Greek Philosophy: An Introduction

Lecturer: Wu Shiyu

Email: shiyuw@sjtu.edu.cn

Website ： http://sla.sjtu.edu.cn/bbs

Timeline

Greek Philosophy(585 B.C.-323 B.C.)

??

Timeline

Greek Philosophy(585 B.C.-323 B.C.)

Myth(poetry)

Story telling

CHAOS (Nothingness)

古希腊时间表

Minoan civilization(2000-1200BC)

Mycenacan civilization(1500-1200BC)

The Dark Age (1150-700BC)

Greek Archaic Age(700-600BC)(Renaissance )

Greek Golden Age(600-400BC(Golden Age)

Homeric Age

Creation of Myths

Greek Philosophy

Course Overview

Three questions:

• What are we going to study?

• Why should we study ancient Greek philosophy?

• How will we study it?

Subject Matter

Four periods

Greek Philosophy(585 B.C.-322 B.C.)

Pre-Socrates Thales (585 B.C.)

Socrates (469-369 B.C.)

Plato(429-347

B.C.)

Aristotle(384–322B.C.)

Anaximander Anaximenes

Xenophanes Pythagoras Heraclitus (535-475 B.C.) Parmenides (515-440 B.C.)

2. Subject Matter (Question 1)

Four distinctive periods: • The Pre-Socratics: Thales of M (585 B.C.)• Socrates: 469–399 BC. • Plato: 429–347BC. • Aristotle: 384–322BC.

The earliest period of western philosophy .

3. Why Study? (Question 2)

(1) Monumental influences

Plato, Aristotle, subsequent western philosophy

(2) Philosophically interesting, provocative, valuable.

4. Interesting, Provocative, Valuable

Philosophy=love (philia) of wisdom (sophia)

?

5. What is wisdom?

The Ability to answer “fundamental” or the “perennial” questions.

Examples

Question 1:

Is anything stable and in our experience, is there anything permanent, or is reality always changing?

Or is everything in flux? Is it flowing?

Examples

Question 2:

Are human beings capable of understanding reality as it is in itself?

Or is reality always seen from a human perspective, which distorts it? Must reality remain a mystery?

Examples

Questions 3:

Are ethical values, values like justice and courage, relative or are they absolute?

(Relativist and Absolutist: stealing)

Examples

Question 4:

What sort of political community is most just? What about democracy?

Along with the question of democracy come two other questions basic in western tradition: the question of freedom and question of equality.

1. Is it freedom the highest value?

We often associate freedom with democracy.

2. Are all human beings to be counted as equal?

Question 5:

What is the proper and best relationship that a human being can take to the natural world?

“Man is the measure of all things.”

-----Protagoras (Greek sophist)

6. 如何学？ (Question 3)

Approached “dialectically.”

They engage in a “dialogue.”

学问之道

These thinkers acknowledge and are dependent on their predecessors, but criticize and move beyond them.

7. 三个哲学 术语 ( P Terms)

Being (archê ): The principle (origin) of all things

The origin of all things in becoming

Becoming

one and many

Logos ( 逻格斯 )

Logos: A rational explanation. (Heraclitus)

Suffix of many English words

Pre-Socrates: Quest for Being (the archê) and Becoming

Pre-Socrates

The Milesian School

Thales (624-546 B.C.), Anaximander (610-540 B.C.), and Anaximenes (585-528 B.C. ).

Began their quest for being (the archê):

How the world is originated?

Look for a unifying element

What is there behind all the constant change? Come up with their own theory.

Thales ( 泰勒斯 )

Date: 624-546 B.C. from Miletus;

The founder of philosophy

“The first to give logos of nature” (Aristotle).

“Water is the archê.”

Water is what is unchanging in a world of changing

Thales (624-546 B.C.)Thales (624-546 B.C.)

One of the Seven Wise Men One of the Seven Wise Men

Thales of Miletus (624-546 B.C.)(624-546 B.C.)

经验主义者和理性主义者

Empiricist ： Relies on experience of the world in order to gain knowledge.

Rationalist: Relies on pure reason alone in order to achieve knowledge

Anaximander Anaximander ( 阿那克西曼德 )

(610- 540 B.C.)

Anaximander ( 阿那克西曼德 )

Student of Thales (610- 540 B.C.) Agreed with Thales: The world has an origin (archê). Disagreed: The archê is not in ordinary, limited, determinate substance like water.

The archê: “The indefinite,” to apeiron.To apeiron : “The indefinite,” or “the indeterminate.”

阿那克西曼德的写作风格

Anaximander 有一回这样言简意赅地说道：

“事物生于何处，则必按照必然性毁于何处；因为它们必遵循时间的秩序支付罚金，为其非公义性而受审判。”

（想起米利都这个城邦的命运）

Anaximenes(Anaximenes( 阿那克西米尼阿那克西米尼 ))

Anaximenes( 阿那克西米尼 )

Anaximenes: Student of Anaximander,

Agreed: There is a rational archê of the world

There was a problem with Thales’ view.

Disagreed: No different from Hesiod’ CHAOS.

The archê was air.

With air, Anaximenes attempted to solve the problem of Being and Becoming, of the One and the Many.

SummarySummary

Spirit of free inquiry, challenge the traditional and established ideas, and also present their own. Using his reasoning capacity, senses, mind. The battle that Plato 200 years later would describe as the old battle between philosophy and poetry.

前苏格拉底派 ( 中篇 )

A kind of crisis has been developing in the sixth century, in the ancient Greek philosophy:

The Relationship between Being and Becoming.

.

Two of the greatest and most radical solutions to the problem of Being and Becoming:

Heraclitus and ParmenidesParmenides

Heraclitus and ParmenidesHeraclitus and Parmenides

Two of the greatest and most radical solutions to the problem of Being and Becoming.

Heraclitus: The Obscure

(540 - 470 B.C.)

Heraclitus: The Obscure

(540 - 470 B.C.)

1. Heraclitus: The Obscure

In Ephesus, near Miletus (540 - 470 B.C.)

Some 100 fragments or aphorisms （警句）

Lonely life he led

The riddling nature of his philosophy

Contempt for humankindHeraclitus (540-470 B.C.)

??

2. Heraclitus’ Writing

Heraclitus writes: short, aphoristic saying.(?)

A short saying: provoke thought

“You can’t step into the same river twice.”

His favorite image: river

River stands for becoming (reality itself)

Flowing, in constant motion

As we step into it, it changes

3. Heraclitus’ Logos

“Everything flows"

Change being central to the universe.

Then: If nothing stable, how possible to give a logos?

Heraclitus: “The Logos is common.”

What sort of logos could this possibly be?

4. More fragments

"The road up and the road down, are one and the same.“

“The same thing is both living and dead.”

"Changing, it rests.“

“S” is both “p” and not “p”.

Heraclitus contradicts himself.

Sounds irrational.

This is his strength, not a weakness.

Rational and expressive.

Nothing stable, permanent, endures; Everything flows

Then: Everything in a process of moving from

“P to Not P”

Take the river as an example.

“We step and we do not step into the same rivers.”

The river is both it and is not itself.

5. A Relativist

If nothing is permanent, then nothing is absolute.

Values would also be in flux (Stealing).

“The sea is purest and most polluted water.”

“Pigs rejoice in mud more than pure water”;

“Asses would choose rubbish rather gold”.

The sense of relativism.

6. Milesian or Anti-Milesian?

“The cosmos was always and is and shall be…”

“an ever living fire.”

“War is the father of all and the king of all.”

“A lifetime is a child playing, the kingdom belogs …

“to A child.”

Fire, war, and Play have in common (?)

7. Influences of Heraclitus

The real power of Heraclitus’ logos:

It is a logos which: contradicts itself, moves, plays.

The German philosopher: Nietzsche

The German thinker: Martin Heidegger

20th century thinkers.

Nietzsche: courage and honesty face reality

Christianity

God

escapism

Naming

Language

The name misleading

Why his language short. (language misleading)

Conclusion: The Weeping Philosopher

"Among the wise, instead of anger, Heraclitus was overtaken by tears, Democritus by laughter."

世界是一个苦海， 人们置身其中惟有哭泣。

Heraclitus: eliminate being

Being and Becoming

Reactions to Heraclitus

Now anyone confronting Heraclitus have two reactions:

(1) beautifully expressive and compelling,

(2)wait! A philosopher shouldn't speak this way. a philosopher shouldn't contradict himself. This stuff of Heraclitus is

merely a pure nonsense.

The latter is Parmenides.

Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor

Questions to Consider

1. What do you make of Heraclitus’s way of writing? Are his paradoxical statements offensive to you, or do you find them intellectually attractive?

2. Of all Heraclitus’s fragments, which do you find to be most expressive of his philosophical position?

Questions to discuss

1. Do you think that the world has an archêarchê? If so, does it seem more plausible to you that it is determinate or indeterminate?2. What might be some contemprary candidates for the archê?archê?

3. The contemporary world is often described as “the 3. The contemporary world is often described as “the age of the computer.” Are we living in Pythagorean age of the computer.” Are we living in Pythagorean times?times?4. Do you think there are aspects of life that cannot be 4. Do you think there are aspects of life that cannot be reduced to numbers? What might these be?reduced to numbers? What might these be?

Biology=a logos of life; Biology=a logos of life;

Psychology= the logos of the soul or mindPsychology= the logos of the soul or mind

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”

---Alfred North Whitehead

He was simply known as “the philosopher.” His writings became the organizing principle of European universities, and they still shape these institution today.

Tell me these things, Olympian Muses,

From the beginning, and tell which of them came first.

In the beginning there was only Chaos,

But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being,

….

Hesiod’s Theogony

Rule by opinion (doxa)

Not rule by wisdom

“Perverted form of government” (Plato)

Democracy allows for philosophy (criticism of democracy itself)

“Dialectic” from the Greek dialegesthai, “to converse.”

Look in the eye and communicate

“spoon-feeding” teaching method,

“dialogue -- questions and answers”

In the give and take of conversation

““Of those who first pursued philosophy, the Of those who first pursued philosophy, the majority believed that the majority believed that the only principles of all only principles of all thingsthings are principles in the forms of matter. For are principles in the forms of matter. For that that out ofout of which all existing things are which all existing things are composed and that composed and that out ofout of which they originally which they originally come into beingcome into being, that, that into into which they finally which they finally perish, the substance persisting, but changing perish, the substance persisting, but changing in all of its attributes. ”in all of its attributes. ”

Quoting from AristotleQuoting from Aristotle

Thank You!