The Self from Various Perspectives Thales

Philosophy – Milesian School of Philosophy  Thales asserted Water to be the

principle of things. For he saw
Socratic Method that matter was principally
 involved not conveying knowledge but dispensed in moisture, and
rather asking question after clarifying moisture in water
question until his students arrived at  Thales's hypotheses that water
their own understanding had the potentiality to change to
HOW DO YOU ANSWER THE QUESTION: the myriad things of which the
who am I? universe is made, the botanical,
physiological, meteorological and
Who am I in relation to the natural world geological states.
(cosmos)?
 Thales knew that heat could
Ancient Philosophy return metals to a liquid state.
Water exhibits sensible changes
1000 BC to 500 AD
more obviously than any of the
other so-called elements, and
can readily be observed in the
three states of liquid, vapour and
ice.

Pre-Socratics (The Milesians)

Thales

Cosmo-centric

There is a fundamental principle/ thing that

underlies everything else, including the human
Anaximander
self.
 "the Boundless" or "the Unlimited"
(Greek: "apeiron," that is, "that which
has no boundaries")

 the Boundless, but not air or water, lest

the others should be destroyed by one
of them, being boundless; for they are
opposite to one another (the air, for
instance, is cold, the water wet, and the
fire hot). If any of them should be
boundless, it would long since have
destroyed the others; but now there is,
they say, something other from which
they are all generated.
  apeiron nature, from which come into
being all the heavens and the worlds in
them. And the source of coming-to-be
for existing things is that into which
destruction, too, happens 'according to
necessity’.
 according to the assessment of time,
 all observable elements are changeable
and, were one to be more powerful than
the others, it would have long since
eradicated them.
 As observed, however, the elements of
the earth seem to be in balance with
each other, none of them holding the
upper hand and, therefore, some other
source must be looked to for a First
Cause.
 Definite things –
 world of becoming
-
 change
 Indefinite things - there is no
beginning, there is no ending
 World of being
 Intuition (a thing that one knows
or considers likely from instinctive
feeling rather than conscious
reasoning)
ANAXIMENES
 Natural forces constantly act on the air
and transform it into other materials,
 Air can be thought of as a kind of neutral
stuff that is found everywhere together
to form the organized world.
 In early Greek literature, air is
associated with the soul (the breath of
life)
 Air as capable of directing its own
development, as the soul controls the
body
 He held that, at one time, everything
was air, and that, even now, everything
is air at different degrees of density.
Since air is infinite and perpetually in
motion, it can produce all things without
being actually produced by anything.
Heraclitus
 “The content of your character is your
choice. Day by day, what you choose,
what you think and what you do is who
you become.”
 “Allow yourself to think only those
thoughts that match your principles and
can bear the bright light of day. Day by
day, your choices, your thoughts, your
actions fashion the person you become.
Your integrity determines your destiny.”
View of Heraclitus
 directive power of fire.
 fire is a strange stuff to make the origin
of all things, for it is the most inconstant
and changeable.
 It is, indeed, a symbol of change and
process.
 All things are an exchange for fire, and
fire for all things, as goods for gold and
gold for goods.
 We can measure all things against fire
as a standard; there is an equivalence
between all things and gold, but all
things are not identical to gold.
 Similarly, fire provides a standard of
value for other stuffs, but it is not
identical to them.
  One thing is transformed into another in
a cycle of changes. What is constant is
not some stuff, but the overall process
of change itself. There is a constant law
of transformations, which is, perhaps, to
be identified with the Logos.
 For he held that (1) everything is
constantly changing and (2) opposite
things are identical, so that (3)
everything is and is not at the same
time.
 "Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things
go and nothing stays, and comparing
existents to the flow of a river, he says
you could not step twice into the same
river"
 The sentence says that different waters
flow in rivers staying the same. In other
words, though the waters are always
changing, the rivers stay the same
 . The point, then, is not that everything
is changing, but that the fact that some
things change makes possible the
continued existence of other things.
Parmenides
 No world of becoming –it is an illusion;
illogical
 Sense of perception - unreliable
 Being – real
 Eternalism
 No time
 Block universe
 Does not change
 Deductive Method
 Extreme Rationalist
 Example
 Something cannot come
from nothing
 Therefore coming to
be (birth impossible)
cannot go to nothing
 (death
impossible)
 Past Present Future
 All are there in the universe
 According to Parmenides, whatever is,
is (being) and whatever is not, is not
(nonbeing). As a result, whatever
constitutes the nature of reality must
always “have been” since nothing can
come into being from nothing.
Anaxagoras
 Everything is in anything
 Seeds – infinite in number
 infinite in size
 infinitely divisible
 Nous – mind- Pure
 What is the course of motion
 How are there different things in the
world?
 Principle of Predominance
 Each thing obtains its
unique characteristics from
the substance which exist
in int in the highest
concentration.
 What is the cause that
moves matter?
 Mind “Nous” Force
The View of Anaxagoras
 According to Anaxagoras, the agent
responsible for the rotation and
separation of the primordial mixture is
Mind or nous:
 And when Mind began to cause motion,
separating off proceeded to occur from
all that was moved, and all that Mind
moved was separated apart, and as
things were being moved and separated
apart, the rotation caused much more
separating apart to occur”.
 There is some end or purpose to
existence
 Impelling them forward to realize
this end
Phythagoras
Democritus
 He maintained the impossibility of
dividing things ad infinitum. From the
difficulty of assigning a beginning of
time, he argued the eternity of existing
nature, of void space, and of motion.
 All motions are the result of active and
passive affection
 Primary motion = impulse
 secondary effects = reaction
 The worlds which we see - result from
the endless multiplicity of falling atoms.
 This is the basis of the law of necessity,
by which all things in nature are ruled.
 The human soul consists of globular
atoms of fire, which impart movement to
the body.
 Similar to musical intervals, in medicine
there are opposites, such as the hot and
the cold, the wet and the dry, and it is
the business of the physician to produce
a proper 'blend' of these in the human
body