The Eleatic School is an early Pre-Socratic school of philosophy

founded by Parmenides in the 5th Century B.C. at Elea, a Greek colony in southern Italy.
Other important members of the school include Zeno of Elea, Melissus of Samos and
the earlier Xenophanes of Colophon .

Xenophanes in particular criticized the belief in a pantheon of anthropomorphic

gods which was then current, and Parmenides developed his ideas further, concluding
that the reality of the world is "One Being", an unchanging, timeless, indestructible
whole, in opposition to the theories of the early physicalist philosophers.

Zeno of Elea is best known for his paradoxes . But Aristotle has also called him the
inventor of the dialectic (the exchange of propositions and counter-propositions to
arrive at a conclusion), and Bertrand Russell credited him with having laid
the foundations of modern Logic.

Parmenides and Melissus generally built their arguments up from indubitably sound
premises, while Zeno primarily attempted to destroy the arguments of others by
showing their premises led to contradictions.

Although the conclusions of the Eleatics were largely rejected by the later Pre-
Socratic and Socratic philosophers, their arguments were taken seriously, and they
are generally credited with improving the standards of discourse and argument in
their time.

zeno
Introduction

Zeno of Elea (c. 490 - 430 B.C.) was an important Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from
the Greek colony of Elea in southern Italy. He was a prominent member of the Eleatic
School of ancient Greek philosophy, which had been founded by Parmenides, and he
subscribed to and defended the Monist beliefs of Parmenides.

Arguably he did not really attempt to add anything positive to the teachings of his
master, Parmenides, and he is best known today for his paradoxes of motion.
But Aristotle has called him the inventor of the dialectic, and no less a logician and
historian than Bertrand Russell has credited him with having laid the foundations of
modern Logic.
Life

Zeno was born around 490 B.C. in the Greek colony of Elea in southern Italy.

Work

Although several ancient writers refer to the "writings" of Zeno, none of his them have
survive intact, and the few fragments of his philosophy we do have mainly come down
to us through Aristotle (who was a major detractor of Zeno's ideas). He did not
really add anything positive to the teachings of Parmenides, but devoted himself
to refuting the views of his opponents.

Like Parmenides, he taught that the world of sense, with its apparent motion (or
change) and plurality (or multiplicity), is merely an illusion. The "true being" behind the
illusion is absolutely one and has no plurality (Monism), and furthermore it
static and unchangeable. However, because common sense tells us that there is
both motion and plurality , Zeno developed arguments to show that the common
sense notion of reality leads to consequences at least as paradoxical as those
of Parmenides.underlying intention was to affirm that everything was One, that all belief
in plurality and change is mistaken, and in particular that motion is nothing but
an illusion. To do this he considered what would happen if something was divided
into infinitely small amounts, showing that this inevitably resulted in a situation which
made no sense, and so must be wrong.

Parmenides:

Introduction

Parmenides of Elea (c. 515 - 450 B.C.) was an early Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher
and founder and chief representative of the Eleatic School of ancient Greek philosophy.

He is one of the most significant and influential (as well as the

most difficult and obscure) of the Pre-Socratic philosophers, and he is sometimes
referred to as the father of Metaphysics. He particularly influenced Plato (and, through
him, the whole ofWestern Philosophy), who always spoke of him with veneration.
Perhaps his greatest contribution to philosophy was his method of reasoned
proof for assertions.

In denying the reality (or even the possibility) of change as part of

his Monist philosophy, Parmenides presented a turning point in the history of Western
Philosophy, and sparked a philosophical challenge that determined the course of
enquiries of subsequent philosophers such
as Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Democritus, and an intellectual revolution that still
echoes today.
Life

Parmenides (pronounced par-MEN-i-dees) was born in the Greek colony

of Elea (southern Italy). His birth date is uncertain.

He is said to have been a student of Xenophanes of Colophon (570 - 480 B.C.), and
what we know of Xenophanes' philosophy seems to be an influence on Parmenides.

He was the founder of the School of Elea, which also included Melissus of
Samos and the young Zeno of Elea.
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Introduction

Pantheism is the view that God is equivalent to Nature or the physical universe - that
they are essentially the same thing - or that everything is of an all-
encompassing immanent abstract God. Thus, each individual human, being part of the
universeor nature, is part of God. The term "pantheism" was coined by the Irish
writer John Toland in 1705.

Xenophanes of Colophon

Xenophanes' philosophy outlines two major beliefs. On the nature of deity, he

was a pantheist believing that God is One. His theology was more a rejection
of polytheism than an attempt at developing an abstract conception of deity.
His beliefs were intellectual objections to the widely accepted traditions. No
evidence suggests that he regarded God with any religious feeling.

Tradition portrayed gods to have human characteristics, but he wouldn't

accept this as truth. If God is in no way human, it follows that he [God] holds
complete power, complete knowledge, and moral goodness. God never toils
intellectually; his mind's power is unlimited. He said that God, "always remains
in the same place, moving not at all, and it is not proper for him to change
position from time to time." [1] Xenophanes, as a wanderer, must have longed
for this sort of stability and rest.
 was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and social and religiouscritic. Xenophanes life was
one of travel, having left Ionia at the age of 25 he continued to travel throughout the Greek world
for another 67 years.[2] Some scholars say he lived in exile in Siciliy.[3] Knowledge of his views
comes from fragments of his poetry, surviving as quotations by later Greek writers. To judge
from these, his elegiac and iambic[4] poetry criticized and satirized a wide range of ideas,
including Homer and Hesiod, the belief in the pantheon of anthropomorphic gods and the
Greeks' veneration of athleticism. He is the earliest Greek poet who claims explicitly to be
writing for future generations, creating "fame that will reach all of Greece, and never die while
the Greek kind of songs survives."[5]

Melissus of Samos (fl. 5th c. BC), after Parmenides and Zeno, is the third

important thinker of the Eleatic movement. Except of a philosopher, he was a naval

commander, famous for his victories especially against the Athenians in 441 BC.

He wrote one philosophical book in prose from which only ten fragment survive,

thanks to Simplicius
 Theory of Being

Melissus was a follower of Parmenides’ thought but not in all its details. On the

one hand, Melissus agrees with Parmenides’ main arguments on the

indestructibility, immobility, indivisibility, oneness, completeness, changelessness

and perfection of Being. On the other, he adopts a different viewpoint on the

Parmenidean timelessness and finitude of Being. Melissus understood non-being in

terms of spatial emptiness. Since non-being is impossible as an enclosing limit,

then Being is limitless. Thus, while Parmenides’ Being is timeless in finitude,

Melissus’ Being is everlasting in infinitum.

Qualitative theories:
Empedocles
Introduction
For those Presocratics who chose not to join the Eleatic camp, the new challenge was
to reconcile Parmenides' rigorously argued rejection of change and multiplicity with the
obviously changing and varied world of sense experience. Unlike the Eleatics, these
philosophers, the pluralists, were not prepared to give up entirely on the world they saw
around them, but nor could they ignore Parmenides' formidable logic. Empedocles was
the first to face this challenge, and he set the model for all later attempts, by arguing for
the existence of certain basic substances of the universe (in his case the four elements)
that have many of the key features of the Parmenidean Real. These substances,
however, can mix with and separate from each other and thus give rise to the world as
we experience it without violating Parmenides' most basic demands.
Empedocles was born in Acragas, Sicily around 492 B.C. He was a philosopher, a
medical man, an active politician, and a truly flamboyant figure. He even went so far as
to call himself an immortal god. As a politician, he supported democracy, although his
position as an aristocrat would have made him a likelier proponent of the oligarchy. His
exploits in other fields defied expectation to an even more dramatic degree. Legend has
it that he managed to keep a woman alive for a month, despite the fact that she had lost
her pulse and had stopped breathing. When plague hit the city of Selinus, he managed
to divert two streams and thereby rout out the illness. For unknown reasons, he was
eventually exiled from his home city. He probably died soon thereafter in the
Peloponese, though given his larger-than-life persona it is not surprising that more
exciting stories of his death abound. The most intriguing of these, found in Diogenes
Laertius, claims that Empedocles' last act was to leap into a crater of Mt. Etna in order
to prove once and for all that he was a god.
Definition:

Empedocles of Acragas (c. 495-435 B.C.) was known as a poet, statesman,

and physician, as well as philosopher. Empedocles encouraged people to
look upon him as a miracle worker. Philosophically he believed in the four
elements:

1. Earth,
2. Air,
3. Fire, and
4. Water

Quantitative theories :
The Atomism of Democritus
Atomism:

Atomism was one of the theories the ancient Greek natural philosophers devised to
explain the universe. The atoms, from the Greek for "not cut" were indivisible. They
had few innate properties (size, shape, order, and position) and could hit each other in
the void. By hitting one another and locking together, they become something else.
This philosophy explained the material of the universe and is called a materialist
philosophy. Atomists also developed ethics, epistemology, and political philosophy
based on atomism.

Leucippus and Democritus:

Leucippus (c. 480 - c. 420 B.C.) is credited with coming up with atomism, although
sometimes this credit is extended equally toDemocritus of Abdera, the other main
early atomist. Another (earlier) candidate is Moschus of Sidon, from the Trojan War
era. Leucippus and Democritus (460-370 B.C.) posited that the natural world is
comprised of only two, indivisible bodies, the void and atoms. Atoms continually
bounce around in the void, bouncing into each other, but eventually bouncing off.
This movement explains how things change.

Preface

Democritus of Abdera lived from about 460 to 370 B.C. Along with Leucippus,
an older philosopher whose dates are uncertain, he is the founder of the
atomic philosophy of nature. Atomism is the most influential of the
philosophies of nature to be developed prior to the time of Socrates (d. 399
B.C.). With Socrates the interest of philosophy shifts for awhile away from
nature. After Aristotle's death the atomist philosophy is revived, with some
modifications, by Epicurus.

I. Background: Early Natural Philosophy

From the beginning of natural philosophy people have wondered about the
ultimate cause or nature of the physical world. Sometimes the inquiry has
taken them in the direction of a controlling power, a single divine force or
principle which governs the multiplicity and changes which can be observed
by the senses.

At other times inquirers have been led to ask about the components or parts
of the bodies that seem to make up the physical world. How many of them are
there? Can they be classified into kinds on the basis of similarities? How do
they interact with one another? How minutely can they be divided? If there is a
limit to their divisibility, what are the ultimate bodies like?

Early thinkers about nature were impressed by the apparent pervasiveness of

opposites or contraries in nature, for instance, hot and cold, up and down, wet
and dry. For any such pair, the first is not the second, and vice-versa. For
each member of each pair, it is itself, and is not its opposite.

Yet motion or change seems to be pervasive as well; short things grow tall;
wet things become dry; big things shrink to small ones (for example, cut grass
left in the sun). For any part or segment of such processes, being is mixed
with not-being. For instance, at any interval in a process of growth (becoming
large from having been small [not-large], being-larger seems to be mixed with
not-being-larger.

Heraclitus (ca. 500 B.C.) is a philosopher who takes such observations to

heart; for him, reality is characterized throughout by the unity of opposites.
Everything that is, is also its opposite. As he puts it poetically, "the road up
and the road down are one and the same."

II. The Absolute Existents: Atoms

Yet the atomists, who prefer a more logical and less poetic way of speaking,
do not agree with him. Where existence or reality is concerned, there must be
something that fully and unambiguously exists, with no admixture of nonbeing.
It is one thing to talk about small things not being large, or wet things not
being dry, or Homer (who lived earlier than Hesiod) not being later than
Hesiod. Yet when it comes to existence, in the unqualified sense, some things
must exist absolutely. Something must be absolutely before we can truly
speak of its not being in a qualified sense (for instance, not-hot, not-cold, not
older, not-younger).

Atomists hold that the absolute existents are the ultimate parts or components
of visible bodies, though these absolute existents can exist separately from
these visible bodies. These existents are completely full or solid; they contain
no gaps, no holes, no empty places. They cannot be subdivided, cut, cracked,
split, or penetrated; for this would imply that nonbeing has gained a foothold in
them. These absolute existents are called atoms, from the Greek word
atomon, which means "that which cannot be divided."

Atoms do not come into being or pass away; for if they come into being (or
pass away), then they would have to partially exist and partially not exist; but
partial existence makes no sense for ultimate things.

The "parts" of atoms do not move relative to one another. (Of course, atoms
do not have parts if by "parts" we mean components that can be detached
from one another, but we can think of atomic "parts" if we can think of the left
and right sides of an indissoluble solid.) These "parts" could move relative to
one another only if the atoms were not completely solid. However, atoms are
completely solid. Thus, atoms are entirely inflexible.

II. The Void

The atomist philosophy would be extremely simple if it could limit itself to

saying that ultimately only the atoms exist (with visible bodies gaining their
[dependent] existence from the atoms that make them up). Now, what would
reality be like if only atoms existed? Reality would be filled up, in every
direction, with atoms. At the limit of one atom, there would be another atom;
there would, in fact, be no point on any surface of any atom that failed to
touch the surface of a neighboring atom. Each atom would be hemmed in on
all sides by others. No atom could move relative to other atoms. In fact, no
change of any sort would be possible.

If this were so, it might even make sense to say that there is just one atom,
infinitely large in all directions, for there would be no gaps between the "parts"
of this monstrous solid, and these parts could never come apart. If this were
true, philosophy would find itself in the position of Melissus of Samos,[1]
according to whom there is just one thing, which is indivisible, while change,
motion, and plurality--the existence of more than one thing--are illusions.

However, Democritus' predecessor, the atomist Leucippus, indicated a way

out. Atomists can keep the doctrine of the atoms, together with the testimony
of the senses regarding the existence of change and plurality, provided that
they are willing to admit some role for not-being.

To clarify this point, let it be said that atomists do not wish to admit all sorts of
not-being. The only ultimate kind of not-being they admit is the void, that is,
empty extension which stretches upwards, downwards, forwards and
backwards, to the left and to the right (from whatever position one chooses to
measure) infinitely, without end.

Of course, it is not entirely empty, because in it there are the dense,

indestructible atoms. Apart from these atoms (and the larger compound
bodies of which the atoms are sometimes parts), there is nothing but the
infinite void.
Leucippus and Democritus maintain the existence of atoms and the void in
part because, thanks to notions of atoms and the void, philosophers are able
to explain, or give a rational account (logos) of, the observable world-order
(kosmos), of how things come into being and pass away. What ultimately is,
atomists say, is the atoms, and the not-being called the void also is. Neither of
these come into being or pass away. Since they exist in a basic sense, they
cannot cease to be; they are everlasting.

V. Atomic Diversity

How many kinds of atoms are there? If atoms were of just one kind, that is, if
they all had the same shape and size, then we would not experience the
variety of nature which we actually do experience. Different effects require
different causes. Our experiences are the effects of which the atoms--their
shapes, sizes, arrangements and movements--are the causes.

Some interesting differences in experience are the direct result of differences

in kind of atoms--in their size and/or shape. For example, sweet tastes are
caused by round atoms, of a good size. Sour tastes are caused by atoms that
are bulky, jagged, and many-angled, without curves. Pungent tastes are
caused by atoms that are round, fine, angular and crooked. Salty tastes are
caused by angular atoms which are of a good size, twisted, with two sides
equal. Bitter tastes arise from atoms that are curved and smooth but very
crooked and small in size. Oily tasting things consist of atoms that are fine,
round and small. [Source: Robinson, An Introduction to Early Greek
Philosophy (1968), p. 200]

Each kind of atoms--by "kind of atoms" is meant a group of atoms alike in

shape and size--must include a very large number of atoms. For example, if
there were not a virtually endless supply of the atoms which cause us to see
surfaces as green in color or to taste foods as sweet, our visions of green
things and tastes of sweet things would be far more limited than they actually
are.*

Besides differing in kind, atoms also differ in how they are ordered and
"turned" relative to one another. One can illustrate the point using as
examples letters of the alphabet. A large A and a smaller A differ in size. A
and H differ in shape. AN and NA differ in ordering. Z and N differ in turning.
Some of the differences we experience arise not from differences in the
shapes or sizes of the atoms encountered, but in how they are combined (in
what order) or in how they are turned. [Source: Aristotle, Metaphysics 985b4-
b18]

VI. Atomism and the Soul

Some people believe that living beings, or animals, or perhaps just human
beings, are distinct from other composite bodies -- they claim that besides the
minute bodies that make up any visible body, these beings, or some of them,
possess something that survives death. The atomist view is that this is
unlikely. Animals, of course, do possess something which rocks lack--they
possess life and breath; but in the atomist view this "soul" is nothing more
than a special very small, fast-moving group of atoms that operate within the
living being and help it sense and act upon its environment. Human beings, of
course, have the power of thought, but in the atomist view thought is nothing
but a special way of being alive and an animal.

Every animal contains a complex system of tiny tubes. These extend between
the sense organs, on or near the exterior of the body, and the mind, or center
of consciousness, probably in the chest area. How sensation occurs can be
explained as follows: Atoms from external objects strike the sense organ and
push into movement small soul atoms in tubes near the organs; these small
atoms jog their further neighbors into movement, and these in turn jog their
neighbors; the motions travel very quickly through the tiny tubes, eventually
arriving at the mind, or center of consciousness.*

How mental decisions cause physical motions can be explained as follows:

The decisions of the mind, by which our ideas of what we wish to do cause
our limbs to move or our lips to speak, are in themselves nothing but special
movements of atoms in the center of consciousness. Motion from these atoms
is communicated to the muscles in the body's remote members through tubes
similar to, or the very same as, those involved in perception, only in the
reverse direction.*

Because, for atomism, the soul or "life" of an animal is nothing but a collection
of atoms that exist and operate together only if they are encased in a body,
the soul cannot survive the destruction of the body. When the soul is
destroyed, it is broken up, and as that happens, the atoms that once made up
the soul scatter just as water in a jar will scatter when the jar is broken.
Because the body passes away, the soul does also. Of course, the atoms of
which the soul and body are composed do not cease to be--no atom comes
into being or passes away--but atoms individually are not alive (how could
anything totally inert be alive?), so there is no place for immortality in the
philosophy of atomism.

VII. Two Kinds of Knowledge

Atomists teach that there are two kinds of knowledge, genuine and
illegitimate. Genuine knowledge tells us about the atomic structure of things,
and concerns the size, shape, arrangement and turning of the atoms. Yet
what most mortals take to be knowledge is nothing of the sort; they speak of
colors, smells, tastes, and so on--the experiences which are revealed to our
senses. But our senses by themselves reveal nothing of the true reality which
underlie them.

According to atomists, among the atoms and the void, there are no colors,
smells, sounds, tastes: these are experiences born of the impact of atoms
upon our senses (themselves aggregates of atoms). We all know that if our
senses are altered, as occurs when a sick person becomes healthy, the same
external stimulus produces a different experience. Therefore, the senses,
without the true interpretation provided by the atomist philosophy, tell us
nothing about reality. They give us only an illegitimate knowledge.

Democritus would not deny that it is of some use for mortals to have
"illegitimate knowledge," to think, for example, that something is hot even
though they may have no idea about the nature of the atoms that cause this
sensation. Yet philosophers like him do not seek knowledge for the sake of
utility; they seek to know for the pure joy of understanding.

Notes

1. The philosophy of Melissus of Samos is a variation of the Eleatic

philosophy whose original source is Parmenides (b. ca. 515, d. after 450
B.C.), a much more profound (and difficult) thinker.

2. Arguments in the asterisked paragraphs have as their textual basis

Lucretius' lengthy work in the atomist tradition deriving from Epicurus. I have
felt justified in attributing them to the philosophy of Democritus because they
seem to pertain to the parts of the theory shared by Democritus and the
Epicureans. In my view, Democritus might have made these arguments, but I
cannot claim as a matter of historical knowledge that he did.
The sophists :
The Sophists were first to make an occupation out of traveling to give public
lectures. This was not an organized society or school, but a trend of
individuals. For a fee, these men spoke on typical subjects such as math or
grammar, but also ranging to rhetoric, education, and ethics.

While every Sophist may have his forte, his finest skill was probably the
delivery of the lecture itself. Public speaking was a skill more valued in the
Ancient world than today, thus becoming more of an art. For citizens, lectures
were not only an educational experience but an entertaining experience as
well. With the rise of philosophical thought, skills of questioning, argument,
and rationale became highly esteemed as men sought to attain such. In the
opinion of some, the Sophists made it difficult to distinguish between mind
games and serious philosophy or teaching.

The connotation of a Sophist was one that changed over the years. Initially,
the word simply referred to those who taught public speaking. These teachers
were some of the first to introduce higher education to the Ancient world.
However, as some Sophists became more radical, there was more room for
criticism. Plato was one of these critics. He openly destined the Sophist's
"job," looking upon it as dishonest and untrue. On the other hand, in an age
that was accustomed to changing ideas, the Sophists were widely accepted.
Their popularity is revealed in the fact that they usually had a group of young
men following as they traveled.

The sophists

The Sophists
First published Fri Sep 30, 2011

The Greek word sophistēs, formed from the noun sophia, ‘wisdom’ or ‘learning’, has
the general sense ‘one who exercises wisdom or learning’. As sophia could designate
specific types of expertise as well as general sagacity in the conduct of life and the
higher kinds of insight associated with seers and poets, the word originally meant
‘sage’ or ‘expert’. In the course of the fifth century BCE the term, while retaining its
original unspecific sense, came in addition to be applied specifically to a new type of
intellectuals, professional educators who toured the Greek world offering instruction
in a wide range of subjects, with particular emphasis on skill in public speaking and
the successful conduct of life. The emergence of this new profession, which was an
extension to new areas of the tradition of the itinerant rhapsode (reciter of poems,
especially of Homer), was a response to various social, economic, political and
cultural developments of the period. The increasing wealth and intellectual
sophistication of Greek cities, especially Athens, created a demand for higher
education beyond the traditional basic grounding in literacy, arithmetic, music and
physical training. To some extent this involved the popularization of Ionian
speculation about the physical world (see Presocratic Philosophy), which was
extended into areas such as history, geography and the origins of civilization. The
increase in participatory democracy, especially in Athens, led to a demand for success
in political and forensic oratory, and hence to the development of specialized
techniques of persuasion and argument. Finally, the period saw the flourishing of a
challenging, rationalistic climate of thought on questions including those of morality,
religion and political conduct, to which the sophists both responded and contributed. It
is important to emphasize the individualistic character of the sophistic profession; its
practitioners belonged to no organization, shared no common body of beliefs and
founded no schools, either in the sense of academic institutions or in that of bodies of
individuals committed to the promulgation of specific doctrines. In what follows we
shall illustrate the diversity of sophistic activities, while considering the extent to
which we can nevertheless identify common themes and attitudes.

 1. Protagoras
 2. Nomos and Phusis
 3. Religion
 4. Other sophists