Unit 1 Philosophy Essay

PHIL 1100 Unit 1 Lecture: Philosophy, Pre-Socratics, and Socrates

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Introduction

In this lecture, students will learn the origin of philosophy, the "Socratic turn" of philosophy, and the value of philosophy. The main sources are the Presocratic philosophers, Plato's Apology, and Bertrand Russell's "The Value of Philosophy."

What is Philosophy?

Consider "ornithology" for example: a branch of zoology dealing with birds. That's clear.

What about the term "biology"? It is defined as a branch of knowledge that deals with living organisms and vital processes. But the definition of philosophy is not so straightforward.

Philosophy: literally means love of wisdom. It is a compound word of two words: philos (love) and sophia (wisdom). To be a philosopher, then, is to love wisdom. Good! We're getting somewhere. But what is wisdom?

I think a fair definition is that philosophy is the study of the most important questions in life, questions about morality, religion, reality, language, etc. Thus, philosophy is the academic subject dealing with questions of metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, and logic.

Thus here is a sketch of the 5 main branches:

1. Metaphysics is the study of the fundamental nature of reality and existence. 2. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It is concerned with the origin, acquisition, and nature of

knowledge. 3. Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste. 4. Ethics is the branch of philosophy concerned about morality. 5. Logic is the study of the principles of good reasoning.

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Presocratics

The Presocratic philosophers were men who lived in and around Greece during the fifth and sixth centuries B.C.E. They were the founders of Western philosophy, a new way of thinking about the world that broke away from mythological thought. In the mythological manner of understanding the world, the behavior of everything in nature was understood as having the personal choice of some god behind it, and was thus seen to be as unpredictable as the behavior of humans. There was no distinction between nature and persons.

The Presocratics invented the idea of nature as a natural place, as a collection of objects. These objects operated according to a predictable pattern that could be discovered by human investigation. In this way they set the stage for an understanding of the world that is one of the central defining features of Western culture. We now call this way of understanding science; but it was once called philosophy.

Thales

Thales of Miletus (624-546 B.C.E) is usually credited with being the first philosopher in the West. Thales' solution to the problem of the nature of reality will sound strange to your ears, but a closer inspection leaves it actually quite revealing. He said that everything is water.

Physical things take the form of either a solid, or a liquid, or a gas. Since water can assume all of these forms it is possible that everything is a form of water. Water is also essential for life. In fact, it appears to be the most abundant thing in existence, especially if you live on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, as Thales did, and believe that the Earth itself floated on a giant body of water.

Anaximander

Anaximander, a student of Thales, describes his idea of the one basic reality: "The Unlimited."

There are two basic ideas of Anaximander that are especially important for us. The Unlimited may mean something like we mean when we call God "infinite", and mean by this that God is outside of time and space. The Unlimited is not itself a particular kind of thing, such as water. Any particular kind of thing is limited to being a thing of that kind. The Unlimited, however, being of no particular kind, has no limits of this sort. Anaximander's apparently unintelligible concept of the "Unlimited" rings true to our contemporary ear if we simply define it as "energy".

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Anaximenes

He dismissed the theory of Anaximander, and identified the one underlying substance of the cosmos with air. Air is all around us. It is necessary for life to breathe it. It fills the sky, and upon it floats the earth.

Pure air is the most rarefied substance, but it can condense into heavier and heavier forms. These may be graded, according to their degree of condensation—as fire, and then wind, and then clouds, and then water, and then earth.

Pythagoras

Pythagoras (572-497 BCE) believed that the soul existed before this life and will be reborn again after the death of the human body. The soul was not considered to be a separate thing, but

was thought of as a sort of harmony of the body. If the soul is a type of harmony of the body, then the study of the harmonies of music and mathematics were seen as a way to nourish the soul. Mathematics and music were also considered to be the keys to unlocking the secrets of reality. This is because, for the Pythagorians, reality is number.

Heraclitus and Becoming

Heraclitus (540- 480 BCE) said everything was constantly changing; nothing was permanent.

Heraclitus believes that there is nothing permanent. This is evident in his now famous quoted remark that: "You cannot step into the same river twice." Once again, a closer look shows that under an apparent absurdity lay the seeds of wisdom. For Heraclitus, constant change is a property of appearances, not of reality. Underlying this changing world of appearances is an order at work. We understand and detect the world through our senses. But by no means are our senses faculties that accurately represent reality to us. Heraclitus' theory explains away the world's apparent opposites, the path up the mountain is also the path down; a glass half full is a glass half empty; people have disparate opinions on just about everything.

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Parmenides and Being

Parmenides (515-445 BCE) said nothing changes, that everything is permanent, that everything is what he called Being. How could he hold such a view? There are all sorts of changes constantly occurring in the world around us. For example, things change their location (motion), or change from one sort of thing to another (wood becomes heat and ashes when burned), or change a property (a banana changes color from green to yellow).

Parmenides drew the distinction between appearances ("mere seeming") and reality. On the one hand, there are the senses that deliver to us our perceptions of the world, perceptions that produce mere opinion. Opinion is belief based merely on appearances. On the other hand, we have our minds, or reason, that delivers reality to us. It is through reason and reason alone, that the Way of Truth is to be traveled by Parmenides.

Things either are (Being) or are not (Nothing). There is no category for becoming. Of these two there is only one category of reality—Being, which is anything that can be thought about. Not-being, which cannot be thought about, simply is not and should not be mentioned, since it is merely an illusion of the senses. From these two intuitions: (1) Being is, and (2) not-being is not, Parmenides then proceeds to deduce some rather startling conclusions.

Democritus and Atomism

Democritus (460-360 BCE) is usually classified as a Presocratic philosopher, but he was actually a contemporary of Socrates. Following his teacher, Leucippus, he agreed with Parmenides that there is an ultimate reality that is not visible to the senses, and also agreed that it possessed the properties of being eternal, indestructible, and indivisible. This ultimate reality he called atoms, and his very modern sounding view is called atomism. According to the theory of Democritus the world is made of tiny substances infinite in number. These tiny objects exist in the void, the nothing and the infinite. Atoms have all sorts of forms, shapes, and different sizes. They are elements combining to produce objects. His reasoning: if you take an object, you can cut it many times. How many? Can you keep cutting forever? That is impossible. At one point you must arrive at the smallest part, the atom.

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Bertrand Russell "The Value of Philosophy"

Bertrand Russell, (1872-1970) British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate.

What is the value of philosophy? Russell considers this question in view of those individuals (practical men) who, under the influence of science or practical affairs, doubt that philosophy is a valuable discipline. This view is due to the wrong conception of the ends of life and wrong conception of the goods of philosophy. Science is useful for inventions and effect on mankind. Utility does not belong to philosophy. The value of philosophy is indirect. This is the view of the practical man, one who recognizes only the material needs and values and only food for the body and not the mind.

Even if most people were well off in the world, there would still remain much to be done to produce a valuable society. Philosophy aims at knowledge that unifies the sciences. Philosophy has not had success in its attempts to provide definitive answers. Ask a historian, mineralogist, mathematician what they do—they won't hesitate. Ask a philosopher, "What is the point of philosophy?" He will have to confess his study did not achieve positive results. But philosophy gives birth to sciences. The uncertainty of philosophy is a virtue rather than a vice. Uncertainty makes you ask questions. Also, it makes you start from acknowledging that we don't know. Many philosophers claim to establish truth of answer to certain questions: for example, religion. Those are dogmatic thinkers. We should not be dogmatic.

Finally, according to Russell, one of the most important aspects of philosophy is that thinking philosophically enables us to overcome the prejudice of color, race, gender, etc. Philosophy makes the mind impartial and enlarges the self and soul.

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Plato's Apology

The Defense of Socrates

Socrates begins his legal defense by telling the jury that his enemies poisoned their minds, when the jurors ware young and impressionable. Aristophanes made Socrates seem as a charlatan-philosopher in the comedy play The Clouds (423 BC). About corrupting the youth, Socrates argues that deliberate corruption is an illogical action. That the false accusations of his being a corrupter of youth began at the time of his obedience to the Oracle at Delphi, and tells how Chaerephon went to the Oracle, to ask if there was a man wiser than Socrates. That when Chaerephon reported to him that the Oracle said there is no wiser man, he (Socrates) interpreted that divine report as a riddle — because he was aware of possessing no wisdom "great or small", and that lying is not in the nature of the gods.

Socrates tried to solve the riddle by systematically interrogating the politicians, the poets, and the craftsmen. Socrates determined that they were not wise at all. In searching for a man wiser than himself, his questioning earned him the dubious reputation of social gadfly to the city of Athens.

The jurors of the trial voted the guilt of Socrates by a narrow margin. Socrates antagonizes the court by proposing, rather than a penalty, a reward. However, the judgment of the court was death for Socrates; Socrates responds to the death-penalty verdict by saying that death is either total annihilation or eternal life, neither of which is a real punishment.

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References

Curd, Patricia, "Presocratic Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

Plato, (Author), Cooper M. J. (Ed.), Grube, G. M. A. (Tr.). (2002). The Apology in Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo. Hackett Classics, Second Edition.

Russell, B. (1997). "The Value of Philosophy" in The Problems of Philosophy, Oxford University Press.

(CSLO 1, CSLO 2, CSLO 4, CSLO 7, CSLO 8, CSLO 9)

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