The Origins of Western Thought: Philosophy Pages Dictionary Study Guide Logic Faqs History Timeline Philosophers Locke
The Origins of Western Thought: Philosophy Pages Dictionary Study Guide Logic Faqs History Timeline Philosophers Locke
The Origins of Western Thought: Philosophy Pages Dictionary Study Guide Logic Faqs History Timeline Philosophers Locke
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Greek Philosophy
Abstract thought about the ultimate nature of the world and of human life began to appear in
cultures all over the world during the sixth century B.C.E., as an urge to move beyond superstition
toward explanation. We focus here on its embodiment among the ancient Greeks, whose active and
tumultuous social life provided ample opportunities for the expression of philosophical thinking of
three sorts:
Speculative thinking expresses human curiosity about the world, striving to understand in
natural (rather than super-natural) terms how things really are, what they are made of, and
how they function.
Practical thinking emphasizes the desire to guide conduct by comprehending the nature of
life and the place of human beings and human behavior in the greater scheme of reality.
Critical thinking (the hallmark of philosophy itself) involves a careful examination of the
foundations upon which thinking of any sort must rely, trying to achieve an effective method
for assessing the reliability of positions adopted on the significant issues.
Beginning with clear examples of thinking of the first two sorts, we will see the gradual emergence
of inclinations toward the third.
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Milesian Speculation
During the sixth century, in the Greek colony at Miletus, a group of thinkers began to engage in
an extended exploration of the speculative issues. Although these Milesians wrote little themselves,
other ancient authorities recorded some of their central tenets. Their central urge was to show that
the complex world has a simple, permanent underpinning in the reality of a single kind of stuff
from which all else emerges.
The philosopher Thales, for example, is remembered as having asserted that all comes from
water. (Fragments) Although we have no record of the reasoning that led Thales to this conclusion,
it isn't hard to imagine what it might have been. If we suppose that the ultimate stuff of the world
must be chosen from among things familiar to us, water isn't a bad choice: most of the earth is
covered with it, it appears in solid, liquid, and gaseous forms, and it is clearly essential to the
existence of life. Everything is moist.
Thales's student Anaximander, however, found this answer far too simple. Proper attention to
the changing face of the universe, he supposed, requires us to consider the cyclical interaction of
things of at least four sorts: the hot, the cold, the dry, and the wet. (Fragments) Anaximander held
that all of these elements originally arise from a primal, turbulent mass, the the Boundless or
Infinite {Gk. [apeirn]}. It is only by a gradual process of distillation that everything else
emergesearth, air, fire, water, of courseand even living things evolve.
The next Milesian, Anaximenes, returned to the conviction that there must be a single kind of
stuff at the heart of everything, and he proposed vapor or mist {Gk. [aer]} as the most likely
candidate. (Fragments) Not only does this warm, wet air combine two of the four elements
together, but it also provides a familiar pair of processes for changes in its state: condensation and
evaporation. Thus, in its most rarified form of breath or spirit, Anaximenes's air constitutes the
highest representation of life.
As interesting as Milesian speculations are, they embody only the most primitive variety of
philosophical speculation. Although they disagreed with each other on many points, each of the
thinkers appears to have been satisfied with the activity of proposing his own views in relative
isolation from those of his teacher or contemporaries. Later generations initiated the move toward
critical thinking by arguing with each other.
Pythagorean Life
The Greek colony in Italy at the same time devoted much more concern to practical matters.
Followers of the legendary Pythagoras developed a comprehensive view of a human life in
harmony with all of the natural world. Since the Pythagoreans persisted for many generations as a
quasi-religious sect, protecting themselves behind a veil of secrecy, it is difficult to recover a
detailed account of the original doctrines of their leader, but the basic outlines are clear.
Pythagoras was interested in mathematics: he discovered a proof of the geometrical theorem that
still bears his name, described the relationship between the length of strings and the musical pitches
they produce when plucked, and engaged in extensive observation of the apparent motion of
celestial objects. In each of these aspects of the world, Pythagoras saw order, a regularity of
occurrences that could be described in terms of mathematical ratios.
The aim of human life, then, must be to live in harmony with this natural regularity. Our lives
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are merely small portions of a greater whole. (Fragments) Since the spirit (or breath) of human
beings is divine air, Pythagoras supposed, it is naturally immortal; its existence naturally outlives
the relatively temporary functions of the human body. Pythagoreans therefore believed that the soul
"transmigrates" into other living bodies at death, with animals and plants participating along with
human beings in a grand cycle of reincarnation.
Even those who did not fully accept the religious implications of Pythagorean thought were
often influenced by its thematic structure. As we'll see later, many Western philosophers have been
interested in the immortality of the human soul and in the relationship between human beings and
the natural world.
During the fifth century B.C.E., Greek philosophers began to engage in extended controversies
that represent a movement toward the development of genuinely critical thinking. Although they
often lacked enough common ground upon which to adjudicate their disputes and rarely engaged in
the self-criticism that is characteristic of genuine philosophy, these thinkers did try to defend their
own positions and attack those of their rivals by providing attempts at rational argumentation.
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Greek Atomism
The inclination to regard the world as pluralistic took its most extreme form in the work of the
ancient atomists. Although the basic outlines of the view were apparently developed by Leucippus,
the more complete exposition by Democritus, including a discussion of its ethical implications, was
more influential. Our best source of information about the atomists is the poem De Rerum Natura
(On the Nature of Things) by the later Roman philosopher Lucretius.
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For the atomists, all substance is material and the true elements of the natural world are the tiny,
indivisible, unobservable solid bodies called "atoms." Since these particles exist, packed more or
less densely together, in an infinite empty space, their motion is not only possible but ineveitable.
Everything that happens in the world, the atomists supposed, is a result of microscopic collisions
among atoms. Thus, as Epicurus would later make clear, the actions and passions of human life are
also inevitable consequences of material motions. Although atomism has a decidedly modern ring,
notice that, since it could not be based on observation of microscopic particles in the way that
modern science is, ancient atomism was merely another fashionable form of cosmological
speculation.
The Sophists
Fifth-century Athens was a politically troubled city-state: it underwent a sequence of external
attacks and internal rebellions that no social entity could envy. During several decades, however,
the Athenians maintained a nominally democratic government in which (at least some) citizens had
the opportunity to participate directly in important social decisions. This contributed to a renewed
interest in practical philosophy. Itinerate teachers known as the sophists offered to provide their
students with training in the effective exercise of citizenship.
Since the central goal of political manipulation was to outwit and publicly defeat an opponent,
the rhetorical techniques of persuasion naturally played an important role. But the best of the
Sophists also made use of Eleatic methods of logical argumentation in pursuit of similar aims.
Driven by the urge to defend expedient solutions to particular problems, their efforts often
encouraged relativism or evan an extreme skepticism about the likelihood of discovering the truth.
A Sophist named Gorgias, for example, argued (perhaps ironically) that: (a) Nothing exists; (b)
If it did, we could not know it; and (c) If we knew anything, we could not talk about it. Protagoras,
on the other hand, supposed that since human beings are "the measure of all things," it follows that
truth is subjectively unique to each individual. In a more political vein, Thrasymachus argued that it
is better to perform unjust actions than to be the victim of the injustice committed by others. The
ideas and methods of these thinkers provided the lively intellectual environment in which the
greatest Athenian philosophers thrived.
History of Philosophy
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