Greek Philosophy: An Introduction

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Greek Philosophy An Introduction

• Lecturer Wu Shiyu
• Email shiyuw_at_sjtu.edu.cn
• Websitehttp//sla.sjt
  u.edu.cn/bbs

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Timeline
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Timeline
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Course Overview

• Three questions
• What are we going to study?
• Why should we study ancient Greek philosophy?
• How will we study it?

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Subject Matter
Four periods
Anaximander Anaximenes
Xenophanes Pythagoras
Heraclitus (535-475 B.C.)
Parmenides (515-440 B.C.)
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2. Subject Matter (Question 1)

• Four distinctive periods
• The Pre-Socratics Thales of M (585 B.C.)
• Socrates 469399 BC.
• Plato 429347BC.
• Aristotle 384322BC.
• The earliest period of western philosophy .

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3. Why Study? (Question 2)

• (1) Monumental influences
• Plato, Aristotle, subsequent western
  philosophy
• (2) Philosophically interesting, provocative,
  valuable.

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4. Interesting, Provocative,
Valuable

• Philosophylove (philia) of wisdom (sophia)

?
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5. What is wisdom?

• The Ability to answer fundamental or the
  perennial questions.

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Examples

• Question 1
• Is anything stable and in our experience, is
  there anything permanent, or is reality always
  changing?
• Or is everything in flux? Is it flowing?

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Examples

• Question 2
• Are human beings capable of understanding
  reality as it is in itself?
• Or is reality always seen from a
  human perspective, which distorts it? Must
  reality remain a mystery?

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Examples

• Questions 3
• Are ethical values, values like justice
  and courage, relative or are they absolute?
• (Relativist and Absolutist stealing)

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Examples

• Question 4
• What sort of political community is most just?
  What about democracy?

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• Along with the question of democracy come two
  other questions basic in western tradition the
  question of freedom and question of equality.
• 1. Is it freedom the highest value?
• We often associate freedom with democracy.
• 2. Are all human beings to be counted as equal?

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• Question 5
• What is the proper and best relationship that a
  human being can take to the natural world?
• Man is the measure of all things.
• -----Protagoras (Greek
  sophist)

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6. ???? (Question 3)

• Approached dialectically.
• They engage in a dialogue.

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????

• These thinkers acknowledge and are dependent on
  their predecessors, but criticize and move beyond
  them.

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7. ???? ??( P Terms)

• Being (archê ) The principle (origin) of all
  things
• The origin of all things in becoming
• Becoming
• one and many

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Logos (???)

• Logos A rational explanation. (Heraclitus)
• Suffix of many English words

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Pre-Socrates

• Pre-Socrates Quest for Being (the archê) and
  Becoming

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The Milesian School

• Thales (624-546 B.C.), Anaximander (610-540
  B.C.), and Anaximenes (585-528 B.C. ).
• Began their quest for being (the archê)
• How the world is originated?
• Look for a unifying element
• What is there behind all the constant change?
  Come up with their own theory.

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Thales (??? )

• Date 624-546 B.C. from Miletus
• The founder of philosophy
• The first to give logos of nature (Aristotle).
• Water is the archê.
• Water is what is unchanging in a world of changing

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• Thales (624-546 B.C.)
• One of the Seven Wise Men

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• Thales of Miletus (624-546 B.C.)

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???????????

• EmpiricistRelies on experience of the world in
  order to gain knowledge.
• Rationalist Relies on pure reason alone in
  order to achieve knowledge

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Anaximander (??????)

• (610- 540
  B.C.)

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Anaximander (??????)

• Student of Thales (610- 540 B.C.)
• Agreed with Thales The world has an origin
  (archê).
• Disagreed The archê is not in ordinary,
  limited, determinate substance like water.
• The archê The indefinite, to apeiron.
• To apeiron The indefinite, or the
  indeterminate.

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???????????

• Anaximander????????????
• ??????,???????????????????????????,???????????
  
• (????????????)

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Anaximenes(?????? )
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Anaximenes(?????? )

• Anaximenes Student of Anaximander,
• Agreed There is a rational archê of the world
• There was a problem with Thales view.
• Disagreed No different from Hesiod CHAOS.
• The archê was air.

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• With air, Anaximenes attempted to solve the
  problem of Being and Becoming, of the One and the
  Many.

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Summary

• Spirit of free inquiry, challenge the traditional
  and established ideas, and also present their
  own.
• Using his reasoning capacity, senses, mind.
• The battle that Plato 200 years later would
  describe as the old battle between philosophy and
  poetry.

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• ?????? (??)

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• A kind of crisis has been developing in the sixth
  century, in the ancient Greek philosophy
• The Relationship between Being and Becoming.
• .
• Two of the greatest and most radical solutions to
  the problem of Being and Becoming
• Heraclitus and Parmenides

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Heraclitus and Parmenides

• Two of the greatest and most radical solutions
  to the problem of Being and Becoming.

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Heraclitus The Obscure

• (540 - 470 B.C.)

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Heraclitus The Obscure

• (540 - 470 B.C.)

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1. Heraclitus The Obscure

• In Ephesus, near Miletus (540 - 470 B.C.)
• Some 100 fragments or aphorisms(??)
• Lonely life he led
• The riddling nature of his philosophy
• Contempt for humankind

Heraclitus (540-470 B.C.) ??
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2. Heraclitus Writing

• Heraclitus writes short, aphoristic saying.(?)
• A short saying provoke thought
• You cant step into the same river twice.
• His favorite image river
• River stands for becoming (reality itself)
• Flowing, in constant motion
• As we step into it, it changes

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3. Heraclitus Logos

• Everything flows"
• Change being central to the universe.
• Then If nothing stable, how possible to give a
  logos?
• Heraclitus The Logos is common.
• What sort of logos could this possibly be?

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4. More fragments

• "The road up and the road down, are one and the
  same.
• The same thing is both living and dead.
• "Changing, it rests.
• S is both p and not p.
• Heraclitus contradicts himself.
• Sounds irrational.

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• This is his strength, not a weakness.
• Rational and expressive.
• Nothing stable, permanent, endures Everything
  flows
• Then Everything in a process of moving from
• P to Not P
• Take the river as an example.
• We step and we do not step into the same
  rivers.
• The river is both it and is not itself.

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5. A Relativist

• If nothing is permanent, then nothing is
  absolute.
• Values would also be in flux (Stealing).
• The sea is purest and most polluted water.
• Pigs rejoice in mud more than pure water
• Asses would choose rubbish rather gold.
• The sense of relativism.

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6. Milesian or Anti-Milesian?

• The cosmos was always and is and shall be
• an ever living fire.
• War is the father of all and the king of all.
• A lifetime is a child playing, the kingdom
  belogs
• to A child.
• Fire, war, and Play have in common (?)

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7. Influences of Heraclitus

• The real power of Heraclitus logos
• It is a logos which contradicts itself, moves,
  plays.
• The German philosopher Nietzsche
• The German thinker Martin Heidegger
• 20th century thinkers.

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• Nietzsche courage and honesty face reality
• Christianity
• God
• escapism

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• Naming
• Language
• The name misleading
• Why his language short. (language misleading)

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Conclusion The Weeping
Philosopher

• "Among the wise, instead of anger, Heraclitus was
  overtaken by tears, Democritus by laughter."
• ???????, ???????????

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• Heraclitus eliminate being
• Being and Becoming

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Reactions to Heraclitus

• Now anyone confronting Heraclitus have two
  reactions
• (1) beautifully expressive and compelling,
• (2)wait! A philosopher shouldn't speak this
  way. a philosopher shouldn't contradict
  himself. This stuff of Heraclitus is merely a
  pure nonsense.
• The latter is Parmenides.

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Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor
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Questions to Consider

1. What do you make of Heraclituss way of writing?
   Are his paradoxical statements offensive to you,
   or do you find them intellectually attractive?
2. Of all Heraclituss fragments, which do you find
   to be most expressive of his philosophical
   position?

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Questions to discuss

• 1. Do you think that the world has an archê? If
  so, does it seem more plausible to you that it
  is determinate or indeterminate?
• 2. What might be some contemprary candidates for
  the archê?
• 3. The contemporary world is often described as
  the age of the computer. Are we living in
  Pythagorean times?
• 4. Do you think there are aspects of life that
  cannot be reduced to numbers? What might these be?

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• Biologya logos of life
• Psychology the logos of the soul or mind

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• The safest general characterization of
  the European philosophical tradition is that it
  consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
• ---Alfred North Whitehead

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• He was simply known as the philosopher. His
  writings became the organizing principle of
  European universities, and they still shape these
  institution today.

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• Tell me these things, Olympian Muses,
• From the beginning, and tell which of them came
  first.
• In the beginning there was only Chaos,
• But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being,
• .
• Hesiods Theogony

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• Rule by opinion (doxa)
• Not rule by wisdom
• Perverted form of government (Plato)
• Democracy allows for philosophy (criticism of
  democracy itself)

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• Dialectic from the Greek dialegesthai, to
  converse.

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• Look in the eye and communicate
• spoon-feeding teaching method,
• dialogue -- questions and answers
• In the give and take of conversation

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• Of those who first pursued philosophy, the
  majority believed that the only principles of all
  things are principles in the forms of matter. For
  that out of which all existing things are
  composed and that out of which they originally
  come into being, that into which they finally
  perish, the substance persisting, but changing in
  all of its attributes.
• Quoting from Aristotle

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Thank You!