AM+DG

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY (Reviewer) 1st Quiz

Introduction to Ancient Philosophy

Notes from Fr. Payo’s lecture (Jan. 15)

Classic (scholastic) definition of Philosophy

- The study of all things through its first principles and
ultimate causes in the light of human reason alone.
The word Ancient comes from the Latin word Ante which means before.
The history of thought in Ancient Greece (the age of antiquity) can be divided
into:
1. The Age of Mythos
o The time when people began to believe/create origin stories and
as well as the gods of Mount Olympus to explain things that are
happening in the world. [Prominent names: Homer, Illiad,
Hesiod, etc.]
2. The Age of Logos
o The time when men began to look beyond explanations provided
by their polytheism (belief in many gods) and superstition with
the commitment to argument and critical inquiry.
[Prominent names: Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, etc.]

PRESOCRATICS
- Philosophers (thinkers) that lived before Socrates.
- The first group of thinkers classified as Presocratics originated from the
Greek city of Miletus in Ionian coast of Asia Minor (modern-day
Turkey). Thus they are called the Milesians. [In Copleston’s book, the first
thinkers are also called the ‘Ionians’.]
- The first thinkers were dissatisfied with the explanations
provided by the people’s faith in the Greek gods.
- A reaction to Hesiod. Hesiod wrote a poetic narrative on the origin of
the universe (cosmos/kosmos) and as well as the origin of the gods. \
 - Cosmogony – origin of the universe
- Theogony – origin of the gods

- Characters/elements in Hesiod’s narrative as placed in order:

o Chaos, Abyss
o Gaia, the Earth
o Tartaros, underground
o Eros, “the loveliest of the immortals”
o Erebos, Night
o Aether, Day (came forth after a “sweet” [sexual] intercourse
between Erebos and Night)
o Ouranos (Gaia’s first child)
o The Sea (was given birth by Ouranos without sexual intercourse)

Classification of the Presocratics (as provided in Kauffman’s table of

contents/introduction ‘Before Socrates’.)
1. THE THREE GREAT MILESIANS
a. Thales- water
b. Anaximander- the boundless or indefinite “apeiron”
c. Anaximenes- Air “aer” The Compaction and Rarefaction
2. THE THREE GREAT INDEPENDENTS (The Solitary Figures)
a. Pythagoras- math
b. Xenophanes-
c. Heraclitus- Change is constant/logos
3. THE THREE GREAT ELIATICS
a. Parmenides
b. Zeno of Elea- stoicism
c. Melissus
4. THE THREE GREAT PLURALISTS
a. Empedocles
b. Anaxagoras
c. Democritus- atom
(along with Leucippus, the ‘father of atomistic philosophy’)
5. SOPHISTS-
a. Protagoras-
b. Gorgias
c. Antiphon
d. Critias (more of political approach rather than a sophist)

585 BC – Thales predicted an eclipse. This is said to have traditionally

marked the beginning of philosophy and science in Western thought.
The Presocratics had these characteristics: share intellectual attitudes and
assumptions and had enthusiastic rational inquiry.
The starting point of philosophical thought, according to Kaufman’s book
(our main textbook), is the dissatisfaction with facile answers.

THE MILESIANS
Thales held that water is the principle of all things.
Aristotle, in his book Metaphysics, explains that Thales’ thought on water comes
from the observation that “the nourishment of all things is moist… water
is the principle of the nature of moist thing.” Therefore, water must be the
principle of all things.
Anaximander held that “the indefinite” or the “boundless” (the Greek
word of which is Apeiron) is the originating stuff of the universe/principle of all
things.
Anaximenes held that air (the Greek word of which is Aer) is the originating
stuff of the universe/principle of all things. Compress and rarefied.

Common Denominator- commitment to argument and critical

inquiry.

(Scholastic) Perennial Philosophy (Thomistic) - The philosophy that is applicable

before, in the present, and in the future.

Aristotle explains the basic stuff of the universe in his book metaphysics
(Anaxemenes)

History of philosophy- Frederick copleston S.J.

Anicient Philo. - Walter Kauffman
Pre-socratic- Patricia Curd
Dk- Diels and W. kranz- a standard collection of fragments and testimonia
A- Testimonia
B- Fragments

Hippolytus- The refutation of all heresies

 Clement of Alexandria- miscellanies
Aristophanes- a comedian who portrays scorates as a sophist “The Clouds”

Diogenes Laertius- unreliable account

Reason, Contemplation and sensory observation- To make sense of reality

How are they presented- through cryptic passages, forceful aphorisms.
Heraclitus influence the philosophy of stoics.
Democritus influence the philo. Of epicureans.

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY (Reviewer) 2nd Quiz January

26, 2021

The Milesians
- Aristotle – the history of philosophy as the search for causes and
principles.
Thales –
- (teacher of Anaximander), Anaximander (teacher of anaximenes), and
Anaximenes
- Chronicler – Apollodorus
- The 3 agree that the cosmos began as a single stuff that changed to
become the universe as we see it today.
- This view is called “Material Monism”
- Soul produce motion
- Magnetic
- Is often included among the seven sages of Greece (a traditional list of
wise men)
- Appolodorus suggests that he was born about 625? / 585
- He argued that Water is the basic stuff of the universe
- He indicated that the earth rests on water (according to his observation
nourishment of all things is moist.)
- His contemporaries are: Jeremiah, Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, and
Lao tze.
- The first western Philosopher
- He was also a statesman, an astronomer, a geometer, and a sage.
- Solar eclipse prediction May 28, 585 BC (May 23. Copleston)
 Anaximander
- He was 64 years old in 547/546- Diogenes laertius
- Predicted an earthquake
- The first person to construct a map of the world
- He claims that the single original material of the cosmos is something
“Indefinite or boundless” (apeiron in Greek)
- This indefinite stuff is in motion, and, as a result of the motion,
something that gives rise to the opposites hot and cold is separated off
from it.
- The hot takes the form of fire, which is the origin of the sun and the
other heavenly bodies.
- The cold is dark mist, which is transformed into air and earth.
- Both of these are originally moist, but dry as the result of the heat of
fire.
- Anaximander’s theory “Postulates Substantial Opposites”
- The earth’s shape is curved, round, like a stone column.

Anaximenes
- The younger associate and student of Anaximander
- Basic stuff “Aer” (a dense mist)
- “Aer” is indefinite enough to produce the other things in the cosmos but
it is not as vague as anaximander’s boundless.
- He improves the theories of Thales & Anaximander by explicitly
including in his account the processes, condensation and rarefaction, by
which aer is transformed into everything else.
- Condensation and rarefaction- the processes that transform aer and the
other stuff of the cosmos
- Eurystratus was his Father
3rd Quiz January 29, 2021
PYTHAGORAS
-Contemporaries- Haggai (Hebrew Prophet), Zechariah, Buddha.
-He was born in the island of Samos of the coast of the Asia Minor (in the eastern
Aegean)
- His Father was engraver (Mnesarchus)
- leaving samos around 530 to escape the rule of polycrates
- He travelled Egypt and Babylon
- he hide in a temple in Metapontum where he starved to death.
-Archytas of Tarentum one of the Italian pythagoreans
- Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration of souls (ridiculed by Xenophanes)
-2 sects 1. Mathematikoi – had a great reputation in the ancient world for
philosophical, mathematical, musical and astronomical knowledge (it comes
from “mathema”, “study” or “learning”
2. Akousmatikoi- venerated pythagoras’ teachings on religion and the proper way
to live ( akousmata, “things heard”)
- pythagoreans believe that number was the key to understand the cosmos
- pythagoreans rejected Ionian methods
-this view of the rational arrangement of the universe can be found in the work of
Philolaus, the earliest Pythagorean who left a book. He was born on 470 and so
never knew Pythagoras himself, who died around 494.
-Philolaus claimed that the cosmos was made up of what he termed limiters and
unlimited, fitted together in what he called a “harmonia”

- He settled at croton on the bay of Tarentum

- His younger contemporary Heraclitus thought ill of him
- He founded the so called sect “Pythagorians”
- Pythagorian theorem- a square is equal to the sum of the squares on the sides
inclosing the right angle.
- Pythagoras was interested in mathematics for his own sake.
- For Pythagoras things are numbers
- He focuses on the form of all things (unlike of that milesians)
- Mathematical formulas and ratios explains the natural world
- Pythagoras was also interested in religious salvation and established a proto
religious monastic.
- Philosophy and religion are inseparable
- In similar way like Plato Pythagoras believes that the study of mathematics
could convert the soul from the world of senses to the contemplation of the
eternal.
- Pythagorian ideas that influenced plato-
- Dualism- body and soul are separated. The body is the tomb for the soul Body
(soma) Tomb (Sema)
- The belief in the Immortality of the soul
- Transmigration of the soul
- Knowledge and philosophic life are required for the salvation of the soul
- the idea that designing a society would be an instrument of salvation
4th Quiz Reviewer
XENOPHANES

- Born in Colophon, a city on the west coast of Asia Minor, near

Ephesus and Miletus.
- The wandering poet and philosopher
- Born about 570
- He left Colophon after it fell to the Medes in 546/545
- He refers to Pythagoras and his doctrine of the transmigration
of souls in one fragment.
- Some ancient reports say that he was a teacher of Parmenides.
- He wrote in verse and concerned himself with religious and
philosophical topics as well as more poetic matters (one of his
fragments is a poem about how to prepare for a symposium, or
drinking party)
- He seems to have been keenly interested in religious issues,
including questions about the nature of the gods, and he
explored problems in the nature and possibility of human
knowledge.
- He rejected the traditional Olympian accounts of the gods (Hesiod’s
Theogony) arguing that there is a single, and non-anthropomorphic god
who is unmoving, but all-seeing, all hearing, and all thinking and who
shakes all things by the thought of his mind.
- He draws a sharp distinction between knowledge and belief, but the
same time he suggests that rational inquiry is the best way to attain
what knowledge we can.
- He is interested in Natural Philosophy.
- Fragments- Sextus Empiricus, Clement of Alexandria, Aristotle
- A contemporary of Pythagoras
- He travelled a great deal, reciting his poetry, of which only a few
survive.
- He was thought to have been the founder of the Eleatic school.
- He challenges Homer’s and Hesiod’s anthropomorphic conception of
the gods and invites scepticism about the ability of humans to know the
divine.
- He was son of Dexios, or, according to Apollodorus, of
Orthomenes
- he was expelled from his native land, passed his time in Zancle in Sicily
and in Catana
- He wrote epic metre, also elegiacs and iambics, against Hesiod and
Homer, reproving them for what they said about the gods.
- He is said to have held contrary opinions to Thales and Pythagoras, and
to have rebuked Epimenides.
- He had an extremely long life

HERACLITUS

- He was born from an aristocratic family and it is manifest of his content

with the common people
- He came from Ephesus
- The dark philosopher and riddler
- (misanthropy) and obscurity reputation
- modern admirers: Hegel, Nietzsche, Bergson
- Fundamental world stuff- Fire- he describes it as element that always
changing yet always the same. Associated it with change strife and
war.
- - Fire- The process of change is the one truth that the logos teaches
those who listen. Flow Panta Rhei is the quintessence of the Philo. Of
Heraclitus.
- Logos- it is the rational principle in the world.
- It could also be define as reason
- It is the singular divine law of the universe which rules and
guides the cosmos.
- Account, the thing said, and word.
- Prominent quote of Heraclitus “Much learning does not teach
understanding.”
- Fragments- Clement, Sextus Empiricus, Aristotle.
PARMENIDES

- Philosopher of Being
- He was born about 515
- According to Diogenes Laertius he was a student of Xenophanes “but
did not follow him”
- Laertius also says that Parmenides was, at some time in his life
associated with the Pythagoreans
- but it seems clear that Parmenides is concerned with answering
questions about knowledge that are generated by Xenophanes’ views.
- Like Xenophanes, Parmenides wrote in verse: His poem is in Homeric
hexameters, and there are many Homeric images, especially from the
Odyssey. In the poem Parmenides presents a young man (kouros, in
Greek), who is taken in a chariot to meet a goddess. He is told by her
that he will learn “all things”; moreover, while the goddess says that
what the kouros is told is true, she stresses that he himself must test and
assess the arguments she gives.
- Parmenides is one of the most important and most controversial figures
among the early Greek thinkers, and there is much disagreement among
scholars about the details of his views. The poem begins with a long
introduction (The Proem, B1); this is followed by a section traditionally
called Truth (B2–B8.50). This is followed by the so-called Doxa section
(“beliefs” or “opinions”)—a cosmology that, the goddess warns, is in
some way deceptive.
- Parmenides argues that genuine thought and knowledge can only be
about what genuinely is (what-is), for what-is-not is literally unsayable
and unthinkable. Parmenides warns against what he calls the “beliefs of
mortals,” based entirely on sense-experience; in these, the goddess says,
“there is no true trust.” Rather, one must judge by understanding (the
capacity to reason) what follows from the basic claim that what-is must
be, and what-is-not cannot be.
- Parmenides’ views about knowledge, being, and change were a serious
theoretical challenge, not only to later Presocratic thinkers, but also to
Plato and Aristotle
- Younger contemporary of Heraclitus and older contemporary of
Socrates
- According to Plato Parmenides visited Athens when he was 65
accompanied by his chief pupil Zeno
- 2 kinds of inquiry “whatever is” “is and cannot be”
- Philosopher of changeless being.

Empedocles

- Born in Acragas, in Sicily, around 492 BCE, Empedocles belongs to the

generation of Presocratics who come after Parmenides.
- He is known to have visited the southern Italian mainland, and while
his work shows his familiarity with Parmenides, there are also signs of
the influence of Pythagoreanism, the other great southern Italian
philosophical movement.
- At home in Acragas, he seems to have been an active politician,
supporting democracy against oligarchy, even though his own
aristocratic family connections might have made that support
unexpected. Empedocles was a philosopher, a medical man, and a truly
flamboyant figure.
- Empedocles was a philosopher, a medical man, and a truly flamboyant
figure. According to ancient reports, he dressed ostentatiously (there
are stories of rich purple robes, a golden diadem, and bronze sandals),
he claimed remarkable powers for himself, and in fragment B112 (no. 1
below) he says of himself, “I go about among you, an immortal god, no
longer mortal, / honored among all, as it seems, / wreathed with
headbands and blooming garlands.”
- Empedocles was exiled from his home and was said to have died in the
Peloponnese
- Diogenes Laertius reports that Empedocles, desiring to demonstrate
that he was indeed a god, leapt into the crater of Mount Aetna.
- Like Parmenides, he wrote in verse; his subjects included both natural
philosophy (physics and the development of the cosmos) and inquiry
into how human beings ought to live (ethical and religious topics). For a
long time scholars debated how, if at all, these two main areas of
interest were related. New study, and the discovery of some new texts,
now show without a doubt that Empedocles regarded these questions as
connected, and that the material from the two was thoroughly
integrated. There remains the question of how many different works
- two separate poems, usually called Physics and Purifications. Although
we now know that the physical and purificatory material were not
viewed by Empedocles as entirely distinct, the question of how many
poems Empedocles wrote remains open.
- Empedocles claimed that the numerous basic realities of the cosmos are
entities with the features of basic reality for which Parmenides had
 argued. Although these basic entities are eternally real and unchanging
in their natures, their mixture and separation cause the world of the
senses.

- 6 basic entities: Earth, water, air, fire, love, and, strife

- The mixture and separation resemble coming to be and passing away
but do not, for Empedocles, count as the genuine sorts of changes that
would be ruled out by parmenidean arguments.
- This mixture and separation resu;ts in the world as we perceive it, and
Empedocles even gives “recipes” for the proportion of earth, air, fire,
and water in bone and blood.
-
Anaxagoras

- He came from Clazomenae, in Ionia.

- This interest is tempered by an awareness of the metaphysical
implications of the work of Parmenides.
- He was born around 500
- He lived for 30 years in Athens, where he was an associate of Pericles
- He predicted the fall of meteorite at Aegospotami in 467, and said that
the sun was a fiery stone rather than a god.
- His association with Pericles combined with his nonconformist
scientific views resulted in his being prosecuted for impiety
- The prosecution took place around 450.
- He was convicted and exiled from Athens to the northern Ionian city of
Lampascus (near troy) where he died in 428
- How does Anaxogoras envisioned the original state for the cosmos.
- All things were together
- All things except mind (nous) which he said to know and to control all
things.
- Simplicius (commentary on Aristotle’s metaphysics
- Anaxagoras thought that everything consists of an infinite number of
particles or seeds. And that in all things there is a portion of everything.
Zeno of Elea

- Most of the accounts of zeno came from plato’s dialogue named

“Parmenides.”
- Zeno was a student of Parmenides and who happens to be his lover.
- He visited Athens at year 450 with his boyfriend (Parmenides) when the
time he visited athens Socrates was about 20.
- Parmenides characteristics of genuine being 1. Unchanging 2. Whole 3.
Complete 4. One
- Zeno resisted at tyranny.
- Zeno explores the consequences of Parmenides claims on “WHAT IS”
(QUID SIT)
- Neither plurality and motion is compatible with being according to
Parmenides.
- Plurality implies difficulties/contradictions things would be both like
and unlike, both infinitely small and indefinitely large.
- The very possibility of motion or change results in contradiction.
- Arguments against motion. 1. The race course 2. Achilles 3. Arrow 4.
Stadium
- Aristotle’s physics the source of the fragments about zeno’s arguments
against motion.

Melissus of Samos
- When he grow up in samos he adopted the philosophy of Elea. (eleatics)
- as an admiral he defeated the Athenian navy under pericles
- the characteristics of the one 1. It is unchanging (thus it rejects the
material monism) 2. Full (which is the reaction against the void) 3. Not
subject to density and rarity (against Anaximenes), 4. Not subject to
rearrangement
THE ATOMIST (LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS)

LEUCIPPUS

- founding theorist of atomism.

- Epicurus, a post-Aristotelian philosopher who adopted certain aspects
of Presocratic atomism is even said to have denied that Leucippus
existed.
- Leucippus’ birthplace is variously given as Miletus, Abdera, and Elea
- Democritus, his pupil and associate was from Abdera
- Leucippus proposed the atomic system sometime around 440 to 430
BCE, thus he is contemporary with the other post-Eleatic thinkers
Anaxagoras and Empedocles as well as Melissus
- Two books are attributed to Leucippus: On Mind and The Great
World System (Makrokosmos).
- Democritus himself says that he was young when Anaxagoras was an
old man; his birth date is usually placed at about 460; he lived well into
the fourth century (tradition says he lived to be about 100 years
old), and so was a contemporary of Socrates, Plato, and
perhaps even the young Aristotle.
- Democritus was born in Abdera, in Thrace, a birthplace he shares
with the sophist Protagoras, but he traveled widely throughout the
ancient world (later sources say he went to India, but this is
doubtful
- Ancient sources list about seventy titles of books by Democritus on all
sorts of subjects, both philosophical (on natural philosophy, ethics,
mathematics, literature, and grammar) as well as on other perhaps
more popular topics
- One of his books was called The Little World System (Mikrokosmos), in
obvious homage to his teacher and associate Leucippus.
- The selections included here concentrate on atomism, the scientific and
metaphysical theory begun by Leucippus and continued by Democritus
- Unfortunately, very few passages from Leucippus and Democritus on
atomism survive; most of the evidence we have about the view comes
from Aristotle and the Aristotelian commentators.
- The word atomos in Greek means “uncuttable,” and so atoms are things
that cannot be cut, split, or actually divided.

- The atomists claim that there is an indefinite number of these atoms,

each of which is uniform, not subject to coming-to-be or passing-away,
and unchangeable in any other way, except position, an external change
that does not affect the inner core of atomic being.
- Individual atoms are imperceptible: most of them are very small,
though Democritus may have said that there could be an atom as large
as the cosmos. All atomic stuff is the same; atoms differ from one
another only in shape and size (there is controversy about whether pre-
Platonic atomists considered weight as a property of atoms).
- The second player in the atomic system is “the empty” (void). Void is
where the atoms are not, and atoms are able to move into the empty.
The atomists explicitly call the void “the nothing” or the “what is not,”
whereas atoms are called “the something” or the “what is.” Hence they
explicitly challenge Parmenides’ proscription against what-is-not; yet
there is good evidence that they insisted that the void is real in its own
right, and not simply the negation of what-is.
- Void separates atoms, which allows them to move and come close to one
another without melding into each other.
- The mixing together and separating of the different types of atoms into
different arrangements is responsible for all the aspects of the sensible
world, and so what looks like coming-to-be and passing-away is merely
rearrangement of the basic entities—atoms and void
- All else is, as Democritus says, “by convention.”
- Democritus offered complex accounts of the structure of
physical objects (i.e.,arrangements of atoms) and of perception,
thought, and knowledge, as well as of many other aspects of
human life. There are many fragments on ethical matters
attributed to him, but the authenticity of these is unclear.
- Aristotle wrote a multivolume work on Democritus; only
fragments survive, thanks to Simplicius, who quotes some passages
DIOGENES OF APOLLONIA
- According to Theophrastus Diogenes was perhaps the last of the
physiologoi, philosophers who concentrated on the natural world.
- He was probably from apollonia on the black sea
- He was active after 440
- A contemporary of melissus and Leucippus
- There are references to his views in the plays of Euripides,
Aristophanes, Plato’s phaedo
- He was interested in the role of the brain in perception and in the
operation of the veins suggests that he may have been a medical man.
- Simplicius had seen a copy of Diogenes’ book called ON NATURE.
- DIOGENES combines the material monism of the milesians with an
understanding of the Eleatic requirements on a theory of nature.
- He provides arguments against metaphysical pluralism and for
monism
- He attributes both divine and intelligent qualities to air, his one
basic being.
- Everything is a form of air (condensation and rarefaction
- The degree of intelligence a thing has is determined by the warmth of its
internal air.

THE SOPHISTS
- They are moral and social thinkers
- They immerged during the Peloponnesian war which lasted for about
30 years from the year 431-404 BC.
- 2 city states involved in the war Sparta and Athens.
- The loss of Athens gave birth to the growth of democracy (there is new
civic virtue and that is the ability to speak well in assemblies and law
courts)
- the sophist are called itinerant teachers (they move from one place to
another)
- they are teaching because they are being paid by their students
- they are teaching rhetorical skills (the art of speaking well)
- according to Plato they are both fascinating and dangerous
- among their prominent inquiries about morality
 PROTAGORAS
- He was born in abdera, in thrace northern Greece
- He was first a porter discovered by Democritus and decided to instruct
him
- He is often in Athens and associated with prominent politician
especially pericles
- He reflected on language and develop a system of grammar
- In Athens at the age of 70 he was accused and convicted of atheism and
left for sicily southern Italy
- Cause of death drowned in the sea.
- Fragment Aristotle’s rhetoric
GORGIAS
- He was from leontini and he was said to have died at the age of 100
years old
- He was a student of empedocles
- One of his famous works on not being
- Longest account from sextus empiricus against the mathematicians
ANTIPHON
- He was from rhamnous
- He was known of his famous work tetralogies (how to argue the
strongest on however law suit)

CRITIAS
- He was from Athens
- He was a cousin of plato’s mother
- And an associate of Socrates
- He belongs to the group of 30 tyrants
- He died in a civil war between the democrats and oligarchs
- Critias is more of politician rather than a sophist.
- But said to be a perfect product of the sophist.
SOCRATES
- Death 399 B.C
- He was born around 470 B.C
- He was 70 years old when he died
- He was accused of impiety and corrupting the minds of the Athenian
youths.
- He was part of the school of archelaus
- “Elenctic” Socratic way of arguing (elenchus)
- From his youth upwards he received a mysterious voice or sign or
daimon.
- Socrates began to study the cosmological theories of east and west in
the philosophies of Archalaus, Diogenes of Apollonia, Empedocles.
- He was disappointed of the philosophy of Anaxagoras.
- But he received a light from the passage where Anaxagoras spoke of
mind as being the cause of all naural law and order. He bagan to
studyanaxagoras, but instead he found out that Anaxagoras introduced
the mind merely in order to get the vortex movement going.
- This dissatisfaction set Socrates on his own line of investigation,
abandoning the natural philosophy.
- At oracle at Delphi chaerephon asked the oracle if there was any living
who was wiser than Socrates, and received the answer “no.”. this set
Socrates thinking, and he came to the conclusion that the good meant
that he was the wisest man because he recognised his own “Ignorance.”