Milesians

This chapter contains sections titled: The Primordial Beginning Anaximander and the Beginning of Metaphysics Heraclitus Parmenides Plato Aristotle.

The six studies comprising this volume deal with some fundamental issues in early Greek thought: cosmic evaluation in Anaximander, the theory of opposites from the Pre-Socratics to Plato and Aristotle, thought experimentation in Pre-Socratic thought, the origins of Greek Scepticism among the Sophisists, the prehistory of "Buridan's Ass" speculation, and the role of esthesis in Aristotle's theory of science. In each case the early discussion seeks to show how certain ideas bore unexpected fruit during the subsequent development of philosophical thought.

Against a widespread reading according to the first philosophers would have discussed mainly about material principle of beings, this paper will argue that Anaximander’s cosmology is essentially procedural and is characterized by being a detailed description of how present states is developed from passed ones in accordance with a principle of justice regulated by time disposition. His cosmology would represent the emergence of a new conception of temporality which does not explain “what it is, was and will be” in terms (...) of generations of gods, but in terms of followed processes. Despite this approach, according Anaximander, χρόνος is not a neutral means where changes in nature took place, nor designates the totality of three temporal instances (past, present, future). First of all, χρόνος is not only a regulator agent of natural transformations but also the celestial arrangements itself. The starting point of this reading is the contextualization of the so called fragment DK12B1 in its doxographic source (SIMPL. In Phys. 24.13-25 = DK12A9). Unlike the idea that DK12B1 refers to ἄπειρον or to στοιχεῖα, it will be argued that the reference in question is οὐρανοί. (shrink)

In Metaphysics Γ, Aristotle argues against those who seem to accept contradictions. He distinguishes between the Sophists, who deny the principle of non-contradiction through arguments, and the Natural Philosophers, whose physical investigations lead to the acceptance of objective contradictions. Heraclitus’ name appears throughout the discussion. Usually, he is associated with the discussion against the Sophists. In this paper, I explore how the discussion with the Natural Philosophers may illuminate both the interpretation of Heraclitus by Aristotle and Heraclitus’ own worldview. To (...) refute the Natural Philosophers, Aristotle proposes a general reconstruction of their reasoning. Roughly, relying on sensory evidence (A1), they see that the same thing changes from one opposite to another (A2). Such a change appears to characterize a generation out of non-being, which a Natural Philosopher does not accept (A3). To solve the problem, despite their different worldviews, Natural Philosophers hint at a state in which opposites co-occur, characterizing an objective contradiction (C). Looking at the discussion in Metaphysics Γ and Heraclitus fragments, sections 1–3 show how assumptions A1, A2, and A3 easily apply to Heraclitus. The case of the conclusion is more challenging. In the case of the Pluralists, the co-existence of opposites characterizes a state in which there is no generation. Such a view does not fit Heraclitus’ mobilism. To argue that Aristotle’s argument is general enough to encompass dynamic views, I examine his problematization of accepting the change of change in Metaphysics K and Physics V. There, after re-stating several points that appear in Metaphysics Γ, Aristotle argues that accepting the becoming of another becoming leads to a state of contradiction in which the becoming is perishing. Heraclitus’ B8, cited in Nicomachean Ethics, gives evidence that, for Aristotle, Heraclitus puts a process at the origin of an opposite process. Moreover, after examining the expression ‘living the death/dying the life’ in B62, I argue that Heraclitus was aware that his worldview implied a dynamic objective contradiction. Finally, an analysis of elemental changes in B36 proves that accepting objective contradictions does not make Heraclitus’ worldview less attractive. (shrink)

Bu makalede, Milet Okulu doğa filozoflarının ontolojileri çerçevesinde töz hakkındaki görüşlerine yer verilmektedir. Buna göre, öncelikle, töz kavramının felsefi tartışmalarda neden farklı şekillerde ele alındığını açıklamak için kavramın kökeni ve çeşitli anlamlarına yönelik tespitler aktarılmaktadır. Bu tespitlerden hareketle, Thales, Anaksimandros ve Anaksimenes'in her şeyin ilk ilkesi (arkhe) arayışında ulaştıkları sonuçların töz olarak kabul edilebileceği ve onların farklı nitelikte olan tözlerinin felsefi töz kavramının çeşitli özelliklerine atıfta bulunduğu ortaya konulmaktadır. Nihai olarak, makalenin amacı Miletli filozofların töze ilişkin kavrayışlarının birbirine paralel olduğunu, (...) ancak töze atfettikleri özelliklerin farklılaştığını ve bu noktada Anaksimenes’in töz kavrayışının diğer düşünürlere oranla daha kapsayıcı olduğunu ortaya koymaktır. (shrink)

The term “Presocratics” refers to a group of Greek thinkers who lived not later than Socrates and who were not decisively influenced by him. They are often referred to as the first philosophers as they represent the dawn of human speculation in the West. The essay examines the fragments of major Presocratics - Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empidocles and Anaxagoras, which contain their views and arguments as reported by subsequent authors. Although these fragments are incomplete and are based (...) on secondary quotations, it is possible to sift through them and develop coherent and logical interpretations that approximate the original idea and intentions of these philosophers. The aim of this essay is to shed light on the philosophical meaning and significance of the concept of Arche (ἀρχή) – an untranslatable Greek word that connotes origin, principle, first in the series, or source, which constitutes the central thread of speculation among the Presocratics and their most influential contribution to the history of Western thought. (shrink)

Treating Cormac McCarthy's The Road as an ecocritical work, this article uses Heraclitus's arche of fire as a new methodological lens through which to examine the text. In particular, it asks how readers can derive hope from such a materialistically bleak novel. Heraclitus was a Presocratic philosopher from fifth century BCE Greece. He was a material monist, who claimed that fire was the principle element of the universe, or arche: the preserving and destroying element from which the cosmos came, to (...) which it will return, and by which it will be judged. This principality of fire is reflected in the supra-religious moralistic metaphor that “good guys” in The Road “carry the fire.” This interpretation challenges Daniel Luttrell's claim that fire in The Road aligns to the Promethean myth, demonstrating that Heraclitus's arche of fire may offer a more holistic interpretation of the metaphor, particularly when combined with Marcel D. DeCoste, Matthew Mullins, and Erik J. Wielenberg's theories of community as morality within The Road. Fire is shown to represent the intrinsic, ambiguous interconnectedness of humankind—and that the defining moral choice of The Road's inhabitants is simply whether they acknowledge it, both in terms of the community of humanity, and humanity's communion with nature. (shrink)

A number of aspects of the cosmology of Anaximenes of Miletus have not yet been convincingly explained, but we can assume that a starting point was the notion of a universe stretching only between a flat earth and heaven. This gave the cosmology its “meteorological” character: heavenly bodies were viewed as ignited evaporations of moisture. They were thought of as moving only above the earth’s surface, and their rising and setting were explained as an optical illusion. Similar approaches appear not (...) only in the Greek epic tradition but even in the writings of Xenophanes. It can therefore be assumed that Anaximenes’s conception is representative of contemporary Ionian explanations of cosmological events. (shrink)

Abstract:The history of metaphysical thought has been dominated by the notion of substance as the ground of being, with substance, primarily following Aristotle, being understood in terms of independent/separate existence. This understanding raises fundamental problems, a primary one being the one–many problem. As Plato recognizes in both Parmenides and the Sophist, to assert being to be fundamentally either one or many leads to contradictions. However, there is an alternative understanding of the ground of being which can be traced to some (...) of the earliest Presocratic thinkers. The author examines two of those philosophers, Anaximander and Heraclitus, and explores how they understand the ground of being primarily in terms of relation. (shrink)