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Greek philosophy culture
Ancient Greek philosophy and the modern western world
Greek philosophy culture
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Here is a brief summary of the Pre-Socratic figure, Empedocles. Empedocles was born in Acragas, Sicily about 492 BCE to a distinguished and aristocratic family. His father, Meto, is believed to have been involved in overthrowing Thrasydaeus who was the tyrant of Agrigentum in the year 470 BCE. Empedocles is said to have been somewhat wealthy and was a popular politician and a champion of democracy and equality. For those Pre-Socratics who picked not to join the Eleatic camp, the new test was to accommodate Parmenides' thoroughly contended dismissal of progress and assortment with the clearly changing and fluctuated universe of sense experience. Dissimilar to the Eleatics, these philosophers, the pluralists, were not arranged to surrender …show more content…
altogether on the world they saw around them, yet nor would they be able to overlook Parmenides' considerable rationale. Empedocles was the first to face this test, and he set the model for every later endeavor, by debating for the presence of certain essential substances of the universe (the four elements) that have a large portion of the key elements of the Parmenidean Real. These substances, nonetheless, can blend with and separate from one another and in this manner offer ascent to the world as we experience it without contradicting Parmenides' most essential requests. Empedocles is the Pre-Socratic figure who put together the theory of the four elements. These were fire, air, water, and earth. Philosophically, Empedocles also stated the principle of strife exists along with the principle of love. This is in a way opposed to the teachings of Plato. He proposed the powers of love and strife which are forces that bring about the combination and separation of the elements. Parmenides and his followers believed and taught that there was no change at all in the real world. Empedocles’ argument was to divide the world into the more real and the less real. On the level of the all the more genuine, there are just the four elements (or roots) and the two motive forces.
Among these components and powers there is no generation and demolition—henceforth, no change. The measure of, say, earth on the planet stays consistent, and earth never shows signs of change subjectively. Each of the four elements and the two motive forces, then, are Parmenidean Reals. Be that as it may, there is likewise, on this view, the lower level of reality. The world of tactile experience, the world we observe and hear around us, has a place with this level of reality. This world comes to fruition as an aftereffect of the blending and isolating of the four components as indicated by the strengths of adoration and strife. Despite the fact that there is change, generation, and pulverization in this world, it is not an infringement of the Eleatic requests, Empedocles accepted, on the grounds that these progressions were not occurring on the level of the most genuine things. Empedocles explained how the different mixtures of his elements gave to different substances. He even how differing mixtures can sometimes yield different degrees of the exact same type of substance. For example, the elemental recipe for blood could be varied to create different types of blood, which as a result, would correspond to produce different levels of intelligence in the blood’s
owner. According to Aristotle, Epedocles dies at the age of sixty either in the year 430 BCE or 432 BCE. Some writers have believed that he lived to the age 109. There is no official account of his death, only theories ranging from volcanic flames to suicide.
In the Stoic account of physics, all things identified, debated, discussed and pondered fall strictly into certain categories in the Stoic ontological structure. Of the three branches of the very broad category of ‘somethings,’ the two most relevant to this paper are bodies and incorporeals. The rigid conception of Physics as articulated by the Stoics seems to use the incorporeal somethings as a means to categorize, locate, and evaluate those things which are bodily. In their incorporeals, the Stoics include lekta (which I will discuss later, as it is an integral part of their causality), void, place and time. Stoic causality, a largely deterministic discussion of events in a fated world, discusses the alteration of bodies without defining any bodies as effects. In characterizing the effects of causation as only lekta, I believe the Stoics have left themselves with an incomplete discussion of causality. By showing that an effect of a particular cause may incorporate both incorporeal and bodily aspects, I hope to provide a more acceptable account of causation while demonstrating various holes in the Stoic account.
“Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta king and queen of Thebes” (Sophocles n.p.). He was born to a royal family. The king and queen bore him after staying for a long time without children until they had to consult the gods abou...
Since airs are variable, we must settle on specific choices in given circumstances that we might not make in different circumstances. Alternate segments of the spirit are not variable in the same way. This is vital to Aristotle's postulation in light of the fact that these decisions are conne...
Unlike Parmenides and Heraclitus, who took a clear stance on whether being is changing or unchanging, Empedocles argued that things do change, but these objects are composed of materials that do not change. The change that we see is merely a cause of the interaction and changes in position of the four basic elements (earth, air, fire, and water). Much like Heraclitus and his views that orderly change is brought about by the “logos”, Empedocles also recognized that there was a force responsible for the change brought about. In his case, changes in the forms and positions of the basic elements was an effect of two forces – love and strife (or more commonly known as the forces of attraction and repulsion/decomposition). The philosophy of Empedocles can be likened to our understanding of physics today. What with his belief of the universe being composed of basic material particles (the four basic elements, in his point) constantly moving under the act of impersonal forces (love and strife). With that being said, it’s difficult to argue against his philosophy when much of what he said we know is true today. Except, of course, for his belief that the four basic elements are the rudimentary material particles of matter that are the “building blocks” of the universe. The elements themselves are made up of smaller particles, which can be broken down even further.
The locus classicus for Descartes’ consideration on the laws of motion are the articles 36 through 45 of his Principles and the chapter seven of The World. In The World, Descartes introduces a fable about the creation of the world where he exposes the similitude between God’s creative and preservative acts. Descartes begins considering matter as devoid of all its secondary qualities: ‘let us expressly suppose that it [matter] does not have the form of earth, fire, or air, or any other more specific form, like that of wood, stone, or metal’ (AT XI, 33). Hence, Descartes claims that the only quality remaining in bodies is their extension, which is the only one we can conceive clear and distinct. In the beginning, then, God created an indefinite quantity of matter whose substantial quality is its extension.
According to legend, Euripides was born in Salamis on September 23 480 BCE, the day of the Persian War’s greatest naval battle. Other sources estimate that he was born as early as 485 BCE. His family is believed to be wealthy and influential. Euripides began to question his religion at a young age because of his exposure to famous thinkers, like Socrates and Protagoras. These important men might have influenced Euripides way of thinking, which caused him choose to write about certain issues for his works.
Aristotle was born in 384 B.C., in Northern Greece. His father was a physician to the king of Macedonia, Amyntas II. Amyntas II was the grandfather of Alexander the Great. When Aristotle was still a boy, both of his parents died; so he was raised by a guardian named Proxenus. At the age of seventeen, he went to Athens to attend Plato's school, the Academy. Aristotle stayed at the Academy for twenty years as a student, a research assistant, a lecturer, and a research scientist. After Plato died, he moved and lived with Hermeias, a former pupil of Plato. During his three year stay, Aristotle married princess Pithias, Hermeias's daughter. The couple had two children: a son named Nicomachus and a daughter. In 342 B.C., Aristotle was invited to educate Alexander by Philip of Macedon. He taught Alexander until King Philip was assassinated, then Alexander became ruler. In 335 B.C., he left Macedonia and returned to Athens to found a school named Lyceum. Twelve years later, when Alexander died, the Athenians charged Aristotle with impiety because they resented his relationship with Alexander and other influential Macedonians. Aristotle said that he would not let the Athenians "sin twice against philosophy" (Soll, 663), so he fled to Chalcis. One year later he died at the age of sixty-two.
Socrates is easily one of the most well known names in the history of philosophy. He is even portrayed via the magic of Hollywood time travel in the popular movie “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and was more recently quoted inaccurately on a t-shirt as saying, “I drank what?” Despite his fame, Socrates was not the first philosopher by far, and certainly not the earliest to make meaningful contributions to the field of philosophy. Some of the great “Pre-Socratics” include Anaximenes, Parmenides, Xenophane, and Democritus. The philosophical issues of their days were significantly different from the popular discussions today, though no less relevant, and provide ample fodder for the cannon of philosophical consideration. The issues in consideration here that may benefit from discussion are the problem of the one and the many, the distinction between phusis and nomos as regards the nature of god(s), and distinction between appearance and reality. Appropriate and thorough discussion of these topics in the pre-Socratic context is certain to yield insight into the connection between these three issues.
Sophocles wrote the play, Oedipus the King. Oedipus the King was written around 420 BC, has been noted as the most powerful expression of Greek tragic drama (Hyesso). Oedipus, who was a stranger to Thebes, became king of the city after the murder of the city’s king, Laius, about fifteen or sixteen years before the start of the play. He was offered the throne because he was successful in saving the city from the Sphinx, an event referred to repeatedly in the text of the play. He did so by solving a riddle in which killed the Sphinx. He married Laius’ widow, Jocasta, and had four children with her. When Oedipus was born, there was a prophecy that said Oedipus was destined to kill his father and marry his mother. In order to prevent this, his parents pierced and bind Oedipus’s ankles and abandoned him in the mountain. They believe that Oedipus’s fate was in the God’s hands. When Oedipus grew up, he heard about this prophecy, and decided to flea town in order to avoid the possible outcome. What he did not know was that the parents who raised him, had ...
Book XII of the Metaphysics opens with a clear statement of its goal in the first line of Chapter One: to explore substances as well as their causes and principles. With this idea in mind, Chapter One delineates the three different kinds of substances: eternal, sensible substances; perishable, sensible substances; and immovable substances. The sensible substances are in the realm of natural sci...
He was born in Athens into a very wealthy family and as a young man
...of the body, and no problem arises of how soul and body can be united into a substantial whole: ‘there is no need to investigate whether the soul and the body are one, any more than the wax and the shape, or in general the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter; for while “one” and “being” are said in many ways, the primary [sense] is actuality’ (De anima 2.1, 12B6–9).Many twentieth-century philosophers have been looking for just such a via media between materialism and dualism, at least for the case of the human mind; and much scholarly attention has gone into asking whether Aristotle’s view can be aligned with one of the modern alternatives, or whether it offers something preferable to any of the modern alternatives, or whether it is so bound up with a falsified Aristotelian science that it must regretfully be dismissed as no longer a live option.
Oedipus did not have a fair start in life. His father, Laius, heard prophecy that Oedipus would one day kill his father and sleep with his mother. In order to prevent this, Laius gave Oedipus to a shepherd to be killed. Fortunately, through a string of events, Oedipus's life was saved, and he even went on to become the honored king of Thebes. Despite this feat, Oedipus still managed to make several decisions that ultimately fulfilled the original prophecy told to Laius, and inevitably sealed Oedipus?s fate.
However, it is notoriously difficult to say what an ever-changing universe has to do with an unchanging Reality. Additionally, the contingent world we know is morally and aesthetically imperfect, to say the least. It follows that Reality, by contrast, must be supremely good and beautiful. This strand goes right back to Plato, and the idea that there exists a world that is more ‘real’ and more ‘true’ and the ‘so-called’ real world we inhabit in our embodied state. This is the world of the perfect Forms, but their relation to the particulars of which they are the Forms is difficult to describe adequately. How can two things that have absolutely nothing in common be related to each other in any way
384 B.C.E., Aristotle was born in Stagira, Greece. At the age of fourteen, Aristotle went to Athens to study Philosophy with Plato. Although he studied with Plato, he did not always agree with some of his teachings. When Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and traveled to Macedonia. While in Macedonia, Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great. Later on in his life, Aristotle returned to Athens and created a school of him own, Lyceum. When Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C.E., Aristotle fled to Euboea to avoid charges and execution. He died shortly after in 322 B.C.E. (Aristotle Biography, 2015). Aristotle is seen as much more than just a great philosopher of his time. He practiced in ethics, biology, science, and much more (Chaffee, 2013, p. 250).