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
Myth
(poetry)
Story telling
CHAOS (Nothingness)
Greek Philosophy
(585 B.C.-323 B.C.)
古希腊时间表
Minoan civilization(2000-1200BC)
Homeric Age
Mycenacan civilization(1500-1200BC)
Creation of Myths
The Dark Age (1150-700BC)
Greek Archaic Age(700-600BC)
(Renaissance )
Greek Philosophy
Greek Golden Age(600-400BC
(Golden Age)
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
Plato
Aristotle
(469-369 B.C.) (429-347 B.C.) (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
Pre-Socrates: Quest for Being
(the archê) and Becoming
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.)
One of the Seven Wise Men
Thales of Miletus (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 (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(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.
Summary
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 Parmenides
Heraclitus 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 humankind
Heraclitus (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 archê? 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?
3. The contemporary world is often described as “the
age of the computer.” Are we living in Pythagorean
times?
4. Do you think there are aspects of life that cannot be
reduced to numbers? What might these be?
Biology=a logos of life;
Psychology= 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
majority believed that the only principles of all
things are principles in the forms of matter. For
that out of which all existing things are
composed and that out of which they originally
come into being, that into which they finally
perish, the substance persisting, but changing
in all of its attributes. ”
Quoting from Aristotle
Thank You!