Pre-Socratic Philosophy: From Thales to Democritus
In pre-Socratic philosophy, we find elements that were incorporated by Plato, and his theory influenced the formulation of this. Such is the case of the doctrines of Pythagoras and Parmenides: those emphasized mathematical structures and relationships as a principle of intelligibility of the universe, and mathematical entities are ideas in the Platonic doctrine. For Parmenides, the distinction between what exists and the universe truly changing the way we are is also reflected in Plato’s thought: what really exists is the ideas, and every idea has the same characteristics as the reality advocated by Parmenides. We cannot forget Socrates. In his dialogues, Plato is always asking questions about a virtue or a moral concept. “What is justice?”, “What is value?”… Whoever asks a question of this kind presupposes that there are some common features to all actions, institutions, etc., particular to implementing the universal predicate, just or courageous, or moderate. This trait is common and is not identified with any particular action will be fair, for Plato, the idea of justice. Aristotle has noted the influence of these inquiries by Socrates at the origin of the theory of ideas, insisting that Socrates did not separate universals, but it was Plato who separated them, calling them ideas.
Socrates
Method: He had a very peculiar method that was to make people think that they themselves, from exposing his own thoughts. (His father was a potter and sculptor and his mother a midwife; in both offices, something is given birth to from the inside). Socrates believed that knowledge that each person should not be taught things, but let them discover the truth that lies inside.
His method has three stages:
- Irony: It is the starting point; we must bring the listener to believe that he knows nothing by asking questions to break the dogma. Thus, without saying so directly, he makes the man discover his own ignorance, makes him doubt, leads him to investigate and criticize the views of others, and admitting his own ignorance, it makes getting to the truth. “I just know that I know nothing” exemplifies Socratic irony.
- Maieutics: It means birth, giving birth to the truth. The dialogue makes light the truth (with help from others leads to the truth).
- Definition: It’s getting to the bottom of things. The definition is the unveiling of truth that has been discovered in the dialogue.
Intellectualism: Moral face of disappointment by the diversity of opinions of ancient philosophers (physicists) replaces the concern for the cosmos by genuine concern for the Man: His moral nature. Wisdom does not come to man from without but from within. The wise man is not the possessor of securities, but he who doubts and questions. Moral intellectualism is a doctrine that identifies virtue with knowledge. The virtuoso knows; he who does evil is ignorant, because the property, which is useful for the individual and for the city, so influences on the understanding of who knows, once known, determines the will, which cannot stop loving and practicing it. Anyone who has not practiced it is because he has not known, i.e., not knowing what is good. “But knowing what justice is, one can be fair, only knowing what is good, one can do good.” Paradox: Is it better the shoemaker who knows how to make good shoes but makes bad ones, not knowing that other shoes do make them good (even accidentally)? The sinner, therefore, is not ill-willed, but ignorant. There must be not a punishment, but an instruction, and instead of prisons, schools.
The Milesians
Thales of Miletus (624-546 BC)
As such the principle or “Arche” of all things is water. This assertion has come to us from Aristotle, and it is doubtful that any other cause of the assertion is independent of his authority. Aristotle had no means to know exactly the reasons which might induce such a similar claim and therefore is cautious when dealing with the issue. In his book Metaphysics, he tells us that with respect to these early thinkers, most of the earliest philosophers thought that principles exist in the nature of matter as it was the only principle of all things. Therefore, Aristotle continued, on the amount and kinds of these principles are not agreed. Those who first said that the principle is water and therefore also claims that the earth rests on water. Different reasons have been suggested to explain why he decided to choose such water. These reasons can be divided into two classes:
Mythic: As noted above, it is an undoubted fact that Thales lived in a place very much linked to Babylonian and Egyptian culture. He even suggests that he visited Egypt. In these two civilizations, water played an important role, as reflected in their mythology, as both Mesopotamia and Egypt were cultures laughed. The Egyptian priests boasted that not only such, but even Homer had learned from Egypt the top of the water. For its part, the Babylonian cosmogony of the second millennium BC also presents a similar picture on the primacy of water. In the Hebrew cosmogony, it describes the spirit of God moving over the water, and finally, the same Greek mythology introduces us to the Ocean (mainstream beyond the limits of the earth and surrounding it was the source of all rivers and springs) as the first father of the Gods.
Rational: The first most likely reason is that water is the only natural element we can really see that is transformed, according to its temperature in the three states of matter. However, it is perished that this was not the reason it occurred to Aristotle, since according to the thinking that most likely could guide Thales had to do with the relationship between water and moisture and life in general. Certainly, the vital heat is humid while death is characterized by coldness and dryness, as we see were biological considerations.
Anaximander (610-546 BC)
Friend of Thales but younger, he wrote a book that we know was in the library of the “Lyceum”. In it, Anaximander meant to provide a geographical, ethnological, and cultural description of the land and the way they had become what it is. Simplicius tells us, Anaximander called the “Arche” of all existing things “Apeiron,” which translates as unlimited or infinite. He says it is water or any of the natural elements but a different substance which is unlimited and from which emanate all the heavens and all the worlds that exist. With the election of the “Apeiron” single principle or universal matrix from which everything is created or arises, he wants to solve a problem that concerns the Greek minds of the moment; we refer to the issue of opposing or contrasting. The conflict is between the opposing elements of nature; it is an undeniable fact of the Greek world, such as water and naturally have opposed attempts to put out the fire. Therefore, hard water could be that principle or original substance from which springs all that is. Anaximander recognized as the tendency in the various natural elements to destroy those who are opposed. Therefore, he ends by postulating (assumption) that the true principle must be beyond all this natural diversity to the contradictions or oppositions that are characteristic. In short, the unlimited is a principle or unit in which it achieves the harmony and transcends the world with controversy or opposition between the multiple and diverse.
Anaximenes (585-524 BC)
He also operated in Miletus and was almost a boy when Ionia passed into the hands of the Persians. He says he wrote in Ionian style and that his work survived till well into the Hellenistic era. Anaximenes continued the monist tradition of his predecessors, that is, believed that all things proceed and eventually disappear in a single principle, but Anaximenes believes that the principle will be the air, but the problem that interests him a special form was that of the process by which the different situations that arose in the world. According to Anaximenes, the rarefied air becomes fire, and if it condenses, it gives rise to the clouds, and if this process continues in this process of condensation, water and finally get earth or stone. To him, it was an obvious fact of nature that the air on a humid day becomes visible as fog and cloud that causes the rain solidified if but when the water heats the opposite happens, one becomes visible and later steam invisible air, by an extension of these processes meant that Anaximenes very condensed air would lead to land and on the contrary, when it was lighter and rare, approached the status of the fire. He also noted that in choosing the air as “Arche,” Anaximenes also met a very old popular belief that was latent at that time and in the air it is associated with life. The air we breathe is the essence of all life, and therefore death is characterized by the cessation of breathing.
Pythagoras (590-496 BC)
Born on the Ionian island of Samos, his account is traveling in Egypt with a recommendation of Polycrates (tyrant of Samos) to the pharaoh. Returning to Samos, Polycrates had problems, so he had to emigrate to Croton (a small Greek colony in southern Italy), where he arrived preceded by a reputation of a wise man and a prophet. There, he soon got together a group of followers or disciples, seizing the city government. Beside the official religion of the Olympian gods and more social in nature had always existed outside had always existed in the Greek world a religious tradition more intimate and appealing to the individual staff and promised him immortality if purified his soul through a series of rites catharsis (purification rites). One of these was the religious currents Orphism whose ceremonies were performed rites for which it was assumed that the soul could be separated from the body and understand its nature immortal. After his arrival in Croton, Pythagoras presented Orphic as a prophet and founded a sect that ruled the city for twenty years. By the year 500, there was a revolution against as Pythagoras was forced to leave.
Heraclitus (550-480 BC)
One of the great thinkers of S. Born in BC VI Eces within an aristocratic family who claimed descent from the founders of the city, for this reason, his family retained the right to appoint the king of the city as this is a purely honorary post. However, Heraclitus rejected the charge, ceding it to his brother, so it seems that we have received was a difficult man solitary and misanthropic character. For the fragments that remain of his work is apparent attitude of animosity and criticism over its citizens and to the thinkers of the time, as in ancient times was known by the nickname of “dark” because of the difficulty of understanding that had his writings. Therefore, Socrates, with his characteristic irony, refers to his thought by saying that what he has understood, it seems very deep and all that is not understood well. For his part, Aristotle criticizes syntactical incorrect because it sometimes cannot distinguish when they begin or end sentences. Also, according to Aristotle, Heraclitus seems to contradict the principle of contradiction. In summary, we can say that the difficulty of understanding the thinking of Heraclitus does not rest solely on syntactical shortcomings but in the depth of dialectical thought, the first to arise in our history.
The Problem of Becoming
The problem that revolves around the thought of Heraclitus is the problem of Becoming (change). Aristotle summed up this philosophy as an affirmation that all beings are in constant flux and therefore nothing is really stable or constant. For that absolute mobility of all reality, it is impossible that we can bathe twice in the same river as the plunge for the second time we find a distinct water at the thought of Heraclitus that the beginning of Western philosophy has not yet accommodate the logical principle of identity, and nothing is equal to itself because everything is becoming to that subject. Similarly, neither has a place in the thinking of Heraclitus the principle of contradiction, he says, “we entered and not entered into the same rivers, we’re not.” Clearly, their discourse is contradictory to be confused and not really what he means is that all things, because it is becoming essential to their nature, are somewhat stable.
The Logos
Similarly, Heraclitus intended, as we saw with Anaximander, finding a harmony beyond the contradictions of the “controversy” that characterizes reality in its diversity and plurality, to achieve world harmony requires just that opposition or struggle, and therefore tells us that the universe is a harmony of opposite tensions as the Bow and the Lyre. Heraclitus’s vision aims to be a global vision able to watch all the reality in its complexity in order to discover its meaning or rationality ultima. Above this multiplicity of reality with their mutual oppositions and relationships, as it is a law that governs everything latest happening and what gives the name of Logos. The Logos is this rationality that allows the world a Cosmos (somewhat sorted). Regarding the latter meaning the logos cannot be understood as something more with the others but as a last unit that accounts for all the diverse, although the Logos is separated from all, the fact is that the man, says Heraclitus, may hear and participate as a rationality that is truly universal or common. If the ambition of the Milesians had been to discover the single principle from which everything comes, in Heraclitus, we are more with the statement that everything is a unit governed by the Logos as ultima ratio.
Parmenides (540-470 BC)
Founder of the Hellenistic school, he wrote in verse and perished that his poems are preserved till far into this poem had a prologue and two parts, the truth and the way of opinion. We saw as the first term thinkers appealed to nature to mean the totality of things. Parmenides is going to be the first Western thinker who will use the concepts “Being” or “Entity” to describe or name that all of reality that was previously reserved exclusively for the word “Phycis”. Indeed, the noun “entity” does not faithfully translate the Greek expression “to on,” which is a participle conveniently translatable by the expression “what is.” As soon as it appears in Western thought the concepts being or entity is also contracopcectos “not” or “do not enter.” According to Parmenides, being comprises all that is, and outside it, there is nothing else as being or nothingness is something intelligible and inexpressible. Parmenides absolutely separates being and nonbeing, and we repeat that the latter is an impractical way remained therefore likely that Parmenides tried to resist the Heracltianos who confused being and nonbeing. But even though he is a rational truth being or entity that is completely exempt, therefore continued to argue, that has not been generated and has apparently not going as if it had been generated, it would have been a time in the past what is the supreme being or entity was not yet and if so would perish, would also have a time in the future, which no longer serious. But both situations in their view, are impossible, since being cannot not have been and cannot fail to be leading to nowhere. It also says that being or enter is characterized by complete, continuous, homogeneous, undisturbed, and motionless. In short, being is stationary or moving because the change would mean not being, what changes and certainly is not like it but will still not like in the future. On the other hand, being complete, not lacking anything, so Parmenides attributes the perfect geometric shape, the spherical form is more diversity and plurality as demonstrated by the senses, the real truth is provided by the thought the reason being that we argue is truly unique and immortal. Usually, in philosophy, one begins by contrasting the thoughts of Heraclitus and Parmenides; we are told that both are quite contrasting and thought that while you defend the diversity of becoming, the other defends the absolute stillness of being, or enter. However, despite this opposition must be said that among them, can find common because they belong to the pre-Socratic times and share the same world, thus the circularity of Heraclitus Dialectic resembles the spherical symbolizes the being of Parmenides. But still, both are alien to the ethics and the ideal and its primacy of ideas or values on the sensible. We may also note another similarity between them as Heraclitus told us that last reason or Logos, could be achieved by man while Parmenides, similarly tells us that being or enter and thought the same thing, i.e., which, if it also “be” uniform thought this was some rational nature.
Anaxagoras (500-428 BC)
I accept as obvious the reasoning that no Parmenidean that cannot cause any new reality. Assumptions, it remains only to say that everything has always existed. Tiny particles of all substances existed and exist forever; these tiny particles were originally mixed in a compact mass with no gaps. Thus it is explained the origin of plurality, now comes the problem of how to explain this mass movement, for that Anaxagoras uses an external cause you printed this inert mass of swirling motion. In Anaxagoras first appears explicitly the idea of a god as a guiding principle of the universe, this leads to a conception of the order of the universe as a result of intelligence that acts according to purposes, so that the result of natural processes the result is always the best, but Anaxagoras never develop this theory properly.
Democritus (born 460 BC)
He gave a more rational response to the problem of principle. Among the multitude of facts (atoms) certainly gets something, vacuum. The atomistic concede that the gap between the atoms is not real, real is understood the existing field, only the atoms are real and the vacuum can be characterized as non-real. However, the void is real, if real means that actually there. Along with the atoms, the void is part of the nature of the universe and that their role is vital, not only allows for plurality but also the movement. Admitted the void, the atoms can move freely in it, but because they start moving; is concluded that the movement was not home at any time since the atoms move forever in a vacuum. Atomism alum definitely a concept, a mechanistic model of nature, the universe is chaired by one plan devised by a transcendent importance, nor is there a purpose to provide inteligibidad natural processes. The universe is the result of blind necessity and opacity is confused with randomness.