Parmenides and Heraclitus

The first thing that struck me about Parmenides is the his writing style was similar to Hesiod's. He, like Hesiod, writes in verse and even follows a similar plot line. Only instead of the muses bestowing knowledge, it is a Goddess.

While the text says that he may have been a follow of Xenophanes, it seems more likely to me that he would have been a follow of Heraclitus. This mainly stems from the idea of trying to gain understanding and not just amass knowledge. It is clear to me that Parmenides is advocating for understanding as his character, Kouros,is told to by the Goddess to not jut learn arguments, but also assess and test them. I believe that this is similar to Heraclitus's attack on the Pythagorean tendency to amass knowledge without having real understanding of it.

Another reason I am tempted to say that Parmenides may have been a follower of Heraclitus is that his definition of "What-Is" seems to be a direct attack on Heraclitus concept of "logos". The logos is supposed to be the divine law of the cosmos and is represented by fire because it is always changing. Parmenides takes on a complete reversal of the stance and says that for something to be it must be unchanging, even in a qualitative sense.

Heraclitus and

Heraclitus certainly stands out from many of the other Pre-Sorcratic philosophers we have read. For one, he is far more open about attacking other schools of thought and seems to be on the receiving end of criticism for this. His stance on possessing knowledge without understanding is specifically directed at several other thinkers, such as Hesiod and Pythagoras. Several other thinkers in the excepts hold him in contempt for these aggressive stances such as Plutarch who refers to him as a dog barking at things he does not understand.

Despite being critical of the thinkers coming before him, I don't believe that Heraclitus is really that different from some of the other Pre-Socratic thinkers. He is still  claiming that there is an arche he calls Logos. Logos is supposed to be the divine law, a force that controls and steers the cosmos. But, according to the text, Logos is made intentionally vague to open it to all kinds of possibilities. And despite directly attacking Pythagoras, he has clearly borrowed his idea of being able to interpret the universe by specific pratcices. He simply replaces math with human understanding as the method.

Pythagoras and Reincarnation

Pythagoras is similar to some to many of the other materialist pre socratic readers in that he believes there is one key to understanding the universe. But, instead of water or air, he believes it is numbers. Honestly though, this aspect of Pythagoras does not interest me. His introduction of the concept of reincarnation  was what really grabbed my attention.

My first idea was that maybe Pythagoras had encountered Hinduism and its belief in reincarnation during his travels. Curd tells us that he visited Babylon and that is close enough to the Indian sub continent that I don' believe it is to far fetched for him to have heard of it. But, his idea of reincarnation is quite different from the Hinduism's. For instance, his version of reincarnation seems to be random while your Hinduism believes you can influence your next life via good karma/moksha. Also, at least according to the story presented, Pythagoras believes you could identify souls you have previously met claiming that he recognized his old friends soul in a dog.

I think that Pythagoras and his concept of reincarnation is especially important to western thought because of the emphasis on the soul. Similar to more recent christian thinkers, Pythagoras introduces the idea that human souls are not only unique, but eternal.

Xenophanes and the Rejection of the Greek Gods

Xenophanes represents one of the most groundbreaking thinkers of the Pre-Socratic thinkers. To me, he represents a major jump in Greek thinking with his open rejection of the traditional Greek pantheon. I believe several of the Pre Socratic thinkers, such as the materialists like Thales and Anaximander, had already been dancing around such a proposal. What makes Xenophanes  interesting is not only the rejection of the Greek gods but what he proposes as a replacement for their conception of the of gods.

Xenophanes new system of the divine was different from the old Greek version in two ways. First, similar to Judaism, Xenophanes introduces the idea of monotheism to the Greeks. While he doesn't believe that their has to be only one God, he does think that there is only one supreme god that matters. This contrasts greatly from the Greek view that had dozens of god each being supreme in their own specific realm.

The second and most shocking difference was Xenophanes belief that this new supreme god was non anthropomorphic. This basically means that he did not posses the likeness of a human like Zeus or the other Greek gods did. This supreme god is also supremely uninterested in human affairs. Xenophanes claims that divination and all other forms of communication with gods are hoaxes and that humans are essentially on their own.

I think that it is possible to see Xenophanes as a very early precursor to Deism. His philosophy certainly contains the key elements of Deism. Like the great clock-maker theory, Xenophanes believes that their is a divine being that made the world, this being does not care to check in on the world and simply lets it tick away.

The Pre-Socratic Reader

Hello, my name is John and this is the start of my new blog. I've created this blog mainly to write responses for a philosophy class I'm taking at Baylor. The class is called the History of Classical Philosophy and will cover a variety of ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.

This first post will be focused on a book called The Pre-Socratic Reader by Patricia Curd. The term Pre-Socratic refers to the thinkers and philosophers who came before Socrates, as Socrates is supposed to represent a significant change in western thought. Curd's gives a brief history of some of the first philosophical thinkers. I find it particularly fascinating that these men were already trying to use logic and reason, even if some of their reasoning was flawed, to comprehend the world around them. The account of Thales and his belief that all things come from water is an excellent example of this. With modern science it is easy for us to dismiss his idea as silly, but I agree with Curd in that it is easy to follow how he would have reached such a conclusion.

Another aspect that Curd hits on that has always intrested me about the ancient Greek philosophers is that they were really the original Renaissance men. As Curd mentions, these thinkers were not only studying the broad philosophical questions such as what is all matter made of, but tried to educate themselves in a variety of fields such as math, geometry, and engineering.

One fact that I had never realized about these Pre-Socratic thinkers until reading the Hurd's introduction is that we do not possess any of their complete works. Only fragments of their original work have survived and the rest of our knowledge of them comes from other, less ancient thinkers, mentioning them in their works. It makes me wonder what could have been if their complete works survived and the world had taken a liking to Thales instead of Socrates.