Transcript History of Philosophy

History of Philosophy
The origin, the idea and major problems
of philosophy.
The significance of the early Greek thought.
Mythology and philosophy: the irrational and the rational.
Criteria of rational knowledge.
Mythology is a way of ordering and explaining
what is perceived.
Mythology is a mixture of both reason and
unreason, of reason and passions, of perception
of the world around us and fantasies about it.
Philosophy is an endeavour:
• to separate the rational from the
irrational,
• to define what is rational knowledge,
• to explain what is a relation between
the rational and irrational.
Two general assumptions of philosophy,
usually called
the criteria of rational knowledge:
1. objectivity or inter-subjectivity of
results of the quest for knowledge (truth)
2. objective or inter-subjective testability
(justification) of the results.
Inter-subjective – between knowing subjects.
If a knowing subject (e.g. a knowing man) is able
to articulate and communicate his knowledge of
something to another subject, and this piece of
knowledge is well understood, we can say that
this piece of knowledge has been intersubjectively communicated.
From an etymological point of view
philosophy is the love of wisdom
(from Greek phileo [I love], and sophia [wisdom,
knowledge]).
We are told that Pythagoras (b[orn] c[irca]
570 BC) was the first philosopher to use the
word in this specific meaning, but he was by
no means the first man who was a
philosopher.
The idea of philosophy:
love of wisdom and the contemplation of the divine order
Concepts: philosophia, theoria, kosmos, chaos, logos and nous.
A Greek noun theoria, and a verb theoreo, [to look at, to
behold, to observe; to consider, to contemplate, to examine;
to perceive], has a root theos [god, deity, divine being],
means “the contemplation/to contemplate the divine”.
Therefore, the original meaning of the notion of ‘theory’ or
‘to theorise’ was ‘the contemplation of the divine’ or ‘to
contemplate the divine’.
The ancient Greek thinkers were convinced that
wisdom is the contemplation of the divine.
But what was the divine? The overwhelming order of
things or of the universe they called kosmos.
Kosmos was the opposite of chaos - the unordered,
unformed, undifferentiated beginning of things.
Chaos is one of the most important notions in the
Greek mythology, as Greeks believed that chaos was
in the beginning of anything existing before time
[chronos, Kronos] and matter - ‘the stuff’ of the
universe/reality.
Contemplation is an unbiased, disinterested (selfless)
attitude towards sth one wants to know.
It is a striving to understand the superhuman order, its
regularities or laws, and therefore its rational nature.
This is the reason why Greek thinkers thought of
kosmos as
logos [word, statement, principle, law, reason,
proportion],
or
nous [mind, reason, the faculty of intellectual vs.
empirical apprehension].
We can know the rule-governed, rational
universe because there is a fundamental affinity
between human reason and rational nature of
kosmos.
This is what the ancient as well as the early
modern and modern theorising have in
common.
Hence philosophy is a love of wisdom, i.e. a
quest for true knowledge of the whole of being
and its contemplation.
Philosophy according to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
Socrates (c. 470-399 BC)
According to Socrates (c. 470-399 BC) lovers of wisdom
(philosophers) are seekers after wisdom. They are between the
ignorant, who are not interested in wisdom, and gods, who are
wise already.
Plato (428-347 BC)
Plato, Republic, 484a and 490a
R. Waterfield’s translation, Oxford: OUP, 1993
“[P]hilosophers are those who are capable of apprehending that which is permanent and
unvarying, while those who can’t, those who wander erratically in the midst of plurality and
variety, are not lovers of knowledge…
[A] genuine lover of knowledge innately aspires to reality, and doesn’t settle on all the various
things which are assumed to be real, but keeps on, with his love remaining keen and steady, until
the nature of each thing is in itself has been grasped by the appropriate part of his mind – which is
to say, the part which is akin to reality. Once he has drawn near this authentic reality and united
with it, and thus fathered intellect and truth, then he has knowledge; then he lives a life which is
true to himself.”
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982a
J. Warrington’s translation, London-New York: J.M.Dent & Sons Ltd., 1966
“Wisdom is concerned with first causes and principles.”
The origins of philosophy according to
Plato and Aristotle
According to Plato philosophy is the quest for truth, but he
also thought that astonishment is the beginning of
philosophy: “for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher,
and philosophy begins in wonder. He was not a bad
genealogist who said that Iris (the messenger of heaven) is
the child of Thaumas (wonder).”
His disciple Aristotle repeated his opinion: “For through
astonishment men have begun to philosophise both in our
times and at the beginning" (Metaphysics, A 2, 928 b12sq).
The origins of philosophy:
Ionian natural philosophy, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Eleatic philosophy and the
beginnings of western metaphysics
(being and non-being, Zeno’s paradoxes)
The Greek thinkers, who lived in 7th and 6th c. BC mostly in
Greek colonies, mainly in the cities of Colophon, Miletus,
and Ephesus, in Asia Minor (Ionia), i.e., in today’s Turkey,
and in the city of Elea, some 100 km (approx. 60 miles)
south of Naples, in southern Italy.
The famous city of Athens in Attica, in the Peloponesus
(Peloponnesus), became the capital city of philosophy in
5th c. BC.
Thales of Miletus (c. 624-545 BC)
Anaximander (c. 610-546 BC) Anaximenes (d. 528 BC)
They tried to explain whether the multitude of things have something in common.
For Thales, one of the Ionians, who came from the city of Miletus, water was the
stuff of the universe, its beginning and the principle, therefore any material thing
was a form of water. He was also convinced that matter is by nature alive (‘all
things are full of gods’).
Anaximander of Miletus had more abstract mind and for him the beginning and
the principle of all things - arché as it was then called by Aristotle, was infinity, the
boundless, the unlimited (Greek, apeiron).
A disciple of his, Anaximenes of Miletus, taught that the primary substance was air
(Greek, aer).
Pythagoras (b. c. 570 BC – d. about 475 BC)
Pythagoras and his disciples, however, argued that the arché are
numbers, because any relation of things in the universe is a
geometrical proportion or symmetry; the whole of the kosmos
can be explained in terms of harmonia or number.
The fundamental form and the root of nature is the tetraktys or the Great
Four, which is the decad (1+2+3+4 = 10)
●
● ●
● ● ●
● ● ● ●
On each side of the triangle there are four points and one in the middle.
When counted from top to bottom the number of points increases by one,
and together they make ten. Thus the triangle is formed out of ten points.
Pythagoras was the first philosopher, who broke from an idea of prime
matter and concentrated instead on form, explaining natural things in terms
of geometrical structures.
Heraclitus of Ephesus (d. after 480 BC)
Heraclitus of Ephesus (d. after 480 BC) seemed to claimed that in
order to understand the nature of the kosmos we have to assume
that there is the ‘flux’ of all things, i.e., all things change. But the
guiding idea of his philosophy was that of the logos (law, principle,
reason), which unifies the opposites, therefore the whole - kosmos
is in a state of harmony, in a state of dynamic equilibrium.
Parmenides of Elea (b. c. 515 BC)
Parmenides of Elea (b. c. 515 BC), the founding father of the
western metaphysics, undermined materialistic philosophy of the
first philosophers, and argued that being (Greek, to on) is one,
perfect, unchangeable and spherical (the perfect geometrical
solid) and is (exists), while non-being is not (does not exist),
because changes constantly. Being can be known only by reason,
non-being is perceived by senses. The idea of the perfect being is
the model-concept for the philosophical concept of God.
Zeno of Elea (c. 490 - 430 B.C.)
Zeno’s of Elea paradoxes – arguments for the nonpossibility of motion
The Dichotomy:
The first asserts the non-existence of motion on the ground that that which is in locomotion must
arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal. (Aristotle Physics, 239b11)
Achilles and the Tortoise
The [second] argument was called “Achilles,” accordingly, from the fact that Achilles was taken [as a
character] in it, and the argument says that it is impossible for him to overtake the tortoise when
pursuing it. For in fact it is necessary that what is to overtake [something], before overtaking [it],
first reach the limit from which what is fleeing set forth. In [the time in] which what is pursuing
arrives at this, what is fleeing will advance a certain interval, even if it is less than that which what is
pursuing advanced … .
And in the time again in which what is pursuing will
traverse this [interval] which what is fleeing
advanced, in this time again what is fleeing will
traverse some amount … . And thus in every time in
which what is pursuing will traverse the [interval]
which what is fleeing, being slower, has already
advanced, what is fleeing will also advance some
amount. (Simplicius(b) On Aristotle's Physics, 1014.10)
The Arrow:
The third is … that the flying arrow is at rest, which result
follows from the assumption that time is composed of
moments … . he says that if everything when it occupies an
equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is
always in a now, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.
(Aristotle Physics, 239b.30)
1. When the arrow is in a place just its own size, it’s at rest.
2. At every moment of its flight, the arrow is in a place just its
own size.
3. Therefore, at every moment of its flight, the arrow is at rest.
The Stadium:
The fourth argument is that concerning equal bodies
which move alongside equal bodies in the stadium
from opposite directions—the ones from the end of
the stadium, the others from the middle—at equal
speeds, in which he thinks it follows that half the time
is equal to its double…. (Aristotle Physics, 239b33)
Empedocles (c. 492—432 B.C.)
According to Empedocles there are four 'elements’ of matter, or
‘roots’, which have a creative potential: earth, air, fire and water.
These are able to create all things, including all living creatures, by
being 'mixed' in different combinations and proportions.
Nevertheless, each of the elements retains its own characteristics in
the mixture, and each is eternal and unchanging.