Pre-Socratics, Sophists and Socrates
- The Beginning of Greek Philosophy
- The Moral Universe in the Pre-Socractics
- The Greek Sophists
- Socrates
The Beginning of Greek Philosophy
Early Greek philosophers are pre-scientific scientists. They asks about questions of origins of cosmos as we know it. Early Greek poets, dramatists had the conviction that the cosmic order is also a moral order, there is a notion of cosmic justice in Odyssey and Iliad, Hesiod etc. The question is whether there is an order to the cosmos that includes a moral order and if it is a moral universe, how do we explain that effect. We have two philosophical lines of thought in accounting for the origin of Greek philosophy here, one that focus on reflection of the physical universe, and the other on the moral order.
Pre-Socratic philosophers can be grouped into monism and pluralism, the question is whether there is one basic elements that accounts for everything or there are many basic elements.
Milseians - Naive Monism
Thales thinks everything can be reducible to water, that is, water is the fundamental elements of the universe. Anaximander thinks “apeiron”, translated as “the infinite” or “the boundless” to be the primary substance. Anaximenes thinks air is the ultimate element that constitutes everything.
Pythagoras and Heraclitus - Double Aspect Monism
Pythagoras and Heraclitus were saying that there are two aspects of everything in nature, on the one hand everything is changing, on the other hand there is order, uniformity of nature. To think of change, Heraclitus think of the basic element as fire. Fire is constantly changing, yet there is regularity, therefore you have both change and order. Heraclitus proposes that there is Fire(change) and Logos(order). On the other hand, Pythagoras also talks about change and order, and the order he talks about is the mathematical order. And that means amidst all of life’s change we should live a rationally ordered life.
Eleatics - Absolute Monism
When we came to Eleatics, they want absolutely no pluralism, no world of change. Parmenides declares that change and plurality are illusory. Zeno tries to make the case for this claim. Zeno proposes many paradoxes in order to prove that change and plurality are illusions. Although the position that sense-perception is illusory is self-contradictory, the point is not the position they come up with, but the issues they pose, is the world of a radical pluralism with everything dis-associated, with no law and order?
Pluralism
Empedocles picks all four elements: earth, fire, air, water as four basic elements of the universe. And the change is caused by two forces, love and hate. Anaxagoras, on the other hand, thinks there must be a basic element for every qualitative different things, which are called seeds. But then how to account for the ordered unity of the universe? Anaxagoras uses “Nous” (Mind), that draws things into ordered unity, some sort of divine “Nous”, which marks the beginning of the theology in the ancient Greeks. While Empedocles and Anaxagoras were qualitative pluralists, Democritus is a qualitative monist, but a quantitative pluralist, that is to say physical things are composed of infinitesimal atoms, that cannot be split. And the qualitative differences of things are due to the combinations of atoms. The idea is the atoms come in different shapes, and they collide, hook onto each other, combine to larger aggregated form, and it is a result of chance of mechanical processes that whole body of things has been formed over the course of history. While Anaxagoras is suggesting a teleological explanation, that is to say there is cosmic mind that ordered things, Democritus has a purely mechanistic explanation, blind forces, combining by chance to produce the kinds of conglomerates that constitutes the cosmos.
Philosophical Agenda
Pre-Socratics formulates the philosophical agenda of the western philosophy and science, including questions on Metaphysics, questions having to do with the nature of reality, questions about the natural world, mechanism or teleology, about whether matter is real in itself, whether mind and matter are two substances, whether everything occur is deterministic or there is free will, whether there is ultimate source of cosmic order, whether God exists. Secondly, there is further agenda on epistemology, does all we know come from sense experience, as empiricists suggests, or as the rationalists like Parmenides and Zeno who disparage completely sense experience and that only abstract thought give us reliable knowledge. Thirdly, there are question about ethics, social philosophy. Both Pythagoras and Heraclitus maintain that if this is a rationally ordered universe then we should live a rationally ordered life if we want to fit into the universe. Even Democritus suggests that a life guided by reason has value in mechanistic materialist universe. Because blind forces cause pleasure and pain so if you understand the causal processes and guide your life about what you know you can minimize the pain and maximize pleasure. Out of these positions follow ethical positions, what is good life and what we have to do to pursue it.
The Moral Universe in the Pre-Socractics
Another view on Pre-Socratics except for pre-scientific science is pre-theology. For example, Heraclitus “Logos” and Anaxagoras “Nous”. However, there is a third way, for Plato and Aristotle, their metaphysical views are a part of larger concern to maintain that there is something that is good by nature. In the predecessors of Pre-Socratics, we can get the notion of cosmic justice and Pre-Socratics stand in continuity to these predecessors. Nature as a whole is ordered, and your moral life is ordered or law governed as well. There is a parallel between the orderliness of nature, of city-state and moral life. The poetry and literature plays a important role in the education of Pre-Socratics.
For example, Anaximander says the source of coming to be of existing things is that into which destruction to happens, those processes according to necessity, for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of time. This is a moral notion that there is justice in the end applies back into the nature.
Pythagoras founded a group that there was a harmony of opposing interests, a well-ordered, rationally governed life charactered by justice. He used the word “Paris”, which means order or boundary, as opposed to “Apeiron”, which is undefined, unlimited.
Xenophanes proposed a purely immaterial rational being in order to find an alternative to the basic conception of Gods among the Greeks.
In Heraclitus, those awake has one ordered universe, but in sleep, each turns away to their own world. The thinking faculty is in common to all, there is one same ordered universe. So, “listen not to me, but to logos”, not to a private understanding, but to the cosmic reason. “It’s wise to agree that all things are one”. If we trace the meaning of logos, the significance is rather in the rationality of it rather than speech. It is measure, harmony, order, value, meaning to life.
Anaxagoras is a pluralists, he believes that everything has a corresponding seeds and there is “Nous” that governs things. All thing with life are ruled by mind. In the book by Cicero of Roman, “On the Nature of Gods”, he says the first human thinker to hold the disposition of the universe is designed and perfected by a rational power of an infinite mind was Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras’ mind is not a creator, who creates things ex nihilo (out of nothing), but more of an architect, who brings order into chaos. Plato is not satisfied with the ideas of Anaxagoras, since he sees order but he fails to see there is a purpose as well as the way things are made. Although Plato’s purpose is intelligent but unconscious. There is an opposite view which is from Democritus, who don’t think there is “Nous” or “Logos”, and he thinks the order of cosmos is being a result of sheer chance, a purely mechanist account. Democritus is not likely to stress cosmic justice. When he talks about matters of ethics, pleasure and the absence of pleasure is the criteria of what is profitable or not. The criterion of advantageous and disadvantageous is enjoyment or lack of enjoyment. People are fools who lives without enjoyment, because in a world of sheer chance with no intrinsic order that ensures that right will out, eat, drink and be merry.
The Greek Sophists
Sophists questions the possibility of knowing the truth about the reality and nature. The incompatibility of different positions, equivalence of argument, that is the arguments for have no more weights than the arguments against surfaces in some of the Sophists. What they do then is turn to the pursuit of rhetoric. Moreover, their interests are in practical affairs, rather than theoretic, however, not following the pre-Socratic thought, which concerns the good and well ordered life, they view morality as conventional, a matter of social agreement, and therefore relativistic. They are more concerned about success, about winning an argument rather than the pursuit of truth. They are rejecting any natural moral law, and instead take on the alternative of ethical relativism. The book “Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry” from Alasdair MacIntyre has a modern introduction of ethical theory.
Protagoras says that men is the measure of all things. “Many things prevent knowledge including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life”. Another famous excerpt from Sophists Gorgias: Nothing exists. If anything exists, then it is incomprehensible. If it is comprehensible, it is incommunicable. In Plato’s Republic, Thrasymachus says: “Justice is the interest of stronger”, which is what Nietzsche described in his book “On the Genealogy of Morality”. The ethical relativists sees that the power behind rhetoric is that it appeals emotions rather than reason. This poses a contrast between the use of careful thinking, reflective argument, philosophical inquiry as against the use of rhetoric. Antiphon says: Justice is a matter of not transgressing the law of the city in which one is a citizen. A man can best conduct himself in harmony with justice if when in company with witnesses, he oppose the law and when without the witnesses he oppose the nature. The edicts of laws are artificially imposed, those of nature are compulsory. The edicts of laws are arrived by consent, while the laws of nature are not. If a man violates laws implanted in the nature, even if he evades all human detection, the ill is no less, and even if all see, the ill is no greater.
Skepticism comes from the disagreement in the pre-Socratic argument, but is the only alternative to pursuit of knowledge skepticism or relativism, with rhetoric and pursuit of power? Not necessarily. But if there is another alternative, we need a theory of knowledge. The problem is that the pre-Socratics are not methodological enough. In other words, we need a methodology of knowing, and it is precisely what Plato and Aristotle address. The attempt to understand the proper nature of knowledge in relationship to the methodology of knowing is the branch of philosophy called Epistemology.
Socrates
Socrates developed the Socratic method also known as dialectic, and he regarded himself as an intellectual midwife. His main concern is not success, but the moral nurture of the human soul, the care for the soul. And Plato follows him in concerning the improvement of the soul. Socrates tries to get people thinking about the truth, virtues using Dialectic. The subject of Socratics dialogues is knowing the truth about the moral ideals, the virtues. In the famous story written in Apology, where Socrates tries to defend himself against the accusations before his sentence, Socrates says the difficulty is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness when he was offered to escape in the prison.
Plato criticizes poets, like Homer, saying he doesn’t have any judgments of his own to make, but copies from others. He also criticizes Sophists, as they could make no meaningful distinctions between good and evil.