Pre-Socratic Philosophers

Question 1

I. General Theories of the Cosmos (attempt)

Answer 1

a. Use of observation and reason to construct general theories
b. Secrets behind the appearances in the world
c. Knowledge stemmed from islands
1. Ionian Sea
2. Coast of Persia

Question 2

II. Problems about Pre-Socratic Philosophers

Answer 2

1. Very little is known about them
2. Accounts are inaccurate because of distortions
3. Often contained anachronistic ideas
4. Debatable fragments

Question 3

580 B.C.E.
Colony of Miletus on the coast of Asia Minor—today’s Turkey—in the sixth century B.C.E.

Answer 3

Thales

Question 4

ca.
610–ca. 546
B.C.E.), also from
the city of Miletus,

Answer 4

Anaximander

Question 5

(ca. 545 B.C.E.)

Answer 5

Anaximenes

Question 6

ca. 572–ca. 500 B.C.E.), from the island of Samos, near Miletus,

Answer 6

Pythagoras

Question 7

(ca. 470 B.C.E.) of Ephesus,

Answer 7

heraclitus

Question 8

(ca. 515–ca. 440 B.C.E.)

Answer 8

Parmenides

Question 9

(ca. 490 B.C.E -?)

Answer 9

Zeno of Elea

Question 10

(?–ca. 440 B.C.E.), a citizen of the Greek colony of Acragas

Answer 10

Empedocles

Question 11

(ca. 500–ca. 428 B.C.E.) of Clazom- enae, near Miletus

Answer 11

Anaxagoras

Question 12

Leucippus (ca. 460 B.C.E.–?) and (ca. 460–ca. 370 B.C.E.),

Answer 12

Leucippus and Democritus

Question 13

(ca. 490–ca. 422 B.C.E.)

Answer 13

II. Protagoras

Question 14

(ca. 483–375 B.C.E.)

Answer 14

III. Gorgias

Question 15

c. All things are composed of water
1. First principle
2. Basic nature
3. Valued for its form

“If there is change, there must be something changes, yet does not change.”
1. Unity behind the plurality of things

Answer 15

Thales

Question 16

d. Ultimate reality
i. Elements have contrariety with one another
ii. Not unlimited
e. Boundless or the Unlimited (apeiron)
I. Unobservable, unspecific, indeterminate
iii. Opposed to nothing
iv. Everything is it

Answer 16

Anaximander

Question 16

b. Air
i. halfway house between forms (primordial air)
ii. transformed through condensation and rarefaction
1. Project of reductionism
- Differences in quality

Answer 16

Anaximenes

Question 17

c. all things are numbers
d. reality must be expressed in mathematical formulas
i. great-great-grandfather of this law
e. little is known of him

discovered ratios between musical sound and number
i. deduced a mathematical harmony (universe)
ii. doctrine of “the music of spheres”
iii. celestial bodies move
1. motion produces sound
2. motion is divine
iv. music is the eternal background sound
1. sound in the world is contrasted

Answer 17

Pythagoras

Question 18

There is an exchange of all things for fire and of fire for all things”
i. basic stuff of reality

Reality is composed not of a number of things but of a process of continual creation and destruction.”
c. “You cannot step into the same river twice.”

Answer 18

Heraclitus

Question 19

a. you can’t step in the same river once.
b. “It is”
i. truth of reason
ii. cannot be denied
iii. “it is not”, then “it is”
iv. if nothing exists, it is not nothing (something)

Answer 19

Parmenides

Question 20

b. Everything was made up of simplest parts (four roots)
i. water
ii. air
iii. eath
iv. fire
c. Forces to explain change and movement
i. Love
1. force of unity
2. brings together unrelated terms (new creation
ii. Strife
1. Force of destreuction
2. Breaking down old unities to fragments

Answer 20

Empedocles

Question 20

impossibility of motion
ii. absurdity or contradiction
iii. even granting motion = never getting anywhere
1. E.g. door
- Halfway (infinity)
b. Race between Achilles and a tortoise
i. head start (tortoise)
ii. swift runner (Achilles)

Answer 20

Zeno

Question 21

a. Replaced four roots to “infinite seeds”
i. object in the world contains seeds
ii. seeds predominate (element)
iii. “In all things, there is a portion of everything. . . . For how could hair come from what is not hair? Or flesh from what is not flesh?”
b. Replaced Love and Strife
i. Nous or Mind (mental)
ii. organized to an intelligent, rational order
iii. animate and inanimate world
1. Organic world
- Nous contained within it (self-ordering principle)
2. Inorganic world
- Nous ordered externally

Answer 21

Anaxagoras

Question 22

a. Little piece of Parmenidean being (atoms)
i. set them moving through empty space
i. uncreated
ii. indestruvtable
iii. eternal
iv. indivisible
v. no holes

Answer 22

Leucippus and Democritus

Question 23

Achievements of Pre-Socrats

Answer 23

a. Special kind of thinking
i. method
ii. content
iii. science and philosophy today
b. Theory of evolution
c. Effort to solve riddle
i. how mathematical numbers hold sway over the flux of reality

d. Undermine traditional religious and moral values
e. Old aristocracy
i. no longer interested in Honor, Courage, and Fidelity (virtues)
ii. power and success
1. Through politics
2. Access to political power
3. Study of rhetoric