The Pre-Socratics and Sophists, Chapter 2

Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Democritus, Protagoras, and the Sophists

How did philosophy begin?

Beginning with the pre-Socratics, Greeks refused to follow traditional ways of thinking and instead looked to reason and experience to find truth

What was Thales’ important method?

He looked for natural, not mythic, explanations for natural phenomena, making explanations as simple as possible

What did Thales believe to be the substance of the world?

He held water as the source of all that exists, making up everything in existence in some way

What was Anaximander’s belief?

He believed everything came from a formless, imperishable substance called apeiron that was eternal → brought the beginning of existence without a start itself

What is Heraclitus’ central idea?

Logos, the principle, formula, or law of the world order → understanding it is to understand reality, the divine, and the underlying pattern of nature

What is logos according to Heraclitus?

He believes that everything in the universe flows in flux, but behind the flow is an unchanging pattern, logos → standing in river metaphor

How did Heraclitus see the cosmos?

He saw it as an eternal, rational force steering all things as a divine though operating according to its own logic

Why was Parmenides so important?

• He was the first to employ deduction outside of mathematics, using premises to justify conclusions

• Made two important distinctions, one between reason and the senses and the other between appearance and reality

How did Parmenides see reality?

He believes that reality consists of the One, and eternal, uniform, solid, perfect, and uncreated being

What is ancient atomism?

The view that reality consists of an infinite number of minute, indivisible bits called atoms moving rapidly in an infinite void

How did Democritus’ ideas differ from those of Parmenides?

Democritus proposed the void that is a space without things, but is not the same as having nothing

How did Democritus characterise the world?

He saw it as mechanistic, with things happening in a particular way because of the blind machinery of nature → argues there is no need for deities or agents to explain the state of the universe

How does Democritus compare to modern theories?

Although modern atoms differ from those proposed by Democritus, the basic insight that matter is made up of indivisible units has yet to be refuted

Who were the Sophists?

Itinerant professors teaching subjects for intellectual or practical use for a fee, including rhetoric, argument, law, ethics, and politics

How were the Sophists and Thales similar?

The Sophists also taught naturalist theories, favouring natural explanations over ones referring to gods or mythology → specifically taught that morality and law were not from gods, but were human inventions varying across societies

What were the ideas of Protagoras?

He was a famous Sophist that taught relativism, saying reality is what you believe it to be

What is relativism?

The doctrine that the truth about something depends on what persons or cultures believe → two types: subjective and cultural relativism

What is subjective relativism?

The notion that truth depends on what a person believes

What is cultural relativism?

The notion that truth depends on what a culture believes

Why did Plato reject relativism?

He argued that the doctrine undermined itself, making it unfounded → if relativism means reality is what one believes, believing that relativism is false makes it so, therefore if relativism is true, it is false