PreSocratics

Question 1

Order of the first 3 Greek philosophers

Answer 1

• Thales
• Anaximander
• Pythagoras

Question 2

Thales of Miletus

Answer 2

• the first Greek philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

Question 3

metempsychosis

Answer 3

• transmigration of the soul
• the soul or consciousness can undergo a series of incarnations

Question 4

archê

Answer 4

• foundation of everything
• fundamental substance or reality

Question 5

what were Thales’s, Anaximander’s, Anaximenes’s, and Heraclitus’s archê?

Answer 5

• Thales: water
• Anaximander: apeiron (infinite and indefinite)
• Anaximenes: air
• Heraclitus: fire

Question 6

Thales’s eclipse

Answer 6

• predicted an eclipse of the sun in 585 BC

Question 7

Thales’s olives

Answer 7

• deduced that there would be a bumper crop of olives
• He raised the money to put a deposit on the olive presses so that when the harvest was ready, he was able to rent them out at a rate that brought him a windfall
• In this way, Thales answered those who reproached him for his poverty.

Question 8

Value of Thales’ Claim?

Answer 8

• makes a falsifiable statement about the primal origin of all things
• uses language that has nothing to do with fable or myth
• attempts to explain the plurality of things in an ‘ultimate’ ontological sense

Question 9

Anaximander of Miletus

Answer 9

• same town as Thales
• first philosophical author whose words are recorded in the original and in prose
• Apeiron arche principle

Question 10

Apeiron

Answer 10

the unlimited, indeterminate, and indefinite ground, origin, or primal principle of all matter postulated by Anaximander

Question 11

who was the first philosopher to provide an ethical or moral interpretation of existence?

Answer 11

Anaximander

Question 12

Heraclitus points

Answer 12

• Logos: fire, always changing, always the same
• Logos is divine law, not gods, one God
• Soul can understand logos, not brain
• Change on the outside, fundamentally the same

Question 13

Permindes idea

Answer 13

• void
• x doesnt = y
• you can’t say “what is not”`

Question 14

same river?

Answer 14

Hericlitus says you cant step in the same river twice because it is constantly changing

Question 15

dog is a familiar soul

Answer 15

• Pythagoras sees someone kicking a dog and tells them to stop because there is a familiar soul in it
• states transmutation of souls through bodies

Question 16

Pythagras’s cosmos

Answer 16

the universe is arranged mathematically (beautiful/fundamental order)

Question 17

Atomists

Answer 17

• atomos = uncuttable
• atoms are fundamental thing
• Leucippus and Democritus

Question 18

Sophists

Answer 18

• “wise guys” and “practitioners of wisdom”
• turned away from natural philosophy and toward ethical, political, and social questions
• Their instruction was mostly concerned with winning arguments in legal and political matters

Question 19

Protagoras

Answer 19

• always make the weaker argument look stronger
• no truth beyond what we designate
• a person is the measure of all things

Question 20

Leucippus and his associate Democritus

Answer 20

• the full and the empty (void) are the elements
• what is and what is not
• full and solid vs empty and rare

Question 21

the differences are three:

Answer 21

• shape, arrangement, and position

Question 22

What does Democritus say?

Answer 22

• atoms come together to create things
• but all things are atoms

Question 23

Protagoras of Abdera

Answer 23

• sophist
• “Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.”

Question 24

“Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.”

Answer 24

• by Protagoras
• suggests that perceptions and judgments are subjective and can vary from person to person

Question 25

Sophistry and Relativism

Answer 25

• “Protagoras made the weaker and stronger argument and taught his students to blame and praise the same person.” (Stephanus)
• “Protagoras was the first to declare that there are two mutually opposed arguments on any subject.”
• “A person is the measure of all things – of things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not.” (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians)

Question 26

Relativism

Answer 26

• A person may judge that the weather is cold, whereas another may believe that the weather is hot.
• Both judgments, though contradictory, are not only simultaneously possible, but are correct.
• In this case, and many others, there is no absolute standard of judgment beyond the individual’s evaluation.
• Propositions are or are not true according to how the individual perceives them.
• Therefore truth, according to Protagoras, is relative, and differs according to each individual.

Question 27

Hippias of Elis

Answer 27

• sophist
• natural law (laws of nature) over conventional or theoretical law

Question 28

Sophists reputation

Answer 28

• bad rep
• Plato’s entire life’s work was consumed with defending his teacher (Socrates) against the accusations of sophistry
• In place of Protagoras’s relativism and Hippias’s naturalism, Plato believed the truth or falsity of statements or thoughts was its correspondence to immutable metaphysical absolutes, what he labels “Forms”