Dark Ancient Philosophy
The stage of Greek myth as we have it now is already the result of an introduction of logos and rational accountability into the Greek myth. In philosophy we talk about pointing to Greek myth as prephilosophy, but it is not at all an example of prephilosophy, due to having been inherently influenced by philosophy. It was a world-view clearly localised in Hesiod and implicit in homer.
The introduction of the term Logos which in Greek covers a lot of connotations. It is about everything that has to do with words. The initial meaning is something like an utterance, speech or a word. But it can also mean speech as something that a person delivers, or a discussion. A story too. Logos and mythos can be synonyms sometimes. The bill at the pub can even be called logos. Logos involves everything that has to do with your personal accountability. In Greek this is epitomised in the expression ’logon didonae’, to give logos. To give an account.
The main discovery will actually be that we have logos, which makes it possible that we think about things and give an account of them, but this implies that the thing itself corresponds to the same logic as in the account. The logic is not going to be purely abstract, it is always material in some sense. The thinking capacity is not theoretically elaborated yet. Some would even place the logon in the heart. Everything that happens on this level is in some sense material however.
Plato is important in the sense that it is a lot easier to give a good explanation if there was an immaterial side to explanation. Someone had to discover this and say this.
Accountability involves systematic ordering, like Hesiod in the Theogony. There must be some cohesion or coherence between the elements of explanation. If you explain the turning around of the earth, then the cohesion of the entire earth-system must be explained as well. The account must also be universally valid. If you say something you cannot allow too many exceptions because then it doesn’t give an explanation. If I try to give an account of why an eclipse takes place, I must explain more than just the present eclipse, it must explain every and any eclipse. There may be exceptions, but there cannot be too many. Present day science maintains the same. It must also involve an ojective intelligibility, we must appeal to principles of understanding that are shared by people. In Athens, the ordinary people did not understand anything, and the philosophers understood everything, everyone else are fools. It must involve people who are educated and know what they are talking about. If those fools had taken the effort of learning, they would have the same level as I do.
This term will be loaded with more elaborations of the same meanings as we go on. The term will more or less always return as the main principle of stoic cosmology. Or even in the bible and the gospel of John, ’first was logos’.
A second one, equally important, but hidden under the emphasis on logos, but which is the distinctive element in Greek representation. If you asked a 5th century greek they would point at the element of theoria. This word, as we call it, comes from a contraction of two words. Thea and orao, that which you can look at – spectacle – looking at things that are there to be seen. The word is used in a technical meaning by the Greek historians as an ambassador who is sent to a befriended city to view the religious festivals there. Theooros, watching the spectacle. A foreign external viewer, who is not involved in the things themselves but purely watch them. The first historian Herodotus describes how the philosopher Thales [from Miletus which was the first city that the Persians were to invade, and it was the first city in which philosophy flourished] goes to Egypt for the sake of theoria, ie. as a tourist. Someone who is curious what Egypt is like, what they have to say and so on. What Thales discovers in Egypt is that with the inundation of the Nile, the lots of the peasants are inundated and they have to recount the boundaries at each lot. This led the Egyptians to an enormous knowledge of geometry. Thales looked at this and found the result very interesting, but only when you detach it from its practical applicability and use for measuring lands, can you make it into actual knowledge. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The practical use becomes the signs of geometry. So the Greeks see themselves as superior for detaching this applicable knowledge.
Likewise, in a similar account, the babylonians had a very long tradition of studying the skies, knowing when a certain planet would be present at a certain place in the skies for the sake of giving advice to rulers. The babylonians were well-versed in astrology in order to advice the king about when it would be good to do certain things. The Greeks in their own representation took this knowledge from its practical use in Babylonia and study it for its own sake. The discovery of scientific views leads to immediate results.
Basically theoria is the uninvolved spectators view.
Kosmos, from kosmesis, cosmetics, is a beautiful gem and as such beautiful to look at. The attitude of viewing the thing disconnectedly is then applied to the cosmos as such. That is what the word is about already in Greek language, ie. cosmos should be viewed. Cosmology is then the combination of things that are beautiful with an account, or speculation. Speculation about the nature of the universe is then the immediate job of philosophy.
Most presocratic works are titled ’peri physeos’, On Nature, ie. cosmology – it is basically the same thing.
Aristotle analyses what makes science into a science. From the first book of metaphysics. This is about the highest science or the first philosophy. Philosophy is synonymous with science. Philosophia is the bearer of all sciences to come, starting with cosmology. Rational explanation is always philosophia. What makes this first philosophy into a scientific endeavour? Because it displays the characteristics of what science should be in a paradigmatic manner. The first book explains how his predecessors had achieved first philosophy before. Only Aristotle figures it out however, ALL THE PRINCIPLES OF METAPHYSICS. First of all you need observation. But sense perception is common to all and easy and no mark of wisdom. My grandmother also has eyes, does that make her into a scientist? No. Sense-perception is not enough to be a scientist. Scientism against aristotelian science, by Francis Bacon, is that we need observation as the only thing necessary for science. We need also exactness. We need a precis knowledge of principles, of what is going on, what the explanatory elements are. This is about principles, not about mathematics. This exactness will return again in the 15th century, where exactness is only mathematics. Aristotle thinks mathematics is not the best procedure in science because that reduces reality into quanitifiable elements and you lose the wider perspective. The third element is what he calls wisdom; knowledge that has smaller amount of principles that explains more. There is something pyramidal about it. Once you climb up the stairs of all the sciences you will be smart ig. Metaphysics is the top of the pyramid, with theology as a specific account of metaphysics, ie. to the highest being. The fewer principles you apply, the more wisdom you have, since you have more general principles. The more you use science as an abstract discipline, the more applications may be envisageable which we cannot not envisage. We cannot immediately apply the thing, because we cannot then see all the applications. If metaphyiscs has these four elements in a paradigmatic sense they are applicable to any science in the Greek view. This now leads to a scientific system which is also a theoretical model which is to be in place for centuries to come.
Wisdom, ie. knowing things, becomes a profession. You should ask wise people when it is time to go to war or when it is a good time to harvest. But they are now set in a theoretical framework in science for the sake of science. These professionals are now known as sophoi, ie. wise persons. Every philosopher would be seen as a sophos. But commonly there were 7 famous sages. In the city of Miletus this actually takes place for the first time with the beginning of Ionian philosophy. At this time in history Athens is boooooring. Thales Theorem in geometry is something he maybe created. He also predicted the eclipse of 585 bce. People thought the sun was gone and Thales reminded people that it will be back tomorrow guys. He was also smart enough to see that the oil production would be very profitable because of the climactic conditions. So he bought a monopoly on all pressses. Cleverness is what is attributed to the sophoi. They have something.
The jewel of the cosmos is explained by the rational account of the ionian philosophers. The ionians were materialists. And all presocratics too. They had no other perspective on nature than that it is a set of bodies. Not even matter really matters. This is just about explaining the corporeal nature of things. They would reduce all the order in the universe to one single principle, the archè. Something of a high rank, the original, the archetype. These words refer to the ancient greek word for the general principle. A principle which is at the beginning of things. Everything that comes after the origin is governed by it. Principium in latin also have those meanings. The beginning and the governing.
There is no thing that explains nature except for those things that are within it, as such, the archè has to be a corporeal thing. All the ionians therefore think there is some material principle. For Thales, water. For Anaximander, the apeiron, the infinite. For Anaximenes it is earth.
The archè is a reductive model that reduces all that exist into one single component which then develops into something else. If my bench is water, how come it doesn’t present itself as water??? Aristotle on that deep think.
One quotation by Thales is also that ’everything is full of gods’. Don’t lose sight of the fact that for the Greeks, for generations and generations, doing philosophy from a rational viewpoint does not preclude the existence of gods. They will involve them more and more as metaphysical principles but they never leave the stage. Socrates and Anaxagoras were sued for atheistic ideas. Anaxagoras believed the planets were burning stones, though he didn’t exactly deny that they are gods. Atheism doesn’t exist in anitiquity, maybe mostly agnosticism. Protagoras never says that the gods don’t exist, he just doesn’t think we can find them because we cannot perceive them. This is not the same kind of atheism we have now, where we have science in place without the gods. In the Greek world theology is just a specific application of metaphysics.
Being vs Becoming
Now that we have the general view of what is going in the centuries before philosophy as we know it. We get to Heracleitus and Paremenides.
Heracleitus is known as the dark. He wrote a work titled ’on nature’ just like everyone else. Though we don’t actually know the title.
On the shore of asia minor, close to the city of ephesus, we find Heracleitus. On the opposite side of the Greek world we have the eleatic school. There is kind of a real clash, but there are also doubts whether Parmendies and Heracleitus even knew each other.
Heracleitus is a very strange and elsuive figure. We only have a number of sayings. We don’t have poetry or prose, just saying. He is a very austere philosopher, living by himself, during a time in which the Persians attacked the Greek cities. His title refers to his ideas being quite elusive. This explains how he has been attracted by philosophers as different as Hegel and Nietzsche. Hegel because of the coincidence of opposites, and Nietzsche becauase of his appreciation the critique of immobilism in the world.
Heracleitus distances himself from ordinary people and people don’t understand what he says. When he speaks of Logos it must be something corporeal. So what is it? It is going to be omnipresent.
All things are one if you listen to logos. And you don’t understand this because you don’t listen. All things coincide if you listen to logos.
Everything is in flux, panta rhei. In the quotation it is about the flux and stream of the water itself. The stream is in constant motion. So nothing is permanent excep for the stream. There is a permanent flux. Why should it then be a permanent stream? It should lose its consistence too.
He is not saying that the world is one whole stream constantly flowing, but the waters may change, and the world too.
The harmony of opposites. The term ’harmony’ in greek, harmonia, doesn’t mean the same as we mean it. Harmony for us is the sounding together of musical sounds. For him it means a sequence of musical notes on a scale. A scale is a harmony for Heraclitus. The scale needs to be harmonious in that it has a good transition from one thing to another. In carpentry you bind things together through dovetailing, that is what the greeks call harmonia. The bringing together of different parts into a harmonious way of being connected. Dovetailing things. The harmony of the spheres is also about the course of the scales, at least in Pythagoras. For Heraclitus the harmony of opposites is something negative, in that it is unavodiably the case. The discriminate parts have to be put together. He refers to this like the harmonia of lyre. In referring to the wooden beam that is held in equilibrium. The stringes pulling are all opposite forces that you necessarily have to install in order to have something like a lyre. If you lose this qualitative part of the lyre, you lose the lyre as such. The whole universe, the order of the world is actually due to a non-permanent, a transitional equilibrium, between opposite forces. Everything is only a temporary limited equilibrium of things trying to pull each other apart. This means that in the order of the cosmos, opposites coincide. They are held together or brought together in some way or others. The fragments give different acounts of how this coincidence of opposites actually happen. You can order them in a logical sequence in which you can see that in the end, the first way of producing some kind of harmony of opposites is unproblematic, but then we may get to some strangle conclusions. How can opposites be brought together? Well, for example in a relativistic account. You have different ways of looking at the same thing, a kind of coincidence of opposites that is unproblematic. Heraclitus seems to hold a view that depending things’ effects on different things, they may be described in different ways. There may be different aspects to the things that can be described as mutually exclusive or opposite. In writing you follow a straight line, but at the same time you are bending your hand in a bunch of different directions. Depending on the level of analysis, the same thing can be opposite things.
The experience of hunger coheres with the hunger of eating and filling your stomache because it is actually dependent on that for its existence.