Pre-Socratic Philosophy

Pre-Socratic Philosophers
• First to express discontent with Greek religion on these questions:
1. What is the true nature of reality?
2. What is its origin?
3. What is out place in it?
4. How are we related to the powers that govern it?
5. What is the best way to live?
• Hesiod “Thoegony”-
o “Chaos was first of all but next appeared Broad bosomed Earth”
o They will seek instead rational, natural explanations vs. supernatural or poetic explanations
o Proto-scientist  Pre-Socratic philosophers that would observe and then speculate
 Their mantra – “Explain what you see & touch by what you can see and touch”
o Problem of the one and the many
 Q: If reality is in some sense one, what accounts for the many different individual things that we experience? In other words:
1. What is the ultimate reality? (the One) Is it God, matter, elements, etc.? How does this or it manifest itself into so many different ways? (rocks, trees, birds, etc.)
2. How is everything else (the Many) related to each other?
• Thales (considered 1st philosopher)
o Lived in Miletus which is currently Turkey
o He was considered “Mr. H2O”  He believed that water is “the One” This answered #1 from above
 He said:
1. “The cause & element of all things is water”
2. “All things are filled with gods” (Poetic part)
 Reasons to suggest water was “the One”
1. Water nourishes all things; all of life dependent on water
2. Water is the only naturally occurring substance to change forms (solid, liquid, gas)
3. Water is all around us (rivers, streams, ponds, etc.)  This answered #2 from above
4. Miletus is on the coast so this explains where his philosophy possibly originated from
o He believed water behaved like gods because water was everywhere (a poetic thing to say)
• Xenophanes
o First to explicitly criticize the Greek religion (Thales implicitly critiqued – subtly explained the water idea)
o Xenophanes said that the Greek gods/goddesses were unworthy of worship (because of the way they behave – this was Xenophanes’ ‘clue’)
o According to Homer & Hesiod, gods stole, lied, cheated, raped, murdered so Xenophanes said if we don’t act like this, why do we worship gods that behave like this?
o Conclusion: Homer & Hesiod are fiction & made up stories
o “God does not make us in his image, rather we make god/goddesses in our image”
o First person to suggest “…one god, greatest amongst gods, in no way similar to mortals in mind or body”
o He is suggesting an immaterial (non-physical), no gender & not similar to our minds and above negative emotions (like anger, temper, jealousy) of humans. They may have positive emotions like love, justice, etc.
o He says god:
1. “sees all over”
2. “thinks all over” (knows everything)
3. “hears all over”
4. Remains the same (gods not limited, god does not change)
5. God sets all things in motion with the power of his mind
o He suggest god has a mind & therefore, god is personal & one of the FIRST to suggest monotheism

January 31, 2011
The Problem of the One & the Many:
1. What is the Ultimate Reality (the One)
2. How is everything else (the Many) related to it?

• Democrates
Side Note: Parmenides denies the existence of “the Many” and suggests rather that all reality is “the One”  we can compare this to Eastern philosophy like Buddhism (no separation between god and everything else…he IS everything or all “the Many” is the Ultimate Reality)
o Democrates REJECTS Parmenides ideas & reacts against him with a kind of compromise.
o Democrates asks the Q: If everything (the Many) is really just ‘the One’, then how do you explain movement? Democrates speculated that things, i.e. the Many, move. He says that if everything was ‘the One’, then everything would sit still.
 He compromises and says ‘the One’ is both ‘atamos’ and ‘the Void’. ‘the Void’ is the empty space between atamos. This ‘Void’ was necessary to explain emotion.
 He says ‘atamos; (the physical stuff) was the Ultimate Element meaning physical
• He said the ‘atamos’ were tiny particles like dust motes except smaller, but he said that they are so tiny that you can’t see them; however he says “let me describe them to you”.
• 6 characteristics of atamos:
1. They are Invisible to us or the naked eye (physically; he didn’t mean like a ghost)
2. They are Indivisible or “Unsplittable”  This is why he named it ‘atamos’ which literally means unsplittable or uncuttable. (He was wrong on this one – His reasoning was that they are the Ultimate Reality or Ultimate physical stuff to which everything is made so you shouldn’t be able to split it)
3. He said because they are Indivisible, they are indestructible. He was wrong about the ‘because’, but he was right that they are indestructible. (atoms are like legos – you can build, tear apart and rebuild, but the legos do not change)
4. He said they are in constant motion. The tiny motion was made possible because of ‘the Void’. The tiny movement makes all movement possible.
5. Such motion is made possible by ‘the Void’
6. It is their nature to move meaning they do not require an external force of motion (cause & effect). He’s implying that they don’t need god.
 He suggests that ‘atamos’ are internally homogenous meaning it is all the same on the inside; however, externally, they are different in:
1. Shape & Size  A differs in shape & size from N
2. Arrangement  AN differs in arrangement from NA
3. Position  A differs in position in the alphabet from N
 He asks, how do atoms stick together? He says that each atamos has tiny little hooks and come together with other little atamos with hooks and stick together. (This was clearly not true)
 He asks the Q: Why is a rock harder to cut with a knife than an apple?
• He thought you were cutting in between the atamos and cutting the hooks in the Void. You weren’t cutting the atamos itself.  He was partly right because he anticipated DENSITY, but wrong about the hooks. – These were typical type questions that Pre-Socratic philosophers asked themselves from observing & speculating.
o Democrates has an implicit critique of Greek religion. He leaves no room for god. In his theory of the universe, there is no need for God/goddesses because the atamos explain and do everything.
o One of the first Naturalistic philosophers meaning there is no connection to a supernatural force (god) – everything was a naturalistic explanation.
o Democrates did believe in the existence of a soul (seems contradictory because the soul is immaterial or non-physical) Traditionally, the soul was immaterial, but Democrates was the only person in western philosophy to suggest a material soul. Remember that he said atamos can be different shapes and sizes…so Democrates said that there are other atamos which are even smaller than the original and that they were spherical. He said these spherical atamos would fit in between the other atamos with the hooks and Void still being there. These spherical atamos in between the other atamos were responsible for intelligence. The bigger atamos were not intelligent. The amount of spherical atamos determined the level of intelligence so for example, a rock had no spherical atamos, but a plant, which is alive, had a few of the spherical atamos. Humans had the most spherical atamos. So he meant that the material soul was a conglomeration or concentration of spherical atoms.
o Democrates says that at the moment of death, the spherical atamos go away and form something else, and they don’t carry any memory.