pre-socratics + socrates

Corporeal Monists

• One material substance behind everything

• Naturalism

• Materialism

• Monism

Thales

• First philosopher → asked the right questions

• Corporal Monist: Hylozoism

Hylozoism

The basic substance is water

Basic substance

The substance that everything in the world is made out of

Anaximander

Apeiron

Anaximenes

Air as the basic substance

Apeiron

Materials are infinite undefined substances and gradually develops

Heraclites

• Fire

• Principal of rationality of change

• One instance is infinitely small

• Logos is behind change

Naturalism

• Nature can explain everything

  • Gods don’t explain the world, nature does

  • Similar to atheism

Materialism

• Everything that exists is material

  • Ex. No spirits, no God

  • Matter is eternal

  • Similar to modern academia

  • Leads to the evolutionary approach

Monism

Everything that exists can be condensed into one substance

Pythagoras

• Soul pre exists the body

• The immortality of the soul

• Reincarnation 

• Numbers are the fundamentals of the world

Xenophanes

• Opposes the greek gods

  • People didn’t believe him because the “lie” of multiple Gods and paganism had been repeated to them so many times

  • Propaganda

  • Believed that the greeks made the gods in their images, but in reality the real God was not materialistic and humanlike

• Outsider opposing the norm

• Monotheistic

Parmenides

• Whatever is, is

• Things don’t change

• Changes in illusions happen, no actual change

• Proof by contradiction

• Law of contradiction

• Fundamental problem of viewpoint

Proof by contradiction

• Assume the opposite of what you wish to prove

• Show the valid reasoning from that premise leads to a logical contradiction

• Therefore the opposite of the assumption must be true

Xeno

• Similar to Parmenides

• Goal of philosophy is to find the truth

Empedocles

• There are 4 substances behind everything

• Air, Earth, Fire, Water

Democritus

• Atomic theory

• Life is just a random collision of particles

Sophists

Can’t find answer to the big questions because there is no answer so get whatever you want through rhetoric

Protagoras

• There are two equal sides to every argument

• Positive laws and Natural laws

• Sophist

• Agnostic

• Relativist

• Dialectic

Dialectic

Method of argumentation of debating from both sides

Logos

• Words that govern human nature

  • Language

  • Logic

Incorporeal Monists

One immaterial substance behind everything

Law of Non-Contradiction

• Contradictory statements cannot both be true. In other words, if A and non-A are contradictory statements, they cannot both be true simultaneously.

• If change were possible, it would involve something going from being (existence) to non-being (non-existence) or vice versa.

• However, this would entail a contradiction, as it would mean that something both is and is not at the same time and in the same respect

• Therefore change is not real and everything is always the same

Corporeal Pluralists

Multiple material substances

Anaxagoras

• The mind (nous) as a physical substance behind everything

• Used like logos

• Infinite number of separate and distinct substances

Relativist

Each person perceives things in their own way, so being is relative

• Problem: Opposes objective truths like science and math