It seems to Aristotle, experience is a factor that is important for the criteria to determine a creatures intelligence, And all of it seems to culminate in the theory of craft. I wonder how Aristotle would evaluate conditioning
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- Dec 2019
- Nov 2019
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Moreover, we say that matter is close <to being substance> and in a way is substance, whereas the privation is not substance in any way. Pre-vious thinkers, however, identify both the great and the small (taken
What does he mean by substance though, it seems like he just dropped this term randomly
I found the definition of substance but what is privation?
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However, substances-the things that are without qualification-also come to be from some subject. This will become evident if we examine it. For in every case there is something that is a subject from which the thing 5 that comes to be comes to be, as plants and animals come to be from seed.
So it's an infinite cascade of 'substances' ? Like if a substance makes up everything, at what point do you end up with the first substance?
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If, then, this is true, everything that comes to be or perishes does so from one contrary into the other, or from or into the intermediate
While this does make sense i feel as though this is going to lead to some weird conclusions
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For we say that one principle is divine, good, and an object of striving, while a second is contrary to the first, and the third naturally strives for the first and tends towards it in accordance with its own nature.
i'm sorry,
but which is the first, which is the second and which is the third? and where the heck did he define substance...i'm still looking for it
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That is why we also say 30 the same about the compound: we say both that the musical man comes to be musical from being an unmusical man and that the unmusical man comes to be musical
Reading slowly this makes sense.
It is like sayingyou cannot become a cook from already being a cook. You had to not know how to cook first...but it's very weird to think about it that way
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The man, for instance, re-mains a man and is still a man when he comes to be musical, whereas the not-musical or unmusical thing, either simple or compound, does not remain.
Some qualities are independent , others are not. The change in one state changes the entire state
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Similarly, something becomes musical from being not-musical, and not from just any way of being not-musical but from being unmusical or from being something (if there is anything) between musical and unmusica
There is a lot of parallels to asian philosophy that can be drawn here
Namey the whole concept of duality although they use it differently than aristotle
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And isn't this also clear? In the case of just and beautiful things, many people are content with what are believed to be so, even if they aren't really so, and they act, acquire, and form their own beliefs on that basis. Nobody is satisfied to acquire things that are merely believed to be good, however, but everyone wants the things that really are good and disdains mere belief here
But per the entire paper, it will be the Philosopher that does not quarrel with these topics and thus has the right to rule in this sense.
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Of course it is. They blame us for not knowing the good and then turn around and talk to us as if we did know it. They say that it is knowledge of the good-as if we understood what they're speaking about when they utter the word "good
But they still do not define the word good for all intents and purposes.
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hem and have no stability at all. That's true. On the other hand, people with stable characters, who don't change easily; who aren't ea
It seems that Socrates is acknowledging that these traits that he is advocating for both have their flaws associated with them no matter how ideal.
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Then the philosopher, by consorting with what is ordered and divine and despite all the slanders around that say otherwise, himself becomes as d divine and ordered as a human being can
This sounds very Confucius like
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hen don't you also agree that the harshness the majority exhibit towards philosophy is caused by those outsiders who don't belong and who've burst in like a band of revellers, always abusing one another, indulging their love of quarrels, and arguing about human beings in a way that is wholly inappropriate to philosophy?
those types of people that simply just rail on other things because they can or the types of people that just seem to be contrarians for the sake of starting brawls seems to be what he is alluding to.
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It's nothing compared to the whole of time. All the same, it's no wonder that the majority of people aren't convinced by our arguments, for they've never seen a man that fits our plan (and the rhymes of this sort they have heard are usually intended and not, like this one, the product of mere chance). That is to say, they've never seen a man or a number of men who e themselves rhymed with virtue, were assimilated to it as far as possible, and ruled in a city of the same type. Or do you think they have?
i can see two interpretations of this line.
One, for all of time this person has not really come into existence which is why it has become unfathomable to these people about what this person looks like
or two, the masses just haven't been looking for this person to rule the city as argued in the previous sections where this person appears to be useless by the masses.
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How a city can engage in philosophy without being destroyed, for all great things are prone to fall, and, as the saying goes, fine things are really hard to achieve
They mention this problem through this section of the chapter too but i think they do not quite address that this person they wish to lead does not practically exist. Also the city based upon this person doesn't exist either so all the near models are doomed to fail as well.
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hat instead they'd perish before they could profit either their city d or their friends and be useless both to themselves and to others, just like a man who has fallen among wild animals and is neither willing to join them in doing injustice nor sufficiently strong to oppose the general savagery alone. Taking all this into account, they lead a quiet life and do their own work.
The nature of Philosophy is 'sweet and blessed'
But this describes something of complete helplessness and misery, How this is supposed to be sweet if Socrates is describing an existence that is entirely based around isolation and not having any friends due to you thinking that you are better than them
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And if someone approaches a young man in that condition and gently tells him the truth, namely, that that there's no understanding in him, that he needs it, and that it can't be acquired unless he works like a slave to attain it, do you think that it will be easy for him to listen when he's in the midst of so many evils
This is mentioning how hard or near impossible it can be for someone to learn the nature of Philosophy from the standpoint of strife and poverty, these individuals are stuck in a state of place that prevents cultivation an can't be faulted for failing.
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Then does this person seem any different from the one who believes that it is wisdom to understand the moods and pleasures of a majority gathered d from all quarters, whether they concern painting, music, or, for that matter, politics? If anyone approaches the majority to exhibit his poetry or some other piece of craftsmanship or his service to the city and gives them mastery over him to any degree beyond what's unavoidable, he'll be under Diomedean compulsion,2 as it's called, to do the sort of thing of which they approve. But have you ever heard anyone presenting an argument that such things are truly good and beautiful that wasn't absolutely ridiculous?
Sophists offer nothing new, they only regurgitate the ideas of the masses in a seemingly eloquent fashion to get more of the masses t hear them boat and for the sophists to obtain fame.
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that the majority express when they are gathered together. Indeed, these are precisely what the sophists call wisdom
This is the the mob mentality critique of Sophic thought as i remember it.
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No, indeed, it would be very foolish even to try to oppose them, for there isn't now, hasn't been in the past, nor ever will be in the future anyone with a character so unusual that he has been educated to virtue in spite of the contrary education he received from the mob-I mean, a human character; the divine, as the saying goes, is an exception to the rule. You should realize that if anyone is saved and becomes what he ought to be under our present constitutions, he has been saved-you might rightly say-by a divine d
So this is basically saying that if you got an education from those who are not properly philosophical/ apart of the masses, then your ability to actually learn to become virtuous is impossible.
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grow to possess every virtue if it happens to receive appropriate instruc-492 tion, but if it is sown, planted, and grown in an inappropriate environment, it will develop in quite the opposite way; unless some god happens to come to its rescue
while he mentions the fear of the Sophists being the people that would represent that negative environment and what not to do. He doesn't really mention what the good environment would look like. I think this is fairly common in philosophy and pedagogy in general too. Where they make the case of what Not to do than what to do.
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We know that the more vigorous any seed, developing plant, or animal is, the more it is deficient in the things that are appropriate for it to have when it is deprived of suitable food, season, or location. For the bad is more opposed to the good than is the merely not good.
I think this is basically saying that anything with an already short temper is not the best to have as a leader because everything Must go right for them or else their qualities that are already poor will only get worse with time.
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Next tell him that what he says is true, that the best among the philoso-phers are useless to the majority. Tell him not to blame those decent people for this but the ones who don't make use of them. It isn't natural for the captain to beg the sailors to be ruled by him nor for the wise to knock at the doors of the rich-the man who came up with that wisecrack made a mistake. The natural thing is for the sick person, rich or poor, to knock at c the doctor's door, and for anyone who needs to be ruled to knock at the door of the one who can rule him. It isn't for the ruler, if he's truly any use, to beg the others to accept his rule. Tell him that he'll make no mistake in likening those who rule in our cities at present to the sailors we mentioned just now, and those who are called useless stargazers to the true captains
This is an interesting idea because the nature of this line of dialogue seems to suggest a passive waiting for people to recognize your merit and talent.
It's almost as if the people just have to want to elect you like the first elections of America where the candidates did not campaign. I wonder i that was true in other places as well.
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Whether he's a slow learner or a fast one. Or do you ever expect anyone to love something when it pains him to do it and when much effort brings only small return? No, it couldn't happen. And what if he could retain nothing of what he learned, because he was full of forgetfulness? Could he fail to be empty of knowledge?
The first line seems to suggest a preference to fast learners over slow ones because the slow learners might not be as invested in the role as Socrates argues that the person involved in slow labor will not want to subject themselves to the pain of learning. Similarly he makes the same case regarding someone who forgets a lot.
So in essence you need to have good memory (as he says) and be skilled at learning from the start.
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Then will he consider death to be a terrible thing? b He least of all. Then it seems a cowardly and slavish nature will take no part in true philosophy. Not in my opinion.
Oh okay, so Philosophers are just not meant to have a fear of death. To do so would be cowardly in their eyes.
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when someone's desires flow towards learning and everything of that sort, he'd be concerned, I suppose, with the pleasures of the soul itself by itself, and he'd abandon those pleasures that come through the body-if indeed he is a true philosopher and not merely a counterfeit one.
Socrates really does have a strong focus on the learning aspect of the world and how pleasures of the body or anything else is the true way of philosophy.
I see why this can function as a good way to transition into Aristotle's thoughts about how a life should be spent in reflection.
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- Oct 2019
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What else, Socrates, said Crito, but what the man who is to give you thepoison has been telling me for some time, that I should warn you to talk aslittle as possible. People get heated when they talk, he says, and oneshould not be heated when taking the poison, as those who do mustesometimes drink it two or three times.
I wonder if this has a double meaning. Where someone in anger often doesn't take the critisism for what it means until they are not angry anymore to realize the merits of the poison
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And so, Meno, is it right to call divine these men who, without any understanding, are right in much that is of importance in what they say and do?-Certainly
and since they 'agreed' that it is innate, then yes this can happen where virtue is only handed down upon people by some higher, unreasonable, force
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Then if they do not come by nature, men are not so by nature either.-Surely no
This to number 99 seems to be a summary of all they talked about up to now. Like a good way to summarize the arguments that are here
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So true opinion is in no way a worse guide to correct action than knowl-edge? It is this that we omitted in our investigation of the nature of virtue, when we said that only knowledge can lead to correct action, for true c opinion can do so also? -So it seems
I'm not sure how to feel about this as this can lead to relativism quite quickly
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Now there seem to be no teachers of virtue anywhere?-That is so. H there are no teachers, there are no learners? -That seems so. Then virtue cannot be taught?
This doesn't actually follow in my eyes.
One could indirectly teach without ever teaching. Just by seeing someone work can be inspiring to others or seeing someone forgive someone else can teach others to forgive without ever formally teaching anything
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But have you ever heard anyone, young or old, say that Cleophantus, the son of Themistocles, was a good and wise man at the same pursuits as his father? Never
I know the point of this was to show that: if virtue could be taught how come it doesn't seem to exist in the offspring of virtuous persons?
But this just sounds slightly harsh to the son
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How then, my good sir, can you know whether there is any good in their c instruction or not, if you are altogether without experience of it? Easily, for I know who they are, whether I have experience of them or not.
While there may be some merit to this idea if someone else has informed you of their problematic tendencies. In this case, this is not at all true.
It kinda reads like he hates the sophists because he feel as though he should rather than seeing that their ideas were not valid or begin with.
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By Heracles, hush, Socrates. May no one of my household or friends, whether citizen or stranger, be mad enough to go to these people and be harmed by them, for they clearly cause the ruin and corruption of their follower
Little did he know, Socrates has been trying to point out that Anytus does exactly this in his own way
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Then again, if on the contrary there are no teachers or learners of e something, we should be right to assume that the subject cannot be taught?
Not directly anyway, after all teaching social norms (in most cases) happens through just observation rather than formal or direct teaching. Unless something goes wrong. However, for the most part one just learns the sense of social norms or is more or less indirectly told by their guardians.
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Since the good are not good by nature, does learning make them so? c Necessarily, as I now think, Socrates, and clearly, on our hypothesis, if knowledge is virtue, it can be taught.
I think Ethically this can lead to problems of relativism because then you could make unjustified social inequality 'the good' through just teaching it. Acknowledging this possibility seem intuitively wrong to do
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Consider whichever of these you believe not to be knowledge but dif-ferent from it; do they not at times harm us, at other times benefit us? Courage, for example, when it is not wisdom but like a kind of reckless-ness: when a man is reckless without understanding, he is harmed, when with understanding, he is benefitted. -Yes.
This kinda reminds me of Aristotle and the mean between two extremes theory he had...except with knowledge. IT seems in this view, skills are tools that can only be cultivated through knowing how to use them
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And does he know? -Certainly not.
By this point i have lost track of the mathmatical proof Socrates was trying to illustrate.
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He cannot search for what he knows-since he knows it, there is no need to search-nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what to look for
This makes sense if yu don't think about it too hard. I think it gets at an idea teachers drill into our heads about how you can't study for a subject without knowing what you don't know
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ery well. According to Meno, the hereditary guest friend of the Great King, virtue is the acquisition of gold and silver. Do you add to this acquiring, Meno, the words justly and piously, or does it make no dif-ference to you but even if one secures these things unjustly, you call it virtue none the less?
Yup Socrates just pointed out that Meno's argument allows for, by birth, one can be declared as embodying virtue. even though this is absurd.
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et you say that the round is no more a shape than the straight is, nor the one more than the other? -That is true
It also seems to lead to a paradox where both things declared to be the virtue...are incompatable with one another
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Do you not say that?-I do
This whole paragraph seems to be denoting that you cannot really distinguish between what is virtue as one thing, it seems all things are qualified as being the virtue one is describing
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You weren’t coerced oretricked into agreeing or forced to decide in a hurry. On the contrary, youhad seventy years in which you could have left if you weren’t satisfiedwith us or if you thought those agreements unjust.
Even so, this is n' always a valid thing to follow. If he was fighting the rule the entire time in his seventy years. then he would be justified.
Also leaving would let the injustice of the city fester, which also seems immoral to do
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Come now, what charge have you to bring against the cityand ourselves that you should try to destroy us?
The city is corrupt is a good one to bring up. Even though the city raised you, does not mean you can not justify going against the city and its laws for it's problems.
Hell isn't this the nature of Socrates' mission about how he wants to tell people how they didn't really no anything and exposes the problems of the society as it exists?
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You too, then, shouldconsider very carefully whether you share that belief with me and whetherthe following is the starting point of our deliberations: that it’s never rightto do injustice, or to do injustice in return, or to retaliate with bad treat-ment when one has been treated badly. Or do you disagree and not sharethis starting point? You see, I’ve believed this for a long time myself andstill believe it now
Since Crito agreed to this. he effectively lost the entire argument right here because Socrates just trapped him Into a scenario where any injustice is now invalid.
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ome then, what of such questions as this? When a man’sprimarily engaged in physical training, does he pay attention to the praiseor blame or opinion of every man or only to those of the one man who’s abdoctor or a trainer?Crito: Only to those of the one man.
this is hardly a universal claim,
There are several cases where the expert or the doctor is not to be trusted or if the person who is a trainer is not more valid than the lay person.
Here.the doctor or experts might be doing someithng that is already established to be the most effective way of teaching available even though it may not be the most effective in actuality. The creativeness of the layperson might be of more concern because they haven't been molded to a certain viewpoint
I.E. the concept of the bloodletting being a helpful procedure for every single disease on earth at the time. While people's more lax theories, those who may be sick might stand a better chance.
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- Sep 2019
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o it’s not seen because it’s a seen thing; on the contrary, it’s aseen thing because it’s seen; nor is it because it’s a led thing that it’s led,rather it’s because it’s led that it’s a led thing; nor is something carriedbecause it’s a carried thing, rather it’s a carried thing because it’s carried.So is what I mean completely clear, Euthyphro? I mean this: if something’schanged in some way or affected in some way, it’s not changed because it’sca changed thing; rather, it’s a changed thing because it’s changed. Nor is itaffected because it’s an affected thing; rather, it’s an affected thing becauseit’s affected. Or don’t you agree with that?
I am not really following this
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all the gods hate is impious while what they all love is pious, and thatwhatever some love and others hate is neither or both? Is that how you’dnow like us to define the pious and the impious?
This is literally impossible from what i know about the Greek pantheon. Hades owns the underworld, Posideon the sea, and Zeus the sky and the Acropolis... and they all want control of all the domains so they will never love anything going on in any realm because they want to own that realm
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them that those actions of your father’swere unjust and that the gods all hate them
Socrates is pointing out how Euthyphro has to have this ultimate justification where no gods can oppose the action of Euthyphro prosecuting his father. This si going to be next to impossible
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n that case: what’s loved by the gods is pious, and what’snot loved by the gods is impious.
(haven't read the rest yet but.)....I can foresee a coming paradox for what the gods suggest that makes something both pious and impious
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Not only those, Socrates, but as I mentioned just now, Iwill, if you like, tell you lots of other things about religious matters that I’msure you’ll be amazed to hear.
OH i am really starting to see how much Euthphro is working towards proving that the gods are motivating his work (which will also free socrates) if he can show that the gods have stood against injustices, no matter who committed the injustice, they can just say they are acting in line with what the gods do and thus aren't creating any false ones.
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ild-goose chase?
completely off topic but geese were native to the area of Athens? It seems like a translator choice in word choice
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e mustn’t givethem a thought, though. Just meet them head o
Oh he isn't afraid of a fight it seems, he's ready to stand for what he believes in and that is quite admirable. although he seems to come from a rather strong angle of not letting their concerns be heard. He also seems a tinsy bit arrogant.
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e says I’m an inventor of gods. And because I invent new gods,and don’t acknowledge the old ones,
so was it assumed that because Socrates (supposedly) made new gods that he didn't acknowledge old ones? this seems like a jump in logic to me as he could just be augmenting existing gods with more gods rather then replacing them
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Art (tekhn ̄e) without practice and practice without art arenothing
Seems like a relatively straight forward concept of how you cannot have one without the other. However, it doesn't seem to say anything beyond. I also feel myself reading with a bit of bias as the only thing i heard about the Sophists is that they are swindlers that use rhetoric to sound smart.
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rotagoras says of mathematics, the subject matter is unknowable andthe terminology distastefu
Is there a deeper meaning to this or is it as simple as it reads? Where Protagoras doesn't like math because it doesn't make sense and is unfathomable. Or is this a more direct critique to how Pythagorean had perverted math.
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Protagoras was the first to declare that there are two mutuallyopposed arguments on any subject.
It seems that world of arguments will always exist in duality but what about arguments about what constitutes 'a pile of sand?' i'm not sure how these can exist in duality besides the conclusions of "this is a pile of sand" and "this isn't a pile of Sand"
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For no matter what, they are separatedby void.
This was a fairly impressive reasoning given the time, being able the theorize that nothing actually makes contact with each other. He seems to posit the electromagnetic or weak force that we would then experimentally prove centuries later.
-Mark F
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After establishing the shapes
Does he mention the actual shape of the atoms? I pictured a sphere as we know now but what if he pictured cubes or prisms as the image that these atoms took? I may have missed the part where he defines the type of shape the atoms hold.
-MAF
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These atoms, which are separate from one another in theinfinite void and differ in shape and size and position and arrange-ment, move in the void, and when they overtake one another theycollide, and some rebound in whatever direction they may happen to,but others become entangled by virtue of the way their shapes, sizes,positions, and arrangements correspond, and they stay together, andthis is how compounds are produced
I wonder if he later though of the elements as well as combinations of atoms or if he though each atom was separate from each other. Like each atom was it's own entity and indistinguishable from one another. Such that each hydrogen would be one atom but helium would be two atoms (that later combined to all the stuff we see.
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When Nous began to move [things], there was separation offfrom the multitude that was being moved, and whatever Nous moved,all this was dissociated; and as things were being moved and dissoci-ated, the revolution made them dissociate much more.
This seems to suggest a cascading effect, were once things are set in motion, they never seem to stop unless acted upon by an outside force
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The people must fight for the law as for the city wall.
This makes sense, after-all, a lawless society with no structures seem more apt to fail than those that hold their structure. So it reads to me that a society without its laws is just as weak as a society without its walls.
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Cold things grow hot, a hot thing cold, a moist thing withers, aparched thing is moistened
This and 79 speak of a cycle that is somewhat inescapable
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7) Pigs wash themselves in mud, birds in dust or ash
This and lines 69-74, speak to me as reinforcing the idea behind Xenohpanes' idea of how the image of gods is only painted in the context of what humans covet.
Heraclitus is reinforcing this idea as the animals he list prefer things that humans would find unpleasant or unappealing.
Maybe he is making a larger claim about how our good and bad ethical rules are based upon this and not what is really real in the world.
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) A man when drunk is led by a boy, stumbling and not knowingwhere he goes, since his soul is moist.
In relation to line 53, i assume what he might mean by this line is that alcohol...or perhaps other afflictions as well... clouds the judgement of the soul to embody logos.
just like how water on a wet surface impedes the ability to work with it (in many cases but not all)
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The knowledge of the most famous persons, which they guard,is but opinion.... Justice will convict those who fabricate falsehoodsand bear witness to them.
Heraclitus seems to really have a strong dislike to the nature of opinion and how the greatest people abuse it in his eyes
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What we see when awake is death, what we see asleep is sleep
This seems to relate to the point about sleep people talking nothingness with no meaning as seen in line 19 and 21. Where we want to see death?
I'm a bit confused to what exactly we should be seeing while awake and if death is preferable to sleep
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For the waking there is one common world, but when asleepeach person turns away to a private one.
The whole common vs private split seems somewhat synonymous with the terms objective and subjective
objective knowledge is common to us all while subjective knowledge is private to the individual.
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logos is common, most people live as if they had theirown private understanding.
So common in this sense is being under to denote availability rather than its presence in the community?
I think this might be it from the line about their own private understanding and it seems to be different from Logos as Heraclitus phrases
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He calls this the logos.
Was this the root of the term logos as we use it in the triangle of logos, pathos, and ethos? And if this si the case, where did Pathos and Ethos originate from?
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Heraclitus ridiculesthose who have much learning but little understanding.
If i had to relate this idea to a plurality that might exist in the modern world, is this akin to the difference to someone who knows a ton of trivia facts rather than someone who an expert in a field
where a trivia expert says a collection of true statements but does not understand the underlying mechanisms under them
While a expert may 'know' less than the trivia expert but understands the object in the field he studies.
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sea shells are found in the middle of earth and inmountains, and imprints of fish and seals have been found at Syracusein the quarries,
This was interesting to see the start of archaeology Xenophanes began to come up with to explain the cycle of the earth and how the world functioned beyond the scale of humans.
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(A38) <The stars> are constituted out of ignited clouds that die downevery day but become fiery again by night, just like coals
Does this could of explanation of a phenomena in the absence of any influence of a deity? Or does this just the basic roots of explanation from correlation to other heavenly bodies.
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) If god had not fashioned yellow honey, they would saythat figs are far sweeter.
This seems to point at the epistemological nature of the world and how we only declare something as 'the best' because we lack the knowledge on what is better than the best
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B25) . . . but completely without toil [he] agitates all things by thewill of his mind
Sounds like this thought might create a simular problem seen in Asian Philosophy where this being that brought everything in existence and moves the universe has no origin point of their own.
so where did this supreme being come from? did they come from a place beyond existence of gods and humans? What would that look like though?
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If horses had hands, or oxen or lions,or if they could draw with their hands and produce works as men do,then horses would draw figures of gods like horses, and oxen likeoxen,and each would render the bodiesto be of the same frame that each of them have.
I wonder how people recieved this message. It just simply states or very clearly implies that our gods are only humans because humans said it so.
However, i do not know if this should be extended to say that the gods are man-made or if the foms they take are man-made. So is he saying the god of thunder is only humanoid because that is the model that works for humans (thus a god of thunder would still exist independent of the superimposed form). Or is he saying the god of thunder only exists because of humans thought of it in their image, thus the god of thunder doesn't exist.
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whole universe
so would this number be zero by our standards? if it is a number that is both even and odd
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white is of the nature of good, while black is of the nature of evil
I wonder if there are any stories about the Akousmatikoi applying this to race at all. Maybe they only applied it to the (night and day)/(the actual colors) and nothing else. But that might be wishful thinking.
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But they suppose that the wisest of their number are those whohave got the most akousmata.
I'm fairly sure this is a jab at the akousmatikoi, but beyond that, it seems that the akousmatikoi were the most fanatic of the two facts and the most exclusive. Very much like a cult.
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Pythagoras seems to have been the first to introduce these opin-ions into Greece.
So in Pythagoras view, it almost implies a finite amount of souls if nothing is absolutely new. OR maybe he is implying that the addition of new souls (in humans and animals) is fixed since everything happens at defined intervals
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He reportedly traveled in Egypt and Babylonia
Did the Egyptians or Babylonians have any ideas about reincarnation? maybe he adopted some of the ideas from the time he spent there that we see later with the quotes
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making a selection of these writingsconstructed his own wisdom, polymathy, evil trickery.
This seems to parallel the distinction in the figure of speech "history is written by the victors"
In this case Pythagoras is being accused of electing to ignore some of history so he can select parts that are only useful to him. Then Pythagoras can impart a modified message unto his followers that would seem logical to him. That seems to be the impression everyone had of what he would do, which would explain the dislike surrounding him.
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I recognized when I heard it crying.
Is this suggesting some form of recarnatioon thought present in these words or just a appreciation of how the lives of animals are just as justified as those of man?
Is he saying the dog 'physically'has the soul of a man or is he saying the dog represents the soul of man (man like mankind) which would then make it "a friend of mine"
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Lightning occurs wheneverwind escapes and splits the clouds apart
THis seems highly like early science through the description of phenomena that can be seen with the aked eye and then pondered. It is facinating and somewhat saddening to see that our thought process (from a western lens) has not changed very much in its core. I believe it can be summarized by: Make observation, ponder observation, make plausible (given the context of available technology) explanation, then repeat until more accuracy is needed/achieved.
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but some nature which is apeiron, out of whichcome to be all the heavens and the worlds in them. This is eternal andageless and surrounds all the worlds.... In addition he said thatmotion is eternal, in which it occurs that the heavens come to b
For a modern day reading, it seems uncannily similar to how the discussion of dark matter sounds. Maybe this serves as evidence for what we were talking about in case about how the old thought patterns still very much exist in our world today. The description of a force that exists beyond the elements as traditionally thought about, but has the power to give rise to everything we live upon, seems to parallel how dark matter works.
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e apeirongives rise to something productive of hot and cold, but Anaximander does notsay what this “something productive of hot and cold” is. The hot takes theform of fire, the origin of the sun and the other heavenly bodies; while the coldis a dark mist that can be transformed into air and earth.
So my interpretation of this is that the aperion seems to allow everything to exist between two extremes. There are absolute hot things and absolute cold things, all other entities that are not clearly defined are in existence between these two.
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kind of cause or we will be more confident about the ones now beingdiscussed.
This reads to me as an early version of what later became the scientific method In Europe. Where you analyze past themes and then critique them to see how they interpret the truth or not. If they fail to do so adequately then you replace the thought pattern. However, if they do, it only serves as more evidence to believe them.
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This reads to me as an early version of what later become the scientific Method In Europe. Where you analyze past themes and then critique them to see how they interpret the truth or not. If they fail to do so adequately then you replace the thought pattern. However, if they do, it only serves as more evidence to believe them.
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Aristotle and the ancient commentators on Aristotle,
So is the presocratic work derived from Aristotle's teaching tertiary in nature? Sice most of Aristotle's work is not from him and from students and then Aristotle is only talking about this group of people? How do we know if we are getting a clear version our the presocratic ideas that are given from Aristotle's texts?
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and travel.
So philosophy was more holistic on life and was not separated as a discipline in the past? And they were orators telling stories about life's mysteries and giving explanation for them?
In my eyes, this really describes traits of an early believe-system that just is not unified more than the term 'philosophy' Where did the term philosophy originate?
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We do not have the end of the fragment, but it is clear that Alcmaeonis contrasting the limited epistemic status of humans with the exaltedcertainty that the gods enjoy
So was philosophical thought and critical thinking in the west borne (in some part) out of a frustration to the narrative of all knowing beings?
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In the fragments of the Presocratics we shall find gapsin explanation, appeals to the Muses, apparent invocation of divine war-rant, breaks in the connection between evidence and assertion.
If this is the case, then Western Philosophy does seem to have deep roots in an system very much akin to religion. However as an early philosophical thought process, i wonder if this was present in other forms of philosophy too, where gaps in critical thinking were filled with more religious figures
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Nor does he think that appeals to evidence are necessary:the divine warrant offered by the Muses is sufficient for his purposes.
In a way, this almost seems to be the birth of a belief system rather than a particular system of philosophy. I wonder why no one really calls the birthplace of western thought to be akin to religion. what was the reason to call this 'philosophy' rather than another religion/belief system
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This may strike us as ana ̈ıve and overly simplistic claim. Yet A
Oddly, this claim by Thales does not strike me as odd. Given the technology at the time, this seems like a very natural claim to have. Our modern day version of this claim is atoms and atomic structure afterall. However, it does make me question if our understanding of the existence of an universal building block was borne out of Thales' comments and thoughts. What does make us think or search for a unified building block to all of creation?
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