed.Various rites were practiced to free the soul from the body and liberate from transmigration and return to the presence of the Gods, from whence it came.

This idea of soul seeking to escape earthly existence and enter into a heavenly state gained popularity and became part of Judeo-Christian beliefs.

The PresocraticsAlmost all knowledge of them is indirect, little of anything original survives and of some may not have existedPhilosophy

began with natural explanations (logos) replacing supernatural explanations (mythos)Concerned with metaphysics, the nature of being

Cosmologyexplanation of origin, structure, and processes governing the universe (cosmos). Universe was orderly and thus, in principle, explainable.

The PresocraticsThe Milesians

ThalesAnaximenesAnaximander

The PythagoreansHeraclitus and CratylusParminedes and the EleaticsLater Presocratics

EmpedoclesAnaxagorasAtomists

LeucippusDemocritus

The MilesiansThales ~624 - 546 BCEEmphasized natural explanations, universe consists of natural substances and governed by natural principles.Universe is knowable and understandable.Thales searched for the one single substance from which all others were derived, the physis or primary element, and for him the physis was water.He ushered in the critical tradition – the criticism and questioning of others’ teachings and views.

The MilesiansAnaximenes ~585 – 525 BCE

Basic substance air and things form through condensation and refractionEarly science?Air encloses the whole world and keeps it together much like the soul does the body

Hence the breath is indication of life, but may also imply the earth has a soul also

Anaximander ~610 – 546 BCEDidn’t identify physis with any of the four elementsWas a substance that had the capability of becoming anything, called the “boundless” or the “indefinite” (the apeiron), but not in the sense of the others that it changes into those thingsThe source of coming-to-be of existing things that are destroyed back into it

Compare to Tao, Brahman

The PythagoreansPythagoras ~582–507 BCE and the Pythagoreans

Pythagoras was leader and prophetFreaks

Not much is known as the members of the cult were bound to secrecy

Hippasus drowned for revealing their secrets?Part of this due to the general intolerance of the time with regard to natural philosophers’ speculation about the heavens.

From Plutarch:Hence it was that Protagoras was banished and Anaxagoras cast in prison… and Socrates, though he had no concern for this sort of learning, was yet put to death…

For the Pythagoreans though, held a general regard for sanctity of life, believed in transmigration

Some of the rules of the Pythagorean order were:

1 To abstain from beans. 2 Not to pick up what was fallen. 3 Not to touch a white cock. 4 Not to break bread. 5 Not to step over a crossbar. 6 Not to stir the fire with iron. 7 Not to eat from a whole loaf. 8 Not to pluck a garland. 9 Not to sit on a quart measure. 10 Not to eat the heart. 11 Not to walk on highways. 12 Not to let swallows share one’s roof. 13 When the pot is taken off the fire, not to leave the mark of it in the ashes, but to stir them together. 14 Do not look in a mirror beside a light. 15 When you rise from the bedclothes, roll them together and smooth out the impress of the body.

The PythagoreansExplanation of the universe is found in numbers and numerical relationships

‘all things are numbers’

Emphasis on mathematics even went far as numerical mysticism (numbers as being able to explain abstract concepts like justice)

They applied mathematical principles to almost all aspects of human experience, numbers and numerical relationships were real and influenced the empirical world.

The PythagoreansThe Pythagoreans proposed a dualistic universe

one part abstract, permanent, and knowableone part empirical, changing, and known through the senses, but senses cannot provide knowledge.

They believed that experiences in the flesh (senses) were inferior to experiences in the mind

affected Plato’s views and impacted on early Christian thought, and this rationalist/empiricist distinction continues today

Then Hippasus discovered that irrational numbers (like sqrt 2), which suggested the perfectly rational universe which could be irrational, and well, so much for the cult

Heraclitus~535 - 475 BCE“… it is wise to agree that all things are one”You cannot step into the same river twice

Cratylus: you cannot step into it even onceNature in a constant state of change Physis is fire (not really as the Milesians offered, but it is something like fire) because it transforms all things into something else.World is always “becoming” – never “is.”

HeraclitusAll things exist between polar oppositesHowever there is some thing that unifies them – hot/cold : temperature, the river is that unified thing which is constantly changing

All things are one, the unity of oppositesHe raised the epistemological question – how can one know something if it is always changing?

The veracity of the senses began to be questioned, though they can come to true realizations if properly attuned

The Eleatics Parmenides & Zeno

Parmenides b. ~510 BCEWrote in Homeric style poetryAll things constant, change is an illusionOne reality – finite, uniform, motionless, and fixed, the eternal present

There is only is, no is not. Wrap your head around that, especially coming as part of an argument in which one of the premises is ‘Nothing cannot exist’

Then what are we talking about?

Knowledge comes only through reason (rationalism), sensory experience is not to be trusted

Heraclitus’ river is due to inaccurate senses

Parminedes & ZenoZeno, disciple of Parmenides ~490 - 430 BCEUsed logical arguments (paradoxes) to show that motion was an illusion to support Parmenides.

In this capricious world nothing is more capricious than posthumous fame. One of the most notable victims of posterity's lack of judgement is the Eleatic Zeno. Having invented four arguments all immeasurably subtle and profound, the grossness of subsequent philosophers pronounced him to be a mere ingenious juggler, and his arguments to be one and all sophisms. After two thousand years of continual refutation, these sophisms were reinstated, and made the foundation of a mathematical renaissance...

— Bertrand Russell, The Principles of Mathematics

Zeno's arguments can be classified into two groupsThe first group contains paradoxes against multiplicity (are directed to showing that the 'unlimited' or the continuous, cannot be composed of units however small and however many), the second concern motion (are directed to showing that time is no more a sum of moments than a line is a sum of points)

Parminedes & ZenoExample:

If a runner wants to go 100m he must first go 50To go the next 50 he must first go 25, to go the remaining 25…and so on.In other words, the runner must travel an infinite number of distances (midpoints) in a finite amount of time, which is impossibleAnother perspective: The slower will never be overtaken by the quicker, for that which is pursuing must first reach the point from which that which is fleeing started, so that the slower must always be some distance ahead.

Motion is an illusionSuch paradoxes are still causing trouble

Later PresocraticsEmpedocles ~490 – 430 BCEAnother who wrote in verseAll four elements as the physis (neither created nor destroyed), along with the forces of love and strife

Love does the mixing of the elements into other things, strife rends those things apartArgument shown to be false by Joy Division in 1980

Proposed an early theory of perceptioneach of the four elements are found in the bloodobjects in the world throw off tiny copies of themselves called “emanations” or eidola (plural of eidolon) which enter the blood through pores in the body, the eidola combine with elements like themselves.The fusion of external and internal elements results in perception.

Later PresocraticsAnaxagoras ~500 – 428 BCEHe proposed an infinite number of elements called “seeds” from which all things were created, the seeds do not exist in isolation – every element contains all other elements.

We’re all just stardust

What is present (the characteristics of something) is determined by proportion of the elements present.

Everything is what it has most of

Later Presocratics

Taken literally Anaxagoras was committed to belief in an actual (not potential) infinity of things

One exception – mind, nous, is pure, contains no other elements, mind is part of all living things but not nonliving things

Anaxagoras was an early vitalist.

Later PresocraticsDemocritus ~450-470 BCE

the Laughing Philosopher

Actually a contemporary of Socrates

Atomist

First completely naturalistic description of the universe

For Democritus, all things were made of tiny particles called atoms, characteristics of things are determined by shape, size, number, location, and arrangement of atoms.

All things and events, animate, inanimate, and cognitive can be reduced to atoms and atomic activity.

All is atoms and the voidAtoms: what is

Void: what is not

Later PresocraticsAtom’s behavior is lawful – determinismAll things explained by atomic activity - reductionism

The collisions of atoms create the compounds of the visible universe

Events and phenomena explained in terms of another, more elemental level – reductionism.He described sensation and perception in terms of atoms emanating from the surface of objects and entering the body through the sensory systems and then transmitted to the brain.

Color a human convention

Summary of the Presocratics

Common concernsTheologyPhysicsEthicsPsychology

Set the course for what philosophy (and eventually other disciplines) would attempt to solve up until present time

The Sophists

Professional teachers of rhetoric and logic, Around this time the Greeks became more aware of other customs and cultures, and the influence of man in general, and shifted their focus about what can be known as influenced by manTruth is relative – no single truth exists.

Pre-post-modernists

The Sophists

Protagoras ~481– 420 BCE‘Man is the measure of all things’Truth depends on the perceiver, perception varies from person to person because each perceiver has different experiences.

Complete relativism

To understand why a person believes as a person does, must understand the person. Agnostic toward the Greek gods, liked to argue either position of a given issuePhilosophy of relativity of truth is still present today in postmodernism.

The Sophists

Gorgias ~483-375 BCETook a more extreme position than Protogoras – all things are equally falseHe came to conclusions that:

Nothing exists (contrast w/ Parminedes)If it did exist, it could not be comprehendedIf it could be comprehended, it could not be communicated to another person.

There is no objective basis of truth – nihilism – one can only be aware of ones own experiences and mental states – solipsism.

The Sophists

Xenophanes ~570 - 480 BCEAlthough known as the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy (Zeno’s teacher, though this view is no longer widely held), had views similar to those of the later Sophists“…and of course the clear and certain truth no man has seen nor will there be anyone who knows about the gods and what I say about all things. For even if, in the best case, one happened to speak just of what has been brought to pass, still he himself would not know. But opinion is allotted to all.”

The Sophists

Xenophanes stated that religion is a human invention – his evidence was:

Olympian gods act like humansGods of different peoples look like them (the people)

Humans create religion – moral codes come from manHowever he believed in a ‘greatest god’ that had more divine aspects than the Olympian gods

“one greatest god” who “shakes all things by the thought (or will) of his mind”

OtherDirectly influenced K. PopperSeeing fossils of sea life in mountainous area, concluded water once covered the earth

Socrates

~470 – 399 BCEKnow thyselfWrote nothing, so we really only know Plato’s version of Socrates mostly and even later interpretations (the Socratic problem)Constant questions, the ‘gadfly’ of AthensDelphic oracle declared him the wisest in Athens; as he couldn’t figure out why specifically, he came to the conclusion that it must be because, that while others know nothing while pretending to be knowledgeable, he knew he knew nothing

Socrates

Reaction to the sophists

Socrates agreed with sophists that personal experience is important, but disagreed that no truth exists beyond personal opinion.

Virtue is knowledge, and includes a self-knowledge and care for one’s soul

Socrates

Employed method of inductive definition.

Examine instances of a concept (beauty, justice)

Ask question – what is it that all instances have in common?

Find the essence of the instances of the concept.

The essence was a universally accepted definition of a concept.

As opposed to an abstract reality

Socrates

However in using such a method to determine what a particular virtue is we are left wanting

E.g. justice consists in paying debts, but is that really what we mean by justice?

As the definitions of virtues are typically unacceptable, we are left to oneself, look inward to acquire good character, and produce a good soul

Socrates

Weakness of will is not possibleIf one truly has knowledge, they will know how to act properly, and knowledge will be unaffected by emotions

Prosecuted for impiety, and eventually, corrupting the youth

Death by hemlock‘Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. See to it and don’t forget.’

Plato

~427 - 347 BCEStudent of Socrates, also influenced by the PythagoreansPhilosophy as we now know can be said to have formally began with Plato, who tackled many subjects and examined them in detail and with thoughtful argumentA superior writer, used dialogues as a means of presentation, though the form and content of his works variedHands down the most influential Western philosopher ever

Plato

Key themes:The senses do not lead to true knowledge, yet there exist perfect forms or ideas, which can be grasped with reasonThe soul is separate and independent of the body, it allows us to grasp the true nature of thingsThe good, as an ideal, can be understood by those aware of the fact that reason alone can lead to truth

Plato

Theory of forms:Everything in the empirical world is an inferior manifestation of the pure form which exists in the abstract.Experience through our senses comes from interaction of the pure form and matter of the world – result is an experience less than perfect.True knowledge can be attained only through reason, rational thought regarding the forms.People attempting to gain knowledge through sensory experience are doomed to ignorance or, at best, opinion.

Plato

Theory of knowledge: The Sun, the Cave, the Divided LineThe analogy of the sunSight differs from the other senses, since it depends upon light in order to function. We see clearly objects on which the sun shines, in twilight we see confusedly, and in pitch-darkness not at all. The world of ideas is what we see when the object is illumined by the sun, while the world of the senses is a confused twilight world. The eye is compared to the soul, and the sun, as the source of light, to truth or goodness.

“The sun ... not only furnishes to visibles the power of visibility but it also provides for their generation and growth and nurture though it is not itself generation. ... In like manner, then ... the objects of knowledge not only receive from the presence of the good their being known, but their very existence and essence is derived to them from it, though the good itself is not essence but still transcends essence in dignity and surpassing power.”

Plato

The allegory of the cave – demonstrates how difficult it is to deliver humans from ignorance.

The reminiscence theory of knowledge – how do we know the forms if cannot be known through sensory experiences?Prior to coming into the body the soul dwelt in pure, complete knowledge – among the forms.All knowledge is innate and can be attained only through introspection

all true knowledge comes only be reminiscence, from remembering the experiences the soul had prior to entering the body.

Plato was a rationalist – stressed mental operations to gain knowledge already in the soul.

Plato

The analogy of the divided linedescription of Plato’s view of acquisition of true knowledge.The analogy divides the world and our states of mind into points along a divided line.Ratios relate to relative clearness/obscurity

Imagining/Conjecture is lowest form of understandingShortest division of the lineImages

Beliefs or opinions allow for imagining and so are better, but not muchSo far our knowledge is obscure and problematic at bestVisible world

Understanding e.g. contemplation of mathematical relationships, is still better.

Now in the intelligible worldHighest form of thinking involves embracing the forms, true knowledge and intelligence comes only from understanding the abstract forms (reason).

Plato

Comparison of divided line and the cave allegory

Plato

The nature of the soul – tripartite nature of the soulIdeas similar to Orphic tradition of body springing from earth, soul from heaven

DualistDeath is separation of soul and body

Soul comprised of three parts Appetite component – mortal, needs such as hunger, thirst, and sexual behavior that must be satisfied.Courageous (emotional or spirited) component – mortal, emotions such as fear, rage, and love.Rational component- immortal, existed with the forms.

Job of rational component is to postpone, inhibit immediate gratification when in the best long-term benefit of the person.

To obtain knowledge must suppress bodily needs and concentrate on rational pursuits.

The body is a hindrance both with its desires that lead us away from the search for truth and its clouding of truth

Plato

Ideal SocietyPlato described a utopian society with 3 types of people (along the lines of the distinctions regarding the soul) performing specific functionsAppetitive individuals

Common peopleWorkersSlaves.

Courageous individualssoldiers.

Rational individualsGuardiansPhilosopher-kingsMust be warriors in a sense as well

Plato felt that all was predetermined – a complete nativist, people are destined to be slave, soldier, or philosopher-king.