As an Introduction of philosophy classes

The difficult and uncertain road the first philosophers -called Naturalistic or Cosmologians in the
classic Greece (600 years B.C.)- had to travel to reach a real closeness of the origin of life, setting
aside the mythological beliefs about divine intervention, could motivate us to realize the big
challenges these wise men had to surpass for unraveling the mysteries of the material and cosmic
realm that surrounded them. Let’s ask then some important questions: Did they have some magic
tools? Did they come from the outer space? Were they helped by aliens? Not at all! : They only had
the historic privilege to live 600 years B.C., in Greece, a wonderful territory in the shores of the
Mediterranean sea, with different political systems ruling these city states, oscillating from
monarchies and tyrannies, to elitist democracies, and where the slave labor force and peasants
had the fundamental role in the productive factor over its shoulders, and who produced all
agricultural and industrial products they consumed and exported, with also many beautiful,
diverse and important handcrafting and other cultural products, which permitted the transit of
such important and diverse merchandise’ interchanging between Greek colonies and other
ancient countries in Egypt, Spain, Italy and the Minor and Middle Asia, creating an economic and
political wealthy cultural scenarios in the ancient Greek city-states. And as a consequence, some
wealthy and mighty citizens (In that elitist society) had special time to enjoy different pleasures:
like free time to attend pleasantly to theatrical plays, written mainly by the greatest four tragic
writers (Esquilus, Sophocles and Euripides, including Aristophanes as the most important comedian)
and in participating in many and popular sport competitions (Olympic games, i.e.,) And only a scarce
and selected group, who thought in an organized and systemic way, moved by the amazement,
wonder, interest and a real strong imagination, including a deep sharp sight, introduced -with
fantastic eyes-, their magic and penetrating glimpse into the mysterious nature and its internal and
external movement, without any of the current advanced tools for scientific research we can count
on today. However they tried to look for evidences, imagined first and tested through empirical
ways, to show a sympathetic stone in the comprehension of the material realm without a divine
intervention.

First of all let’s try to be in their shoes for a minute. They started questioning, among other inquires,
what life was, and as only a few people can explain today, they couldn’t know that life, in the
scientific properly sense, is a composite of thousands of millions of molecules, lipids, proteins, and
nucleic acids that work joined to form the minimal expression and the main brick of life: the cell as
the highest expression of the organized movement of the organic matter. Life, as we considered
today, is a consequence of the development of different molecules, proteins, lipids, enzymes and
amino acids, in a continuous and mysterious process that emerged in the marvelous road that
conducted to a cell construction! But they, the first philosophers didn’t know it.
Water, fire, air, boundless substance, Logos, earth, atoms…that’s what these first observers
thought were the beginnings of the whole material realm they saw. Were they wrong? Don’t answer
yet! First come with me in a wonderful short search of the first intend to understand the universe we
live in, but in which we scarcely ever think or ask about what it is, or when it began, setting aside a
comprehensible response about how this marvelous world in where we are and live, was created and
functions!!

These first Greek scholars thought the life was a spark of creative material provoked by different
substances as we mentioned before, however they were not so far away from the factual truth.
They didn’t know the first cells were pleuromones, a special kind of bacteria with cellular membrane,
thousands of genes, RNA, and also able to synthesize proteins, but to produce this was necessary
one hundred random events with a probability of happen in spontaneous form, of a ten minus
20,000 zeros; as you can understand, is something so improbable that you could say is almost
impossible that happens.
Now we can think in this: a single cell consists at least in 100 amino acids (amino acid, as you know
today) is an organic molecule with a group amino and a group carboxyl. The most frequent amino
acids are those that form part of the proteins, and are present in every biological process. The
amino acids are the base of the proteins). The quantity of different functions of the 20 amino acids
basic in a protein of 100 amino acids is 10 with 130 zeros. Only one of this is required for the
functioning of one enzyme (enzymes are proteins that act as a catalytic, because facilitate the
chemical reactions, so they are like chemical accelerators for the production of proteins. Enzymes
function with a high level of proficiency and of them depend the normal functioning of a cell;
without enzymes, life would be impossible. Enzymes increase the velocity of the chemical reactions
from 1,000 to 1 billion). The Escherichia coli have 4 millions of nucleotides (nucleotides are an
organic compound formed by a nitrogenized base, sugar and phosphoric acid. The nucleotides can
act as monomers in the nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) forming linear chains, or act as free molecules).
This impossibility sets life in a category of a real miracle. That’s why the chance of life through a
random process is so improbable as if a tornado could assemble a 747 airplane from a junkyard.
In every organism the proteins are formed from a union of 20 amino acids. Many of them have the
enzymatic capacity included in the green-blue algae (first forms of life). The enzymes let these
organisms transform the light into energy with a perfect efficiency.
In order to demonstrate this hypothesis in 1953 a scientist and his assistant: Harold Urey and Stanley
Miller, prepared a kind of soup that contained methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and
water vapor, trying to simulate the atmosphere that could have existed on Earth three and a half
billion years ago. They got as a result a viscous residue that contained eighteen amino acids (glycine,
alanine, valine, aspartic and glutamic acid, cyanide and formaldehyde). This could generate in
shallow puddles more and more complex compounds every time, until the generation of molecules,
including DNA (double helix, complex protein that can be found in the nuclei of a cell and constitutes
the main constituent of the genetic material of living beings) or RNA (only one helix).
We should remind that proteins are molecules formed by amino acids united by one specific type
of link known as polypeptides. Their order and disposition of amino acids will depend of the genetic
code of every person. All proteins are composed of Carbone. The first function of DNA is to form
proteins, main base of life. Without the proteins life couldn’t exist, neither the metabolic and
reproductive systems nor the maintenance of the cell structure, properties that define life. But as a
paradox, to let the DNA can form proteins, is required the catalytic protein. The genetic system not
only copies but correct mistakes in the sequences of nucleotides, but the machine that synthesize
proteins needs proteins to synthesize, and it is the paradox of life.
All this already expressed -as a short briefing-, can be for many students, a difficult task to
understand, but we must remind that it is the result of a work of many scientists that during many
years of arduous experiments, dedicated their lives, in sometimes cold and dark laboratories, to
study the complex reality of life. However, first philosophers like Democritus, Anaximander or
Heraclitus -between others we will study later-, reached an approximate and real evaluation of
the main components of life and the origin of the material reality through the imaginary
explanations given without a real scientific achievement.

How was the world created? Is there any will or meaning behind what happens? Is there a life after
death? What is fate? Are the men free to make their own decisions using their own will? Is any kind
of God the responsible of the good or evil in the world? How can we avoid the suffering? Should we
look to eternal pleasure without thinking in personal and others’ sufferings and penalties? Is it worth
thinking about the good moral construction of ourselves? Has human history been fair with the way
mankind was governed through the hands of the most powerful? What kind of government would
be preferable to look for human equity and fairness? How can we set a better and fair governmental
system for all the citizenships? Must we follow a religious ideal over our real beliefs and
contradictions? Are laws fair in their treatment about the inequality of men? Has women been fairly
treated in human history? Should we live respecting the inheritance of the kings’ right to govern us
or must we have to overthrow and eradicate forever this ancient and unfair historical system and
to erect a real democratic system? Is the democratic system real or is still handled by the most
economically powerful countries? Who was responsible of the condemnation of women as an
inferior and despicable part of humanity? Has ethics been the rule in an appropriate way the human
conduct in all historical moments? Is the reincarnation possible? Do we live forever inside different
corpses? Are we able to fly out of our corpses and see the real knowledge in a perpetual spiritual
motion forgetting later this transcendental happening? What knowledge is? Where is the
consciousness located? Can we reach real knowledge? Do we have a real picture of the external
reality or is only an illusion of our senses? Can all the observers see the same reality out of us? Is
the material realm only an appearance of our thoughts or it is true? Is there such a thing as natural
modesty? Can we decide our own actions or they are previously settled by the ‘hand of God’? Are
all of our actions predestined like an invisible line in the book of God? Are we living in a new form
of another universe previously collapsed? Does life proceed from nothing? Is the nothingness an
abstract word without the real meaning of what nothingness is? How can we understand the
nothingness if the nothingness doesn’t exist? Is the heart part of our consciousness or the brain? Do
we have a soul? Who talks with us in the loneliness claiming or approving our daily past actions? Is
the soul our consciousness? Is the consciousness our soul? Is the consciousness real as the superior
part of our brain? Where is the consciousness located? Where is the soul located: in our brain, or in
our heart? Is existence the most important part of the human being or is the essence of us? Is our
life really absurd? Do we live in perpetual anguish because life is a real nonsense? Are we real or
only imaginary scenery of God's creation? How did they answer these questions? People have been
asking these questions, amid others, throughout the ages. We know of no culture which is not
concerned with what man is and where the world came from. Philosophers’ search for the truth
resembles a detective story. A lot of age-old enigmas have now been explained by science. What
the dark side of the moon looks like was once shrouded in mystery. It was not the kind of thing that
could be solved by discussion; it was left to the imagination of the individual. But today we know
exactly what the dark side of the moon looks like, and no one can “believe” any longer in the man
in the moon or that moon is made of green cheese.
A Greek philosopher who lived more than two thousand years ago believed that philosophy had its
origin in man’s sense of wonder. Man thought it was so astonishing to be alive that philosophical
questions arose of their own accord. Although philosophical questions concern us all, we do not all
become philosophers. For various reasons most people get so caught up in everyday affairs that
their astonishment at the world gets pushed into the background. To children, the world and
everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most
adults accept the world as a matter of course. This is precisely where philosophers are a notable
exception. A philosopher never gets quite used of the world. To him or her, the world continues to
seem a bit unreasonable –bewildering even enigmatic-.
I wish these considerations could provoke in every one of you the same desire to know that the
first philosophers had when they were astonished by the wonder of nature and its mysteries and
let move you, as they did 2,679 years ago, to inquire in the world where you live every day without
questioning to yourselves in it !!

History and Reflections on

Philosophy
A course destined to let you reflect and learn the difficult path of the
philosophical thoughts
Class I

By philosophy we mean the completely new way of thinking that evolved in Greece about
six hundred years before the birth of Christ, nowadays named our Current Time. Until that
time people had found answers to all their questions in various religions. These religious
explanations were handed down from generation to generation in the form of myths. We
must remind that myth is a story about the gods which set out to explain why life it is. Over
the millennia a wild profusion of mythological explanations of philosophical questions
spread across the world. The Greek philosophers attempted to prove that these
explanations were not to be trusted. The myth only tried to explain something
unexplainable for that moment. When a drought occurred, people sought an explanation of
why there was no rain, then the myth came to explain the changing seasons of the year, and
we know today that in winter Nature seems to die and in spring Nature succeeds in winning
it back. So the myth tried to give people an explanation for something they could not
understand. But myth was not only an explanation. People also carried out religious
ceremonies related to myths.
A mythological world picture also existed in Greece when the first philosophy was evolving.
The stories of the Greek gods had been handed down from generation to generation for
centuries. In Greece the principal gods were called Zeus and Hera, Apollo and Athena,
Dionysus and Asclepius, Heracles and Hephaestus, to mention only a few of them. Around
700 B.C., much of the Greek mythology was written down by Homer and Hesiod. This
created a whole new situation. The earliest Greek philosophers criticized Homer’s
mythology because the gods resembled mortals too much and were just as egoistic and
treacherous. For the first time it was said the myths were nothing but human notions. One
exponent of this view was the philosopher Xenophanes who lived from about 570 B.C. He
said men had created the gods in their own image. They believe the gods were born and
have bodies and clothes and language just as we have. During that period the Greeks
founded many city-states, both in Greece itself and in the Greek colonies in Southern Italy
and Asia Minor, where all manual work was done by slaves, leaving the citizens free to
 devote all their time to politics and culture. In these city environments people began to
think in a completely new way. Purely on his own behalf, any citizen could question the way
the society ought to be organized. Individuals could thus also ask philosophical questions
without recourse to ancient myths. This was the development from a mythological mode of
thought to one based on experience and reason. The aim of the early philosophers was to
find natural, rather than supernatural, explanations for natural processes. People had
always felt a need to explain the processes of nature. Perhaps they could not live without
such explanations. And that they made up all those myths in the time before there was
anything called SCIENCE.
How philosophy was methodized or divided? : It is a good question, because in order to
study the contents of every possible branch of thought should be advisable to divide the
kingdoms of knowledge in different and separated branches. Philosophy was then in the
classic form divided into five main branches, due to the help of the most important
philosopher of the classic Greece, Aristotle, and the Scholastic support later:
1) Metaphysics 2) Epistemology 3) Logic 4) Ethics 5) Aesthetics
Metaphysics is concerned to the study of the physical world and its origin, including our
universe and its heavenly bodies.
Epistemology is concerned to the possibility of knowing and the true knowledge of human
beings in front of objective reality.
Logic is concerned with the science of the relation of our mind structures, not the results of
these structures but the structures in themselves (How we think)
Ethics is the application of rules of our human behavior and values; it can be named axiology
as well.
Aesthetics concerns the science of sensible appreciations or the science of a real beauty
balance.
And now let’s enter in the fascinating world of the first philosophers and their struggle to reach
the truth of life and our role in the world as political beings.

Class II Socioeconomic aspects of the

appearance of philosophy in
Greece.

In classical Greece, the citizens formed the political community, so the most important political
expression was the “polis”, conceived as a city state, which enjoyed certain autonomy and tried to
be autarchic. The most important characteristic of the polis was to let the citizens intervene in the
political making decisions, particularity that sustains democracy.
In every one of the first monarchical states, which Homer describes, every social center which
substitutes the main localities were transformed into an important social, economic and political
center called city states.
Monarchies are substituted by aristocracies or governments of noble and later, by tyrannies or
governments of a leader of aristocracy without succession right able to rule and sustain the
subordination and participation of the people.
Polis reached under the tyrants a great prosperity, wellbeing and socio-cultural wealth during a long
time in which higher transformation happened due to the great transformation of the development
of the handcrafting that generated greater richness than the agriculture and livestock and the
currency settlement. This new situation provoked a change in the mentality in powerful middle class
that conducted the democratization of the Polis.
The commercial movement between the islands of Greece and the continent (Asia and Africa) let
Greece has a splendid rising of its economy, and as a consequence, the culture grew up and
appeared Sophists who made a living out of teaching the citizens for money.

After about 450 BC, Athens was the cultural center of the Greek world. From this time on, philosophy
took a new direction. Now the interest was focused on the individual and the individual`s place in
the Greek society. Gradually a democracy evolved with popular assemblies and courts of law. In
order to make democracy work, people had to be educated enough to take part in the democratic
process. For the Athenian, it was first and foremost essential to master the art of the rhetoric, which
means saying things in a convincing manner.

Class III the

the first philosophers:

Cosmologists or Natural Philosophers

These first appearances of such men deeply concerned with a searching of a real explanation of
our world were called natural philosophers because they were mainly concerned with the natural
material realm and its processes.
These philosophers observed with their own eyes that nature was in constant state of
transformation and had many questions relating with the transformation they could observe in the
physical world looking for the underlying laws of nature and wishing to understand what was
happening around them without having to turn the ancient myths. And the most important thing
was that they tried to know the actual process by studying nature itself, of course, quite different
from explaining thunder and lightning or winter and spring by telling stories about gods. The natural
philosophers took the first step in the direction of scientific reasoning; thereby they were precursors
of what was to become science. So philosophy gradually liberated itself from religion.
Only fragments have survived of what the natural philosophers said and wrote. What little we know
is found in the writings of Aristotle, who lived two centuries later. He refers only to the conclusions
the philosophers reached; so we do not always know by what paths they reached these conclusions.
But what we do know enables us to establish that the earliest Greek philosophers’ project concerned
the question of a basic constituent substance and the changes in nature: The origin of life and the
human role in the Cosmic integrity, happened in Greece during the first half millennium before
our current time. They asked if the myths could give answers to the real movement of the material
realm, or the hidden natural laws they unknown, then these first wise men started asking through
the amazement of their natural environment if the real world could be being explained through
the myths and the mythology itself, and then began to look for the practical exercise of their own
thoughts contrasted with the deep insight of what they observed and discovered through the
reality and its development in the nature.
The names of these philosophers -called in this way because the Greek word means “love the
wisdom” were:

1. Thales from Miletus: He came from Miletus, a Greek colony in Asia Minor. He traveled in
many countries, including Egypt, where he is said to have calculated the height of a pyramid
by measuring its shadow at the precise moment when the length of his own shadow was
equal to his height and he predicted a solar eclipse in the year 585 B.C. Thales thought that
the source of all things was water. He may believe that all life originated from water and
that all life returns to water again when it dissolves. Thales is also supposed to have said
that ‘all things are full of gods’, what he meant by that we can only surmise. Perhaps seeing
how the black earth was the source of everything from flowers and crops to insects and
cockroaches, he imagined that the earth was filled with tiny invisible “life germs” as a
comparison with imaginary particles he called Gods, but we are certainly he was not talking
about the same Homer’s gods.

2. Anaximander: the next philosopher also lived in Miletus, at the same time as Thales. He
thought that our world was only one of a myriad of worlds that evolve and dissolve in
something he called the “Boundless” ( el infinito) (lo ilimitado). It is not so easy to explain
what he meant by the “boundless”, but it seems clear that he was not thinking of a known
substance in the way that Thales thought or believed. Perhaps he meant that the
substance which is the source of all things had to be something other than the things
created, because all created things are limited, that which comes before and after them
must be “boundless”. It is clear that this basic consideration could not be anything as
ordinary as water.
He thought that the substance which is the source of all things had to be something other
than the things created. Because all created things are limited, that which comes before
and after them must be ‘boundless’

3. Anaximenes: (570-526): the source of all things must be “air” or “vapor”. The air was the
origin of earth, water and fire. Anaximenes was familiar with Thales theory of water. But
where does water come from? He thought that water was condensed air. Is possible to see
it when it rains, water is pressed from the air. When water is pressed even more, it becomes
earth, he thought. He may have seen how earth and sand were pressed out of melting ice.
He also thought that fire was rarefied air. According to Anaximenes, air was therefore the
origin of earth, water and fire. Anaximenes thought that earth, air, and fire were all
necessary to the creation of life, but that the source of all things was air or vapor. So, like
Thales he thought that there just be an underlying substance that is the source of all natural
change. He also thought that fire was rarefied air. According to Anaximenes, air was
therefore the origin of earth, water and fire. It is not a far cry from water to the fruit of the
 earth. Perhaps Anaximenes thought that earth, air and fire were all necessary ti the creation
of life, but that source of all things was air or vapor. So, like Thales, he thought that there
must be an underlying substance that is the source of all natural change.

4. Parmenides: (540-480): He thought that everything that exists had always existed, “nothing
can come out from nothing, and nothing that exists can become anything”. “Nothing could
become anything other than it was”. Parmenides realized that nature is in a constant state
of flux. He perceived with his senses that things changed, but he could not equate with
what his reason told him. When forced to choose between relying either on his senses or
his reason, he chose reason. He believed that our senses gave us an incorrect picture of the
world. You know the expression: “I believe it when I see it” but Parmenides didn’t even
believe things when he saw them. He believed that our senses give us an incorrect picture
of the world, a picture that does not correspond with our reason. As a philosopher, he saw
it as his task to expose all forms of perceptual illusion. This unshakable faith of the human
reason is called “rationalism”. A rationalist is someone who believes that human reason is
the primary source of our knowledge of the world.

5. Heraclitus: (540-480): he was from Ephesus, and he said that the constant change, or flow,
was in fact, the most basic characteristic of nature. He had more faith in the” universal
reason” guiding everything that happens in nature. Instead of the term God, he used the
Greek term “logos” meaning reason, so, in the midst of all nature’s constant flux and
opposites, there is an “Entity or oneness”. This “something” which was the source of
everything, is what he called God or Logos. “Everything flows” said Heraclitus. Everything is
in constant flux and movement, nothing is permanent, therefore we “cannot step twice in
the same river” when I step into the river for the second time, neither I nor the river are the
same. Heraclitus pointed out that the world is characterized by opposites. If we were never
ill, we would not know what it was to be well. If we never knew hunger, we would not
appreciate peace. And if there were not winter, we could never see the spring. Both good
and bad have their inevitable place in the order of things, Heraclitus thought. Without this
constant interplay of opposites the world would cease to exist. Parmenides and Heraclitus
were the direct opposite of each other. Parmenides’ reason made it clear that nothing
could change. Heraclitus’ sense perception made it equally clear that nature was in a
constant state of change. Which of them was right? Should we let reason dictate or should
we rely on our senses?
Parmenides and Heraclitus both say two things: a) Nothing can change, b) Our sensory
perceptions must therefore be unreliable
Heraclitus, on the other lo says: a) That everything changes (all things flow) b) Our sensory
perceptions are reliable. It fell to Empedocles (490-430 B.C.) from Sicily to lead the way
out of the tangle they had gotten themselves into. He thought they were both right in one
of their assertions but wrong in the other.
6. Empedocles (c. 490-430BC): The cause of all in nature consisted of four elements or roots:
earth, air, fire and water. All Things are a mixture of earth, air, fire and water in varying
proportions. Basically nothing changes, what happens are that the four elements are
combined and separated only to be combined again. He thought “love: “joined the elements
together in whole bodies and the “strife” (lucha, conflicto, repulsion) expulsed them from
a body.

7. Anaxagoras (500-428 BC): Nature is built up of an infinite number of minute particles

invisible to the eye. Moreover, everything can be divided into even smaller parts, but even
in the minutest parts there are fragments of all other things. He called these minuscule
particles “seeds”. He said the sun was not a God, but a red hot stone, bigger than the entire
Peloponnesian peninsula. Was also really interested in astronomy. He reached to the
conclusion that the heavenly bodies were made of the same substance of the Earth studying
a meteorite. He also pointed out that the moon had no light of its own. He thought up an
explanation of the solar eclipses as well.

8. Democritus (460-370): He agreed with his predecessors that transformations in nature

could not be due to the fact that anything actually changed, he assumed that everything
was built up of tiny invisible blocks, each of which was eternal and immutable. Democritus
called these smallest units “atoms”. The word atom means non cuttable. For him it could
not be indefinitely cut into smaller parts, because nature would begin to dissolve in a
constantly diluted soup. Democritus thought nature’s blocks had to be eternal because
nothing can come from nothing. In this, he agreed with Parmenides and the Eleatics. Also
he believed that all atoms were firm and solid, but this could not all be the same, due to if
these were identical they couldn’t combine to form everything from animals to olive trees.
He thought the nature consisted of an unlimited number and variety of atom, so because of
this, they could join together into all kinds of different bodies. But however infinite they
might be in number and shape, they were all eternal, immutable and indivisible. When a
body, tree or an animal, died, and disintegrated, the atoms dispersed and could be used
again in new bodies. Atoms moved around in space. In our time scientists have discovered
that atoms can be broken into smaller “elementary particles” and we call these elementary
particles protons, neutrons and electrons. He didn`t have access to modern electronic
apparatus. His only proper equipment was his mind. He didn`t believe in any “force” or
“soul” that could intervene in natural process, he only things were atoms and the void
existing. Because of this he was he was called one of the first and most important
materialist. Democritus atomic theory marked the end of Greek natural philosophy for the
time being.

The Antropologians.
Class IV The Sophists
The sophists had one characteristic in common with the natural philosophers: they were critical of
the traditional mythology but at the same time the sophists rejected what they regarded as fruitless
philosophical speculation. Their opinion was that although answers to philosophical questions may
exist, man can´t know the truth about the riddles of nature and of the universe. In philosophy a view
like this is called skepticism. The Sophists chose to concern themselves with man and his place in
the society. “Man is the measure of all things”, said the Sophist Protagoras (485 – 410) By that
meant the question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad must always be considered in
relation with a person needs. The term sophist comes from the Greek “sofós” that means wise.
Greeks used this term to designate who highlighted in any knowledge, theoretical or practice. In
that time had a more specific meaning: designated to those teachers of knowledge (sofistés) that
dedicated their teachings to others collecting money, as in any other profession or job. Then it was
a “job” that obeyed to the historical circumstances of that moment.

The work of these wise teachers is directed to satisfy the demand of the Athenian citizens, really
interested in their participation in the politics of every city-state. Different from the traditional wise
teachers or philosophers dedicated to the speculation and the theoretical knowledge they entered
as teachers of culture and virtue capable to make prevalence of their opinions thank of their science
and his art of oratory and discourse. When the time went by this concerning on knowledge as a
practical strength moved through a real abuse of the rhetoric art as a superficial or vain art or
convincing the contrary. From here derived the pejorative term “sophist” as a maker of empty
discourses and included the name “sophism”.
This “dark side” of this coincides with the Peloponnesian wars where the city states of Athens
And Sparta, (City State of totalitarian sign) disputed the hegemony of the Greek Classic world. The
war concluded with the defeat of Athens and the settling of a pro- Spartan government known as
“The thirties”.

The Sophists didn`t constitute a single philosophical “school” but a movement integrated by
numerous wiser who shared some common convictions, in special: a) A critical attitude before the
institutions, which are accused of being founded in false natural laws; b) Skepticism respect of the
real knowledge possibility and capacity; c) Relativism in front of the truth; d) Confidence in the
education and rhetoric value and the dialectic; e) Exigency of payment for their services.
The coincidence on these topics doesn’t mean that all defended the same positions. We can group
them into two stages: First and Second stages. The Sophists of the first stage are located before the
Peloponnesian war. Their critic was less radical and more constructive; in the Second stage the
counter position between the nature and the social conventions was more accentuated.
The first stage philosophers were Protagoras (Man is the size of everything); Gorgias (Nothing is
really known); Prodicus of Julius (Divine things are taken as useful for men); Hippias from Elis (All
men are equal by nature)
The second stage philosophers: Trasimaco from Chalcedon (Justice is useful for the stronger);
Calicles (Enounces the theory of the natural right of the stronger); Chritias (Gods are a human
invention to frighten humans); Antiphon from Athens (You can trespass the law if no one is aware)

Class V Conventionalism against the nature

The Greek society was accepting, like something unmovable, the existence of the nature as a
wisdom creator, and of certain values and natural laws universally valid. The originality of the
Sophists resided in putting openly into doubt many things that have been being accepted as
originated by a called natural law, and that they were purely conventional realities.
They also were ready to accept that the natural laws were untouchable, totally fixed and
necessaries; however they traveled all around the known world and knew many different
Constitutions in different countries as to accept without restrictions, the natural origin of all the
laws, because for them they were self-evident they were only human construction. Then, the
Sophists established openly the need to argue and to distinguish between the real natural kingdom
and the natural law against what they were pure conventionalism or the law of the own man
(Nomo’s).
This argument affected directly to the laws that ruled the city. These laws, in the real sense of the
word, defended positions useful for a group of people and generalized the democratic ideals of the
aristocracy. The same Athenian Constitution was considered of almost sacred and of common belief
that the ancient creators of these Constitutions were inspired by Apollo and the legislators had the
custom of looking advises in the Delphos oracle. Subjected to an argument appears now as a result
of historical factors and of group interests, and the same could be told of the rest of the city laws: It
can`t be accepted that these rules have been based on the self nature when in the reality they are
a human product, and in that manner, changeable and conventional.
More than this, from the analysis of the same nature, can deduce that not only are different nature
and law, but many times are contradictory, though the laws consecrate the power of weaker when
the nature confirms the contrary, but according the epoch, the Sophists deduced different
consequences of this main contraposition.

Class VI The first sophistic

This first sophistic comprehends to the previous sophists to the Peloponnesian War, declared in 431
B.C. At the beginning, its critic pretends to base rationally the laws, gods and values. They consider
that men are equal by nature and tend to erase the differences between them, attributing the
inequalities to the social practice. They sustained that the man best gifted by nature, must set his
“areté”, his successful capacity to the collectivity service and is who should govern the city because
is good and beneficial for it. That is the opinion of Protagoras from Abdera.

The second sophistic

They established a stronger and more radical opposition between nature and Nomo’s, and arrive to
one irreconcilable opposition in Calicles; according to him the laws is the maximum injustice against
the nature that doesn’t have any other laws than the ones of the strongest and the individual
pleasure. The law is the maximal right of the city and the only thing that pretends is the submission
of the strongest to the weakest. Nature makes men unequal, but in change, the law tends to
equalize them and it shouldn`t be like that, it must prevail in the city the strongest, wise and
craftiest, like happens in nature. Now the change is obvious from the first sophistic.
Now the individual can`t set his natural gifts in the collectivity service, but to the triumph of itself,
even the collectivity could suffer. The collectivity shows it then, enemy of the individual. To be
understood that the nature justifies the predominance of the strongest over weakest, differences
are accentuated between the citizens and refuses its equality.

Class VIIRelativism and skepticism

Discussion between nature and Nomo`s provoked the distrust about the validity of the traditional
knowledge, putting on doubt the existence of the natural laws, with a fixed and universal value that
ensure what is fair and good for man. If what is natural and almost religious, doesn`t fix to the
establishment of standards and fixed values, only left the justification in function of the self
convenience and the agreement. In the same way: if the universal knowledge doesn`t exist, it
becomes necessary the practical searching of it which serves to the citizen to regulate its ordinary
life.

The knowledge to the utility service

Like the agreement substitutes the natural law, the concept of truth is substituted by the concept
of utility. The distrust in the possibility of knowing what is by nature has derived to the conformity
with a knowledge that serves and can be useful to men; for this reason more than the abstract truth
of things; interest was focused on its utility. The authentic wisdom consists in having better opinions
and more useful remedies. The wisdom and the wise are such in the same measure they serve to
man to give better options and improvements for living.
A good doctor is who knows enough to do the sick patient experiment a better health state, and the
good political speaker how to convince to the citizens that the fair and good things are precisely
those that really are useful for the city. This constitutes a relativism totally skeptical characterized
by the impossibility of getting universal truths. In accordance with that, things are perceived through
the different situations of every one, and at the same time, the variability of things makes change
to the vision that the individual has of them.

Two principal Sophists: Protagoras and

Gorgias
“Man is the size of everything” affirmed Protagoras. From this base, no one can blame mistakes to
the other because no opinion is more true than another; if someone is convinced than to steal is
good will have this thing as a true while he continues believing in this. The people must try to
convince him not that is bad but the contrary is better. With respect of gods, Protagoras denied all.
Gorgias sustained skepticism more radical than Protagoras, and has been formulated in three
celebrated thesis of the most absolute skepticism:
a) Reality doesn`t exist
b) If something existed, we couldn`t know
c) Even in the case that we could know something, we couldn`t communicate to the rest of
the people.
The relativistic posture of Protagoras that saved the truth over any opinion becomes in Gorgias in
the negative skepticism to declare all the opinions false. In such manner, if is impossible to know
the reality and even more impossible to communicate it, no opinion can be contrasted with the
reality, hence its falsehood.

Class VIII Socrates in front of the Sophists

Socrates and the sophists had many things in common. Both studied the same problems and live
the same social and political concerns. Socrates boasted of his poorness, the best testimony of the
gratuity of his “ministry”. Sophists offered wisdom, Socrates said to look for it, and affirmed his
ignorance and the necessity that everyone “enlightens” inside themselves the truth or the “logos”
of the general things. Socrates shared with the sophists of the first stage the idea of the natural
kindness of every man, as well as his trust in reason and the need to substantiate the necessary
political practice on rational basis. The dialogue over things that interested to the citizen became in
dispute where the most important thing was the sustaining of the self opinions.
Socrates affirmed the necessity to recover the dialogue, abandon the frivolity of thedisputes and
valuing the word as an expression of thought. For that reason is needed a serious reflection about
things to look the “logos” because is important to have a knowledge that permits to define them,
to say what the things really are.
He maintains a profound convincement in the existence of the true as a universal value, don`t
subjected to the individual`s changeable opinions. To this truth delivers not only the reason every
one had, but the sense that for him has the existence of gods: he said that Gods have given us many
questions about they don`t want to be disturbed.
This God`s will endorses the existence of absolute values too, supported so much in its rationality
as in this divine will. In second hand, Socrates doesn`t accept the division between the individual
and the collective, saying that the good of the individual and the society must coincide. He defended
the laws as a State and individual protection thanks to the personal treaty or pact the citizen has
established with the laws of his city, but in front of the race or fortune nobility he defends the
intellectual and moral values.
Socrates converted his life in a permanent searching about the human condition. Not even he
entered in the discussion of theoretical successes or mistakes of the Cosmologians’ doctrines but he
disqualifies them because of his futility to solve the real problems that really concerned society and
men and that`s why he dedicated his researches about ethical questions. He assured that the
wisdom that served to the man never will come from outside, from the knowledge he could have
from the cosmos, because in spite so much knowledge he can get from it, he won`t be able to
handle, but it will come from the same man, from his mindset, from his “Nous”. Reason, he said,
stirrup in the man is, before all, a moral being. Socrates only wanted the discussion about the
knowledge of the good and wrong, of justice and virtue.

Moral inquiry of Socrates

Socrates took as a wise program a phrase from the Delphos Oracle written in the Apollo’s Temple:
”know first yourself”, because that the man can know through itself is one of the most important
thing, and the other is to know what he must do in order to be happy. To be happy is the reward
that here, in the present life, waits to the fair and good man. He sustained that our investigation
must start from the simple things, for instance, lf we want to know what justice is, we must examine
what do we call just things and we don`t; then we, at last, will finish knowing what justice is. In this
point Socrates coincide with Sophists because, like them, he establishes his reflections about the
ordinary things the man lives, but with the importance the public life had acquired in Athens, the
citizens had arrived to the conclusion that the truth about everything must be identified with the
truth of the opinions everyone had about things. As the opinions abounded, prevailed the
convincement that the reality of each thing depended from the vision that every one had about the
reality. Because of this, Socrates wanted to start from the things, but not as people affirmed in the
public life, but like they discovered in themselves with the reason. It is necessary to apply the reason
to the discovering of what the things are, their proper essences, and the things really interesting to
man are the ethical questions, that is, what can produce a fair, happy and virtuous man.
To answer these questions the way to be followed is to wonder what justice is, what happiness and
virtuosity are. Socrates was the first philosopher, as Aristotle said, who followed an inductive way
to the definition and searching of what everything was, its universal concept, starting from the every
particular case.

Class IX The moral Intellectualism

For Socrates to define moral concepts was the indispensable condition to restore the
communication and to make possible the dialogue and the agreement, but there is another reason
more for this necessity: to make possible the education and moral conduct of man. Only knowing
what is fair is possible to do good things. The knowledge of virtue is what allows man to carry out
to the practice in the social life, while its ignorance impedes man to work in agreement to it; this
point of view is called “Moral Intellectualism”, and we could define it as such philosophical theory
according to knowledge and virtue coincide; thus, virtue and knowledge can and must be taught;
even more, being the final purpose of philosophy the moral education of man, we should have a
pure and precise knowledge about the behavior and virtues man must assume that we can teach
to it like we teach mathematics, so no one would behave wrongly, because no one wrong does
things wanting. Socrates thought a wrong conduct is, inall cases, a knowledge`s error, consequence
of the ignorance. He doesn`t conceive what years later Aristotle would name “acrasia”, that is, to
“know the good but do the bad”. To Socrates to commit wrong doings will be always not voluntary
but a fruit of the ignorance.

The Socratic Method

Socrates always said he had inherited the same office of his mother: a midwife. This profession he
practiced helped others to “give birth”, finding the truth inside oneself and he was a special midwife
using “maieutic” that in Greece was the profession to assist in labor. This proceeding has two
important moments: negative or destructive and positive or constructive.
Socrates thought the ignorance was the worst evil a man can suffer and therefore is necessary to
scape from it. In this consists the first moment: to set the opponent in the bad moment he
recognizes his own ignorance and so, to prepare him to look for the thing he ignores and to accept
the assistance he is offering. In the Plato`s dialogues, appears Socrates setting the opponents in
trouble, in special to those more convinced about their arguments. Through skill questions he tried
to convince them that they had opinions and when they are subjected to a thorough exam they
were carried to a great contradiction and to one “cull du sac” or a dead end road. This is the negative
part of the Socratic Method called “eristic”. Is in this part where Socrates made use of the fine irony
which frequently exasperated the opponent and always confused him. Once the opponent
recognizedhis limitation and accepted the assistance, theresearch continued through the constant
application of the expressed reasoning in the dialogue. The dialogue outlets in the discovering of
the correct definition searched. The final agreement, as a consequence of thedialogue, acquires the
value of universal in front of the particular opinion or interest and it must reign in that society.
Socrates, however, admitted the right of every one to say and act in accordance with its moral
standards, but he understood that this position was disqualified since the moment was unable to
let the rest of the people see their mistakes. It was the main reason why, in spite of he considered
his sentence to death unfair, he accepted it.

Main frame of Socrates ideas

Shares orientation and concerning with the Sophists

Disagrees in doctrine and methodology of Sophists

He believed was necessary to recover the real capacity of dialogue

Socratic
Ideas There are absolute values

Is possible to establish what every thing is

The individual and the collective good coincide

Man has to know first himself

Tasks Ascertainment about the good, justice, virtue and justice

Application of “logos” (reason) to the discovery of the things’ essence

His Moral Intellectualism Knowledge is virtue

Evil is consequence of the man`s ignorance

His method “the maieutic” To enlighten the truth, as a fruit of the dialogue and reason
 Outlets in the agreement

Class X Plato`s philosophy

The Plato’s philosophy is the sum of each one of the participants of his dialogues, the sum of his
contradictions, from there it’s unfinished richness, and from there it’s modernity. Precisely for
that they continue interesting us, not because the possible solutions could give us to many
problems appeared in his works, but because in them Plato remarked the majority of questions
have continued to worry philosophy until our current times.
E. Lledó

The Greek philosophy reaches in Plato its maturity and fullness. Its contributions will mark the main
coordinates of the rational interpretation of the man and his world, and he has been considered as
one of the philosophers who have influenced most in the posterior philosophical thought.
Plato`s philosophy ha as a background, the reaction and confrontation to the conventionalism and
relativism of the sophistic, which is considered by him, unable to offer a firm platform to the
organization of the society and a base for the human knowledge. Born in a worry environment by
the “Polis” organization, his objective is to find a solid platform in which build the reform asked for
a society that has been capable to condemn legally to Socrates. To this political finality must add an
ethical intention, because in front of the relativism of the Sophist, Plato claims the existence of a
eternal ideal of justice, also immutable, that serves as a base of his political organization, and by the
other hand, a scientific intention, because influenced by the Parmenides ideas, Plato is convinced
that the real knowledge, the science, only can deal with permanent objects, immune to the
becoming we observed in the material realm.
Plato is really concerned with the following points we will expose in this frame:

Origin of the society: the mutual satisfaction of needs

Social organization: Production – producers
Political organization: Defense – warriors
Government – rulers
Government: finality: realization of justice, based in the
real knowledge of the philosopher rulers

The reality Intelligible world: Ideas, absolute realities, eternal and immutable ideas
objective of a real knowledge

Types: Mathematical forms

Ethical and esthetical values
Form of natural things
 Sensible world: (Cosmos)= realization of an ideal order which is depicted
by the creator taking the ideas as a model

Soul and body Joined accidentally

Dualism= Soul: belongs to the world of Ideas – Spiritual – Immortal,
rational – concupiscible- irascible

The man Body: Soul prison

Material, mortal

Reincarnation of the soul in different bodies, according with its former behavior

Is reminiscence of Ideas’ world reminding

It is obtained by the dialectic: method of ascension from the sensible to the
intelligible world (cavern myth)

The knowledge grades: Imagination (eikasia) of the shadows and images

Beliefs (pistis) of the sensible objects
Thinking (dianoia) of mathematical objects
Knowledge (dialectica) o the ideas

Class XI The Platonic division of the society

Plato established a closed organization of the society structured in three different groups:

- Producers
- Guardian
- Rulers

The society in this exposed form, organized, corresponded with the threefold vision he had about
the human soul. As in every human being highlighted one of the three parts of the soul, this permits
the distribution of the social “roles” in accordance with the psychological characteristics of every
person. In that way in the peasants and ranchers predominate the concupiscible part of the soul,
the guardians or warriors predominate the irascible part and in the rules the rational one. To each
one of them corresponds to put in practice one specific virtue: the prudence would be the rulers’
virtue; the courage in the warriors and the temperance in peasants and handcrafters and the justice
appears as the regulator of the relations between the people in the city-state and at the same time
order the harmonic relation between the different parts of the individual soul. To Plato, justice is
defined as “to do what everyone must do”.

Education has the most important role in these different divisions of social roles, for example, the
guardians must keep an special life status and regime, they live separated from their families and of
the rest of the citizens; they won’t get proper richness neither house, family or women in marriage
condition. When they have sexual intercourse, women will be of the same class of the warrior and
the blood pureness will be kept controlling offspring with eugenic measures.
The rulers proceed from the class of warriors and are going to be chosen from the best of them.
Their education is the principal concern of the process, because to become a ruler they must
accomplish first with the highest grade of training to be a real wise man, that is, a philosopher who
can govern wisely the city-state, because the rulers belong of an special aristocracy based in its
intellectual capacity and in the scientific preparation. The ruler-philosopher should use the dialectic,
that is, the method to reach the highest grade of knowing in the knowledge hierarchy.
Different sciences will conduct the ruler-philosopher soul to the dialectic that is, not only to the
personal rejoicing but with the finality to return to the people the social care and education that
the same city-sate gave to him. Only the wiser, the philosopher has the perfect qualities needed
for the good government of the city-state.

Relationship among ethics and politics

The class division that Plato established is selective and rigid, because all the citizens must be
controlled in order to occupy the correspondent place in the society and in accordance with the
state interests. There is not a social movement in the sense we understand today. The same who
control the power in the state determine who is going to form part of every social class, that’s why
the political question is, at the same time, an ethical question, because each citizen must occupy
the rightful place and to do their social duties and to practice the moral virtues of the same social
group where they belong; then we can consider that Plato submitted ethics to politics, but in order
to be discovered by everyone as Socrates sustained, Plato supposed that ethics is a science. This
means that all the judgments of value that regulate the individual behavior are based in objective
truths with a strong validity of universal character and not in opinions and subjective preferences,
as the sophists sustained. All this thing means that the Plato’s ethical theory and within the political
theory requires the existence of absolute truths, then we enter in the Plato’s Idea theory that
constituted the mile stone of all the Platonic philosophy.

Class XII The Plato’s theory of the Ideas

To Plato there are two worlds: the intelligible world of the reality, or the world of the Ideas, and the
world where we live, the material realm, sensible world that at the same time, is a reflection of the
world of ideas. The reality is marked by the ideas we have preconceived or have of the material
world, then the first is the idea which marks the name and the nosology of the reality, and later
there is the possibility to understand and know the reality through the same first idea, then the real
world doesn’t exist in the real terms without the ideas we can have first about it. Plato seems
understand the Idea as the unique form of some multiple things. It would be the model of a class of
objects, for instance, the Idea of a tree, the Idea of beauty. Each one of them is a unique reality,
eternal and immutable, absolute. They are not of material nature, but neither pure mental concepts,
but nor proper qualities of things. Plato started a topic of a posterior philosophical history: what
kind of reality corresponds to the concepts that represent the particular things. This topic will be
dealt by Aristotle later, but in the Middle Age will acquire the most important place giving place to
the famous “Universal controversy”.
To Plato all the ideas are hierarchically organized, he admitted Ideas as mathematical forms:
equality, unity, plurality, etc., and some others that are values as: justice, kindness, beauty, etc., and
finally other Ideas that are a form of natural things: water, fire, man. To Plato this theory allowed to
build, by one side, a theory of what we could consider nowadays “values” and by the other side, a
cosmic interpretation(cosmos) as the realization of an Ideal world, which establishes the Sum
Creator.

The Soul doctrine

To Plato, the soul is before the man’s appearance, and existed before the earth’s life and will be still
in existence after the death. The union of the soul and body is purely accidental and only by a short
time, because the body is mortal and the soul doesn’t. The soul is incarnated and conditioned in its
cognitive activity by the characteristics of the same body where is locked.

Class XIII The theory of knowledge

Plato considered that the soul before reincarnation has contemplated the world of Ideas, and by
some reason, the soul has fallen from this world of Ideas and has arrived to its current state,
incarnated in a body. This suddenly change to be free and later locked in a body has provoked the
soul has forgotten everything about that first and decisive experience. However this oblivion is not
total or definitive. Through different sensations soul gives memories (reminiscences), aspects of
what it contemplated before being reincarnated. Plato used the Socratic procedure of maieutic as
a continuation of the possibility of reminding the truth looking inside oneself through the
metempsychosis or soul transmigration.
Sensations are not enough to get the whole truth, but they are special possibilities to awake the
soul of that knowledge once knew, and which could be again reached in successive reincarnations
that will enable new and better states of knowing.
Finally it could be fine if we tell you the “myth of the cavern”. In one underground cavern that has
a special opening to the light, there are a group of men chained since they were children with their
faces directed to the cavern wall. Inside the cavern there are two separated zones divided by a
partition, behind it a bonfire burns. Between the fire and the chained there is a road by which a few
men transport all kind of objects and project their shadows on the bottom wall and the chained
men, not knowing anything else than the cave and their shadows, and because of this, they have
the absolute certainty that what they see is the real world. But, one day, one of them is released
and he can look the light and making a strong effort, gets used to see the fire and the strong light,
and of course in the meantime would understand that the sun produces the seasons and all things
he saw. If the man turns back to the cave, with the time he would learn to appreciate more clearly
the shadows recognizing in them the false representation of the reality as copies, and then he would
be the most trained ruler to govern the prisoners of the cavern.
Class XIV Aristotle, or the pursuing of the scientific
knowledge

The Aristotle work covers a wide range of topics that we can consider encyclopedic. His most empiric
focus of all the philosophical theories supposed a novelty and a clear remoteness of the Platonic
method to do philosophy. He separated from the Platonic method as well in the way of interpreting
the motivation that moves men to search knowledge. To him, the motor that moves the men to
know is not the Eros, as the gravity force the truth exerts itself, but a human tendency or deep
motivation in the profound essence of human beings. He said: “All men wish, by nature, to know”.

Socio-cultural landscape

When the Peloponnesian war finally ended (431 B.C– 404 B.C.) began the decadence of the City-
States as a consequence of a severe socio-economic crises that moved to a new model of political
organization in which the autarchic ideal, typical of the City-States will be overcome.
During the war, peasants looked for refuge in the cities, leaving behind the field work, due this
scarcity of food famine started. This situation generated a deep social unrest that created a severe
confrontation between social classes and a profound division among rich and poor people.
This situation was manifested first in Athens, however, by maintaining the value of the currency -
drachma-, in which the whole Mediterranean commerce was based, Athens grew in a great wealth
that permitted the recovering once more of the hegemony in Greece, and to organize a new
Confederation that remained until 355 B.C.
All this happenings provoked a serious value crises that created an individualistic development, due
to the worry of the individual prosperity that, at the same time, produced a deep lack of respect on
the non written laws, which was the base of the social behavior of the Greeks, so the feeling about
the “citizen moral duty” was abandoned by a new concept of “cosmopolitism”.
This process coincided with the Macedonia`s development with Philippe II, father of Alexander the
Great. Macedonia that had been apart from all the struggles and fights of the city – states of Greece,
was mainly formed by tribes of shepherds with a ancient patriarchy system. The power of the king
was strongly limited by the eight hundred landlords, to whom the king had to consult all the
important decisions and not always could get their approval. Philippe II had studied with the general
Epaminondas in Thebes that permitted to him to know the best military strategies. When he came
back to Pella, capitol of Macedonia, he was decided to conquer Greece.
To get this he organized different parties with hunting, and sport tournaments trying to share his
conquest`s projects, later he organized a great army that had as a basic structure the phalanx,
formed by sixteen rows of infantry protected in the flanks by the cavalry.
Admirer of the Athenian culture and interested of its fleet, signed a peace treaty with Athens and
requested the command of the Greek forces to fight against the Persians. All the Greek states,
except Sparta, joined in this occasion and offered him their armies. This fact resulted in the
appearance of two opposed political parties: Isocrates, who wanted the Greek unification under the
Philippe’s rule, and Demosthenes, who didn’t want the Macedonia’s command, but when Filippo
was death by Pausanias, his general, in 336 B.C., his son Alexander assumed the throne and with
only 20 years old directed the campaign against the Persians, to whom he finally defeated, and with
this heroic happening, began the extension of the Macedonia’s Empire, from Macedonia to Persia
and from India to Egypt. The empire disappeared after Alexander’s death.

Class XIV The Aristotelian method

Aristotle in his philosophy comes from Platonism, although soon will mark distance with respect of
Plato’s theory of ideas, because Aristotle considered the individual entities were the real things and
as a consequence, admitted the validity of sensible knowledge as a start point of all knowledge;
however Aristotle coincided in many aspects with Plato, for instance: the knowledge organization;
the physical reality; the man in its individual and social aspects; the political and ethical questions;
the problem of knowledge, but always dealing with them in a different perspective. This change
came due to the influence of the empirical studies in the animal world (biology) he practiced and
that he left written in his papers about natural history. The empirical orientation of Aristotle is
manifested too in the political research, as it has been shown in the gathering of 158 constitutions
of different States of his time, with the final purpose to elaborate apolitical theory. All these
researches supposed the rejection of the Platonic dialectic and a supreme grade of knowledge and
science of the “real truth” substituting it by a new instrument of knowledge: the Logic.
Aristotle thought that the universality of science is the result of the conjunction of all knowledge,
and that is articulated in different particular and autonomous sciences, and this conjunction is the
knowledge of all aspects of the reality, and due to the necessity to classify different objects of the
reality, appears the diverse branches of science or particular sciences, and he divided them into
three main groups of sciences:

a) Theoretical (or speculative, which tries to achieve the theoretical knowledge of the
reality); the physics or second philosophy; mathematics, and the first philosophy or
theology (that onwards will receive the name of metaphysics).

b) Practical, that concerns the human or social actions: the ethics and politics.

c) Poetical, that concerns about the production of things and are the different arts like
the poetics and rhetoric.

Aristotle founded Logic as an instrument to the service of all other sciences, and distinguishes two
classes of logic:
a) The formal logic, technique that cares of the laws and rules of reasoning, in special the
syllogism
b) The material logic, understood as the possibility to enter in the same reality. Concerns
about definition and demonstration.

Class XV The First philosophy in Aristotle

To Aristotle the first philosophy (or theology), is the science of sciences. If every science in particular
studies a part of the kingdom of Being; the first or primary philosophy studies the Self or Being as
such, it means, the Being aspects common to all Beings. Is a theory of the principles and causes of
Being,
Aristotle, different of Parmenides or Plato, admitted that what is born and dies, can receive the
name of “being”, It is because to Aristotle didn’t understand the “being” as a single concept, who
has the opposite in the “not being”, without something else. It is not a wrong concept with different
meanings, but an analogue concept, that can be applied with certain forms or ranges to different
things we find in the Universe, because, although of a different form or shape, all things are things.
To Aristotle, then, there are different forms or shapes of “being”, like for Plato were the ideas what
constituted the real truth of the reality. To Aristotle the real existent things are the singular beings
(entelechies or substances), so, everything that exists is or substance or things that affect the
substance: the accidents
The distinction between form and substance plays an important part in the explanation of the way
we discern things in the world. When we discern things, we classify them in various groups or
categories. We can see a horse, and another horse. Horses are not exactly alike, but they have
something in common, and this common something is the horse’s form. Whatever might be
distinctive, or individual, belongs to the horse’s substance. Aristotle wanted to do a thorough
clearing up in nature, and tried or showed that everything in nature belongs to different categories
and subcategories. The firm and substance are, then, the causes or principles of the natural
substances and in that way, the substance and form would be “nature”. Aristotle sustained that the
impossibility the first philosophers had to explaining the birth and death in nature was because they
resort to a single type of cause. So, Thales talking about the water or Anaximenes of air, reduced
the existent to its material principle. Empedocles resorted to an efficient cause (love and hate);
Pythagoreans and Plato to a formal cause (numbers and Ideas respectively) and one who showed
interest in the final cause.
.
Also is really relevant in the Aristotelian theory, the role of the final cause in the explanation of
nature. It is conceived as teleological of finalist. To him, everything directs to the realization of its
own being.
Finally we must say that in the changes natural beings, three of the four main causes coincide; to
know: the formal, the efficient, and the final, because the changing agent is the own being which
only end is to reach the perfect form: the entelechy.

Class XVII The universe through Aristotle’s

philosophy
In his work “About the Universe” he wrote about the main characteristics of the Universe (cosmos)
in which he distinguished two differentiated regions: the “sub lunar world”, subjected to changes,
and for this cause to the corruption, and formed by the four main elements: fire; water; earth and
air, and the “supra lunar world”, perfect, without any possible corruption, and formed by a single
substance: the “ether” or first body to whom the scholastics will call “fifth essence” (quinta esencia).
This Universe is unique, aspheric, perfect, finite, in the space but no in the time. Every one of its
regions has its own laws, being different to the “sub lunar world”, which is imperfect, ruled by
violent movements and the “supra lunar”,
perfect, in accordance with the circular movement. This circular movement is the unique continue,
but a severei change requires starting the movement, we must admit a first cause or first motor.

The soul theory’s of Aristotle

Aristotle distinguishes three types of soul: the nutritious soul or vegetative, that exerts the
reproduction and assimilation functions. It is proper of the plants while in the rest of living
organisms, their functions are assumed by other kind of soul.

The sensitive soul belongs to the animal, that permits to them sensible perception, desire,
movement, and in many cases, imagination and memory.
The superior or highest level is the intellective soul, that Aristotle sometimes calls understanding.
This soul assumes the vegetative and sensitive functions and also makes possible the scientific
thinking or theoretical knowledge that looks the truth inside itself, and the practical knowledge
which pursues the truth to look at the practical behavior, from this that the practical activity of the
human being be the rational activity, and that only can reach happiness through a whole life
dedicated to the cultivation of reason.

Class XVIII Knowledge’s theory of Aristotle

To Aristotle all living organisms have some kind of knowledge, in accordance with the proper
functions of each one of them. So, he distinguishes different levels that go from the simple sensitive
knowledge to the intellectual knowledge; however what really interested to him was to respond
which is the knowledge’s model that permits the scientific research, because it is the most
characteristic activity of the human being.
Aristotle takes the intellectual inheritance of Socrates and Plato, who stressed the superiority of the
intellectual knowledge over the sensible one, but as different from Plato, to whom the intellectual
knowledge is only a reminding of the reality contemplated by the soul in its running by the Idea’s
World, Aristotle starts from the same data given by the senses. To him the contact with the reality
is the start point of all the knowledge; he discards the preexistence of the soul and the possibility
the soul have contemplated what really is; from here the high value he gives to the senses as the
start point of knowledge, opposite to the Plato`s theory.

Ethics
The best perfection and the “good” is the final of the human actions. Happiness as the culmination
of the “good” is an autarchic ideal that consists in the exercise of the contemplative activity. Virtue
is a strategy to achieve the happiness.

Politics
Politics is the pursue of the common good; the city is the place where the citizens achieve the
common good; the citizens participate in the administration of justice, and in the government of the
city-state. About the political regimes, the favorite are those who assist in the common interest, but
in the real practice and theoretically talking, the best would be the most convenient to the people.

Class XIX The Hellenism

Aristotle died in the year 322 BC., at the time when Athens had lost its dominant role. This was not
least due to the political upheavals resulting from the conquest of Alexander the Great 356 –323
BC)
Alexander the Great was the king of Macedonia, and Aristotle was the young Alexander tutor. It was
Alexander who won the final and decisive victory over the Persians, and with this victory he linked
both Egypt and the Orient as far east as India to the Greek civilization. This marked the beginning of
a new epoch in the history of the mankind. A civilization sprang up in which Greek culture and the
Greek language played a leading role. This period, which lasted for about 300 years, is known as
Hellenism. The term Hellenism refers to both the period of time and the Greek dominated culture
that prevailed in the three Hellenistic kingdoms of Macedonia, Syria and Egypt. However from about
the year 50 BC., Rome secured the upper hand in military and political affairs. The new super power
gradually conquered all the Hellenistic kingdoms and from then on Roman culture and the Latin
language were predominant from Spain in the west to far into Asia. This was the beginning of the
Roman period which we often refer to as Late Antiquity but we must remind that in the moment
before Romans managed to conquer the Hellenistic world, 
Rome itself was a province of Greek
culture. So Greek culture and Greek philosophy came to play an important role long after the
political influence of the Greeks were a thing of the past.

Hellenism was characterized by the fact that the borders between the various countries and cultures
became erased. Previously the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Syrians and
the Persians had worshipped their own gods within what we generally call a “national religion”. Now
the different cultures merged into one great witch’s caldron of religion, philosophical and scientific
ideas. Oriental gods were also worshipped in all the Mediterranean countries. New religious
formations arose that could draw on the gods and the beliefs of many of the old nations. This is
called syncretism or the fusion of creeds. A common feature of the new religious formation during
the Hellenistic period was that they frequently containedteachings about how mankind could attain
salvation from death. These teachings were often secret. By accepting the teachings and performing
certain rituals a believer could hope for the immortality of the soul and eternal life. But philosophy
was also moving increasingly in the direction of salvation and serenity. Philosophic insight it was
now thought, did not only have its own reward; it should also free mankind from pessimism and the
fear of death. Thus the boundaries between religion and philosophy were gradually eliminated. In
general, the philosophy of Hellenism was not a star-tingly original. No one Plato or Aristotle
appeared on the scene. Hellenistic science, too, was influenced by a blend of knowledge from the
various cultures. The town of Alexandria played a key role here as a meeting place between East
and West and became the center for science with its extensive library became the center for
mathematics, astronomy, biology, and medicine. Common with the former philosophy of the great
philosophers, the Hellenistic philosophy had the desire to discover how the mankind should best
live and die. They were concerned with ethics, the main emphasis was on finding out what true
happiness was and how it could be achieved.

Class XX The Stoics

The cynics were instrumental in the development of the Stoic school of philosophy, which grew up
in Athens around 300 B.C. Its founder was Zeno, who came originally from Cyprus. The name “Stoic”
comes from the Greek word for portico (stoa). The Stoicism was later to have great significance for
Roman culture. Like Heraclitus, the Stoics believed that everyone was a part of the same common
sense or “logos”. They thought that each person was like a world in miniature, or “micro-cosmos”,
which is the reflection of the “macro-cosmos”. This lead to the thought that there exists a universal
rightness, the so-called natural law, and because this natural law was based on timeless human and
universal reason, it did not alter with time and place. In this the Stoics sided with Socrates against
the Sophists. Natural law governed all mankind, even slaves. In the same way the Stoics erased the
difference between the individual and the universe, they alsodenied any conflict between “spirit”
and “matter”. There is only one nature. This kind of idea is called monism (in contrast to Plato with
the two worlds)