Professor doesn’t like this room :(
Course is set up as a historical survey, telling it from the start in 6th century BC, to 6th century AD.
In ancient history (AH), philosophers tend to build on the work of other ancient philosophers. As we go on, because it presupposes much more foreknowledge, the course will grow more and more complex. Hence, the linear structure of the course.
Toledo will have all announcements, and all useful and necessary things for the course. Reader is there. 87 pages (not bad at all damn)
Reader will not be discussed verbatim in class, but the expectation is we can apply our knowledge from the course to the texts. Exam reflects this, there will not be a “here’s a random text” moment.
Handbook is also available.
Professor is encouraging people to volunteer for the NFK <3. He seems sweet
Exam is ‘a friendly dialogue between you and i’ ← professor
Lectures are recorded, attendance falls → ‘punitive’ measures
The earliest philosophers explicitly react to the situation that existed before [myth, presumably?].
Human culture begins eons ago. Philosophical, epistemic encounters with the world are often limited by philosopher to a relatively recent development, while human culture in itself served as such an interaction with nature.
The most fundamental questions about reality were asked orally and answered by referring to stories called myths, mythos in Greek - which some, like Plato, might even use synonymously with reason. These stories always referred to sacred, divine things.
Using super-natural is an anachronism. “nature” was not invented at the time.
Referring to it as myth is not what they themselves would do, it was how they dealt with reality - by telling stories.
For millennia, myth has been a valid way of explaining the world. Be it in Greece, or in China, philosophy exists from the 1st millennium BCE (let’s say), sometimes 2nd, there have been many more millennia prior to that than since. We have only been doing our kind of philosophy for around 2600 years.
These stories - myths - refer to situations or events that took place somewhere out of time. Somewhere with no historical reference, and while they may have some historical systematization (ordering), this is already introducing rationalization into it. Myths refer to timeless events where divine forces interact with one another, or humans, in some whimsical manner they desire to. This includes gods’ perversions that humans are then bound to.
Why does the sun rise in the morning and set at night? Because at some point in history, a god decided to travel with a carriage, carrying a large fireball, from east to west.
Why are there seasons? Because at some point in pre-history, Demeter brought Persephone to marry the king of the underworld. …
This model of explanation takes the situation as we have it for granted - we see the sun rising and setting, seasons coming and going - and this explanation does not give alternatives, and show how from all possible alternatives only one was chosen; rather, it only legitimizes the state-of-affairs as we have it.
All peoples that have had this manner of explanation in their culture, they would be certain that there are gods. To believe in olden society is to take an a-rational position, for there was no rationality, but also no going against it.
In modern society, with the introduction of rationality, to take a stance of belief is to introduce irrationality - as now rationality exists to be contradicted.
In mythical people, the omnipresence of the gods is taken for granted.
The behavior of Zeus is insane lowkey, he was first a weather-god for the indo-germanics, one who sent rain and sunshine to the people below (or thunder). In Greece he became a ‘person.’
Hesiod’s Theogony creates a genealogical structure of the family relations of the Greek gods. Much like humans, they reproduce by sexual intercourse.
There are contradictions between different myths about the same god. Hesiod decides to organize it, and with this introduces logos.
Poets were the educators of the people. A guy from Colophon (we can forget this as far as the professor cares) called Xenophanes was reflecting on the contemporary image of the gods.
From Carthage, part of Sicily was conquered, but Greek cities resisted and kept Greek alive for a while.
In the south of Calabria and Salento (Italy), some communities still speak Greek.
Xenophanes is already ~580-480 BCE.
”Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the Gods all that is a shame among men”
When working with early Greek philosophy we only really have fragments that have survived through the manuscripts of different authors.
Pre-Socratic philosophy only survives fragmented.
That there are so many quotations (relatively speaking), means that consequent generations were in constant dialogue regarding Xenophanes.
Xenophanes rejects the immorality of the gods.
Xenophanes says that it is blasphemous to attribute bad things to gods. There is a palpable tendency (in his case), to purify the image of the gods.
Obviously this is not yet a cosmological argument, but with some charity you can see this as something that might be quoted in a cosmological argument.
Beings represent Gods in their own “image and likeness.” Kind of in a reverse direction to Christianity.
Anthropomorphism ^
Virtue is made divine at some later stage. Irrelevant atm.
There is already a clear tendency of purification, but not yet of abstraction of the divine. Prof. says this starts with Aristotle.
For Xenophanes to talk about how people look, there would have had to be intercultural exchange.
Xenophanes does not introduce monotheism !!
Whatever you say about the gods in pre-Socratic times can never speak about a god as immaterial
Discovery of Nature
nature vs the supernatural
physis - phyo
The discovery of nature is something we have to talk about when we speak of the beginnings of philosophy.
The discovery of nature is the recognition of it as such. I.e. nature was there, but not seen as itselfs.
-tura makes a verbal root into a noun.
The original verb from na-ture: nasci, referred to nascence, birth.
Likewise, -sis makes a noun from a verb, phyo means growth, physis means nature.
This all refers to the fact that nature grows out of itself.
Nature grows out of itself, reproduces itself, etc. etc., and that’s spectacular!!!!!
Nature should be understood as a force of growth, rather than something that is made to grow by an external “SUPER-NATURAL” force.
When one calls something nature as something with a growing force in itself, a tree as in-itself, then you detach nature from the divine. This means you can now explain the force of growth in nature by means not rooted in the divine.
[here feeling like this is a 3rd act plot twist reveal]
Nature is things that can move themselves and things that can be moved.
Self-motion will be an exception. ← this kinda needs a soul
When your body heals itself, you can claim that it is a principle stemming from nature, rather than the gods intervening and healing your cut.