Ancient Western Philosophy: The Pre-Socratics:

 The whole body of western philosophy (that of Europe and the Americas
after colonization) is based in ancient Greece.
 Not much is known about the prehistoric origins of the philosophical
thought; these can only be guessed at by observing the physical remains and
animal behaviors.
 Prehistoric developments in the area of spirituality, mythology, and a sense
of an afterlife were integral to the progress of the growth of human thought.
 Out of the vague, grey area of time where civilizations came to be formed,
this early system of thought developed into more formal philosophy, a more
organized body of belief about knowledge.
 Formal philosophy I believed to have begun in the west during the 6th
Century BCE (c. 500’s).

It’s Not About Us:

 The first Ancient Greek philosophers began thinking about the world in a
very different way from ancient mythologies.
 Before philosophy, people were the centre of reality in ancient myths.
 The earliest philosophers, however, saw things in a new way: they did not
see people as the centre of everything, but rather were trying to discover
what the natural world was made up of
-Physis: the natural world
-Cosmology: the study of order / organization of the world
-Cosmogony: the study of the origin of the world

The Earliest Philosophies:

 The earliest philosophies had little to do with people’s daily lives, but focused
on natural forces and substances.
 Thales was a philosopher who believed that everything in the world was
based on water; water was contained in everything, and was an eternally
present source of life.
 Heraclitus believed the world was made of fire; everything is burning
because of a conflict of forms with their opposites:
-Because of this conflict, everything is always changing.
 Anaximenes claimed that the world was made of air.
 Pythagoras believed that the world was made up of and controlled by
numbers and ruled by their order.
 These philosophers were monists they believed the world was made up of
one substance only.

Pythagoras’ Theorems:
 Pythagoras was one of the most important pre-Socratic philosophers.
 He believed that numbers possessed some kind of magical power that shaped
reality.
  He made up his philosophical discoveries by experimenting with music – he
found that harmony was created when strings were plucked that were ratios
of one another.
 He also felt that the stars reflected this numerical harmony and that they
made music unable to be heard by us.
 Pythagoras had ideas other than those involving numbers.
 He had a very strict set of rules for his students to follow; for example, they
could not eat meat because Pythagoras believed that when one died, his or
her soul was reincarnated into another animal.
 This meant that humans were spiritually connected to animals, and so should
not kill them.
 Interestingly enough, however, he was also highly protective of his ideas and
made his students keep them a secret.
 He allegedly once drowned a student for revealing the secret of irrational
numbers.

Out of his Senses:

 Parmenides was a philosopher who thought about the world in impersonal
terms.
 He believed that change was an illusion of the senses; that everything exists,
and always has, because people believe it does.

 Philosophers soon began concentrating on human-centered ideas such as

virtue.

 Every free adult male was expected at this time to participate in government,
which required a sense of responsibility.
 Assemblies were required to meet to discuss issues and courses of action,
which caused the emergence of a group of philosophers known as sophists,
meaning “experts”
 Sophists were interested in ideas that were politically useful, and they
believed that people should do whatever is necessary to be successful
(although this would vary from person to person).

Relativism:
 Relativism is the belief, first put forward by sophists, that different people
(and groups of people) can have different standards about how to act (that
everything is relative to the individual).
 Protagoras stated that “Man is the measure of all things,” meaning that
people must decide what is true for themselves and act accordingly.
 He also felt that people couldn’t be sure God existed (or gods) and so people
should act accordingly to their own standards, rather than trying to please
some possibly non-existent god(s).
  This raised an important moral problem: if there was no set way people
should behave, what would keep people from acting in an entirely selfish
way and imposing their desires on others.
 How can the political system work if everyone is just out for himself?

Double Standard:
 Relativism poses a moral problem because it often leads to injustice and
suffering.
 It also leads to a logical problem, because it creates a double standard, a
form of hypocrisy in which what is supposed to be true for everyone
only holds true for some.
 Protagoras asserted that individuals would see the advantages of being part
of a society because they would see that it is safer and more secure to be part
of a group than an individual.

What’s Fair Is Fair – Or Is It?

 Thasymachus believed that social order is imposed on everyone by those
who have the most power – “Justice is nothing but the advantage of stronger”
 Therefore, relativism leads those who are stronger to set the rules according
to their own desires.
 This makes it difficult for those who begin disadvantaged to ever make
headway.
 They must break rules and risk punishment in order to change things.
 According to this view, fairness is whatever those in power decide it is.

Politics As Usual:
 Sophists in Ancient Greeks came to use their ideas for their own advantage:
they gained a reputation as people whose wisdom could not be trusted
because it may stem from their own standards for personal benefit.
 Today, the approach to wisdom is sometimes believed to be seen in a variety
of areas, which lend themselves to people gaining power through presenting
their own personal interests as those of the public at large, or through
misrepresenting things for the benefit of their “side.”

Knowledge Is Virtue:
 Socrates was a philosopher opposed to the sophistic belief in the self-
centeredness of people.
 We cannot be sure what Socrates’ own ideas were because he never wrote
them down; they came to us through the writings of his student, Plato, who
may have mixed his own ideas with those of his mentor.
 To Socrates, the job of the philosopher was to constantly strive to find the
higher ideal, the truest of goodness.

Socrates:
  Socrates’ famous Socratic method involved in asking questions about what
other people thought.
 He would engage people in constant exchanges of questions and answers,
ending up pulling other people’s ideas apart, so that they began to question
all they know.
 His goal was to make everyone think, and no to take for granted that they
knew anything.
 He often used these discussions to expose what he saw as the pretences of
sophists – he laid bare their double standards and their flaws in logic.

Rebuilding Knowledge:
 Socrates’ philosophy is often criticized as being more about destroying other
people’s ideas than suggesting some of his own.
 Really, though, his role was to examine why they believed what they did and
do what they did and to consider other opinions and ideas, too.
 This can actually make one’s own position stronger.
 He is important for forcing people to question their beliefs, and, while he did
not often fill this void with answers of his own, he believed so strongly in the
need of people to question the wisdom put forth by others that he was
willing to die for it.
Two of his most important “teachings” were:
**The unexamined life is not worth living.
**The truly wise person is the one who realizes he knows nothing.