Philosophy (Cycle 1-2 Topics)

Nature of Philosophy, Pre-Socratic Philosophers, Socratic Dialect

Logos

Rationalization of something

Myths

Primitive explanations of natural phenomena, human history, and gods

Birth of Greek Mythology

Product of a desire to find explanations

Birth of Philosophy

Grew out of attempts to provide rational justification

Thales

• Valued for its form

• All things come to be from water

• Reductionism

Reductionism

Simplification of ideas in order to explain the idea of existence

Anaximander

Apeiron as the beginning of all rather than particular elements such as water

Apeiron

• Undefined and ever-moving

• Gave birth to contradictory terms (ex: warm and cold)

Anaximenes

• Continued the project of reductionism

• air is the source of all things

Heraclitus

• Logos permeated all of reality

• Presented his ideas through paradoxical aphorisms

• Most men are useless and ignorant conformists

• Truth is common therefore objective

• CHANGE IS PERMANENT

(1) Heraclitus: View of Reality

Everything is flux

Flux

Things seem to be temporarily stable and permanent, but in fact dynamic and everchanging

(2) Heraclitus: View of Reality

The world is an ever-living fire, fire is rational and responsible for the government of the whole world

(3) Heraclitus: View of Reality

War is the father of all

War is the father of all

• Everything that comes into existence only through the destruction of something else

• Every object is a combination of opposing forces

Parmenides

• If “nothing” exists, then it is not nothing

• Nothing can’t exist because empty space is an impossible idea

Zeno’s Paradoxes

• Motion is not real

• Change is an illusion

• Multiplicity is fake

Zeno

Change is an illusion

Socrates

• Taught and inspired Plato and Aristotle

• Charged with corrupting the youth, impiety, being a wiseman

• An oracle proclaimed that he was the wisest because he knew nothing

• “The unexamined life is not worth living”

• Emphasized ethics and morality

• Focused his inquiries on the concept of virtue and its relation to knowledge

Socratic Method (Dialectic Method)

• Question, Examine, Cross-Examine

• Asking probing questions about matters people presumably knew something about

• Uncovers contradictions and inconsistencies in one’s beliefs