PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS
History of Western Philosophy
BOOK ONE: ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER ONE: The Rise of Greek Civilization
3: Philosophy begins with Thales (~585 BC). Philosophy and science at first not separated
5: Oldest legal code: Hammurabi (Babylonian king) ~2100 BC. Claimed it came from the god Marduk.
6: Crete pioneer in commerce (at first little difference between pirates and merchants).
7: Evidence that Egyptians believed in life after death and also that deeds here on earth rewarded or punished in after life.
Mycenaean civilization--depicted by Homer.
Goes on to discuss development of Greek peoples/culture. Basically irrelevant for study of philosophy though it is good history.
Homer
10: Probably not a single individual but a series of poets. Took approximately 200 years to complete. Probably completed between 750 - 550 BC; others claim it was completed by the 8th century.
11: Homer basically discards the "religious" aspect of the gods; they are not very religious. Although the gods are basically selfish and petty, behind them lies something greater--Fate or Necessity of Destiny "to which even Zeus is subject. Fate exercised a great influence on all Greek thought, and perhaps was one of the sources from which science derived the belief in natural law."
The Greek gods did not create the world; they simply conquered it--from the Titans. After conquering the world, the gods and goddesses did nothing to improve it, etc.
13: Ionia -- the major part of Greek civilization. Philosophers basically refugees wandering from city to city.
Greece mainly a collection of independent states, each built around a city.
Development of Cult of Dionysus/Bacchus
14: A Thracian god--fertility god who promoted fertility. Upon discovery of beer, they thought that intoxication was divine; gave honor to Bacchus for this beer. His popularity increased with discovery that the vine produces wine.
Cult first met with hostility from the orthodox but persisted. Characteristics: (1) tear wild animals to pieces; (2) eat the whole animal raw; (3) traces of feminism.
15: Because Greece quickly civilized, many still hankered for the old ways of Bacchus, a more instinctive and passionate way of life.
Difference between the savage and the civilized man: the latter prudent (has forethought; how do my actions now affect the future?).
16: Cult of Bacchus reacts against prudence. Cult produced "enthusiasm" where the god enters the person, so that the god and man become one. (History is basically the story of the conflict between prudence and passion.)
Basically 2 kinds of Greek philosophers: (1) religious--descending from Cult of Bacchus and (2) the scientific. The former finds a home in Plato.
Further Development of Bacchus Cult--from physical intoxication to mental intoxication
Change from physical intoxication to mental intoxication attributed to Orpheus.
Orpheus said to have been Thracian, more likely from Crete. Much of the Orphic doctrines similar to Egyptian religion (Crete much intercourse with Egypt). He primarily = priest and philosopher.
17: Beliefs: transmigration of the soul; quality of life on earth determined bliss or eternal suffering (maybe just temporary suffering); aimed for purity thru purification ceremonies & avoiding contamination. Man = partly of earth and partly of heaven; purity leads to being more heavenly and less earthly. In the end a man can become one with Bacchus and is even called a Bacchus.
19: Orphics ascetic; wine = simply a symbol. The intoxication they sought was "enthusiasm," union with god. Thru enthusiasm they "gained" mystic knowledge not obtainable by ordinary means. Orphism influences Pythagoras who influenced Plato who in turn influenced all religious philosophies after him.
Bacchic elements which survived thru Orphism:
There exists among us a one-sided view of the Greeks: serene and contemplative. True of many (Aristotle, Homer, and Sophocles), but also true that many extremely passionate (those especially influenced by Orphism and cult of Bacchus). (See Homer's description of them in The Iliad.)
21: In Orphism life "in this world is pain and weariness. We are bound to a wheel which turns through endless cycles of birth and death; our true nature is of the stars, but we are tied to the earth. Only by purification and renunciation and an ascetic life can we escape from the wheel and attain at last to the ecstasy of union with God."
Large proportion of Greeks passionate, unhappy, warring among themselves, "driven along one road by the intellect and along another by the passions [see Homer's Achilles], with the imagination to conceive heaven and the wilful self-assertion that creates hell." Had maxim "nothing too much" which they did not live by. "It was the combination of passion and intellect that made them great, while they were great."
Two tendencies in Greek world:
23: What prevents Greek thought from sliding into oriental mysticism is the existence of the scientific schools.
The new religion climaxes with creation of Orphic communities. "They looked to a revelation as the source of religious authority, and they were organized as artificial communities."
CHAPTER TWO: The Milesian School
Thales
24-25: Philosophy begins with Thales (~585 BC), resident of Miletus in Asia Minor (south of Ephesus).
One of the 7 wise men of Greece.
26: Noted for the saying, "Water is best," that is, water is the original substance of all things. According to Aristotle, Thales taught that the soul was a magnet because it moves the iron and that all things are full of gods.
Although his philosophy crude and rudimentary, his main contribution was that he stimulated thought.
Anaximander
Was 64 in 546 BC. Claimed that all things originate from a single primal substance, which we have not identified--but it isn't water! This primal substance is infinite, eternal, . . .
27: . . . and ageless; encompasses all the worlds (of which our world is just one).
1) feminism--they tended to be more pious and religious than men
2) respect for violent emotion (passion)--which gives rise to Greek tragedies
1) passionate, religious, mystical, other-worldly
2) cheerful, empirical, rationalistic, interested in acquiring knowledge of a diversity of facts.