6.1 Flashcards
Who are the earliest philosophers? (3)
What century?
- Greeks?
From which city?
Which coast of modern-day Turkey?
Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes
6th
Ionian
Miletus
Western
Traditionally, what distinguished these thinkers from others?
Who disagreed (with year)
What do they think?
why?
What does he say instead?
their rationality (willingness to use their own reasoning to explain world around them)
Adamson (2014)
this explanation is unfair
rational thought is found in Homer, who was not a philosopher
their willingness to found their views on arguments, making links between observations to form explicit conclusions, distinguished them
What was pre-socratic society?
Extremely wide-ranging
What did Heraclitus say?
Those who are lovers of wisdom must be inquirers into many things
What did philosophers look into? (7)
and what other areas of natural inquiry? (4)
According to what?
physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, astronomy, embryology, psychology
theology, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics
Fragments
How could the big picture begin to be understood?
by looking into many different subjects and fitting the discoveries together
What were philosophers particularly interested in?
the nature or essence of things (cosmology)
What did Thales think the ultimate principle was?
water
What did Anaximander think the ultimate principle was?
apeiron (the infinite)
What did Anaximenes think the ultimate principle was?
air
What did Heraclitus think everything was a part of?
a unified whole
What do we rely upon for our understanding of what philosophers before socrates thought? (2)
disjodisjointed fragments of their poetry preserved in later writings or later testimonies
Two issues with the surviving fragments?
May not be fully respresentative of what philosopher thought
could have been quoted out of context
Give an example of interpreting fragments being tricky
Xenophanes - “And in some caves water drips”
Why are testimonies faulty as evidence?
they were made centuries after the philosopher lived by people who may not have understood their views
How can the ideas of pre-Socratics be divided?
physical cosmos vs ideas about ethics (justice)
Who think that the first philosophers being from Miletus was no coincidence?
What type of city was it?
Who influenced it?
What did this stimulate?
Holmes (1990s)
Miletus was a cosmopolitan port city
Influenced by eastern and egyptian traditions
Stimulates thought abt natural and physical worlds
What did Thales predict?
year?
supposedly using what?
What was also an unprovable tradition?
a solar eclipse
585 BC
Babylonian astronomical tablets
Thales spent some time in Egypt
When did Philosophy take off in the wider Ionian region?
Who were they? (And where from?)
When other greeks responded to the milesians
Pythagoras (Samos), Xenophanes (Colophon), Heraclitus (Ephesus)
What did Heraclitus do?
challenged the ideas of Anaximander and Anaximenes
In which direction did philosophers then spread their views?
westwards
What did Pythagoras do?
Where?
start a school
Croton (southern Italy)
What did Anaxagoras do?
When?
Brought Philosophy to Athens
5th century
What does holmes argue in regards to ethics?
ideas about justice were stimulated more from WITHIN greek culture than by external factors
What emphasises the gods’ concern for justice?
Give two examples
early greek literature
1 - revenge on suitors in Odyssey
2 - Hesiod’s poetry, Justice (Dike) is a daughter of Zeus overseeing human affairs
What view did philosophers inherit from early greek literature?
And what did they see?
a morally ordered universe
the ethical implications
What did Pythagoras think?
opposing social forces should be balanced by justice
What did Xenophanes believe in so much?
What did this lead him to do?
Why?
a morally-ordered universe
reject the Homeric gods
They were immoral (they don’t fit)
What had already offered answers to quetsions about cosmology?
An example?
through?
Myths
Hesiod dealt with origin of divine order and of the human condition
stories about gods and heroes
What was not new?
What was new?
the question
the answer
What did Pre-socratics NOT rely on exclusively?
But what did they not reject entirely?
myth
traditional religion
