A History of Philosophy (Frederick Copleston) - Volume 1 Notes: Greece and Rome

Note: As I continue to read through this series of books, I will update these notes.

Introduction

Why Study?

• Education of History of Countries and Literature should also be paired with the Study of Philosophers.
• Philosophy systems don't kill and bury each other. They don't necessarily improve upon each other or take from each other. Not any one is necessarily erroneous or non-erroneous due to succession.
• Must have skeptical frame of mind.
• So that we don't repeat past mistakes in thinking.
• So that we can learn from past thinking. We can take what's good and leave what's bad.
• Learn where modern thoughts come from.

Nature of History of Philosophy

• Continuity and connection, action and reaction, thesis and antithesis.
• Philosophies can only be understood within the context of its history, and relationships to other philosophies and to worldly events.
• But the History of Philosophy is not necessarily a succession - it's not determined to choose any particular premises or principles, nor to react to the preceeding philosophy in any particular way. It's a Logical Sequence, but not a *necessary* sequence.
• The History of Philosophy is humankind's search for Truth by discursive reason, and a search for Absolute Truth, God, the Supremely Real, Ultimate Ground, etc.
• Development takes time.

How to Study

• See each philosophy within their historical context.
• Sympathy for thinkers and their thinking, but can still challenge, refute, etc.
• Scholarship of general History should be paired with Specialization and more.

Ancient Philosophy - Greece and Rome

• First begins in Asia Minor.
• The two great philosophies are that of Plato and Aristotle.
• These two lead to Neo-Platonism and ultimately affect Christianity and Christian Philosophy.
• We should not assume that every opinion of every thinking is borrowed from a predecessor, nor that if two thinkers have similar opinions that they must have borrowed from one another.
• Romans depended greatly on the Greeks.

Pre-Socratics

• The Pre-Socratics dealt with the One and the Many - Unity in Difference. Each thought of a principle of Unity, and often went beyond what is physically observable or empirically provable.
• They did not succeed with the problem of the One and the Many.
• Pre-Socratic philosophy centers around the external world, rather than the internal self (which was still included, but not the primary focus).
• Considered Cosmologists. They centered around the Cosmos. However, they did bring up the problem of sense-experience and reason.
• *Not* a pre-philosophic age.

Ionia Overview - Abstract Materialism

• Before the first philosopher, Greek Culture stressed Will to Power and "Might is Right". Plato later condemns this thinking.
• Two sides to Greek Character and Culture:

  - Moderation: Art, Apollo, Olympian dieties (Homer)
  - Excess: unbridled self-assertion, Dionysiac frenzy, lack of moderation, pessimism

• Culture of Homeric poems represented a more "primitive" era, predating the period of the Ionian Cosmology.

• Early Greek Philosophy was the product of the City and reflected the reign of law and the conception of law which the pre-Socratics systematically extend to the whole universe. It was also the product of a *mature* civilization marking the closing period of Ionian greatness and ushering in the splendor of Hellenic, particularly Athenian, culture.
• Ionia was the meeting place of the East and West. Thales is the earliest known philosopher from Miletus, in Ionia. The Pre-Socratic Ionian school was centered in Miletus, Ionia.
• Ionians depicted the *Urstoff* (primitive element, substrate) as *material*. They posited a *material unity*, but they posited it by thought. It was also abstract. This is known as *Abstract Materialism*
• The Ionian School includes the Milesian school as well as Ionian philosophers who were distinct from them (e.g. Heraclitus).
• Science and Philosophy were not yet distinguished during this time.

Overview of Pre-Socratics

Ionian School:

• Thales
• Anaximander
• Anaximenes
• Pythagoras and the Pythagorean Society
• Heraclitus

Eliatic School:

• Parmenides - founder
• Melissus
• Zeno

Pluralist School:

• Empedocles
• Anaxagoras

The Atomists:

• Leucippus - founder
• Democritus

Thales

• Urstoff (primitive element) was considered Water.
• First to conceive of the notion of Unity in Difference.
• First philosopher, from the Milesian School.
• Conceived of the Earth as flat.

Anaximander

Material World:

• Urstoff is neither Water nor any other element, but the "material cause" - the substance without limits. The Indeterminate Boundless (or Indeterminate Infinite) Element from which all things come from and to which all things pass away.
• The determinate opposite elements encroach on each other, creating injustices. This war of opposites is considered disorderly and mars the purity of the One.
• These determinate elements make reparations for the injustices by being absorbed again into the Indeterminate Boundless.
• There's a plurality of co-existent worlds. Each is perishable, but there's an unlimited number of them in existence at the same time, each coming into being through eternal motion.
• The eternal motion separated off. Then the world was formed by a vortex movement - the heavier elements (earth and water) in the center, fire on the outer circumference, and air in-between them. The Earth is conceived as a short cylinder.

Evolution:

• Life comes from the sea and adapts to the environment to evolve into animals.
• Humankind was born from animals of another species. But he doesn't explain how humans survived the transition stage.

Aniximenes

• Urstoff was considered Air, rather than Water.
• Air turns into other things by condensation and rarefaction (dilation). Rerefaction, the warming up of air, turns air into fire, whereas condensation, the cooling of air, turns air into wind, cloud, water, earth, and finally stones.
• Due to this, Air was considered the half-way house of all elements.
• He attempted to found all quality on quantity.
• The Earth was conceived of as flat, just like with Thales.

The Pythagorean Society

The Society:

• They were members of a religious society/community, founded by Pythagoras (an Ionian) in South Itality in the second half of the 6th century BCE.
• It was an Ascetic and Religious School during the Religious Revival. But they had a strongly marked Scientific spirit. They were not a political community. They did, however, obtain political control in Kroton and other cities of Magna Graecia.
• Their religion and beliefs focused on: Purity and Purification, doctrine of Transmigration of Souls, and the promotion of Soul-Culture.
• They thought music, math, and silence were valuable aids in tending the Soul.
• They thought of the Soul as immortal and undergoing transmigration.
• According to Aristotle, they were the first to advance the study of math.

Their Philosophy:

• A Mathematico-metaphysical philosophy
• All things are numerable. Relations of things can be expressed according to numerical proportion.
• Harmony of the universe depends on number.
• All things in their whole nature are modelled after numbers.
• Pythagoras combined Anaximander's Unlimited/Indeterminate with the notion of Limit. The Limit gives form to the Unlimited.
• Declared that all things *are* numbers. Conceived of numbers geometrically and spatially. The elements of number are even (unlimited) and odd (limited).
• All bodies consist of points or units in space, which when taken all together constitute a number. Points, lines, and surfaces are real units which compose all bodies in nature.
• Tetraktys is a figure that is regarded as sacred.

• The Earth is spherical. The Earth, planets, and Sun revolve around a central fire or "hearth of universe" (identified with the number One). The world inhales air from the Boundless Mass outside of it, and the air is spoken of as the Unlimited.
• Influenced by both Anaximander and Anaximenes.

The Word of Heraclitus

The Person:

• Heraclitus was an Ephesian noble who flourished around 504-501 BCE (according to Diogenes).
• He didn't like Homer. Attitude towards God was pantheistic, even though the religious language he used did not make this apparent.
• *Not* the same "Word" (Greek: logos) as in Christianity. His "Word" was a special message to mankind.

His Philosophy:

• Believed everything is changing and Becoming.
• Unity in Diversity, Difference in Unity, Identity in Difference.
• Reality is One, but it is Many at the same time - not accidentally, but essentially. It is essential to the existence and being that the One (Reality) is One and Many at the same time - an Identity in Difference.
• Conflict of Opposites is *essential* to the One. The One only exists in tension of the opposites. This tension is essential to the Unity and existence of the One.
• "All things come into being and pass away through strife"

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