Parmenides [c.515-450 B.C]

Parmenides of Elea was born approximately in 515 BCE in Elea, Italy. He died sometime around the year 450 BCE, though the place of his death is unknown. He was a Greek philosopher.

Not much is known about the life of Parmenides. He is often considered the founder of the Eleatic School, and it is assumed that both Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos were among his students, and that he himself was the pupil of Xenophanes. Parmenides was also a, albeit, younger, contemporary of Heraclitus, whose philosophy was radically opposed to that of Parmenides. Briefly, the main distinction is that Heraclitus affirms becoming, while Parmenides argues that such becoming (or change as such) is nothing but an appearance. Due to his conviction that there is only one essence (namely Being, a single and unchangeable whole) Parmenides is sometimes referred to as a “monist.”

Parmenides is believed to have composed only one work, a poem entitled Peri physeōs (On Nature), which, examining the question of Being, had an enormous impact on earlier Greek philosophy. Only nineteen fragments (or about one hundred and sixty lines) have survived, which is mostly due to Sextus Empiricus, who copied almost all the fragments, and Simplicius, who in his commentaries on Aristotle cited great parts of the poem. The poem was originally divided into three parts: a Prelude; The Way of Truth (“aletheia”); and The Way of Opinion (“doxa”).

In the introduction, Parmenides describes a journey from the dark to the light. Carried in a chariot, the narrator, a young man, eventually meets a goddess: “The steeds that bear me carried me as far as ever my heart desired, since they brought me and set me on the renowned way of the goddess [….] There are the gates of the ways of Night and Day, fitted above with a lintel and below with a threshold of stone. They themselves, high in the air, are closed by mighty doors, and avenging Justice keeps the keys that open them.”

The elucidations of the goddess, wherein she enlightens him on what is truth, compose the rest of the work. The narrator is requested to learn all things, as well the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, as the opinions of mortals in which is no true belief at all. Yet none the less shalt thou learn of these things also, since thou must judge approvedly of the things that seem to men as thou goest through all things in thy journey.

The second, and main part of the poem deals with what is real: with that which is and with that which is not. Affirming that there are “only two ways of search that can be thought of,” it commences with a clear duality, namely the one between truth and the one that cannot even be known.

The first, namely, that It is, and that it is impossible for anything not to be, is the way of conviction, for truth is its companion. The other, namely, that It is not, and that something must needs not be, - that, I tell thee, is a wholly untrustworthy path. For you cannot know what is not - that is impossible - nor utter it; for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.

The “truth” thus proposed by Parmenides’ goddess is that only what is is (true), and “what is not” is not and cannot be. What is is eternal, as it cannot become, and what is cannot be destroyed, as there is nothing outside of it. As it is “impossible for anything not to be,” change, that is taking place in this nothing, is impossible. For one cannot know nor utter what is not, not-being can neither be nor be thought.

Being indestructible, complete, changeless, and immovable, only the path of being can be known. “What is” is timeless. From this Parmenides concludes that there is no time that was outside the whole and immovable present. Future, therefore, is impossible; nothing comes into being. If being becomes, being, therefore, is not. “What is” is everywhere and remains the same, though it is also confined within the limits; “what is” is not infinite, as it needs nothing.

Of the third part the least fragments survived. It is here where Parmenides divides between the “real” and the “opinions” of men, and it is here where he grants plurality an existence within unity. This is first and foremost reflected in the last lines. In recapitulation of the poem, Parmenides yet again accounts for the men’s erroneous belief in becoming, which, just as passing, is to be seen as mere appearance:

Thus, according to men’s opinions, did things come into being, and thus they are now. In time (they think) they will grow up and pass away.

Thus in order that “no mortal may surpass thee in knowledge” the narrator is first told to learn about the fallacious sentiments of mortals and how things appear to them. Men, the goddess states, distinguish between two forms, “one of which they should have left out, and that is where they go astray from the truth. They have assigned an opposite substance to each, and marks distinct from one another. To the one they allot the fire of heaven, light, thin, in every direction the same as itself, but not the same as the other. The other is opposite to it, dark night, a compact and heavy body.”

But now that “all things have been named light and night,” Parmenides gives evidence of his conviction that they are not (to be) separated. There is only one single, unchangeable whole, which at the same time contains light and dark, “everything is full at once of light and dark night, both equal, since neither has aught to do with the other.”

Parmenides then elaborates on his cosmology, of which not much is known. In view of his conviction that nothing becomes but that everything always already is it seems interesting that he apparently negates a creation ex nihilo. In contrast, the narrator is told about the “origin of all the things,” namely how “the earth, and the sun, and the moon, and the sky that is common to all, and the Milky Way, and the outermost Olympos, and the burning might of the stars arose.” According to Parmenides, the cosmos consists of circles, of both light and dark: “The narrower circles are filled with unmixed fire, and those surrounding them with night, and in the midst of these rushes their portion of fire.” In “the midst of these circles” however, there is a female divinity that “directs the course of all things; for she rules over all painful birth and all begetting, driving the female to the embrace of the male, and the male to that of the female.” From her everything emerges, Eros being the “first of all the gods she contrived.” More on the cosmology seems to follow, yet those presumed fragments of Parmenides’ discourse have not been found.

Despite the fact that there has only been a limited number of fragments recovered and that there is not any unified agreement on how to interpret Parmenides’ work, it is evident that his influence on Western thought is paramount and he is considered one of the most important pre-Socratics. In addition to Plato, whom Parmenides had an enormous influence on, so much so that Plato named a dialogue after him, it is said that his work has also had a certain impact on Empedocles as well as on earlier atomists such as Democritus and Leucippus.

Heraclitus [540-475 B.C.]

HERACLITUS (Ἡράκλειτος; c. 540-475 B.C.), Greek philosopher, was born at Ephesus of distinguished parentage. Of his early life and education we know nothing; from the contempt with which he spoke of all his fellow-philosophers and of his fellow-citizens as a whole we may gather that he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom. 

So intensely aristocratic (hence his nickname ὀχλολοίδορος, "he who rails at the people") was his temperament that he declined to exercise the regal-hieratic office of βασιλεύς which was hereditary in his family, and presented it to his brother. It is probable, however, that he did occasionally intervene in the affairs of the city at the period when the rule of Persia had given place to autonomy; it is said that he compelled the usurper Melancomas to abdicate. From the lonely life he led, and still more from the extreme profundity of his philosophy and his contempt for mankind in general, he was called the "Dark Philosopher" (ὁ σκοτεινός), or the "Weeping Philosopher," in contrast to Democritus, the "Laughing Philosopher." κακοὶ μάρτυρες Heraclitus is in a real sense the founder of metaphysics. 

 Starting from the physical standpoint of the Ionian physicists, he accepted their general idea of the unity of nature, but entirely denied their theory of being. The fundamental uniform fact in nature is constant change (πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει); everything both is and is not at the same time. He thus arrives at the principle of Relativity; harmony and unity consist in diversity and multiplicity. The senses are "bad witnesses" (κακοὶ μάρτυρες); only the wise man can obtain knowledge. To appreciate the significance of the doctrines of Heraclitus, it must be borne in mind that to Greek philosophy the sharp distinction between subject and object which pervades modern thought was foreign, a consideration which suggests the conclusion that, while it is a great mistake to reckon Heraclitus with the materialistic cosmologists of the Ionic schools, it is, on the other hand, going too far to treat his theory, with Hegel and Lassalle, as one of pure Panlogism. Accordingly, when he denies the reality of Being, and declares Becoming, or eternal flux and change, to be the sole actuality, Heraclitus must be understood to enunciate not only the unreality of the abstract notion of being, except as the correlative of that of not-being, but also the physical doctrine that all phenomena are in a state of continuous transition from non-existence to existence, and vice versa, without either distinguishing these propositions or qualifying them by any reference to the relation of thought to experience. " Every thing is and is not'"; all things are, and nothing remains. So far he is in general agreement with Anaximander (q.v.), but he differs from him in the solution of the problem, disliking, as a poet and a mystic, the primary matter which satisfied the patient researcher, and demanding a more vivid and picturesque element. Naturally he selects fire, according to him the most complete embodiment of the process of Becoming, as the principle of empirical existence, out of which all things, including even the soul, grow by way of a quasi condensation, and into which all things must in course of time be again resolved. But this primordial fire is in itself that divine rational process, the harmony of which constitutes the law of the universe (see LOGOS). 

Real knowledge consists in comprehending this all-pervading harmony as embodied in the manifold of perception, and the senses are "bad-witnesses," because they apprehend phenomena, not as its manifestation, but as "stiff and dead." In like manner real virtue consists in the subordination of the individual to the laws of this harmony as the universal reason wherein alone true freedom is to be found." The law of things is a law of Reason Universal (λόγος), but most men live as though they had a wisdom of their own." 

Ethics here stands to sociology in a close relation, similar, in many respects, to that which we find in Hegel and in Comte. For Heraclitus the soul approaches most nearly to perfection when it is most akin to the fiery vapour out of which it was originally created, and as this is most so in death, " while we live our souls are dead in us, but when we die our souls are restored to life." The doctrine of immortality comes prominently forward in his ethics, but whether this must not be reckoned with the figurative accommodation to the popular theology of Greece which pervades his ethical teaching, is very doubtful. The school of disciples founded by Heraclitus flourished for long after his death, the chief exponent of his teaching being Cratylus. 

A good deal of the information in regard to his doctrines has been gathered from the later Greek philosophy, which was deeply influenced by it.

Anaximander [611 - 547 B.C.]

Anaximander from Miletus (611 - 547 B.C.), was Thales's disciple. He perceived world in quite a simple way - as the composition of contrasts: dry and wet, hot and cold. You might think that quite a smart teacher had quite a silly disciple. Well... not exactly because Anaximander said that one contrast element couldn't came from the other and it would be a mistake to declare any one of them as a basic element. "So what" you may say again. So what?! Think! He found out that there is more than one basic substance. Nowadays we call them chemical elements. 

Think again! - There was a man living before Christ who knew that some things cannot change into others just as we today know that for example copper cannot be changed into gold and vice versa!
 

That is not all about him - he believed in the subsistence of substance he called "apeiron". He thought it was a great, infinite in time and space, undiverted and neutral immensity. Strange features? Well, as for us apeiron resembles something well known nowadays - vacuum! Of course Anaximander wasn't always that right: He said that apeiron filled the whole world and was a creative element of all the other substances which later disappeared in it. 

According to Anaximander oppositions included in apeiron could separate. What he also maintained is that matter was combined with motion making a unit.
And what do you think about him now?

More on Anaximander: Fragments

Anaximander of Miletos, son of Praxiades, a fellow-citizen and associate of Thales, said that the material cause and first element of things was the Infinite, he being the first to intro­duce this name for the material cause. He says it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but a substance different from them, which is infinite, from which arise all the heavens and the worlds within them. And into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more, "as is ordained; for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice according to the appointed time," as he says in these somewhat poetical terms. —Phys. Op. fr. 2 (R. P. 16). 

He says that the earth is cylindrical in form, and that its depth is as a third part of its breadth. He says that something capable of begetting hot and cold was separated off from the eternal at the origin of this world. From this arose a sphere of flame which grew round the air encircling the earth, as the bark grows round a tree. When this was torn off and enclosed in certain rings, the sun, moon, and stars came into existence.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 2 (R. P. 19).

He says that this is eternal and ageless, and that it encom­passes all the worlds.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 17 a).

And besides this, there was an eternal motion, in the course of which was brought about the origin of the worlds. The earth swings free, held in its place by nothing. It stays where it is because of its equal distance from everything. Its shape is convex and round, and like a stone pillar. We are on one of the surfaces, and the other is on the opposite side. The heavenly bodies are wheels of fire separated off from the fire which encircles the world, and enclosed in air. And they have breathing-holes, certain pipe-like passages at which the heavenly bodies are seen. For this reason, too, when the breathing-holes are stopped, eclipses occur. And the moon appears now to wax and now to wane because of the stopping and opening of the passages. The circle of the sun is twenty-seven times the size (of the earth, while that) of the moon is eighteen times as large. The sun is highest of all, and lowest are the wheels of the fixed stars. Living creatures arose from the moist element as it was evaporated by the sun. Man was like another animal, namely, a fish, in the beginning.—Hipp. Ref. 1. 6 (R. P. 22 a).

Rain was produced by the moisture drawn up from the earth by the sun.—Hipp. Ref, i. 6, 7 (Dox. p. 560).

Further, there cannot be a single, simple body which is infinite, either, as some hold, one distinct from the elements, which they then derive from it, nor without this qualification. For there are some who make this (i.e. a body distinct from the elements) the infinite, and not air or water, in order that the other things may not be destroyed by their infinity. They are in opposition one to another—air is cold, water moist, and fire hot—and therefore, if any one of them were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be by this time. Accordingly they say that is infinite is something other than the elements, and from it the element arise. Arist. Phys. Γ, 5, 204 b 22 (R. P. 16 b).

Those who assumed innumerable worlds, e.g. Anaximander, Leukippos, Demokritos, and, a later date, Epicurus, held that they came into being and others passing away.

Anaximander said the stars were hoop-like compressions of air, full of fire, breathing out flames at a certain point from orifices. The sun was highest of all, after it came the moon, and below these the fixed stars and the planets.—Aetios, ii. 13, 7; 15, 6 (R P. 19 a).

Anaximander said the sun was a ring twenty-eight times the size of the earth, like a cart-wheel with the felloe hollow and full of fire, showing the fire at a certain point, as if through the nozzle of a pair of bellows.—Act. ii. 20, i (R. P. 19 a).

Anaximander said the sun was equal to the earth, but the ring from which it breathes out and by which it is carried round was twenty-seven times as large as the earth.—Aet. ii. 21, i (Dox. p. 351).

Anaximander said the moon was a ring eighteen times the size of the earth. . . .—Aet. ii. 25, i (Dox, p. 355).

Anaximander held that thunder and lightning were caused by the blast. When it is shut up in a thick cloud and bursts forth with violence, then the breakage of the cloud makes the noise, and the rift gives the appearance of a flash by contrast with the darkness of the cloud.—Aet. iii. 3, i (Dox. p. 367).

Anaximander held that wind was a current of air (i.e. vapour) which arose when its finest and moistest particles were set in motion or dissolved by the sun.—Aet. iii. 6, i (Dox. P- 374).

The sea is what is left of the original moisture. The fire has dried up most of it and turned the rest salt by scorching it—Aet. iii. 16, i (R. P. 20 a).

The first animals were produced in the moisture, each en­closed in a prickly bark. As they advanced in age, they came out upon the drier part   When the bark broke off, they survived for a short time.—Aet v. 19, i (R. P. 22).

He declares that at first human beings arose in the inside of fishes, and after having been reared like sharks, and become capable of protecting themselves, they were finally cast ashore and took to land.—Plut Symp. Quaest, 730 f (R. P. 22.).

  

      

Pythagoras [ca. 571- ca. 497 BCE]

Pythagoras (ca. 571- ca. 497 BCE) was a Greek philosopher born on the island of Samos, off Asia Minor, where his ancestors had settled after leaving Phlius, a city in the northwest Peleponnese, after the civil war there in 380 BCE. While this 'fact’ of Pythagoras’ life is held to be true, it, like so much else written of the man, is impossible to verify. None of Pythagoras’ own writings remain and so much mythology grew up surrounding him, much of it by later writers who accepted, uncritically, what they read by others, that all one can say with certainty is that there was a figure in ancient Greece named Pythagoras and that this man founded a philosophical/religious order known as the Pythagoreans.

Plato, in his Phaedo, makes use of Pythagoras’ link to Philius, in choosing Echecrates of Phlius as Phaedo’s audience for the story of Socrates’ last day. In that Socrates’ interlocutors in the dialogue, Simmias and Cebes of Thebes, are both Pythagoreans, and as the dialogue is chiefly concerned with the immortality of the soul as Pythagoras is said to have envisioned it, Plato’s choice of Echecrates links the dialogue directly to Pythagorean thought from the first line.

Yet what, exactly, was 'Pythagorean thought’?

From what was written of him, it would seem Pythagoras founded a religious order which emphasized personal salvation through withdrawal from worldly pursuits and a focus on a strict philosophical and mathematical regimen. The Pythagoreans were vegetarians and believed that the soul was immortal and passed through many incarnations. To Pythagoras, vegetarianism was a path to inner peace and, by extension, world peace in that humans could never live in harmony with each other as long as they killed and ate animals. Xenophanes, a contemporary, wrote derisively of Pythagoras that, “Once they say that he was passing by when a dog was being whipped and he took pity and said, 'Stop, do not beat it; for it is the soul of a friend that I recognized when I heard it giving tongue.’” Since one could easily be re-born as a cow or a sheep in one’s next life, eating any living thing was as strictly prohibited as cannibalism would be.

The Transmigration of Souls, as Pythagoras called it, greatly influenced Plato’s thought and, perhaps, Socrates himself, in the claim that learning is recollecting, as argued in Plato’s Meno and mentioned in the Phaedo and elsewhere. If we die with our mind intact, we will 'remember’ what we learned during that life when we are born into our next incarnation. What we think we 'learn’, therefore, in this life, we are actually only 'remembering’ from our past life. Those whom we term 'child prodigies’, then, are simply people who remember their former lives better than most do.

Most famous today for his Pythagorean Theorem in geometry, Pythagoras asserted that “things are numbers” and that one could understand the physical world through mathematics. In this way, also, he greatly influenced Plato as it is known that Plato’s Theory of Forms is chiefly geometry and that Plato admitted any Greek-speaking student into his Academy as long as they knew geometry. To Pythagoras, mathematics was a course of study to pursue toward enlightenment and understanding and, as he allegedly claimed, “Ten is the very nature of number” and by this 'number’ he meant not only a unit of measurement but a means by way of which the world could be grasped and understood.

Thales [Miletus, 624-546 BC]

Traditionally regarded as the first Western philosopher and mathematician, Thales of Miletus (a Greek colony on the west coast of present day Turkey) lived c. 585 BCE. He accurately predicted the solar eclipse of May 28, 585 BCE and was known as a skilled astronomer, geometer, statesman and sage.

Thales, it is said, was the first to ask the question, “What is the basic 'stuff' of the universe” and, according to Aristotle, claimed the First Cause was water because, among other attributes, water could change shape and move while still remaining unchanging in substance. There are no known writings by Thales and all that is known of his life and work is through what we have written about him by others.

Aristotle tells the story of how Thales proved to his contemporaries the practical use of philosophy:

When they reproached him because of his poverty, as though philosophy were no use, it is said that, having observed through his study of the heavenly bodies that there would be a large olive crop, he raised a little capital while it was still winter, and paid deposits on all the olive presses in Miletus and Chios, hiring them cheaply because no one bid against him. When the appropriate time came there was a sudden rush of requests for the presses; he then hired them out on his own terms and so made a large profit, thus demonstrating that it is easy for philosophers to be rich, if they wish, but that it is not in this that they are interested.

There seems to be no subject which was not of interest to Thales but, according to Aristotle (in his Metaphysics) he was chiefly concerned with the First Cause - that from which all else came - and declared it to be water. Some scholars have claimed that Thales derived this concept from the ancient Greek paradigm of the universe in which, in the beginning, all was undifferentiated chaos in the form of water, while others have claimed that Thales learned the concept while studying in Babylon.

According to Aristotle and other writers of antiquity, Thales was regarded as an original thinker and his 'water theory' does not bear a close relationship with the Greek mythological assertion nor with any Babylonian texts which have come down to us. While Thales does assert, as the Greek myth does, that the earth rests on water, Thales' theory dismisses any supernatural causes for this state of being. For Thales, there were practical, provable, logical reasons for why things happened and the gods had nothing to do with observable phenomena.

With this in mind, it is interesting to note that another of Thales' famous claims was that "All things are full of gods".  In his De Anima, Aristotle writes, "Thales, too, to judge from what is recorded of his views, seems to suppose that the soul is in a sense the cause of movement, since he says that a stone [magnet, or lodestone] has a soul because it causes movement to iron’ (405 a20-22). What, exactly, Thales meant by this statement is unclear but it has been suggested, and is probable, that by 'gods' he simply meant energy and that Plato later re-interpreted Thales' statement according to his own idealism and popularized it.

Thales founded the Milesian School which, today, would equate with a private college at which young men could pursue a course of study in debate, investigation, and exploration of the world around them. While there is no evidence that Thales was an atheist or that he taught atheism, there is ample evidence that the traditional understanding of the gods had no place in his teachings. His most famous pupil, Anaximender, carried on this same point of view as did Anaximenes, also of the Milesian School, after him.

Among his many achievements, Thales 'discovered' Ursa Minor, studied electricity, developed geometry, contributed to the practical application of mathematics later developed by Euclid, studied in Egypt and, perhaps, Babylon, developed a crude telescope, `discovered' the seasons and set the solstice, created what would later be known as `natural philosophy', and was recognized, along with illustrious men like Solon, as one of The Seven Sages of Ancient Greece (first mentioned in Plato's dialogue of the Protagoras). According to Diogenes Laertius, "This wise Thales died while present as a spectator at a gymnastic contest, being worn out with heat and thirst and weakness, for he was very old, and the following inscription was placed on his tomb: You see this tomb is small—but recollect, The fame of Thales reaches to the skies." While later philosophers disagreed with Thales’ claim that water was the First Cause and basic substance of the universe, his work inspired those who would come to be known as the Pre-Socratic Philosophers to pursue their own paths and develop their own philosophical systems which would finally culminate in the vision of Socrates and have resonance far beyond the ancient world.