THE BEGINNINGS OF DOING PHILOSOPHY (Part 2)

Romans 8:28

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are
called according to His purpose.

Good Day Everyone!

Teacher's Note: Today we're going to continue our discussion about the different philosophers
who contributed in Philosophy.

Let's continue...

6. HERACLITUS- he was known for the mystical nature of its philosophy his idea of
CHANGE.

He believed that the only thing that is permanent in this world as CHANGE. He said, “You
cannot step twice into the same rivers, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. We step
and do not step into the same rivers, we are and are not.”
7. PARMENIDES – he leader of the Eleatic school from Elea in Southern Italy. His
philosophical idea is a contradiction of the idea of change from Heraclitus. He proposed that the
only thing that is permanent in this world is BEING. His idea that reality is being and that we
are, therefore interconnected.
8. EMPEDOCLES – he believed himself to be immortal and that he had magical powers. He was
known to have cured somebody who was comatose for 24 months. He was the proponent of the
notion that reality is made up of the four elements, earth, air, fire and water.

He is regarded as a pluralist because he had four elements as his fundamental substances that
reality is made of, instead of only one substance.

NOTE: Those philosophers who believed in just one element are considered as monist

9. ANAXAGORAS – they believed that there NOT just one element that reality is made of. As a
matter of fact, for him, there as many seeds or elements as there are kinds of things. Thus, for
him, matter becomes infinitely divisible. Whenever you divide matter, each separated part will
contain elements of everything else.

Teacher's Note: Another important contribution of Anaxagoras is his idea about the “NOUS” or
the mind, which was conceived of as external but is infinite and is self-ruled and according to
him, “mind has the greatest strength and power over all things.”
10. ZENO – student and loyal follower of Parmenides, as expected he would pronounce and
reiterate the idea of Parmenides that reality is BEING. Thus, to strengthen the point that we are
interconnected as being, he went to prove this assumption by pronouncing that there is no
motion.

11. LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS – contributed their idea that the ultimate substance that
reality is made of are ATOMS. Atoms which means inseparable or indivisible, must be the
ultimate constituent of matter.
12. EPICURUS – he said that philosophy could enable man to live a life of happiness, his views
gave rise to Epicureanism, a school of philosophy which believes the wisdom and simple living
will result in a life free of fear and pain.

THE TRIUMVERATE

 Socrates
 Plato
 Aristotle
SOCRATES – is being considered the foremost philosopher of ancient times. He did not claim to
be “wise” and merely considered himself a “midwife” that helped inquiring minds achieved
wisdom. He believed that philosophy could enable a man to live a life of virtue. He formulated
the Socratic method, which means of examining a topic by dividing a series of questions that let
the learner examine and analyze his knowledge.

PLATO – a student of Socrates, he wrote down his mentor’s teachings and incorporate some of
his ideas. His teachings and writings were considered the foundation of Western Philosophy.
His Dialectic, a method of inquiry were two opposing ideas are discussed in an attempt to arrive
at new knowledge. He founded the Academy, an institution of higher learning which was the
first of its kind in the Western world.
ARISTOTLE - is a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, who made important
contributions to logic, criticism, rhetoric, physics, biology, psychology, mathematics,
metaphysics, ethics, and politics. He was a student of Plato for twenty years but is famous for
rejecting Plato’s theory of forms. He was more empirically minded than Plato and Plato’s
teacher, Socrates.

Teacher's Note: As the father of western logic, Aristotle was the first to develop a formal system
for reasoning. He observed that the deductive validity of any argument can be determined by its
structure rather than its content, for example, in the syllogism: All men are mortal; Socrates is a
man; therefore, Socrates is mortal. Even if the content of the argument were changed from being
about Socrates to being about someone else, because of its structure, as long as the premises are
true, then the conclusion must also be true. Aristotelian logic dominated until the rise of
modern propositional logic and predicate logic 2000 years later.
6. HERACLITUS – A Greek philosopher of the late 6th century BCE, Heraclitus criticizes his
predecessors and contemporaries for their failure to see the unity in experience.

He believed that the only thing that is permanent in this world is CHANGE.

Please have a take note because this will be included to our quiz later.

PARMENIDES- Parmenides of Elea was a Pre-socratic Greek philosopher. As the first

philosopher to inquire into the nature of existence itself, he is incontrovertibly credited as
the “Father of Metaphysics.”

He is also commonly thought of as the founder of the “Eleatic School” of thought—a

philosophical label ascribed to Pre- Socratics who purportedly argued that reality is in some
sense a unified and unchanging singular entity.

His philosophical idea is a contradiction of the idea of change from Heraclitus. He proposed that
the only thing that is permanent in this world is BEING.
8. EMPEDOCLES- he believed himself to be immortal and that he had magical powers because
he cured somebody who was comatose for 24 months.

He was the proponent of the notion that reality is made up of the four
elements, earth, air, fire and water that’s why he is regarded as a pluralist.

ZENO- Greek philosopher and mathematician, whom Aristotle called the inventor of dialectic.

He is the student and loyal follower of Parmenides, Thus, to strengthen the point that we are
interconnected as being, he went to prove this assumption by pronouncing that there is no
motion.

Zeno is especially known for his paradoxes that contributed to the development of logical and
mathematical rigour and that were insoluble until the development of precise concepts
of continuity and infinity.

ANAXAGORAS- was an ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher who developed theories on the
substance and the formation of the universe.

Anaxagoras was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher with some unique ideas about where the
world came from and how the world came into being.

Anaxagoras is his idea about the “NOUS” or the mind, and according to him, “mind has the
greatest strength and power over all things.”

Do you agree to Anaxagoras when he said, the “mind has the greatest strength and power over
all things”? Explain your answer.

Author: Shaira Myrell Naling | Created at: Saturday, Oct 24, 2020 09:51:54 click to reply
LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS - Leucippus and Democritus were the earliest Greek
atomists.

He contributed their idea that the ultimate substance that reality is made of are ATOMS. Atoms
which means inseparable or indivisible, must be the ultimate constituent of matter.

EPICURUS- Epicurus developed an unsparingly materialistic metaphysics, empiricist

epistemology, and hedonistic ethics.

He said that philosophy could enable man to live a life of happiness; his views gave rise
to Epicureanism, a school of philosophy which believes the wisdom and simple living will result
in a life free of fear and pain.

Triumvirate means a group or association of three.

These three I think were the famous philosophers.

These are SOCRATES, PLATO & ARISTOTLE. Let us take them one by one to know their
significant contribution to Philosphy.

The first one among the Three or the TRIUMVIRATE was…

SOCRATES- he is being considered the foremost philosopher of ancient times. The best account
of life and work of one of the most influential philosophers of all times is given by the later
classical writers, in the first place by his students Plato and Xenophon and the playwright
Aristophanes who was his contemporary.

He did not claim to be “wise” and merely considered himself a “midwife” that helped inquiring
minds achieved wisdom.
He is the inventor of the so-called Socratic method or elenchus which remains one of the most
commonly used approaches not only to answer the fundamental questions of philosophy but it
also serves as a tool for scientific research.

PLATO- Plato was said to be an ancient Greek philosopher. He studied Socrates also he was a
teacher of Aristotle and he found the academy. He authored philosophical works of unparalleled
influences. He influenced many of the writers or researchers such as Heraclitus, Parmenides, and
Pythagoreans.

He is the student of Socrates, he wrote down his mentor’s teachings and incorporate some of his
ideas. His teachings and writings were considered the foundation of Western Philosophy.

Wag malito ha, Plato is the student of Socrates thus Socrates was the teacher of Plato.

ARISTOTLE- He was a student of Plato for twenty years but is famous for rejecting Plato’s
theory of forms. He was more empirically minded than Plato and Plato’s teacher, Socrates.

He made important contributions to logic, criticism, rhetoric, physics, biology, psychology,

mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, and politics.

As the father of western logic, Aristotle was the first to develop a formal system for reasoning.
He observed that the deductive validity of any argument can be determined by its structure rather
than its content, for example, in the syllogism.

Among the two which is Socrates and Plato, Aristotle was the bravest and take note he rejected
Plato’s theory of forms.