Introduction to Philosophy

Achieve Test Prep: Philosophy

phenomena, human knowledge, and morality. The pre-Socratics formed an indispensable bridge from early cultural consciousness dominated by gods, mystical spirits and powers, magic and myth to a cultural consciousness founded on reason and scientific investigation of the natural world. The philosophical study of metaphysics examines issues beyond the physical world such as the meaning of life, the existence of free will, and the fundamental principles of the universe. Metaphysics attempts to explain the nature of reality itself, with Aristotle laying the foundation for this branch of philosophy. Philosophical inquiry into the nature or truth is called epistemology. The study of epistemology attempts to describe and explain the nature of knowledge and truth, and whether it is possible to achieve genuine knowledge or perceive an ultimate truth. Some important pre-Socratic philosophers include: • Thales: Considered to be the first philosopher because he introduced a different mode of thinking that relied on reason and observation of nature. Argued that the primary substance of the universe was water. • Anaximander: Proposed that the ultimate stuff of the universe is apeiron, which is translated as the indefinite, the unlimited, and the boundless. Believed the universe to be an intrinsically ordered one with the cycles of the seasons, the rotations of the heavens, and other sort of cyclical changes displaying a structured and intelligible organization that could be understood through rational investigation. • Anaximenes: Held the belief that air is the one substance out of which the entire universe is formed. • Xenophanes: General view that all meteorological phenomena are clouds, colored, moving, glowing. Clouds are fed by exhalations of the land and sea (mixture of earth and water). In contrast to the prevailing religious belief that gods created men and women in their own images, he suggested that man creates gods in his own image. He advances the concept of one supreme god who does not in any recognizable way resemble human beings. • Parmenides: An accomplished mathematician who suggested a necessary, static, unchanging unity running throughout all of what is in flux. Reality must necessarily be eternal and unchanging; therefore, the changing world of our experience must be in some sense illusory. Being is the unity that binds all things—the living and the dead, the changing and the static, the finite and the infinite. • Leucippus and Democritus: Advanced the doctrine of atomism, maintaining that all matter is composed of indivisible atoms in motion. Believed there is a world of appearance and a world of reality. The difference is that this world of reality is not divine, a god-like, or even purposeful: it is entirely physical and too small for us to see. They also proposed an atomic theory to explain the nature of the universe. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed; it is not possible for a being to come from nothing (non-being) and things that exist cannot disappear into non-beings. This led to the conclusion it cannot be separated, differentiated, or changed. Democritus believed that the soul is composed of exceedingly fine and spherical atoms, permitting the soul to interpenetrate the whole of the body. The spherical atoms move because it is their nature never to be still and as they move, they draw the whole body along with them and set it in motion. In the final analysis, the soul, or mind, is ultimately material.

Page 48 of 125

©2017

www.achievetestprep.com