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The Great Thinkers of Western Philosophy |
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Page 2 General Notions The Eleatic School resumed discussion of the problem of being and becoming and attacked the opposition between sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge. The problem can be summed up: Reality in a logical manner appears to us under two different aspects -- accordingly as it is presented to our senses, or as it is presented to our mind. Our senses perceive the multiplicity, the becoming, while our mind perceives the unity. Now the characteristics of unity are opposed to those of multiplicity. To which of the two must our consent be given for the ultimate reality? Heraclitus had answered that the only reality is becoming; the Eleatics say the opposite, that unity alone is being and that multiplicity is non-being, an illusion, considered both from the viewpoint of logic and metaphysics. Xenophanes The founder of the Eleatic School is Xenophanes, who was born at Colophon in Asia Minor about 580 B.C., and died at the age of more than ninety years. From his youth he was a soldier and had taken part in the defense of the Greek Ionian colonies against the Persian invasion. When these fell to the Persians, Xenophanes, in order not to submit to the conqueror, took up the life of a minstrel and went about singing the stories of the gods and heroes in the public squares. Finally he stopped in the Ionic colony of Elea in southern Italy, whence his school took its name. Xenophanes, author of a poem of which only a few fragments remain, was a poet-philosopher who sought to draw the attention of men away from course anthropomorphism to the highest concept of divinity. "There is one God, sovereign alike over gods and men, unlike man either in appearance or in thought." To represent the gods as men is to alter their nature in order to make them similar to us. These errors are due to the imaginations of men. If oxen or horses had a way of representing the gods, they would picture them as oxen or horses. Negroes represent their gods with black face and flat nose. But the "Optimus" is one, and bears resemblance to no one. "He sees all things entirely, hears all things entirely, and thinks all things entirely." Still it seems that Xenophanes confused God with space and with the universe taken it its totality. In The Radical Academy
Elsewhere On the Internet Parmenides The most noted thinker of the Eleatic School is Parmenides (picture), who was born at Elea about 540 B.C. He was called "the Great" by Plato. He was author of a poem about nature which he divides into two parts: Voices of Truth and Voices of Opinion. A few fragments remain. Xenophanes' criticism of popular religion and anthropomorphism was taken up and transferred by Parmenides to cosmic nature. Here also we find ourselves face to face with Unity, which is the totality of reality. There is an extant fragment of Parmenides which summarizes his theory of knowledge. "Nothing can be but what can be thought." This statement indicates that Parmenides is the first philosopher to affirm the identity of being and intelligibility. According to his thought, however, intelligibility seems to mean a clear representation of the imagination. Of far greater interest were Parmenides' metaphysical speculations, which upset Greek thought and influenced the subsequent development of metaphysics. The principle of Parmenides is: "Being is. Non-being is not." Let us try to grasp what this statement involves, for it is more difficult than it may seem at first glance. Let us consider the first part of the principle: Being is. We know that Parmenides' predecessors, such men as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Pythagoras, posed the question of what is the ultimate element or the source of the becoming and multiplicity of beings. Their answers varied and included water, fire, number, and other elements. Commenting on these solutions, Parmenides said that there can be doubt about what they meant by water, fire, and the life; but regardless of what they meant, each element they chose was being. Therefore: Being is. Whatever is not being does not exist and cannot be conceived. Thus he concludes: Being is. Non-being is not. From this principle Parmenides drew some very interesting conclusions:
The One of Parmenides is not born; it is eternal, immutable, and always itself. Moreover, it is limited, since in Greek philosophy the unlimited is a sign of imperfection, and it is conceived as a finite sphere. It is the same One as that of Xenophanes but it is divested of all divine and religious attributes and reduced to one pure metaphysical and logical principle. If the One is being and becoming is non-being, what then is all the cosmic becoming, including the life of man? Is it all a dream, an illusion? Parmenides leaves the problem unsolved. If he had solved it in conformity with his principles, the answer would have had to be affirmative and the life of the universe would appear a complete mystery. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On the Internet Zeno Zeno (picture), chosen disciple of Parmenides, was born in Elea about the year 500 B.C. He is called by Aristotle the first dialectician because he assumed the task of proving with arguments (Sophistic) how much of paradox there was in the doctrine of his master. Parmenides had reduced becoming to non-being and to illusion. Zeno attempted to prove just what exactly is becoming. To understand the arguments of Zeno it is necessary to remember that becoming signifies movement. If the movement were not real but illusory, it would follow that becoming also has no other consistency save that of illusion. This is the task which Zeno assumed. His argument are four, but they follow the same pattern; for they all begin with the supposition that space (the line) is composed of infinite parts, and that it is impossible to cross these infinite parts of which space is composed. As a consequence, all that to us seems to move does not move in reality, for movement is an illusion. Take, for example, the so-called argument of Achilles. The hero of the winged foot can never overtake the turtle -- symbol of slowness -- because the hero gives the turtle the handicap of space. Let us supposed that this interval between Achilles and the turtle is twenty feet, and while the hero runs twenty feet, the turtle advances one foot. Achilles cannot reach his running mate, because while he runs twenty feet the animal moves one foot, and while runs a foot, his rival will run one-twentieth of a foot, and successively, while Achilles run one-twentieth of a foot, the animal will have traveled one-twentieth of a twentieth of a foot, and so on, ad infinitum. The same is to be said of the arrow which will never reach its target. Before striking the target, the arrow must traverse half the distance, and before it reaches half this space it must traverse one-half of this half, ad infinitum. Thus the arrow remains ever at the same place, no matter how much it may seem to be displaced. Such Sophistic arguments, as Aristotle noted well, are based on a false prejudgment that space is made up of an infinite number of parts. In The Radical Academy
Elsewhere On the Internet Melissus Among the Eleatics must be numbered Melissus, who was born at Samos and lived during the fifth century B.C. He accepts and defends Parmenides' doctrine of being, but unlike his master, he maintains that being is infinite, because it cannot be limited, neither by another being, in so far as being is one, nor by non-being, which does not exist. In agreement with Parmenides he maintains that change and motion do not exist in nature, for both imply an absurd transition from being to non-being. The Eleatic School had the merit of calling the attention of philosophers to the concept of being and becoming, of motion, of time, of space, and of continuity. Its importance is such that all succeeding thought represented a victory over the one-sided and apparently contradictory conceptions held by Parmenides (unchanging being) and Heraclitus (successive becoming). Elsewhere On the Internet
General Notions The Pluralists are those philosophers who, putting to themselves the problem of being (Parmenidean) and of becoming (Heraclitean), attempt a reconciliation between the two factions by having recourse to more primordial elements. They accept on the one side the being of Parmenides, but they break it up into various parts, so that the root of things would be found in various elements. The composition and decomposition of these original elements would give the explanation of the becoming of Heraclitus. Thus the Pluralists believe that they have overcome the opposition between being and non-being. The chief philosophers of this group are Empedocles of Agrigentum, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, and Democritus of Abdera. Empedocles Empedocles (picture) lived from approximately 490 to 430 B.C. Of Doric origin, he was a physician, naturalist, poet, philosopher, and wonder-worker. He wrote two books, Physics and Purifications, of which large fragments remain. It is said that the people revered him as a worker of wonders and that he died on a exploration of Mount Etna in Sicily. Like Parmenides, Empedocles admits that being is not born nor does it die, because it is eternal. Unlike Parmenides, he says that being quadruple: land, water, air, and fire. These four elements are the roots of things, the latter being only different combinations of these elements. To explain the process of these combinations, Empedocles has recourse to two forces, primitive and fundamental -- love and strife. From the beginning, since elements were regulated by love, they were an indistinct whole and formed the sphere. In the process of time, strife, which circulated about the sphere, penetrated and divided the elements. Thus they came to form the stars (zone of fire), ether (air), the oceans, and the earth; and from the earth came forth all things, including plants and men. An alternating balance of hate and of love destroys men until, by a natural reaction of love, hatred will be banished and everything will return to form once more the ancient sphere, to begin again a new period of hate and love similar to the first. That part of Empedocles' theory dealing with the four elements endured longest, and fell into decline only with the advent of modern chemistry. In The Radical Academy
Elsewhere On the Internet Anaxagoras Anaxagoras, who was of Ionic origin, was born about 500 B.C. Invited by Pericles, he went to Athens, where he remained about thirty years. Accused of impiety, he was obliged to leave the city in 431 B.C., and went to Lampsacus, where he founded a school. He died in 428 B.C. Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to enter Athens. He wrote a work entitled Peri physeos, of which large fragments are extant. Parmenides' being is constituted, according to Anaxagoras, of an infinite number of particles, homogeneous but qualitatively different. Aristotle called this agglomerate "homoeomeries," that is, homogeneous parts. They enter to make part of every becoming, and the prevalence of a given quality of particles over another is the reason for the qualitative difference of things. Such particles are endowed with an immanent intelligence, which Anaxagoras designated with the name "Nous." The "Nous" gathers and distinguishes the "homoeomeries" of the original Chaos; for this reason the "Nous" is the cause of their distinctions and groupings. No matter how often Anaxagoras had admitted that to give a reason for the distinctions and groupings of an infinite number of particles it was necessary to have recourse to intelligence, every time he explains becoming he fails to make use of the "Nous" and runs to the conduct of natural laws. Hence he is reproved by Plato and Aristotle for not having known how to use his discoveries in the determination of final causes. In The Radical Academy
Elsewhere On the Internet The Atomists: Leucippus & Democritus Leucippus -- probably of Miletus -- and Democritus of Abdera (picture) were physicians. Leucippus was the founder of the Atomist School; but his disciple Democritus, who was born about 460 B.C., and lived about ninety years, was its greater exponent. A naturalist and an avid searcher for knowledge, he journeyed into many regions to increase his notions, and many fragments of his works remain. In Democritus, as in those who preceded him, we assist at the breaking up of the being of Parmenides into an infinity of particles, each of them indivisible. Democritus called these particles "atoms." The atoms are material, qualitatively homogeneous, but of different form and gravity and are endowed with motion "ab aeterno," from higher to lower. Because atoms are endowed with motion, Democritus admits a second primordial element, the void, that is, infinite space which surrounds the atoms and gives them the possibility of movement. The differences in gravity cause the atoms to whirl into motion, thus giving origin to the formation of things. Every union of atoms indicates a birth, just as every separation of atoms indicates a death. Thus from the primitive void have come the stars and the earth and all beings, including man. The soul also is formed of light atoms similar to those of fire, and with death it is resolved into atoms. Democritus does not deny the gods, but even they, he says, are subject to the universal mechanism: they arose from the composition of atoms, and will be reduced to their component parts by decomposition. They live in interastral space, happy and not concerned with the destiny of men. The wise man does not fear them because they are powerless to do either good or evil. Democritus admits only sensitive cognition, a product of the motion of atoms, which in a light form separate themselves from the body, penetrate the empty spaces of our organism and set in motion the atoms of our sensitive faculties. The movement produces cognition. Indeed, not everything that comes to us through the senses is really outside the sensitive faculty. To this end, Democritus distinguishes the objective properties which are real in bodies -- such as form, size, movement, etc.; and the subjective qualities which are due to the reactions of our faculties -- for example, odor, color, taste, etc. These are in the objects only as a point of origin; in the subject they exist as specific qualities. The system of Democritus, the model upon which all the materialistic systems will more or less be re-formed, presents to us a world regulated by mechanics (motion) and by the natural laws which act in the picture of cosmic necessity. No rationality is possible in this world of mechanical forces and hence no finality or purpose. Thus are formed and are broken up the heavens and earth; thus human generations succeed one another, without there being a reason for their birth or for their decomposition; they are unconscious effects of unconscious causes. Life and death have no value, and everything is swallowed up in the night of atoms, whence everything took its origin. Such a system does not solve, but aggravates the problem of life, and inclines one to despair without comfort. In The Radical Academy
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