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Chapter 2: Reality The First Philosophers

Explore the profound insights of the first Greek philosophers on reality, metaphysics, and the nature of existence. Dive into the worldviews of Thales, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and the intriguing debates of the Pre-Socratic era.

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Chapter 2: Reality The First Philosophers

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  1. Chapter 2: RealityThe First Philosophers Introducing Philosophy, 10th edition Robert C. Solomon, Kathleen Higgins, and Clancy Martin

  2. The First Greek Philosophers • Ancient philosophical traditions looked beyond ordinary experience for an understanding of “reality” • The first appeared in the middle of the first millennium B.C.E.

  3. The Ionian Naturalists Pre-Socratics who lived in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E. in and around Greece: • Thales • Everything is water • Anaximander • Ultimate reality: apeiron • Anaximenes • Everything is air

  4. Monism, Materialism, and Immaterial “Stuff” • Monism: the attempt to reduce all of the varied things in the world to one kind of thing • All monistic views rely on materialism: reality is ultimately composed of some kind of material "stuff"

  5. Heraclitus • Conception of an immaterial “stuff”: fire • Fire represents flux or change • Change has a form that underlies all reality, called the logos

  6. Democritus • Pluralist: more than one basic “stuff” makes up the universe • Universe is made up of tiny bits of stuff that he called atoms

  7. Animism • All of these philosophers also believed in animism:all things, including rocks and animals, are living

  8. Pythagoras • Pythagoras: numbers are the real nature of things • Reincarnation and immortality of the soul • Emphasis on logic and thought

  9. The Appearance/Reality Distinction • Underlying reality thought to be quite different from how the world appears • Thales–all is composed of water • Democritus–the unchanging and indestructible atoms • Heraclitus–perpetual changing world also has logos

  10. Parmenides • A monistic mathematician • Reality must be eternal and unchanging; therefore, the world of our experience cannot be real • The world of change should not be of interest to philosophy

  11. The Sophists • Gorgias: there is no reality, and even if there were, we could not know anything about it • Protagoras: man is the measure of all things, meaning there is no reality except for what we take to be reality • Anticipated both pragmatism and relativism

  12. Metaphysics • These various theories are called metaphysical doctrines • Ask and attempt to answer the most basic questions about the universe and the “stuff” of which it is composed • Aristotle called this stuff substance • Ontology–concerned with being • Cosmology–studies the universe

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