Chapter 14 Art and Thought in the 5th Century Flashcards
Anaxagoras
born ~550 BC from CLazomenae in Ionia, moved to Athens in 456 and befriended Pericles. Formulated theories in Ionia, became famous in Athens
Parmenides
One of southern Italy’s greatest thinkers
Agreed with Heraclitus that our senses mislead us, but though our sense tick us into thinking that reality consists of change, but it doesn’t actually change
Zeno
Follower of Parmenides (490 - 430 BC)
-the paradoxes of ____, “proving” that motion, hence change, is illusory.
Paradox of Zeno
famous puzzle of Zeno, proves that motion is illusory
pluralists
Parmenides’ immediate successors are call this, because they reasoned that if there is no one thing from which the many derive, then the world must be made of many things in the first place.
-most important ones were Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Deomcritus
Empedocles
(492 - 432 BC) lived in wealthy and famous Akragas in south Sicily. Active in politics and an olympic athlete. Behaved like a shaman, claiming that his knowledge worked wonders, controlled winds, and raised the dead
Democritus
(460 - 380 BC) of Abdera in Thrace, was a strange man who sunned fame. devised an atomic theory in a form that changed little until the 19th century.
Postulated that tiny uncuttable (atoms) things eterinal in themselves combined to form other tiny things.
moral relativism
sophists questioned if anyone could know anything for sure.
if hot and cold do not exist but results only from accidental mixture and meeting of invisible atoms, then good and evil may also be relative, conventional categories.
sophists
intellectuals which flocked Athens, “wise men”, really teachers whose instruction could improve a citizen’s chance of influencing the poleis
arete
“virtue”, “excellence”
Protagoras
famous sophist, coined the phrase “man is the measure of all things”, meanign that one man views the world one way, another in another way, and neither is right.
insisted some forms of behavior are more practical than others
Socrates
(469 - 399 BC) opposed moral relativism. Wrote nothing but is principal speaker in Plato’s numerous dialogues.
Maintained that arete is knowledge.
Convincing his interlocutors that when they thought they had an answer, they really didn’t
inductive living method
encouraged by Socrates for discovering general definitions.
severe style
serenely calm facial expressions on statues contrast with the earlier frozen smiles of the archaic period.
lost wax technique
sculptors would make a rough model of clay, then coat it with wax. They would shape the wax in detail, coat it with clay and leave holes at the top and bottom of the outer clay later. Then bronze was poured in top hole nad the heat would melt the wax as it ran to the bottom. The sculptor then shattered the outer layer of clay, revealing the bronze statue.
