From Myth to Logos: Ancient Greek Philosophers and Their Ideas
From Myth to Logos: The First Concepts
Homer (8th century BC) is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Hesiod (8th-7th century BC) is the author of Theogony, Works and Days, and The Shield of Heracles.
Physis (Nature)
The set of all things in the universe (except human productions). Nature is understood as a power (a kind of cosmic energy) that produces and destroys everything that exists.
- Principle: It starts all natural things.
- Source: Things come from it.
- Cause: Nature produces things.
- End: All things return to nature at the end of their existence.
Chaos: Chaos, arbitrariness.
Cosmos: Order, organization, harmony, beauty.
Logos: Reason, word, thought, measure, proportion. That is why it explains the order of the world and, in particular, is human reason.
Arche: Top, base, origin, cause.
Logos
From the Greek logos, which comes from the verb legein, which originally meant to speak, say, narrate, give meaning, or gather together. It usually translates as reason, although it also means speech, word.
In a way, then, reason demonstrates discursively through the sense of the word.
Of the original meanings of the term Logos in terms that speak, narrate, and meet (as the words come together to form an ordered discourse) have emerged as logos meaning reason, understood as both:
a) Mathematical reason: order, proportion, measure.
b) Discursive reason: reason that is manifested in the discourse of ordered words.
It has become part of other words to designate the item in question, or study. For example: biology, the study of life, or psychology, the study of the psyche. It also gives rise to the term that designates the logic of knowledge as a science of demonstration. All terms are governed by the laws of the logos, or rationality is logical, while the speech that violates it is illogical or irrational.
Arche
Greek, Arche, which means beginning, guiding mandate, starting point, and foundation. In a philosophical sense, this term was first used by Anaximander to refer to the element in establishing everything. Milesian philosophy and, in general, the whole of Pre-Socratic philosophy is an investigation into the Arche or beginning, which is the foundation of everything, and that element remains despite changes in things. In this sense, this term includes all meanings simultaneously as is beginning (as in that source, and how that primary or first and foremost), governing mandate (in terms of everything coming from him), and foundation that enables all presence.
Aletheia
Aletheia is Greek, which translates to disclosure, unveiling, or truth. It consists of the deprivation (a) of the Greek verb (lanthano) meaning to be or remain hidden. From this, we derive a notion of truth as disclosure and therefore a prior conception of how to hide or be hidden, and when it is truly known and displays reveal the truth (alethes). The problem of access to aletheia emerges with a poem of Parmenides, which opposes the path of truth in the way of opinion or false knowledge, and where truth is conceived as the unity between the human and thought.
The School of Miletus
(Ionia, Asia Minor) (search of a rational principle – only material, non-mythological)
Thales, 625-547 BC (he predicted a solar eclipse in 585 BC) = Arche is water.
Anaximander, 611-546 BC = Arche is Apeiron (undetermined).
Anaximenes, 586-525 BC = Arche is air.
The Pythagoreans
(Southern Italy, Magna Graecia)
Pythagoras, Ionian island of Samos, 570-480 BC. Pythagoras does not look so much at material as the principle structure or shape of the cosmos. The structure of the cosmos is mathematics. Everything is reduced to geometric and numeric expressions. Arche = numbers.
The Problem of Change, 1
Heraclitus, 540-480 BC. Heraclitus defends the perpetual flow of all things, the continued dynamism of Physis, universal mobility. His Arche is fire, the element that is always in process, moving, changing. This belief is expressed in his famous Panta rei (everything flows, everything changes). This constant change follows a law, a logos, the opposition of opposites (day-night, dry-wet, cold-hot, men-women, young-old, war-peace). If there is fighting between opposing injustice, justice is confrontation, conflict, which is the dynamic reality permanently.
Texts of Heraclitus
“One cannot step twice into the same river, nor touch mortal substance twice in the same state; because of the rapidity of change, everything is scattered and rearranged, everything comes and goes.”
“War is the father and the king of all things.”
“You should also know that war is common to all things and that justice is strife, and all things happen by strife and necessity.”
“This Cosmos, the same for everyone, was not made by any god nor man, but always was, is, and will be eternal fire which is lit as far as it blows.”
The Problem of Change, 2
Parmenides, 515-445 BC. Author of poems about nature, which advocates for the radical immutability of reality (that is, Heraclitus says that the changes are only sensory appearances). In the poem, Parmenides argues that a goddess has revealed an indisputable truth: being is, and not-being is not. Put another way: being exists, and nothing does not exist. Thereafter, Parmenides dismisses the possibility of understanding the change, since there is no possibility of rational understanding, as it is pure sensory illusion.
Zeno of Elea, a pupil of Parmenides, defended his master’s position through paradoxes or Aporia (e.g., the paradox of the tortoise).
To become reality-change (Heraclitus) or being-permanence (Parmenides) – two opposing views?
- Heraclitus: Affirms the perpetual flow of all things (panta rei). Being is changed, becoming.
- Parmenides: Being is the only thing (that is unique and immutable) that really exists; Heraclitus says the changes are only sensory appearances that reason leads us to deny.
The Pluralists
The attempt to move beyond the confrontation between Heraclitus and Parmenides. What exists has not arisen from a single principle but from different elements. The changes observed are combinations of these elements led by some force.
Empedocles of Agrigento, 494-423 BC = Arche is water, air, earth, and fire (the 4 elements). Natural things are combinations of these four elements, and combinations (the change) are governed by two forces: Love (unites, draws) and Hatred (divides, separates).
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, 500-428 BC. “In everything, there is everything.” Arche = seed (Spermatia – them homeomeries – Aristotle). The dynamic nature is due to the Nous (mind or intelligence organization that governs the universe).
The Atomists
Leucippus (of Elea?, of Abdera? of Miletus?, 450-? BC) of Abdera and Democritus, 460-370 BC: The basic reality (the Physis) consists of a myriad of small, hard objects, indivisible, eternal, and unalterable: atoms (= Arche), which move freely through the action of chance. Changes or recombination of atoms are possible thanks to the vacuum (space between atom and atom).
Socrates, 470-399 BC
In 399 BC, Socrates was charged by Anytus and Lyco of Meleto with impietas (asebeia), corrupting the young, and introducing new divinities. He was tried, convicted, and executed (killed by ingesting hemlock).
“However, I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.” – Socrates
The Socratic Maieutics
- Maieutics is a method. The concept comes from Maieusi (children, birth, the art of the midwives – the job of Socrates’ mother). And what should give birth? The knowledge we already have inside. Thus, the philosopher who is (using the logos) helps a man to give birth – bringing to light – the knowledge that has been inside.
- The Maieutic method has three phases:
- 1. Irony: Recognize their own ignorance (“I only know that I know nothing”). See all partners on an equal footing. It appears, therefore, the issue of docta ignorantia.
- 2. Dialogue: (or dialectic) is the art of asking questions and answers. Dialogue is co-philosophy (philosophy in common). It is a Simphilosophein. The dialogue always begins with the question ti esti…? (What is this?).
- 3. Universal Definition: (or general conclusion) is the homology of (Homologos). We agree that X is. Reached and the achievement of universal knowledge and goals (against the opinion of the Sophists who defended the concepts of relativism and subjectivism).
The Influence of Maieutics on Plato’s Theory of Knowledge
- “If it is true what you used to say often, that learning (Mathesis) is nothing more than remembering (anamnesis), you must, at an earlier time, we learned what we now remember. And this would be possible if our soul had not existed elsewhere before coming to exist in this human form. So think so too the soul is immortal.” – Plato, Phaedo, 72e
- “For them to be closely related between the parties and having learned the nature of the soul of all things, nothing prevents you, remembering one thing (the learned men say), we resume all the other brave if not tired of searching. Search and learning are not, after all, nothing more than remembering (anamnesis).” – Plato, Meno, 81d