Moving to a new website

From now on, I will be posting everything on my new website:  ericgerlach.com

You can find all of the class lectures, as well as prompts for essays and reviews, on the site by choosing Lectures, and then your particular class.

Greek Philosophy: 2nd Paper Topics

For each of the four response papers, you must write at least three typed and double spaced pages on a topic of your choice that concerns the material we have covered in the class so far.  Do not spend time summarizing the material, but rather focus on your own thoughts and questions.  You are welcome to use your own life experiences as well as fictional and nonfictional material from outside class.  While you are welcome to reflect on anything you have found interesting, the following are possible topics for your response.

1) Pythagoras and later thinkers influenced by him, including Plato, believe that the forms of things can be understood through the use of mathematics, while skeptical thinkers such as Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Zeno and Democritus argue that things always remain unknown to us.  In what way and to what extent can we understanding the forms of things via mathematics?

2) Parmenides argues that difference and motion are an illusion, and Zeno argues that these things can not be understood without paradoxical problems.  Anaxagoras and Democritus both argued that Parmenides was half right about difference being an illusion, but the two completely disagree on whether the unity or difference of things is an illusion.  What do you make of the Eleatic challenge?  Do human efforts to comprehend things as distinct or changing necessarily result in contradictions?  If so, or not, why?

3) Diogenes rejected the conventions of society and chose to live like a dog.  Is his simplicity and obscenity noble or foolish?  Heraclitus says people are mere apes, and should seek wisdom.  Diogenes believes that living as a dog allows us to live by reason rather than passion.  Would living as dogs make us less like apes?

Greek Philosophy: Review for the Midterm

Origins of Ancient Greece: Cosmology, interconnected ancient world, polytheism to monotheism/monism, stack of elements, Egypt and slavery, chemistry, Plato loves Egypt, Greece between Persia and Egypt, Persian and Phoenician influence, Cyrus, Zoroastrianism, Renaissance gives way to idea of the West, modern mythology of reason/freedom/History/Science

Identity, Mythology & Tragedy: Dogmatism vs. Skepticism, philosophy/wisdom as deep questioning, Ionians and Dorians, Dorian invasion theory, Ionian rebellion, Miletus as center, Delian League, political vs. personal freedom, poets Homer and Hesiod, common Homeric culture, prose vs. lyrical poetry/song, epiphany and theory, Archilochos and rhythm of life, Sappho and what one loves, tragedy & hamartia, Agamemnon & Antigone

Thales: Milesian school, trade center, falls into well, olive press monopoly, easy travel to Egypt, all things are full of gods, teleological view, magnets & amber, water as arche

Anaximander: injustice & retribution, infinite/apeiron as arche, element arche would have unbalanced cosmos, hot/cold & wet/dry, gnomon, steady earth vs. Aristotle’s hungry/thirsty man, map of world with Med/Delphi center, mythic snow/fire people, water cycle & life

Anaximenes: air as arche, dissipation and concentration, blowing on hand hot/cold, felt

Pythagoras: theorem & pyramids, first ‘philosopher’, influenced Plato, supposedly divine, reincarnation, secret society, mathematics as origin, harmony of the spheres, the One & the tetractys, ratios/rational & intervals, set of opposites, sayings w/ secret morals, pythagorean y

Xenophanes: ridicules fellow philosophers, critical of honoring athletes, Homeric gods are immoral, incapable of cosmic order, Ethiopians/Thracians/Horses/Oxen, gods unborn, no hierarchy, one immobile infinite that shakes all things, no one will know the truth, optimistic skepticism, figs & honey, water/earth & fossils

Heraclitus: renounces throne, similar to Buddha, weeping philosopher, critical of Ephesians/experts/poets/philosophers, wet vs. dry soul, never same river twice, we are & are not, flux/becoming as being & nonbeing, fire as arche, desire & satisfaction, thunderbolt, Logos, awake vs. asleep, criticism of experts, wisdom as unity of mind, inquire within, opposites work together, influence on Nietzsche, humans as apes

Parmenides: Eleatic school, agrees with Xenophanes being doesn’t move, Plato reveres, apocalyptic journey, ways of night/day, truth vs. opinion, oneness shared by all, ex nihilo, time/motion/difference as illusion, Einstein & block time

Zeno: beloved of Parmenides, reductio ad absurdum, dialectic shows we can’t understand without contradiction, paradox of nonbeing, paradox of place, paradox of motion, Tortoise & Achilles, arrow in flight

Melissus: return to Xenophanes, source of Eleatics, One is full/eternal, Neoplatonic hyperousia, similarity with Buddhist thought

Anaxagoras: sided with Persians, brought philosophy to Athens, heretical idea of sun/moon as blazing stone, charged with impiety, everything contains traces of everything, Parmenides is right about total difference as relative illusion, arche as self-ruled nous/mind, no splits with an axe, deus ex machina, parallel criticism of Euripides, mind/body problem

Empedocles: champion of the poor, healing powers, god rebirth via volcano, fall of souls from original pure state, Zeus/Hera - Hades/Persephone, four classical elements, love & strife in cosmic cycles, pre-human pairs, vegetarian, cycles of reincarnation, critical of animal sacrifice, reason superior to perception as wisdom superior to knowledge, Badiou vs. Dawkins

Democritus: laughing philosopher, the mocker, atomism, infinite beings & void/nonbeing, reaction to Eleatic challenge, mind as many fire atoms, impressions as images/idols, critical of animal omens, man is what we know, wisdom as medicine, much thought over much learning, balance and moderation, improve rather than pray, skepticism, truth is in the depths/opinion

Diogenes: defacing the currency, Antisthenes after Socrates, cosmopolitan, begging in tub at center of town, toughens self, smashes bowl, carries lamp, practice over theory, cynics are ‘dog-like’, bites his friends, courage/nature/reason over wealth/custom/passion, obscenity, criticism of Plato’s idealism, criticism of Alexander, Christians & shamelessness

Short Answers

Pick four topics from the list below.  For each of your choices, write a third to a half page in each of the spaces provided below.  You should demonstrate that you 1) understand the meaning of the concept, 2) that you can connect it to other material from the class, and 3) that you can apply it to examples.  If you demonstrate each of these three things and complete the required page length, you will get full points for your answer.

Stack of the Elements                Dogmatism vs. Skepticism   

Political vs. Personal Freedom        Hamartia & Antigone           

Anaximander vs. an Element as Arche    Xenophanes’ Horses & Oxen       

Heraclitus’ Being & Nonbeing        Heraclitus vs. Experts who Separate

Parmenides Eleatic Challenge        Parmenides Truth vs. Opinion

Parmenides vs. Heraclitus            Zeno’s Paradoxes of Motion

Anaxagoras vs. Democritus            Anaxagoras’ Deus Ex Machina

Empedocles’ 4 Elements/Gods        Empedocles’ Cosmic Love & Strife

Empedocles’ Reason over Perception    Atomists vs. Eleatics

Diogenes’ Live as a Dog            Diogenes’ Criticism of Plato

Greek Philosophy: Democritus & Diogenes

Democritus (460 - 370 BCE) has been mentioned as the laughing philosopher, as opposed to Heraclitus, who is said to be the weeping philosopher.  Democritus was known in his hometown of Abdera as ‘the Mocker’, laughing at the foolishness of people as he studied and travelled in search of wisdom.  Abdera was a city to the north of Athens in Thrace (recall that Xenophanes said the Thracians portray the gods as having red hair).  Leucippus, the original Greek atomist from Miletus taught Democritus, and the two shared a common conception of the cosmos (along with atomists from India, like Kanada of the Vaisheshika school).  Aristotle, who was also from north of Athens, knew him and his work well.  Plato hated him and wanted his books burned.

Democritus’ father was very wealthy and had ties to Persia.  He was said to have received Xerxes and entertained him and his army as Xerxes was passing through on his way back from overrunning Athens and others supporting the Ionian rebellion.  In gratitude, Xerxes left behind several Magi, Zoroastrian scholar priests.  Democritus was said to have been taught by Ostanes, a Zoroastrian Magi.  Once source quotes Democritus as saying he would rather make a single great discovery than be Emperor of Persia.  This repeats the theme found with Heraclitus and Empedocles, placing scholarship before political power.  Democritus also traveled extensively, which he could afford, going to Persia, India, Egypt, and Ethiopia.  He lived in Egypt for some years, and praised Egyptian mathematics, like Pythagoras.  Some say he studied with Anaxagoras in Athens, but all Democritus tells us is that when he went to Athens, no one knew him.

For the atomists, there are two primary elements, two arche, being and nonbeing.  Atoms are beings, alike in being indivisible pure ‘beings’, but unlike in shape.  Nonbeing is the void in which the atoms move, combining and recombining.  The atoms are infinitely many, while the void is singular.  Atoms are indivisible, an answer to Parmenides’ Eleatic challenge regarding division as an infinite regress.  Atomists argued that reality is not infinitely divisible, but rather there is a smallest unit, the ‘atom’, a name which literally means ‘without’ (a) ‘cut’ (tom).  Strangely, modern science has kept the name while dividing things into smaller pieces.

Also unlike our modern understanding, atoms connected physically with hooks and sockets, not by electromagnetic force.  The shape and features of atoms give substances their properties, either by purity or mixture.  Metal atoms have hooks and rigid connections, water atoms are slippery and round, and salt atoms are sharp, hence the taste.  Life and consciousness is made of fire atoms, which exist in plants, animals and humans.  The fire in us is what allows human beings to move and think.

Notice like Anaxagoras, who Democritus praises, salt is as basic as fire.  Democritus extends Anaxagoras’ theories with atomism.  However, unlike Anaxagoras but like Heraclitus, Democritus makes the soul from fire rather than abstract ‘mind’.  This creates an interesting situation.  Recall that Thales believed magnets have souls, which is why they move each other.  While the atomists tried to explain atomic bonds in terms of physical features, Thales was closer to our modern theories with his magnet souls moving all things.

Leucippus and Democritus noted that material things decompose given time, but are also regenerated.  Things seem to both mix and unmix, becoming pure substances again.  This is because at the atomic level things do not mix or degenerate, hence their ability to become concentrated and pure again.  

Atoms exist in void, the reason that things are able to move and change.  If there were no space between the atoms, there would be no room in which for them to recombine and change position relative to each other.  While Parmenides argued that void is non-being, and therefore can’t exist, the atomists argued that motion is a given and evident fact, so void must indeed exist as an actual emptiness, must be as a non-being.  Void, like the atoms, is infinite and eternal.  In reply to the Eleatic challenge, the atomists held that being and nonbeing do not mix.  Rather, they remain entirely distinct while the atoms continuously recombine, changing position relative to each other.  Motion thus does not require being to be nonbeing as Heraclitus said and Parmenides mocked him for saying.  However, this does create another question: Why have there always been separate and eternal atoms, and how are they indivisible?  The atomists do not answer.

Like Democritus, Newton argued that there was indeed void, absolute space, while Einstein later disagreed, saying that space and time are linked and have properties.  Currently, physicists side with Einstein as to the non-existence of absolute void but not with his Parmenidean conception of block time.

Interestingly, Democritus is somewhat the opposite of Anaxagoras even as he borrows from him.  Anaxagoras, remember, believed that Parmenides was right insofar as total separation between things is an illusion because all things are only relatively separate.  For Democritus and the atomists, atoms remain completely distinct even when linked together, so the complete unity of things is an illusion.  For Anaxagoras, what appears to us to be complete separation is ignorance of the underlying connection.  For Democritus, what appears to us to be complete unity is ignorance of the underlying separation.  Heraclitus would argue that each grasps one half of the picture, each with their own relative truth and relative delusion.

A consequence of this would be that our own individual minds, which to us appear to be single unified wholes, are in fact a large number of fire atoms linked together, as is each thought and emotion we experience within the mind.  Similar to Buddhism, this would mean that we do not have a single, unified self, and the illusion arises from our inability to see ourselves at the atomic level.  Our self-awareness, our thoughts about ourselves, and our desire for self-preservation are made of distinct things that appear to us in our ignorance as wholes.

Democritus thought that the world was round, and that there were other worlds, some with many suns and moons, others without any sun or moon.  This is like some Indian thought, and Democritus was said to have traveled to India.  Worlds are formed by the collision and combination of atoms in the void.  All worlds are born this way, and then die when they collide with other worlds.  Did he believe that the cosmos was in the process of forming larger and larger worlds, with future worlds made of this and others growing larger and larger?  What would the result of this process have been?  This is similar but different to Empedocles, who argued that love will result in a reunified world.  For Democritus, the world is amassing in size but the atoms remain eternally distinct even if increasingly joined in combination with one another.  Alternately, large and small worlds could decay, breaking into parts that later would recombine into all sizes of worlds, large and small.

Democritus argued that we cannot know ultimate truth, as it is beyond our perception, just as the atoms and other worlds are themselves beyond our perceptions.  Like Empedocles, Democritus thought that true knowledge does not come through the senses, but through the mind, through reason.  The atoms influence us as we interact with them, technically as our atoms interact with foreign atoms, but we cannot perceive the interactions.  Rather, we must use reason to figure it out.  This is still true today with modern physics, as we do not perceive atoms and quarks but rather their effects after colliding them together in accelerators.  Neither the original microscope nor the electronic microscope allows us to see at the atomic or subatomic level.

The skeptical philosopher of science Feyerabend noted that the size of electrons has been shrinking in recent decades, not that the electrons themselves are smaller but our estimates of their size have shrunk.  When Bohr first conceived of the atom as a small solar system, a model that already violates the literal use of the term ‘atom’, he could see solar systems in outer space but not under a microscope.  We may be just beginning to realize that atoms are not small solar systems, nor do electrons have a simply negative charge.  Consider that magnets have both a positive and negative charge, which is why they only link when the poles are aligned correctly.  Strangely, atoms may be singular wholes like Democritus believed, but are still divisible if broken or smashed through collision.

Some sources say that Democritus blinded himself so that he could pursue his studies without distraction, which would fit with putting reason above the senses.  This seems entirely unlikely however, as like Empedocles he believed that one should reason beyond what is perceived, not ignore perception entirely.

Democritus argued that the fire atoms that make our minds are impressed upon by formations of atoms from outside, which forms images or ‘idols’ of things, our mental conceptions.  Aristotle later followed a similar theory, similar to the much later British empiricist Hume, that the mind is imprinted by things and concepts come from these impressions.  

Democritus said, “Reason is a powerful persuader”, thinking similar to that of the modern philosopher Nietzsche who was mentioned with Heraclitus, as well as the skepticism of Xenophanes and Heraclitus, who say that our understandings are always inferior copies and that human beings conceive of the gods by way of statues and idols which are mere human made images.  Also similar to these philosophers, Democritus argued that the things which are good in some situations are bad in others, giving deep water as an example of something both useful and dangerous.  Bad can come of things that we believe are simply good when we are ignorant.

According to some sources, Democritus believed that the gods are enormous beings that live in the air, which communicate through dreams and images, the source of belief in gods and in prophecy.   According to others, Democritus did not believe the gods were real, but rather people witnessed extraordinary things in the air like thunder and lightning and attributed it to human-like beings.  Either way, he was critical of observing animals for omens.  Our word ‘inauguration’ comes partly from the Latin ‘Augur’, a Roman priest who would examine the flight and behavior of birds when a new official came to power to predict good or bad fortune.  

Democritus also famously said with regard to the gods, “Man is what we know”, very similar to Confucius of China who argued we should worry about this life rather than the next and learn to feed human beings before attempting to feed the spirits.  However, Democritus believed that the verses of Homer were too beautiful to not be divinely inspired and was reported to have said, “Only those who hate injustice are loved by the gods”.  Like Xenophanes, he seems to believe that there are gods and divinity, but our understandings are quite limited.  This is similar to Heraclitus, although Heraclitus believed Homer should be beaten for being impious.

Like Empedocles, Democritus was critical of tyranny, arguing that equality is superior to tyranny.  Unfortunately, like the American founding fathers, Democritus did not extend this equality to women, slaves or foreigners.  He mockingly said that some cities are ruled by men who are slaves to their women, and that being “ruled by a woman is the final insult for a man”.  He also said that women should not be permitted to argue, as it was a terrible thing.  He does not mention whether women are terrible at arguing, or that their arguments have terrible consequences for men, regardless of their quality.

Democritus believed that a life of moderation and discipline results in true happiness.  Just as medicine heals sickness in the body, wisdom removes desire from the mind.  Wisdom is superior to knowledge, as he says, “Many have much learning and no thought...One should cultivate much thought, not much learning”.  Attachment to worldly things and undisciplined anger brings destruction.  Democritus said that scratching an itch gave the same pleasure as sex, and that desire for wealth was worse than poverty, downplaying physical pleasure.  While well bred animals have strong bodies, excellent people have great minds.  

The things necessary for life can be easily found, and it is only unnecessary things that bring us great pain and misery in life.  This did not mean one could not celebrate or indulge, as he did say, “A life without a feast is a long road without an inn”, but not to the degree of immoderate imbalance and not to the detriment of wisdom, saying, “Violent appetite blinds the soul to everything else”.  Profiting from doing wrong is the worst of all things.  Also similar to Confucius, Democritus said that one should examine one’s own mistakes rather than those of others, and that the truly strong person is not one who conquers enemies but conquers the self and the passions.  Rather than pray to the gods, improving the self will bring all the contentment one could ask for.

Originally, Democritus argued, human beings were equal, living a simple life devoid of language or technology in which they had to band together against wild beasts.  They slowly made discoveries by trial and error, learning to build shelter, make fire, farm crops, raise livestock, and communicate.  Democritus saw himself as an heir to this continuing project, the development of civilization.  Interestingly, he is sometimes called the first scientist, the first true discoverer, while he believes it to have been continuous long before himself.  He even argued that human beings became civilized by imitating animals, learning weaving from spiders, singing from birds, and building from bird’s nests (ancient Greece was sadly devoid of beavers).

After Plato and Aristotle, we will study Epicurus and the Stoics, who borrowed much from Democritus and the atomists, including both atoms and the ideal of moderation in life.  It is through Epicurus and Aristotle that Democritus’ thought became influential on later periods.  Later Pyrrhonists saw Democritus, as well as Xenophanes and Zeno, as forerunning skeptics of their own tradition.  Like Heraclitus, who says that nature loves to hide, Democritus said, “In reality, we know nothing, for truth is in the depths”, arguing that we must remind ourselves that we are always relatively removed from the reality that surrounds us.  Also, like Heraclitus, Democritus said, “The world is change, life is opinion”, and “The world is a stage, life is our entrance: You came, you saw, you left”, a saying far more cynical than Julius Caesar’s “I came, I saw, I conquered”.

Diogenes of Sinope (412 - 323 BCE) also known as Diogenes the Cynic, was born in Sinope, an Ionian colony in what is today North Turkey on the Black Sea.  He is not Diogenes Laertius, the biographer of philosophers we have heard much from, nor is he several different Diogenes who are less famous Greek philosophers.

Legend has it that Diogenes’ father was a banker in charge of the mint, making coins for the government, but Diogenes “defaced the currency” and was banished.  One source says that Diogenes went to the Oracle at Delphi, and the pythias told him to deface the currency.  Large numbers of coins have been found in the region that have been defaced, some with Diogenes’ father’s name on them as the minter.  While some believe that Diogenes and his father were involved in counterfeiting, it is likely that this is a metaphor for Diogenes’ rejection of traditional life, the “way of his father”, the common currency used in the marketplace.  Diogenes believed that people were corrupted by society, and should return to a simple life.  It is also true that there were, understandably, warring factions of pro-Greek separatists and pro-Persian loyalists fighting over authority of the city, and the coins may not have involved Diogenes but rather political infighting.  If this is true, the story stuck to Diogenes as a metaphor after the fact.  Either way, sources tell us that Diogenes moved to Athens, where he became famous for his lifestyle and amusingly cynical interactions with others.

In Athens, Antisthenes (445 - 365 BCE), a student of socrates, was the first to make Cynicism a distinct philosophy.  Socrates did prefer the simple life, and despised wealth and excess.  Diogenes became the most famous and emblematic cynic.  While later cynics believed that Diogenes studied with Antisthenes, this is today questionable.  According to the story, Diogenes heard Antisthenes in the marketplace, and offered to become his disciple.  Antisthenes tried to chase him away, beating him with his staff, and Diogenes replied that he was going nowhere, there being no staff hard enough to drive him away from Antisthenes’ wisdom.  Diogenes admired Antisthenes for being the antithesis of the average Athenian, who increasingly had come to indulge in luxury and excess as Athens had become the wealthy center of the newly independent Delian League.

Diogenes when asked said he was a citizen of the world, literally a ‘cosmopolitan’ (like the socialite, not the beverage).  Diogenes is thought by some to have invented the term by use of this expression.  This was also a radical rejection of tradition, as most identified with their city and saw outsiders as barbarians.

None of his writings survive, but anecdotes about his life are found in the writings of others, particularly Diogenes Laertius (again, a different Diogenes).  His life is quite famous.  Many famous paintings from the Renaissance and in the realist style before impressionism of the late 1800s feature Diogenes and stories of his life.

Diogenes begged for a living, sleeping in a large jar on its side in public.  He meant for his life to be seen in the center of town, hoping that his example would inspire others, and bragged about his immunity to the weather, unlike someone used to comfort and fine living.  Diogenes would walk barefoot in snow and roll in hot sand to toughen himself.  When asked if he was being too extreme, he replied that he was the lead singer of a chorus, who must sing louder than the others to give them the right note.  When asked why he begged for his food, Diogenes said it taught people.  When asked what it taught them, he replied, “Generosity”.

Someone in the biological sciences must have had an appreciation of Greek cynicism, as well as a decent sense of humor.  ‘Diogenes’ is the genus of hermit crabs, those crabs that live like Diogenes the hermit, in a vessel they find and come to inhabit.

Diogenes originally owned a wooden bowl which he used to eat and drink, but smashed it after seeing a poor boy drinking from his cupped hands.  He would eat in the marketplace, even though this was indecent according to Athenian custom, saying it was the only place he felt hungry.  Clearly, the joke is that markets cause appetites.

In one of the most famous stories, Diogenes carried a lamp in the daytime around Athens and said he was looking for an honest man, the joke of course being that one could not be found in plain sight during broad daylight.  This is very similar to Socrates, who wandered Athens in search of someone who truly knew something but could find no one.

Diogenes was against complicated theory, believing that true wisdom was rather found in the practice of a simple life ruled by reason and moderation.  With Parmenides, it was already mentioned that when Diogenes was approached by a Parmenidean who argued that motion is impossible, Diogenes got up and left.  This is both a refutation of the Eleatic challenge and an example of putting practice over theory.

Called “Diogenes the Dog”, it is unknown whether this was an insult that he came to accept as a badge of honor or he came up with the concept himself.  The word ‘cynic’ comes from the ancient Greek kynikos, ‘dog-like’.  Diogenes noted that dogs sleep anywhere, eat anything, and do their natural bodily functions in the open without shame.  Dogs are honest and free of human anxieties, and so Diogenes believed people should study dogs to learn how to live.  Diogenes said that while dogs bite their enemies, he bites his friends, shocking them to teach them about life.

Diogenes said that wealth was inferior to courage, custom inferior to nature, and passion inferior to reason.  Several stories involve Diogenes being obscene, further rejecting custom and tradition to show people that they were attached to things that were meaningless.  He said that if one walked around with one’s pinkie extended all day, no one would be offended, but if you walked around with your middle finger extended all day, everyone would be outraged.  “What difference does one finger make?”, he asked.  He was known for frequently flipping people ‘the bird’, a gesture which still means today what it meant in ancient Athens.

Adding to his reputation as a dog, he is said to have defecated in the theater and urinated on people who insulted him.  In one tale, Diogenes was invited to a rich man’s party, but his behavior attracted the anger of one of the guests who began to call him a dog and throwing bones at him.  Diogenes walked up to him, lifted his robe, and peed on him.  Once, when invited into a man’s home and told not to spit on the floor, he cleared his throat and spit in the man’s face.  Another time, when the Athenians had outlawed masturbation, he stood in the marketplace masterbating, calling on all honest men to join him.  When asked later about this, he said that he wished it were just as easy to cure hunger by rubbing one’s empty stomach.  This technique, like his walks with the lamp, failed to find an honest man in broad daylight.

Later cynics, who looked back to Diogenes for inspiration, would do all these things, go barefoot, urinate, have sex in public, and generally not give much of a damn about social conventions.  This is similar to the dada artists of the early 1900s, the beatniks of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.  Opposed to a society engaged in war and commercialism, these countercultural movements rejected acceptable societal norms and brought obscenity and sexuality to the fore, hoping to shock traditional people into greater awareness of the situation.  Marcuse, a German philosopher popular with the hippies who rejected the commercialism of ‘the Establishment’, argued that female genetalia is not obscene, but rather war and poverty that are obscene.  The modern French philosopher Foucault, also influential to hippies, read Diogenes to resist power and authority.  Sloterdijk, in his Critique of Cynical Reason (1987) argued we must return to Diogenes for inspiration today, and that actors who portray the obscene and terrible are engaged in the rejection and criticism of authority and tradition, just like Diogenes.

In Athens, Diogenes was said to have interrupted Plato’s lectures on more than one occasion, arguing against Plato’s interpretation of Socrates.  Diogenes believed, perhaps correctly, that Antisthenes was Socrates’ true heir, and Plato had hijacked his legacy.  Plato said that Diogenes was “Socrates gone mad”.  Once, after Plato had argued that humans should be classified as featherless bipeds, Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it to Plato during a lecture, saying, “Behold! I bring you a man”.  One source says Plato changed the definition to include broad flat nails after this, though he may as well have gone with ‘beakless’.

According to another story, Plato was teaching about ideal forms and pointed to several cups on a table, arguing that there were many physical cups, but only one idea and form of the cup, which was in the mind, superior to the physical copies.  Diogenes, heckling Plato from the gathered crowd, said that he can see the cups, but not this superior ideal form.  Plato replied that we can have it in our mind.  Diogenes picked up a cup, noted that it was empty, and asked Plato where the emptiness of the cup comes from.  Plato paused, unsure of the answer.  Plato, like Parmenides, did not believe void to exist, as it had no form.  Diogenes walked up to him, tapped him on the forehead, and said, “I believe that you can find the emptiness here, Plato”.

In another story, Diogenes was asked by some who had gathered if he could lead them to Plato.  Diogenes led them to a deserted area of town, gestured into the empty air and said, “May I humbly present you the great philosopher Plato”.  This is, of course, another jab at Plato’s idealism and putting theory and the ideal over the practical and the real.

In another, Plato came upon Diogenes washing vegetables in a stream.  “Oh Diogenes”, said Plato, “if you only knew how to court kings, you would not have to wash vegetables”, to which Diogenes replied, “And Plato, if you only knew how to wash vegetables, you would not have to court kings”.

Diogenes was also said to have mocked Alexander the Great as he passed through Athens on his conquests, who was happy to have found the famous philosopher and offered to give him anything.  Diogenes famously replied that Alexander could move so that he was no longer blocking his sunlight.  This story contains a joke too, as Alexander had himself crowned a god and identified with the sun in Egypt, while Diogenes sees him as a hinderance to the sun.  Alexander, impressed by Diogenes’ courage, said that, if he could not be Alexander, he would wish to be Diogenes.  In another story, Alexander found Diogenes looking through a pile of bones, and when asked what he was doing Diogenes said that he was looking for Alexander’s father’s bones, but they seem no different than a slave’s.  Alexander came from the North of Athens, and would have been considered a barbarian like Diogenes himself as well as Aristotle.  It is likely these encounters never happened, but grew in later times after cynicism had become popular in lands formerly conquered by Alexander.

When he was near death, Diogenes told his friends that he wished to have his corpse thrown outside the city, where it would be eaten by birds and beasts.  When some refused, Diogenes replied that he would not be aware of what was going on, so there was no problem.  One source says that Diogenes died voluntarily by holding his breath, by our understandings today impossible as he would simply pass out and resume breathing involuntarily, but similar to accounts of Indian sages who could stop their breath and heart voluntarily when they chose to die.  The ability to shut down one’s central nervous system at will would be a dramatic conquest of mind over body.  Another source says that Diogenes died from a dog bite.  The first seems to hold Diogenes in great esteem, the second an insult from a critic.  Other sources say Diogenes died of old age.

As a philosophy, Cynicism held that happiness is found through being in accord with nature, simple and self-sufficient.  Unnatural things such as power, fame and luxuries cause ignorance and discord with nature, which then causes unhappiness.  This is quite similar to Democritus we just studied, who argued that if we are content with what we have we lose desire for what is excessive and unnecessary.  As some scholars have noted, it is also similar to Daoism of ancient China.  Both body and mind must be disciplined.  Diogenes said that bad people obey their desires as slaves obey their masters.

Later, Cynicism fed into Stoicism.  Diogenes taught Crates in Corinth, who passed it to Zeno of Citium (a different Zeno than the student and possibly more of Parmenides), who turned it into Stoicism.  Cynicism and Stoicism were both popular in ancient Rome at the height of the empire.  Note that, just like with the beatniks and hippies, it is at the height of civilization that many turn away in disgust from excess and corruption.  Some Roman critics called the Cynics “the Army of the Dog”.  

As Christianity developed into a major religion in ancient Greece and Rome, it was influenced by both of these as well.  Some scholars have argued that Jesus was a Jewish cynic, pointing to many details of his life and teachings.  Mack and Crossan, two scholars who created the Jesus Seminar, argue that the historical Jesus was a Galilean who was influenced by Greek ideas and the Jewish prophetic tradition found in the Old Testament, and that later his life was turned into legend.  If this is true, Empedocles might also have been an influence, as Jesus was a healer who taught that we are all divine.  Some cynics were martyred in Roman lands for speaking out against authority, as Jesus and later Christians were.

One major difference was cynic shamelessness, being naked and open about base matters.  Christians, while embracing the poverty and simplicity of cynicism, did not approve of nudity and brute honesty, calling it immodesty and worthy of the label ‘dog’.

New Website!

Hey Greek Philosophy people,

I have started a new website where you can find the lecture notes for the class.  You can still find each lecture posted here on this site, but now you can find them with a simple table of contents here:

http://ericgerlach.com/greekphilosophy/

You can also check out notes from my other classes that relate to the material we cover.

Greek Philosophy: Anaxagoras & Empedocles

ANAXAGORAS

Anaxagoras (500 - 428 BCE), who is neither Anaximander nor Anaximenes, no matter how frustratingly close their names are to each other, was born in Clazomenae, another of the ancient Ionian city states in what is today Turkey that rebelled against Persia together with the help of Athens.  Anaxagoras may have fought on the side of the Persians, against the independence of Ionia.  Many Greeks did, both those loyal and connected to the Persian empire and those who were merely paid as mercenaries.  After Anaxagoras’ considerable property was destroyed, sources say he gave up on possessions and turned to seeking knowledge and wisdom.  Anaxagoras is said to have been the first to bring philosophy to Athens, where he arrived in 465 BCE.  Athens was becoming the wealthy center of Greek culture, which is how they were able to support the rebellion of Ionia at the time.  It would have been in Athen’s interests to dominate Greek trade and not give a cut to Persia.  Anaxagoras taught Pericles, the famed Athenian general, and was admired by Euripides, the Athenian poet and playwright.  Anaxagoras stayed in Athens for thirty years before returning to Ionia.

Many scholars today note the similarities between Anaximenes and Anaxagoras, suggesting that Anaxagoras, like other Anaxa-whoevers we have studied, is continuing in the Ionian tradition.  Agreeing with Anaximenes but disagreeing, Anaxagoras thought the earth was flat and a strong current of air supports it, and disturbances in the air under the earth cause earthquakes.  Like Thales, Anaxagoras believed that plants have minds/souls and purpose.

Like Pythagoras and Parmenides, Anaxagoras believed that male children are born from the right side of the uterus, and females from the left.  He also theorized further that male children come from the sperm of the right testicle, and females from the left, which is why they attach to either side of the uterus.  Thus, “I would give my right testicle”, would mean, “I would give my unborn sons”.

Anaxagoras did cosmology, explaining meteorites and eclipses.  Plutarch says that Anaxagoras predicted the fall of a meteorite in 467 BCE, by ancient standards proof of his cosmological views but by modern standards impossible.  He argued that the sun was a mass of heated metal, like that worked by a blacksmith.  He said the Moon reflects the light of the sun (correct), that the moon has mountains (correct) and that they were inhabited (incorrect as far as we know).  The sun and stars are masses of stone kicked off from the earth, ablaze by rapid rotation, in line with the Pythagorean account of the cosmos for the stars but not for the Sun.

Strangely, Anaxagoras also argued that egg whites are bird’s milk.

Like Socrates, he was charged with impiety, with irreverence to the gods for these explanations (of the Sun and Moon, not bird’s milk).  Athens was not as accepting of a place as Ionia for cosmological speculation, as Anaxagoras discovered.  Saying that the Sun was a rock on fire was apparently acceptable in Ionia but heresy in Athens.

In Plato’s Apology, Plato’s account of Socrates’ trial which we will study soon, Socrates is asked by the prosecution whether or not he thinks the Sun is stone and Moon is earth, and Socrates responds by wondering if he is being confused with Anaxagoras.  Socrates says that neither the jury nor his young students are stupid enough to believe that he would hold such absurd views.  Clearly, the Athenian assembly has Anaxagoras’ impiety in mind as they prosecute Socrates for the same crime, and Socrates is aware of this and distances himself from Anaxagoras.  Socrates was not concerned with cosmology, arguing instead about ethics and our ability to acquire knowledge and wisdom.

Anaxagoras was put on trial in Athens.  According to some sources, Pericles spoke in his defense, but Anaxagoras was still sentenced to death, after which Pericles helped him to flee to Lampsacus in Northern Ionia.  According to others, Pericles sent Anaxagoras to Lampsacus before he could be put on trial as Pericles was himself losing favor in Athens.  Either way, Anaxagoras left Athens with the help of Pericles for Lampsacus to continue his work until his death there less than ten years later.

Only fragments of his philosophical work survive (sound familiar?).  Diogenes Laertius, who we hear from constantly, said that Anaxagoras composed one short work which could be purchased for one drachma.  Socrates in Plato’s Apology says that the youth would not come to him for answers if he held the foolish views of Anaxagoras, as they could purchase these ideas for a single drachma at the market.

According to Anaxagoras, the cosmos has always existed, but originally it consisted of tiny fragments of elements mixed up.  Even as everything separated, each thing contained traces of everything else, which is how transformation is possible.  Anaxagoras wrote that “All things are in everything”.  Originally, everything was a homogenous mass, and out of this things developed into what they are while still containing traces of every other thing.  Anaxagoras noted that if food becomes various parts of animals and humans, becomes skin and bone and hair and muscle, food (as well as matter in general) must already be these other things.  There were seeds of things (spermata, a strange yet familiar term), of humans, animals, and plants, but these were undeveloped, intermixed into everything before they separated and developed.

This is Anaxagoras’ response to the Eleatic challenge.  Being always was, as Parmenides argues, but the differentiation of things is not an illusion but a slow transformation that does not categorically or entirely remove any particular thing from any other thing.  Anaxagoras would agree with Parmenides that fire is one and the same as everything that is not fire, and that fire as a component of being always was and always will be, but Anaxagoras argues that fire is relatively distinct from everything that is not fire.  Fire became more distinguished, but all things contain fire and fire contains the seeds and components of all things.  Through the process, fire became much more fiery than everything else, which remained far less fiery.

Anaxagoras here seems like Melissus in negotiating with Parmenides’ Eleatic challenge.  While Anaxagoras disagrees that distinction is an absolute illusion, distinction is a relative illusion insofar as we perceive fire as simply not water and water as simply not fire.  Fire is water, but much more so fire, and water is fire, but much more so water.  Being is one and the same thing without a particular character in that it has all character, just as Melissus argues to make sense of Parmenides, but particular beings are relatively what they are and relatively not what they are opposed to.  Difference is an illusion, but only relatively, as all things are relatively different, not completely different.

Anaxagoras said that the cosmos is ordered by mind, ‘nous’ in the Greek.  It is mind that separated the like from the unlike, the similar from the different.  Mind was pure and independent, strikingly like God above the chaotic waters in the book of Genesis.  Anaxagoras noted that mind clearly rules animals and humans, the higher and more developed forms of life.  Mind is in some things, such as plants and bears and humans, but not in others while it still directs the process of all things, including rocks and sand.  Anaxagoras uses the metaphor of human beings, who carry inanimate objects such as honey and milk, and lead the lower animals such as cows in the direction we wish them to go.  Likewise, the cosmic mind moves the inanimate and leads the animate through the cycles of things.  Mind is alone, by itself, ‘self-ruled’.  Like Xenophanes, it does not seem to be affected by things but knows all things and moves all things.

Plato was influenced by both Heraclitus’ Logos and Anaxagoras’ Nous.  While Heraclitus already implied that the cosmic fire was a great mind that speaks order downwards, Anaxagoras explicitly refers to the highest ruling component of the cosmos as the element ‘mind’.  This is identical to the Indian philosopher and logician Kanada of the orthodox Hindu Vaisheshika school, who considered both mind and void to be basic elements of the universe.

Mind rotated the chaotic mixture, just as the sun and celestial bodies move in circles and the processes of life and the elements work in cycles on earth.  Things gradually were separated out into what they are today, not sharply or immediately divided.  This follows Anaximenes in condensation and dissipation as basic dynamic of the elements.

First were separated the cold mist from the warm aether, a primal cold mixture of water and earth from a hot mixture of air and fire.  The cold further separated into water, earth and stone, and the hot and seeds of things mixed into the earth, producing warm clay, in which spawned first plants, and then animals and humans.  While Anaxagoras was not an atomist, his theory paved the way for later atomists’ theories and the passage of philosophy from Ionia to Athens.

Anaxagoras criticised Empedocles for saying there were four root substances of fire, water, earth and air.  Anaxagoras argued that skin and hair are just as real and basic as fire and water, and there are no root substances other than matter itself.  While skin and hair do have fire and water in them, or at least the seeds and components of fire and water, so also do fire and water have the root components of skin and hair within themselves.  Anaxagoras says that things are not “split apart with an axe”, are not categorically and totally separate from each other.  He specifically states that hot is not split from cold with an axe, like Heraclitus saying that even opposing elements are one and the same and only relatively, not categorically, distinct.  Against Empedocles, Anaxagoras argued that there are no primary and secondary substances, as being is the only primary thing and all other substances are equally secondary to it.

Some scholars today dispute how different the two are, as Anaxagoras in some ways seems to posit relatively primary substances that emerged earlier in the slow separation of many beings out of the whole.  Anaxagoras says that air and aether dominated at first, the largest elements in size, became relatively distinct first as part of the process, but he is not saying that aether is the primary element.  Rather, it is the first element that emerged from the whole to be what it is now.

Anaxagoras, unlike Parmenides but somewhat like Zeno, says that things are infinitely divisible.  He considers a grain of rice, which he believes has the components of hair and muscle within it.  There is no limit to cutting the grain into pieces, just as there is no limit to matter separating out into various substances.  While Zeno found this to be a paradox, Anaxagoras states the infinite regress as a matter of fact.  The atomists we will study soon disagree with Anaxagoras, and argue that atoms are indivisible and there is no infinite regress of divisibility in answer to Zeno.

There remains, however, a problem for Anaxagoras’ view.  How can uniform being separate into many substances that are more so themselves?  What is the motor or motive of the differentiation if being is originally uniform?  Anaxagoras adds mind as an additional force guiding the process, designing the differences between things and their relationships to each other.

We still today use the expression ‘deus ex machina’, the god/spirit in the machine/design.  The expression is usually used as a criticism of adding in additional elements as an afterthought to close holes in an argument or plot holes in a story.  While Anaxagoras makes mind the highest thing, it is separated from the physical processes, which the Athenians found to be impious.  The gods are involved with things, not simply the detached highest characterless thing.

The Roman Horace brings us the Latin phrase, saying that Greek actors portraying gods in the tragedies were lowered onto the stage when required.  Today, in argument, ‘God did it’ or ‘People know that’ or ‘Science says’, any mental presence that simply enters the picture to explain all too simply (Pyramids? Aliens!) can be criticized as employing a ‘deus ex machina’.

Aristotle argued against Anaxagoras, saying he put mind in as a final thought to start the whole thing, just as the French philosopher Descartes did to give consciousness and freedom to human beings.  Descartes, like Anaxagoras, said that mind/soul determines the physical but is separate and above, which is why humans have free will.  This creates a duality of mind and body for which both Anaxagoras and Descartes were criticized.  This is still an issue for philosophy today.  What is the relationship of mind to body?  The American (Berkeley) philosopher John Searle believes saying “there is no problem” solves the problem, but this is hardly satisfying.  The British philosopher and early computer scientist Alan Turing argued that machines can be said to understand things (with the famous example that a light switch understands only ‘on’ and ‘off’), so if a robot can behave like a person we may treat it like a person, but this seems equally problematic.  While Searle and Turing attempted to get rid of the hard dualism of Anaxagoras and Descartes, the opposite attempt at simple identity of mind and body leaves problems we are still dealing with.

Fans of Japanese animation know that Ghost in the Shell is one of the original two great Anime classics, concerned with the existence of mind as all becomes cybernetic and genetically modified.  Anaxagoras and Turing remain the two poles we are faced with as we encounter more complex forms of bioengineering and artificial intelligence.

Euripides, great admirer and possible student of Anaxagoras, was ridiculed by his critics for often employing the device of god-lowering crane, particularly to end a play with a quick resolution.  Characters, often women who tragically accept their fate, are taken away by a god to safety.  Aristophanes, another famed playwright, mocked Euripides by making Euripides himself a character in one of Aristophanes’ plays and lowering him into scene on a crane.

Aristotle criticized Euripides for overusing the device, and said that plots should resolve due to their internal elements and not by an external element in the end.  This parallels his criticism of Anaxagoras, who Aristotle says places a pure mind atop the whole to explain it without giving an account in terms of the elements themselves.  Aristotle believes in a living and teleological universe, but mind and purpose are physically involved in the process, not separate above.  Aristotle criticized Anaxagoras for bringing mind into the picture as the driving force, but then failing to adequately describe what purposes are driving to what ends.  In a sense, Anaxagoras is saying that things developed because, “Mind has a plan”, and Aristotle replies, “Yes, but what is the plan, man?”.  Aristotle’s work in physics is primarily an attempt to work out the teleological forces and purposes at work in the cosmos, as things work towards their final ends.

Anaxagoras’ work drove both materialism and teleology forward, paradoxically.  He accounted for the world in largely elemental processes, like the earlier Ionians, but also left a mind in charge without filling in the details, which Plato, Aristotle and other thinkers were happy to supply.  In Plato’s dialogue The Phaedo, Socrates says that he was joyful on hearing Anaxagoras at first, but then found that Anaxagoras did not make much use of mind in his system at all.

EMPEDOCLES

Empedocles (490 - 430 BCE) was from Agrigentum, a Greek colony in what is today the Italian Island of Sicily.  As Italy looks like a boot, Sicily looks like a triangular rock being kicked into the Mediterranean by the toe of the boot.  Both Empedocles’ father and Empedocles worked to overthrow the government of Agrigentum, which had grown abusive.  Empedocles was said to have been a champion of the poor and an enemy of the oligarchs, the powerful who dominated politics.  Like Heraclitus, he is said to have been offered the throne, and refused.

He was said to have visited Athens, as well as Babylon and Persia seeking knowledge.  His oratory skill was said to be unsurpassed.  Aristotle called him the father of rhetoric.  He had Pythagorean friends, and believed in reincarnation.  He was also said to be able to cure diseases, as well as control storms like a wizard.

Empedocles had a fantastic death.  While some sources say he ascended into the heavens, others say he threw himself into a volcano, specifically Mount Etna in Sicily, to demonstrate that he had become godlike.  Perhaps Empedocles was trying to out deus-ex-machina Anaxagoras.  Diogenes Laertius says that Empedocles wanted to prove to the people of Agrigentum that he was a god or would be reborn a god, but the volcano spit back up one of his bronze sandals (I’d like to think with a burp) to show that Empedocles had been mortal and now was no more.  Diogenes Laertius was clearly not a fan of Empedocles or his philosophy.

A contemporary of Anaxagoras, Empedocles responds both to him and the Eleatic challenge of Parmenides.  More of his work survives than any other pre-Socratic philosopher.  He was the last Greek philosopher to record his philosophy in verse, as poetry rather than prose, although Plato would continue to make art, namely theater, the medium of his own work.  Empedocles seems familiar with the philosophical verses of both Xenophanes and Parmenides.

Empedocles wrote a poem, On Nature an overused title by this point. (If I had a dollar for every ancient Greek Philosopher who wrote a work called either ‘Nature’ or ‘On Nature’, I’d have at least six bucks by now).  Today we only have some of the first part of the work, called Purifications.  In the very beginning, Empedocles says that he is no longer mortal but now immortal and walks among mortals as a god, praised and decked with flower garlands wherever he goes, curing diseases and raising the dead.

Empedocles is said to have believed that the souls of all things (before inhabiting all things, as Thales originally said) were in a state of bliss before committing an unnamed crime and falling from grace into the mortal bodies of plants, animals and humans.  Through morality and living a good life, we can become gods again, as Empedocles may have believed he had achieved.  This sounds strangely like Scientology today.  Perhaps Empedocles threw himself into the volcano searching for his fellow Thetans.

Empedocles argues that the four elements fire, air, earth and water are the roots of all matter.  They are unborn and undying.  Empedocles identified fire with Zeus, air with Hera (wife and sister of Zeus, goddess of women, marriage and getting pissed at Zeus for cheating on her repeatedly), water with Persephone (who Empedocles calls Nestis, daughter of Zeus, queen of the underworld and goddess of vegetation and springtime), and earth with Hades (who Empedocles calls Aidoneus, king of the underworld).  This would be quite orthodox along Homeric lines, except that for Hesiod it was Poseidon who was king of the water, and Zeus was king of the air, not fire.  Hesiod does hold that Hades is lord of earth.  According to Hesiod, the three joined forces to defeat the titans and take over the cosmos.

Empedocles, in a Pythagorean gendering that departs from Hesiod, has fire upper male, air upper female, earth lower male, and water lower female, an opposed pair of kings and queens.  Empedocles, unlike Anaxagoras, identifies the elements with traditional gods even as he departs from the tradition.  Also, like earlier philosophers but unlike Hesiod, the gods are unborn as well as undying.  Like Heraclitus, Empedocles places fire as king on top.

Other than they are four, they are the one infinite of Parmenides, mixed together in various proportions to become particular beings we see.  This, like Anaxagoras, is on the way towards atomism while still conceiving of the elements as continuous wholes rather than particles.  Anaxagoras, as mentioned, criticised Empedocles, saying that hair and skin are just as basic and real as water and fire, as all substances are equally derivative of being.

Fire, air, earth and water are called the ‘four classical substances’ today, accepted by Plato and Aristotle, and with them the physics of European Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims.  While the earlier Ionians were debating about these four, Empedocles is the first to say that all four are equally primary, even as fire is on top.  For thousands of years, much of the world followed this formula.  It was only in 1772 when the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele was attempting to experimentally prove Empedocles right that he accidentally isolated and discovered oxygen, which he called ‘fire air’.

For Empedocles, love and strife are the two forces that order the cosmos, the love and strife of the gods who are the elements.  Heraclitus has already said that war and strife are the “father of all things”, but he also believes that opposites are one and the same, so Empedocles is not far from Heraclitus’ position.  Heraclitus also, like Anaximander, sees emotion and injustice in the process of the elements.

Like Pythagoras, Empedocles argued that the universe was a sphere of spheres.  Like Anaxagoras, he also said that in the beginning the elements were unmixed and the cosmos was a uniform sphere.  Love and strife were in balance, with love holding the sphere together at the center and strife holding the boundaries apart from the nothing or chaos that was outside.  Then strife gained in influence, not enough to disintegrate the sphere but enough to cause the initial separation of the four elements and then the mixture and stratification of the elements that became the many levels of mortal beings.  As the cosmos works in cycles, love will again gain the upper hand and unite all things back into the original pure unmixed state, which will then again be mixed into a diverse universe by strife in the next round of the cosmic cycle.  This is quite similar to the previously mentioned kalpa system of ancient Indian thought.

As the world mixed and stratified, Empedocles said that there were cases of human arms and heads unjoined to bodies, and monsters of various sorts, part animal and part human.  Like Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and like Plato who borrows from both as well as Empedocles, the form of the human is pre-designed and latent, waiting for the cosmos to figure itself out such that it can emerge.  The historian Herodotus believed that there were dog-headed people and cyclops living in parts of India, explaining the various monsters encountered by Odysseus on his odyssey.  Empedocles’ physics explains the homeric monsters of the traditional mythology.

Empedocles argues that human beings were formed from pre-human dual beings of both genders, much as the gods and goddesses were undifferentiated in the pure unmixed sphere.  In Plato’s dialogue The Symposium, we will read that Aristophanes, the playwright as a character of Plato’s play, the same who lowered his own Euripides as a character into scene to mock the overuse of deus ex machina, argues that love feels like completion because early in the cosmos human beings were joined in pairs before being separated by Zeus, which is why heterosexual men and women find completion in each other and gay and lesbian people find completion in each other.  This follows Empedocles’ theory, as love is integration of what was originally united but later separated, while further attempting to explain homosexuality.  

Buddhist thought also endorses the idea that all binding together in union is love, and all separation into division is hate, as our minds are the cosmos.  To this day, psychology is still puzzling over the relationship between emotion and the basic cognitive acts of association and disassociation.  It may seem odd to say that emotion may be at the root of doing all thinking and conceptualization, even supposedly ‘objective’ hard mathematics and physics, but consider that association (cuddling up to the familiar) and disassociation (Ahhh!  Get it away from me!) dominate the animal mind and emotions were basic to the mammalian mind long before humanity evolved our complex problem solving minds.

For Empedocles, like the Pythagoreans, souls reincarnate, and plants, animals and humans are linked in chains of life.  For this reason, Empedocles promoted vegetarianism.  Wicked people become animals (so, maybe we SHOULD eat them?) and good people become divine, much as Empedocles believed he had before hurling himself into the volcano.  According to sources, Empedocles said that he had once been a daimon, a divine spirit, much like the daimon that Socrates told others he spoke to when philosophizing.  As Christianity spread into ancient Greece, the traditional spirits were seen as evil, and so ‘daimon’ became the root of ‘demon’.

Empedocles said that because he had eaten meat for decades in a previous life, he had been banished to the animal kingdom, but as Empedocles he was about to become immortal in the next life, having made up for his sins.  If so, he believed that he would be reborn a god after emerging from the volcano.  One Roman source says that Empedocles was reborn from the volcano, was shot into the heavens and now lives on the moon, subsisting on dew.  If true, this would confirm the theory of Anaxagoras that the moon is inhabited.

Similarly, Empedocles was a critic of animal sacrifice to the gods, which he believed was human sacrifice.  He argued that in the glorious past, before the strife of his own day, people were wiser and gave the gods offerings of honey and grain, knowing well that reincarnation would bring terrible rebirths on those ignorant of reincarnation.

Empedocles argued that a warm uterus produces a male child, and a cool uterus produces a female.  This explains why males are larger, darker in skin and harrier.  The connections here remain unclear.

Empedocles argued that light emerges from our eyes, presumably from the fire of the mind by which we imagine and conceptualize, and that this touches things and allows us to see them.  For thousands of years, many bought this until Avicenna, the Islamic philosopher and doctor, demonstrated that light comes into the eye but not out of the eye around 1000 BCE.  Avicenna questioned Empedocles’ theory, speculating that if it were correct, then we should be able to see things in the dark.

Empedocles argued that we can learn about things through perception, but we can only see one side of things at a time.  With thought, we can put together the various sides of things to ‘see’ them as they fully are.  Much as Heraclitus says about wisdom, which sees beyond the divisions of things by experts, Empedocles says it is the job of philosophy to integrate things into wholes, rather than merely carve them into parts.  This corresponds to his cosmology, as everyone can see the differences between the four elements but only the philosopher can speculate about their origin and union.

Recently, the French philosopher Badiou has argued a similar position, that the task of philosophy is to metacritique systems of thought and culture by integrating what is often disassociated.  For example, seeing science as political, asking where the money comes from or who in our society benefits from the funding, is the job of a philosopher of science, not a scientist.  This is because the philosopher sees beyond the merely scientific and the merely political to ask questions about how the two are interrelated.  While philosophy in medieval Europe was called the “queen of the sciences”, the most important science for understanding the others, most science majors today graduate without ever taking a history of science class or a philosophy of science class in addition to their science classes.  This is good insofar as the biologist should concentrate on frog DNA rather than worrying about politics or finding new donors, but bad insofar as the members of the system are cogs in a machine that does not ask much critical oversight from them.

Richard Dawkins, the scientist, author and prominent New Atheist, has argued recently that because science is quite accomplished today, we no longer need philosophy.  I side very much with Badiou, noting that for decades far more has been spent on weapons than on hunger.  Consider that Einstein and Oppenheimer created nuclear weapons for the American military, believing them to be so horrible that they would never be used.  After America used them on Japan, Einstein and Oppenheimer became two of the most prominent critics of nuclear weapons.  While science is excellent at supplying us with knowledge and technology, Heraclitus says that wisdom is the act of the mind that unifies all things, just as Empedocles says it is philosophy, the love of wisdom, which gives us the greater conceptions, the farthest views, the greater similarities and unities of things beyond their differences and distinctions.