Historic Philosophers

Topics: Plato, Philosophy, Aristotle Pages: 6 (2237 words) Published: March 7, 2013
There are a lot of great philosophers in the world, modern and ancient. In Ancient Greece there were many philosophers. Some of these philosophers are Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras and Heraclitus to name a few. These philosophers are known as the Pre Socratic philosophers beginning in the sixth Century BC. There are known as this because they came before Socrates and it is said that ancient Greek philosophy should be organized around Socrates and Plato. But the three main ancient Greek philosophers were Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The Pre Socratic philosophers were more about the natural life philosophies while these three philosophers were more into the people. These three philosophers are intertwined together because Plato was the student of Socrates, while Aristotle went to the Academy that Plato founded. Plato used a lot of Socrates teachings and lessons he learned and when he opened his Academy he used these teaching as a stepping stone to the curriculum.

Parmenides of Elea the son of Peirethos (520/510 BC) was born in Elea, a Greek city in southern Italy. Parmenides is the founder of the Eleatic school. His philosophy was known as Eleatic philosophy due to where he was born. Parmenides philosophy is based on rationalism. A lot of Parmenides work is not written down so we depend on others have been passed down to them. “He assumed that any proposition that is logically necessary or self-evident must be admitted as true. By logically necessary or self-evident is meant that one cannot deny the proposition logically necessary proposition always has epistemological priority over any proposition about Being derived from sense data; no matter how at odds with the world of common sense it may be, a necessary proposition must always take precedence” According to Prof. Barry D Smith from Atlantic Baptist University. Parmenides basically had two types of explanations the truth and the popular opinion. Basically that reality must be single and unchanging, and by implication that the plural sense-world is illusory.

Anaxagoras was born in Clazomenae at the coast of Asia Minor around 500 BC. Notoriously, the Pre-Socratic philosopher Anaxagoras maintained that there is something of everything in everything. ‘All things have a portion of everything’, he wrote. He supplied an important qualification when he also said this: ‘In everything there is a portion of everything except mind, but mind is in some things, too’. So maybe his idea was that in every portion of material stuff there is always something of every other sort of material stuff. As if that startling claim were not baffling enough, Anaxagoras added, perhaps thinking to reassure us, that ‘each single thing is and was most plainly those things of which it contains most’ According to Gareth B. Matthews. On the idea of there being something of everything in everything he means for example: snow contains the opposites of black and white and is called white only because white predominates in it. Pythagoras was born in Samos circa 582 BC. Pythagoras is more known as a mathematician than a philosopher like a few others. This is because of the Pythagorean theory of right angles a²+b²=c². It is said that Pythagoras did not discover the theorem but he proved and popularized it in Greece hence why it has his name. The person he discovered the theorem was a Indian mathematician named Baudhāyana in 800BC. The principle was also known to the earlier Egyptian and the Babylonian master builders. Pythagoras founded a religious community and a philosophical school whose inner circle was known as “mathematikoi (knowledge)” There where restriction in the community such as “such as not eating beans and not wearing a ring.” These are known as the “akousmata (hear)”, and in many instances appear to be superstitions, according to Michael Lahanas. Pythagoras exposed his teachings to his followers either in plain words or through symbols. Because his teaching was of...
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