Introduction to Philosophy

Achieve Test Prep: Philosophy

Metaphysics and epistemology in Western culture began with the ancient Greeks, in particular, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It was the thinkers before them known as the pre-Socratic philosophers who laid the foundation for much of their thinking. They were concerned with identifying the ultimate substance of the universe and they wrestled with the apparent contraindications between the eternal and the finite, the immutable and the changing, and appearance and reality. Instead of appealing to the gods, supernatural forces, myths, or magic to explain the world and the events in it, they sought explanations that were within the natural world and used reason as the methodological tool to make sense of things. Heraclitus was the most influential of the pre-Socratic philosophers and stated, “Those who are lovers of wisdom must be inquirers into many things,” and it was in this spirit that he proposed views of the natural world that encompassed the present day disciplines of physics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, meteorology, and embryology. Heraclitus viewed the world as the cosmos---an ordered natural arrangement that could be understood with the power of human reason and references to gods and or mystical forces which were not relevant and not welcomed. Heraclitus maintained that all things were in a constant state of flux and that the governing principle of the universe (what he called logos) which is an objective law like principles that govern the universe and which it is possible (but difficult) for humans to come to understand. There is a single order that directs all events in the cosmos; all things are one and this order is divine in the sense that it is immortal. All is change and change alone is unchanging, as nothing in the world remains static. Fire is another metaphor he used to describe logos—the inner eternal form of the ever-changing cosmos, meaning this world is the same for all, no god made or any man but it ever was and ever shall be an ever-living fire that kindles in regular measures and goes out by regular measures. Heraclitus believed that the world is produced by the ongoing conflict of opposing forces, a unity of opposites that are continually at odds with one another. For Heraclitus, truth and knowledge are hidden and elusive and cannot be captured though systemic study. Pre-Socratic Philosophers Pre-Socratic philosophy is Greek philosophy before Socrates and includes schools contemporary to Socrates that were not influenced by him. Western philosophy began in ancient Greece in the 6th century BCE. The pre-Socratics were mostly from the eastern or western fringes of the Greek world. Their efforts were directed to the investigation of the ultimate basis and essential nature of the external world. They sought the material principle (archê) of things, and the method of their origin and disappearance. As the first philosophers, they emphasized the rational unity of things and rejected mythological explanations of the world. The pre-Socratic thinkers present a discourse concerned with key areas of philosophical inquiry, such as being and the cosmos, the primary stuff of the universe, the structure and function of the human soul, and the underlying principles governing perceptible

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