Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy

Thales

Everything is water

Thales

First to be called a sage

Thales

First to study astronomy

Anaximander

Pupil of Thales

Anaximander

Apeiron or indefinite

Anaximander

A certain infinite nature is first principle of the things that exist. From it comes the heavens and the worlds in them. It is eternal and ageless and contains all the worlds. He speaks of time, since generation and existence and destruction are determined.

Anaximander

The Earth is aloft and not supported by anything and is equal distance from everything

Anaximander

Principle of sufficient reason nothing happens at random and everything happens for a reason, rationalism

Anaximenes

Fundamentally there is one thing: air

Anaximenes

Density of air determines states of matter

Anaximenes

Air is invisible but made apparent by wind and temperature

Xenophanes

If god had not made yellow honey, they would say that figs are far sweeter.

Xenophanes

Moderate skepticism: not entirely sure but some plausibilityS

Xenophanes

There is one god, greatest among gods and men, similar to mortals neither in shape nor in thought.

Xenophanes

Dualistic physical principles, Earth and water

Xenophanes

But mortals think that the gods are born, and have clothes and speech and shape like their own. But if cows and horses or lions had hands or could draw with their hands and make the things men can make, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, cows like cows, and each would make their bodies similar in shape to those which each had themselves.

Heraclitus

Everything is in flux

Heraclitus

Can’t step in the same river twice

Heraclitus

Unity of opposites, what makes things what they are is motion and change, not stillness

Heraclitus

The sea is most pure and most polluted water: for fish, drinkable and life-preserving; for men, undrinkable and death-dealing

Heraclitus

Everything sources from fire

Parmenides

Rationalism taken to its extreme

Parmenides

Way of truth, two roads of inquiry: that it is and that it cannot not be, and that it is not and that it must not be

Parmenides

For you could not recognize that which is not (for that is not to be done), nor could you mention it

Parmenides

for the same things can be thought of and can be

Parmenides

What can be said and be thought of must be; for it can be, and nothing cannot.

Parmenides

Reductio Ad Absurdum, reduction to absurdity

Zeno

If several things exist, it is necessary for them to be as many as they are, and neither more nor fewer. But if they are as many as they are, they will be finite. If several things exist, the things that exist are infinite. For there are always others between the things that exist, and again others between them. And in this way the things that exist are infinite.

Zeno

Disproves the idea that there are several things and that things can move

Zeno

Arrow will never reach its destination because once it gets halfway it will have to keep reaching the next halfway point

Zeno

Achilles and the tortoise, Achilles will never catch up to the tortoise because once it reaches the point where the tortoise was, the tortoise will have moved on to the next point

Empedocles

Four fundamental things: Earth, air, water, fire (solid, gaseous, liquid, plasmeous

Empedocles

Two elements: Love and strife

Empedocles

Change occurs when the four fundamental things are mixed together in different ways

Democritus

Appeals to sense experience to support his view but contradicts his view that you can’t rely on sense experience

Plato Apology

Socrates on trial, old accusers: 1. Making the weaker argument the stronger one. 2. Teaches for a fee 3. Student of all things below the sky and above the earth

Plato Apology

Socrates on trial, new accusers: 1. Corrupting the youth 2. Not believing in gods

Plato Meno

Conversation between Meno and Socrates about how to get virtue/excellence

Plato Republic

What is justice? Is justice a vice or virtue

Plato Republic

Ring of Gyges

Plato Republic

Analogy of the line

Thales

He said that death is no different from life. “Then why don’t you die?” someone asked him. “Because death is no different.” He replied.

Thales

When asked what is difficult, he said, “To know yourself”; what is easy, “To give advice to someone else”; what most pleasant, “Success”; what divine, “What has neither beginning nor end. When asked what was the strangest thing he had seen, he said: “An old tyrant.”

Anaximander

A certain nature, the limitless, is the principle of the things which exist. From it come the heavens and the worlds in them. It is eternal and ageless, and it contains all the worlds.A

Anaximander

The earth is aloft, not supported by anything but resting where it is because of its equal distance from everything. Its shape is rounded, circular, like a stone pillar. Of its surfaces, we stand on one while the other is opposite. The heavenly bodies are a circle of fire, separated off from the fire in the world and enclosed by air.A

Anaximander

Animals come into being from moisture evaporated by the sun. Men originally resembled another type of animal, namely fish.

Anaximander

Originally men were born from animals of a different kind, because other animals can soon look after themselves while men alone require a long period of nursing; that is why if they had been like this originally they would not have survived.

Anaximenes

The form of the air is this: when it is most uniform it is invisible, but it is made apparent by the hot and the cold and the moist and the moving. It is always in motion; for what changes would not change were it not in motion. As it is condensed and rarefied it appears different: when it is diffused into a more rarefied condition it becomes fire

Anaximenes

Our souls, he says, being air, hold us together, and breath and air encompass the whole world

Xenophanes

And the clear truth no man has seen nor will anyone know concerning the gods and about all the things of which I speak; for even if he should actually manage to say what is the case, nevertheless he himself does not know it; but belief is found over all.

Xenophanes

Not at first did the gods reveal all things to mortals, but in time, by inquiring, they make better discoveries.X

Xenophanes

Homer and Hersiod attributed to the gods everything which among men is shameful and blameworthy - theft and adultery and mutual deception.

Xenophanes

There is one god, greatest among gods and men, similar to mortals neither in shape nor in thought. But mortals think that gods are born, and have clothes and speech and shape like their own.

Xenophanes

If the divine exists, it is a living thing; if it is a living thing, it sees-for he sees as a whole, he thinks as a whole, he hears as a whole. If it sees, it sees both white things and black.

Xenophanes

He shows that god is one from the fact that he is most powerful of all things; for if there were more than one, he says, they would all have to possess equal power, but what is most powerful and best of all things is god. He showed that god is ungenerated from the fact that what comes into being must do so either from what is similar or from what is dissimilar; but similar things, he says, cannot be affected by one another

Xenophanes

In this way he showed god to be ungenerated and eternal. He is neither limitless nor limited because what is limitless, having no beginning, no middle, and no end, does not exist, while what is limited is a plurality of things limiting one another. He does away with motion and rest in a similar fashion: it is what does not exist which is motionless, while it is a plurality of things which move.

Xenophanes

Believed earth and water to be principles, “Earth and water are all things which grow and come into being.

Xenophanes

Everything has come into being from earth, for all things are from earth and in earth all things end

Heraclitus

For that reason one must follow what is comprehensive. (i.e. what is common for the comprehensive account is common). But although the account is comprehensive, most men live as though they had a private comprehension of their own.

Heraclitus

Listening not to me but to the account, it is wise to agree that all things are one. They do not comprehend how, in differing, it agrees with itself-a back-turning harmony, like that of a bow and a lyre.

Heraclitus

That the universe is a child and an eternal king of all things for all eternity he states as follows: Eternity is a child at play, playing draughts: the kingdom is a child’s.

Heraclitus

Immortals are mortals, mortals immortal: living their death, dying their life.

Heraclitus

Much learning does not teach thought - or it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus. Wisdom is one thing: to grasp the knowledge of how all things are steered through all.

Heraclitus

You should quench violence more quickly than a fire. And, the people should fight for the law as for the city wall.

Heraclitus

The world, the same for all, neither any god nor any man made; but it was always and is and will be, fire ever-living, kindling in measures and being extinguished in measures.

Heraclitus

Just as the principle alternately makes the world from itself and again itself from the world, and all things, Heraclitus says, are an exchange for fire and fire for all things, as goods for gold and gold for goods, so the conjunction of the number five with itself produces nothing incomplete or alien.

Parmenides

Condemned the sort of reason associated with belief/weak opinions, but supposed that the sort of reason associated with knowledge or infallible reason was a criterion of truth (for he also gave up trust in the senses)

Parmenides

You must learn all things, both the unwavering heart of well-rounded truth and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true warranty. But nevertheless you will learn these things too - how what they believe would really have to be, forever traversing everything.

Parmenides

But come, I will tell you - preserve the account when you hear it - the only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it cannot not be, is the path of persuasion (for truth accompanies it); another, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a trail of utter ignorance. For you could not recognize that which is not (for that is not to be done), nor could you mention it…for the same things can be thought of and can be.

Parmenides

for it can be, and nothing cannot. This I bid you ponder. For from this first road of inquiry I bar you and then from the road along which mortals who know nothing wander, two-headed; for impotence in their breasts guides their erring thought. And they are carried along both deaf and blind, bewildered, undiscerning crowds, by whom to be and not to be are deemed the same and not the same; and the path of all turns back on itself.

Parmenides

One story, one road, now is left: that it is. And on this there are signs aplenty that, being, it is ungenerated and indestructible, whole, of one kind and unwavering, and complete. Nor was it ever, nor will it be, since now it is, all together, one, continuous.

Parmenides

How might what is then perish? How might it have come into being? For if it came into being it is not, nor if it is ever going to be. Thus generation is quenched and perishing unheard of. Nor is it divided, since it all alike is - neither more here (which would bar it from cohering) nor less; but it is all full of what is. Hence it is all continuous; for what is approaches what is. And unmoving in the limits of great chains it is beginningless and ceaseless, since generation and destruction have been banished far away, and true warranty has pushed them back.

Parmenides

Way of Opinion

Here I cease for you the warranted account and thought about the truth. Henceforward learn mortal opinions, listening to the deceitful arrangement of my words. For they determined in their minds to name two forms, one of which they should not - and that is where they have erred. 

Fallen from the intelligible world of truth into the perceptible realm of appearance and seeming.

Zeno

Zeno’s treatise consisted of a series of arguments each designed to show that the common-sense hypothesis that there exist more things than one leads to absurdity.

Zeno

If what exists has size and is divided, then it will be many and no longer one, thus proving that the one does not exist

Zeno

For if it is of no size but is added, there cannot be any increase at all in size. Thus what is added will therefore be nothing. And if when it is subtracted the other thing is no smaller - and will not increase when it is added again - then clearly what was added and subtracted was nothing.

Zeno

If more things that one exist, it is necessary for them to be as many as they are, and neither more nor fewer. But if they are as many as they are, they will be limited. If more things than one exist, the things which exist are limitless. For there are always others between the things which exist, and again others between them. And in this way the things which exist are limitless. 

Zeno

But if it exists, it is necessary for each thing to have some bulk and size, and for one part of it to be at a distance from the other. And the same argument applies to the protruding part. For that too will have a size, and a part of it will protrude. Now it is all one to say this once and to say it fore ever. For it will have no last part of such a sort that there is no longer one part in front of another. In this way, if there exists more things than one, it is necessary for them to be both small and large - so small as not to have a size, so large as to be limitless.

Empedocles

Souls are hated and tortured and punished in this world and then gathered together by Love, who is good and who takes pity on their lamentation and on the disorderly and vile arrangements of mad Strife; she is eager to lead them gradually from the world and to make them appropriate to the One, labouring to ensure that everything, led by her, comes to unity. 

Empedocles

For narrow are the devices dispersed over the limbs, and many things wretched strike in and blunt the thought. Having seen in their lives a small part of life, swift to die, carried up like smoke, they fly away, persuaded only of what each has met with as they are driven in every direction. Who then claims to find the whole? These things are not in this way to be seen by men nor to be heard nor to be grasped in thought.

Empedocles

But come,, observe with every device in the way in which each thing is clear: neither hold sight in more trust than hearing, nor resounding hearing above the clarities of the tongue, nor let any of the other limbs by which there is a passage for thinking be deprived of trust, but think in the way in which each thing is clear.

Empedocles

Everything is compounded from four elements, earth and air and fire and water. There are also two elemental powers, Love and Strife. The elements periodically unite into a divine and homogenous Sphere. The Sphere then dissolves; various mixtures and unions take place, in the course of which our familiar world is formed; and eventually the elements separate entirely from one another in four concentric spheres. This state of affairs too is dissolved: various mixtures and unions take place, and eventually all is fused into a homogenous Sphere.

Empedocles

In anger they have different forms and are all apart, but in love they come together and are desired by one another. For from these comes everything which was and which is and will be - trees sprang up, and men and women and beasts and birds and fish which feed in the water, and even gods, long-lived, highest in honor. For these themselves exist, and running through one another they become different; for so does blending change them.

Empedocles

Just as painters, when they decorate offerings - men well taught by wit in their air-take the many colored pigments in their hands, and, harmoniously mixing them, some more some less, make from them shapes resembling all things, creating trees and men and women and beasts and birds and fish which feed in the water, and even gods, long-lived, highest in honour: so let not error persuade your mind that there is anywhere else a source for the countless mortal things we see. But know this clearly, having heard the story from a god.

Anaximander

The infinite is the universal cause of the generation and destruction of the universe. From it the heavens were separated off and in general all the worlds, infinite in number. The destruction and, much earlier, generation occur from time immemorial, all the same things being renewed

Anaximander

Some say the earth rests where it is because of the similarity. For there is no reason why what is situated in the middle and similarly related to the edges should move upwards rather than downwards of sideways. But it cannot move in opposite directions at the same time. So it necessarily rests where it is.

Anaximenes

The first principle is infinite air, from which what is coming into being and what has come into being and what will exist and gods and divinities come into being, while everything else comes into being from its offspring. The form of the air is this: when it is most uniform it is invisible, but it is made apparent by the hot and the cold and the moist and the moving.

Anaximander

Five reasons given by Aristotle to justify the apeiron: 

1. Time is limitless

2. Division of magnitudes is limitless

3. Generation and destruction must come from something limitless

4. Numbers are limitless because we can always conceive of something larger

5. What is limited will always be limited by something indefinitely

Xenophanes

And the clear truth no man has seen nor will anyone know concerning the gods and about all the things of which I speak; for even if he should actually manage to say what is the case, nevertheless he himself does not know it; but belief is found over all

Empedocles

I will tell you a two-fold story. At one time they grew to be one alone from being many, and at another they grew apart again to be many from being one. Double is the generation of mortal things, double their passing away: one is born and destroyed by the congregation of everything, the other is nurtured and flies apart as they grow apart again. And these never cease their continual change, now coming together by Love all into one, now again all being carried apart by the hatred of Strife. but insofar as they never cease their continual change, to that extent they exist forever, in an unmoving circle.

Empedocles

these are all equal and of the same age, but they hold different offices and each has its own character; and in turn they come to power as time resolves. And in addition to them nothing comes into being or ceases. For if they were continually being destroyed they would no longer exist. And what could increase this universe? And whence might it come? And where indeed might it perish since nothing is empty of them?

Democritus

The nature of eternal things consists in small substances limitless in quantity, and for them he posits a place, distinct from them and limitless in extent. He calls place by the names, ‘empty’, ‘nothing’ and ‘limitless’; and each of the substances he calls ‘thing’ ‘solid’ and ‘existent’

Democritus

He explains that the substances remain together for a certain time because the bodies entangle with and grasp hold of one another; for some of them are scalene, some hooked, some concave, some convex, and others have innumerable other differences. So he thinks that they hold on to one another and remain together up to the time when some stronger necessity reaches them from their surroundings and shakes them and scatters them apart.

Plato Apology

What has caused my reputation is none other than a certain kind of wisdom. What kind of wisdom? Human wisdom, perhaps.

Human wisdom is acknowledging what you don’t know.

Plato Apology

It would have been a dreadful way to behave if when the god ordered me, as I thought and believed, to live the life of a philosopher, to examine myself and others, I had abandoned my post for fear of death or anything else. That would have been a dreadful thing, and then I might truly have justly been brought here for not believing that there are gods.