Philosophy 100: Introduction to Philosophy
PRE-SOCRATIC GREEK PHILOSOPHY

1. FROM A MYTHOLOGICAL TO A NATURALISTIC WAY OF THINKING:
a) In what we may call a mythical way of thinking, disease, like other human catastrophes, arises from the actions of the gods. Consider the opening lines of the famous Greek epic poem ‘The Iliad’ where Homer*, writing about 750 B.C., attributes the plague raging among the Greek troops besieging Troy to the anger of the god Apollo. Agamemnon (the leader of the Greek forces) has offended Apollo by taking the daughter of his priest Chryses as a concubine, and by refusing to give her back. Note the question raised by Achilles* (in bold faced type) in order to determine the cause of the plague: he asks whether someone has broken a vow or improperly performed a sacrifice to the gods (a hecatomb). Here we see a basic natural response to disease: “What have we done wrong? How have we offended the powers which control our lives?” Even today, a person who gets sick naturally asks: “Why me? Why am I being punished? I have lived my life in a good way.”

What god was it that set them (Achilles and Agamemnon) in collision?
Zeus' son and Leto's, Apollo, who in anger at the king drove
the foul pestilence along the host, and the people perished,
since Atreus' son had dishonoured Chryses, priest of Apollo...
. . .
The shafts clashed on the shoulders of the god walking
angrily. He came as night comes down and knelt then
apart and opposite the ships and let go
a tearing arrow against the men themselves and struck them.
The corpse fires burned everywhere and did not stop burning.
Nine days up and down the host ranged the god's arrows,
but on the tenth Achilles called the people to assembly...
'... Who can tell why Phoebus Apollo is so angry,
if for the sake of some vow, some hecatomb he blames us...'
. . .
He spoke thus and sat down again, and among them stood up
Kalchas, Thestor's son, far the best of the bird interpreters
. . .
'No it is not for the sake of some vow or hecatomb he blames us,
but for the sake of his priest whom Agamemnon dishonoured
and would not give him back his daughter nor accept the ransom.’

Kalchas, the interpreter of the signs from the gods, is saying that it is not because a vow has been broken, nor because a public religious ceremony has been done incorrectly that Apollo is angry; rather it is because Agamemnon’s actions have offended Apollo. The god Apollo is punishing the Greek army with a plague because he has been dishonored and disobeyed by its top general, Agamemnon. The conflict which opens the action of the ‘The Iliad’ is between Achilles and Agamemnon. When the cause of the plague becomes clear, Achilles tries to convince Agamemnon to give up his concubine.

b) In contrast, consider the following passage from Hippocrates (c. 400 B.C.), writing about 300 years after Homer. Hippocrates, considered the father of Western Medicine, discusses another disease, one that many people in his own day considered to be divine, directly caused by a god. In his book On the Sacred Disease, he gave something very close to what we would now think of as a scientific description of this disease. In denying that the disease is divine, he argued: a) that it has a specific set of symptoms; b) that the disease runs in families; c) that the disease to a certain part of the body; d) that there is a physical explanation for the disease; finally e) that it can usually be cured by drugs.

I do not believe that the 'Sacred Disease' is any more divine or sacred than any other disease but, on the contrary, has specific characteristics and a definite cause. Nevertheless, because it is completely different from other diseases, it has been regarded as a divine visitation by those who, being only human, view it with ignorance and astonishment.... If remarkable features in a malady were evidence of divine visitation, then there would be many 'sacred diseases', as I shall show. Quotidian, tertian and quartan fevers are among other diseases no less remarkable and portentous and yet no one regards them as having a divine origin. I do not believe that these diseases have any less claim to be caused by a god than the so-called 'sacred' disease but they are not the objects of popular wonder. Again, no less remarkably, I have seen men go mad and become delirious for no obvious reason and do many strange things. I have seen many cases of people groaning and shouting in their sleep, some who choke; others jump from their bed and run outside and remain out of their mind till they wake, when they are as healthy and sane as they were before, although rather pale and weak. These things are not isolated events but frequent occurrences....
        It can be cured no less than other diseases so long as it has not become inveterate (deep rooted) and too powerful for the drugs which are given. Like other diseases it is hereditary. If a phlegmatic child is born of a phlegmatic parent, a bilious child of a bilious parent, a consumptive child of a consumptive parent and a splenetic child of a splenetic parent, why should the children of a father or mother who is afflicted with this disease not suffer similarly?... It affects the phlegmatic, but does not attack the bilious. If its origin were divine, all types would be affected alike without this peculiar distinction. So far from this being the case, the brain is the seat of this disease, as it is of other very violent diseases.

Can you use Hippocrates’ description of the symptoms to identify the disease that he is describing? It is a common disease, even today. Why do you think, even more than other diseases, it was attributed to the gods in the early days of civilization?

2. THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS
How did this change in thinking about the world come about? Unfortunately, only fragments remain from the writings of the earliest philosophers; their books did not survive, and later philosophers only had tradition to rely on to tell what they said. The fragments quoted below (in italics) are from later Greek sources.
        One major aim of the first philosophers was to understand the basic reality of things, that is, what underlies the way they appear to us. One might argue that this was also the aim of those who gave theological explanations, explanations in terms of the actions of the gods. However, the latter, like Homer, in the opening passage of ‘The Iliad’ that we have looked at above, thought of the basic reality in human-like, or anthropomorphic terms. The natural philosophers thought of the underlying reality in terms of principles which were not human, though they differed on what these principles were.

a] The Ionian Philosophers: the School of Miletus
i] Thales
The Greeks ascribed the beginning of philosophy to Thales (c. 600 B.C.), who lived in the city of Meletus in Ionia. Thales was an engineer, as well as an astronomer: He is said to have built bridges, as well as to have predicted an eclipse. A few geometrical theorems, for example, that a circle is bisected by its diameter, are also ascribed to Thales. He is said to have visited Egypt and studied the pyramids and the way the Egyptians measured their fields while he was there.
        Thales is remembered as the first of the philosophers who gave materialist explanations reality. He said that everything has its origin in water or that water is the stuff or substance out of which all things are constituted. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), in the quotation below, seems to interpret Thales in the second way: According to him, Thales held that water is the stuff that remains the same when things change. Aristotle also makes a suggestion about how Thales reasoned out this: he based his conclusion on the observation that (living) things get their nourishment from water.

Most of the first philosophers thought that principles in the form of matter were the only principles of all things: for the original source of all existing things, that from which a thing first comes-into-being and into which it is finally destroyed, the substance persisting but changing in its qualities, this they declare is the element and first principle of existing things, and for this reason they consider that there is no absolute coming-to-be or passing away, on the ground that such a nature is always preserved.... Over the number, however, and the form of this kind of principle they do not all agree; but Thales, the founder of this type of philosophy, says that it is water,... perhaps taking this supposition from seeing the nurture of all things to be moist... water being the natural principle of all moist things.

Thales’ successors, identified other elements as the first principle or ‘archai’ which underlay all things --namely air, earth and fire.

ii] Heraclitus (c. 500 BCE)
In many ways the most fascinating of the Ionian philosophers was Heraclitus, whose aphoristic sayings come down to us sounding as much like poetry as natural philosophy (physics). He thrived about 500 B.C. in the city of Ephesus on the coast of Ionia. For Heraclitus, fire is the basic principle of all things. In the first quotation below, Heraclitus denies that the world-order was made by the gods or men, and ascribes it to an “everlasting fire.” Fire, then, appears to be the cause of everything that exists. But he also stressed that there is order in this first principle: Fire itself is ‘kindled’ and goes out in a measured way..
        Heraclitus was interpreted by later thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle as holding that ever thing is in flux and change; nothing really lasts. The idea that reality is really always changing even though things appear as stable is expressed by him in the second quotation below: One can never step in the same river twice. In this passage, he uses the image of flowing water (rather than fire) to convey the idea that there is no permanence in the universe.
        Heraclitus also stressed the necessity of opposites (male and female, high and low) and that the balanced tension between them is necessary for existence.

This world-order did none of the gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: and everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures.

Heraclitus somewhere says that all things are in process and nothing stays still, and likening existing things to the stream of a river he says that you would not step twice into the same river.

Heraclitus rebukes the author of the line 'Would that strife might be destroyed from among the gods and men': for their would be no musical scale unless high and low existed, nor living creatures without female and male, which are opposites.

b] The Italian School
In the fifth century philosophy thrived in the Greek colonies of southern Italy, including Sicily. The most important philosophers of this area whose names have come down to us are Pythagoras, Parmenides and Zeno of Elea. These philosophers are sometimes considered to be idealists because, it is argued, it is ideas rather than matter which constitutes the underlying reality for them. The underlying reality for these philosophers is something insensible which can only be grasped by the intellect (reason), not the senses. This interpretation has, however, been questioned by some contemporary scholars.

i] Pythagoras (c. 530 B.C.)
Pythagoras probably moved from Ionia to the Greek city of Croton in southern Italy in his youth. He is most renowned for the famous geometrical theorem which bears his name. Among other philosophical beliefs, he held that the first principle of all things was number. Note the first two quotations below, which are attributed to Pythagoras: His view appears to bear an important relation to modern physics.
        The Pythagoreans were a secret sect and that is part of the reason we know so little of their beliefs. We do know they believed that souls are immortal and that they are reincarnated in all animals. Music seems to have played an important role in the purification of the soul for them.

So Pythagoras turned geometrical philosophy into a form of liberal education by seeking its first principles in a higher realm of reality.

And so the Pythagoreans used to invoke the tetrad [the number four] as their most binding oath: 'Nay, by him that gave to our generations the tetractys, which contains the fond and root of eternal nature.’

The strictness of their secrecy is astonishing; for in so many generations evidently nobody ever encountered any Pythagorean notes before the time of Philolaus....

He maintains that the soul is immortal; next, that it changes into other kinds of living things; also that events recur in certain cycles, and that nothing is absolutely new; and finally, that all living things should be regarded as akin. Pythagoras seems to have been the first to bring these beliefs into Greece.

The Pythagoreans... practised the purification of the body by medicine, that of the soul by music.

ii] Parmenides (c. 450 B.C.)
Parmenides’ philosophy can be regarded as the inverse of that of Heraclitus. He believed that, while things appear to change, they are really one and unchanging. This is maintained in the first part of his poem which is entitled ‘The Way of Truth’; in the second part, ‘The Way of Appearances’, most of which is lost to us, he apparently explained why things appear to us to change.
        Parmenides’ conclusion about the nature of reality, may seem surprising to us; but it is worth reflecting on. Is he perhaps getting at what some later Christian, Islamic and Jewish philosophers called ‘Eternity’? Some of these later philosophers said that from the perspective of God everything is eternal, and that God sees things as they really are, one and unchanging.. On the other hand, we see things only as they appear to be, that is, as changing. And we live in a world of illusion. Was Parmenides taking the first steps to this view of the world? This is a point that is debated by experts on Pre-Socratic philosophy.

Thou couldst not know that which is-not (that is impossible) nor utter it; for the same thing can be thought as can be.
One way only is left to be spoken of, that it is; and on this way are full many signs that what is is uncreated and imperishable, for it is entire, immoveable and without end. It was not in the past, nor shall it be, since it is now, all at once, one, continuous; for what creation wilt thou seek for it? how and whence can it grow? Nor shall I allow thee to say or to think, 'from that which is not'; of it is not to be said or thought that it is not. And what need would have driven it on to grow, starting from nothing, at a later time rather than an earlier? Thus it must completely be or not.... How could what is thereafter perish.... So coming into being is extinguished and perishing imaginable. (From ‘The Way of Truth’)

...to give an account, in accordance with popular opinion, of the coming into being of sensible things, he makes the first principles two. (From ‘The Way of Appearances’)

Philosophers have seen an argument in ‘The Way of Truth’, since Parmenides seems to be giving reasons for what he says. They have seen it as a deductive argument, like that of mathematics, since he clearly is not appealing to observation, which only involves appearances. What follows is a formalization of Parmenides’ argument as a deductive argument:

1. IF YOU CANNOT THINK OF A THING IT CANNOT EXIST. (For example, you cannot think of a round square, hence a round square cannot exist.)

2. YOU CANNOT THINK OF NOT-BEING. (Whenever you try to think of not-being you are always thinking of something.)

THEREFORE, 3. NOT-BEING CANNOT EXIST (From 1 & 2, by modus ponens)

4. BUT CHANGE IS A MOVEMENT FROM BEING TO NOT-BEING OR FROM NOT-BEING TO BEING (This is a definition of change.)

THEREFORE, 5. CHANGE IS IMPOSSIBLE; IT CANNOT EXIST (from 3 & 4)

In thinking about this argument, as with any deductive argument, whether we need to consider both whether the premises are true, and whether the conclusion follows necessarily from them. What do you think? Which of these would be the best way to go about criticizing Parmenides argument?

c) The Pluralists
i) Empedocles (c. 470 BCE)
Empedocles was an eclectic philosopher, who brought together the ideas of a number of his predecessors. Indeed, the principles he appealed to became the basis for scientific descriptions of chemical and medical processes by later thinkers.

He makes the material elements four in number, fire air, water, and earth, all eternal, but changing in bulk and scarcity through mixture and separation; but his real first principles, which impart motion to these, are Love and Strife. the elements are continually subject to an alternate change, at one time mixed together by Love, at another separated by Strife.... (Simplicius, Phys. 25, 21)

ii) Anaxagoras (c. 470 BCE)*
Anaxagoras sought to explain everything in naturalistic terms, though he also believed that there is a kind of abstract intelligence which provides order to the universe:

Mind controlled also the whole rotation, so that it began to rotate in the beginning.... And the things that are mingled and separated and divided off, all are known by Mind. And all things that were to be, all things that are now or that shall be, Mind arranged them all, including this rotation in whish are now rotating the stars, the sun and moon, the air, and the aether that are being separated off.... And the dense is separated from the rare, the hot from the cold, the bright from the dark, and the dry from the moist. (Fragment 12)

iii) The Atomists
Leucippus (c. 430 B.C.) is remembered as having put first put forward the theory that everything really consists of atoms and the void (empty space). According to this theory, all change is really a coming together or separation of atoms in different configurations. He was followed in this theory by Democritus (fl. 420 B.C.), and later by Epicurus (341-277 B.C.) When the atomic theory was revived during the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century by thinkers such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, they saw themselves as going back to the ideas of these ancient thinkers.
        Leucippus and his associate Democritus hold that the elements are the full and the void; and they call them being and not-being respectively. Being is full and solid, not-being is void and rare. Since the void exists no less than body, if follows that not-being exists no less than being. The two together are the material causes of existing things.

d) The Sophists (c. 430 BCE --contemporary with Socrates)*
These were travelling teachers, who taught the art of public speaking. Unlike the natural philosophers we have looked at their main aim was to teach young men to be successful in the law courts and in political assemblies. They tended to be distrustful of purely intellectual endeavours. The Sophists were interested in the changing world --Parmenides' world of seeming-- and not in the unchanging world of pure thought.
        Indeed, many taught a relativism in human values. One of the most famous sayings of these teachers was that of Protagoras --who taught that "Man is the measure of all things." He seems to have meant by this that each person's view is true for that person. "Truth" is only the most common view. The aim of the Sophists was to convince others of their "truth". Hence, the importance they placed on rhetoric --on the techniques used to win over others in argument.