The Pre-Socratic Philosophers

Who are the Pre-Socratic Philosophers and why is it important to study their lives and greatest contributions as far as Philosophy is concerned?

1. MAN AND HIS WORLD: A Survey of Metaphysical Perspectives Introduction to the philosophy of the human person WILFREDO DJ P. MARTIN IV| SHS SET A

2. THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS The Pre- socratics were 6 th  and 5 th  century BCE Greek thinkers who introduced a new way of inquiring into the world and the place of human beings in it . The Pre- socratics were the founding fathers of the Western philosophical tradition, and the first masters of rational thought.

3. THE FIRST STAGE IN A RATIONAL SYNTHESIS: SOCRATES BORN IN ALOPEKE, belonging to the tribe Antiochis Son of SOPHRONISCUS (a sculptor) and Phaearete (a midwife) Trained as a stonemason and participated in the Peloponnesian War (battles of Amphipolis, Delium , and Potidaea) One of first persons who was a GADFLY Accused of corrupting the minds of the youth because of his philosophy and was given the penalty of death by poison.

4. SOCRATES philosophy should achieve practical results for the greater well-being of society attempted to establish an ethical system based on human reason rather than theological doctrine.  pointed out that human choice was motivated by the desire for happiness. Ultimate wisdom comes from knowing oneself  ” The more a person knows, the greater his or her ability to reason and make choices that will bring true happiness.”

5. cosmological and physical speculation moral problems vs.

6. 1. THALES OF MILETUS He is remembered primarily for his cosmology based on  water as the essence of all matter, with the Earth, a flat disk floating on a vast sea .  HYLOZOISM - animation/vivification of matter

7. In his thinking about Earth, he regarded the inhabited portion as flat, consisting of the top face of a cylinder whose thickness is one-third its diameter. In his cosmogony, he held that everything originated from the  apeiron  (the “infinite,” “unlimited,” or “indefinite”) 2. ANAXIMANDER

8. 3. ANAXIMENES Anaximenes’ assumption that  air   is everlastingly in motion suggests that he thought it also possessed life. Because it was eternally alive,  air  took on qualities of the divine and became the cause of other gods as well as of all matter.

9. THE PYTHAGOREANS 4.) PYTHAGORAS Came from the island of Samos, and settled in Croton, Magna Graceia Founder of the Pythagoreans Famous for this theorem School of thought was divided into two: the akousmatikoi and the mathematikoi Persecuted because of their submission to taboos and other strange rules like: not eating of meat and beans, not wearing of clothes made of wool, not picking up anything that has fallen, stir a fire with iron and others

10. THE ELEATIC SCHOOL 5.) XENOPHANES From Colophon, Asia Minor Lived in the second half of 6 th Century He looked at the gods of Homer and Hesiod as something absurd and irrelevant He is linked to the doctrine of PANTHEISM or doctrine of oneness

11. 6. PARMENIDES From Elia who lived in the 6 th Century Discovered metaphysics/ontology or the ENTITY “nothing cannot be thought, there is nothing, there is only being” Such being is uncreated, indestructible, eternal, and indivisible

12. 7. ZENO Zeno was famous for the paradoxes whereby, in order to recommend the Parmenidean doctrine of the existence of “the one” (i.e., indivisible reality), he sought to controvert the commonsense belief in the existence of “the many”  Zeno made use of three premises: first, that any unit has magnitude; second, that it is infinitely divisible; and third, that it is indivisible. First to discover Dialectics

13. 8. HERACLITUS Born in Ephesus, Asia Minor (6 th -5 th BC) Developed the Theory of Flux and Unity of Opposites For him, the source of everything is fire The world is an eternal fire which transforms itself “One cannot step on the same river twice”

14. 9. EMPEDOCLES From Agrigentum , Sicily Author of the Poems On Nature and Purification Developed theory of 2 suns: one authentic (fire) and one reflected (actual) For him, the root of all things are from the 4 elements (air, fire, water, and earth) love strife

15. 10. ANAXAGORAS From Clazomenae , Asia Minor (5 th Century) Discovered the theory of HOMOIOMEREIAI For him, there are not 4 elements but an infinite number of elements “There is everything in everything” Accdg to him, there are “SEEDS” in all other things

16. 11. DEMOCRITUS Founder of the ATOMISTS For him, even the soul, is composed of atoms which are indestructible and indivisible  

17. Importance of Studying the Pre-Socratics Introduction to the philosophy of the human person WILFREDO DJ P. MARTIN IV| SHS SET A

18. THINKING IS NOT SO MUCH AS AN ACTIVITY AS IT IS A CALLING We are called to thinking, as some people are called to church or to a particular profession (such as a doctor or nurse) Reason itself calls us to THOUGHT.

19. BATTLING THEOS The presocratics were conscious of how important it is to go beyond the old religion of gods which has served the Greeks for so long; not that they disparaged these gods; rather, they all agreed that the gods were a set of metaphors that had outlived their use. They wanted to find a way to penetrate into the heart of being through abstract reasoning, rather than through often paradoxical activities of Zeus and Athena. Thinking demanded its own set of imperatives that allowed the mind to remove the fetters of customary thinking, indeed the idea of Belief as a theological activity.

20. UNDERSTANDING BEING “One should say and think that Being is.” (Parmenides) Being in this sense is the whole of things, the mightiness of the cosmos, the very substance of atom, the indubitable notion of oneness that lies beneath out understanding of the Universe. Being, however, is determined in the world by the emergence of a duality : that things come into being and then pass away. (life and death, night and day, hot and cold)

21. UNDERSTANDING BEING A paradox, perhaps. Being, or the One as Xenophanes called it, in its eternal stability longs to show itself in the world if an agitation, of instability. Hence, its recourse to duality as a prelude to manifestation. (give and take, ebb and flow, attack and retreat) Movement is thus an aspect of time, no more. Things show themselves in time in the act of movement, of passing from one state to another, so that life is death and death, life.

22. Being (unity) being (multiplicity)

23. The true delight of thinking is not to ‘discover’ something new in nature, or anything at all for that matter, but to explore where thought might lead as an intellectual adventure.