Pre-Socratic Philosophers: Heraclitus & Parmenides
Heraclitus (c. 6th-5th Century BC)
The Doctrine of Heraclitus
, who first addressed the very problem of the investigation and the man who undertakes. Heraclitus of Ephesus belonged to a noble family from his city, was a contemporary of Parmenides and, like him, flourished towards the 504-01 BC is the author of a prose work that was later known to the customary title About nature consists of aphorisms and short sentences and blunt, not always clear, which earned him the nickname dark. The starting point of Heraclitus is the verification of incessant becoming of things. The world is a perpetual flux (panta rhei. The substance is the beginning of the world must explain the continuing evolution of this with their own extreme mobility Heraclitus identifies it with fire. But it can be said that in his doctrine the fire loses all character corporeal: it is an active, intelligent and creative. these foundations of a theory of nature are presented by Heraclitus as a result of difficult to acquire wisdom and ignored by most men. In the opening words of his book, Heraclitus lamented that men, despite having heard to the logos, the voice of reason, forget it in word as in the works so they do not know what they do awake, just as they do not know what they do asleep). According to Heraclitus, the very nature requires the investigation: in fact, she likes to hide Stops especially under the conditions that make it possible. The first is to observe the man himself: I have researched myself. The investigation led to the natural world is conditioned by the light that the man can throw on his own being. But this reason, it is the law of the soul, is also universal law. The second fundamental condition of the research is the communication between men. The thought-logos-is common to all, as Heraclitus. Thus, man must not only conduct research to itself, but also with the same impulse, that which links it to the other: the logos which is the essential core of the individual’s name is also what unites men together in a community of nature. This logo is like the law for the city, the law itself, the supreme law that governs it all: the individual man, the human community and external nature. Not only the rationality but the very being of the world: this is how it manifests itself in all facets of the investigation. Heraclitus man constantly raises the option of waking or sleeping, from opening through research, interpersonal communication, you discover the true reality of the objective world, and shut himself in his own thinking in isolation, in a fictional world no communication with others (fr. 2, 34, 73, 89). This option sets the value of research is crucial for man. It is not just thinking (Noesi but wisdom for life (fronesis), determines the temperament of man, the ethos, that is your destination mismo.Pero Heraclitus also determined what that law whose meaning must clarify and deepen it investigación.Así The great discovery of Heraclitus is the first operator unit is an identical unit or exclude the struggle, strife, opposition. To understand the supreme law of being, the logos that constitutes and rules, it should bring together the full and incompleteness, the concordant and discordant, the harmony and dissonance (fr. 10), and realize that the unity of all opposites arises and they come out of it all. Harmony is not for the synthesis of Heraclitus opposites, the reconciliation and cancellation of his opposition but it is precisely the unity underlying the opposition and makes it possible.Stress is a unit (ie a relationship) can only occur between opposite things while opposite. Conciliation, the void synthesis. According to Heraclitus, the unit’s own world is a tension in this genre: no voids, or reconciled, or exceeds the contrast, but that makes him and he does understand how contrast.
Parmenides (s.VI-V BC).
With it appears an impressive number of Greek philosophical concepts that will endure through history to ourselves. On the one hand it is interesting to the literary genre of the lost work of Parmenides, preserved in fragments: a poem. Surprising that the first work, relatively mature, philosophy is a poem. There is therefore a poetic attention just at the very origin of philosophy, a thing that should not be overlooked. And it appears a poem with a series of mythological references, the daughters of the sun appear, leaving the abodes of the night of darkness, are daughters of the Sun, which have torn the veils that cover the real-which is, in the form metaphorical, the great Greek concept of truth, Aletheia, which is discovery, revelation, manifestation, patency, and there we have that concept in the initial stage of philosophy, and will try to discover, with unflinching heart, really. And it appears another fundamental concept, the way: There are several ways, several ways in Parmenides. The Greek word for road is ll, a derivative form of it’s method, the method is the way to something. And also appears explicitly the idea of the ways, methods in Parmenides. And it’s going to distinguish three possible routes, the roads are the expression of the principle of non-contradiction: 1) a way is the way it is, it is practicable route, which is the philosophical path, 2) other routes that of what is not, it is not practicable, y3) is the way of what is and what is not, which is what another great concept called “Greek doxa, opinion and added: the view mortals. Mortals say, mortals move in what is and is not. That is, different from the truth, he discovers the path of what is, is the appearance. And see also the duality, which prolonged the Hellenic thought, between what is really effective and what is appearance. Parmenides determined with perfect clarity the essential criterion of the validity of knowledge that was to dominate all Greek philosophy: the truth value of knowledge depends on the reality of the object, the real knowledge can not be more than knowledge of self, that is, absolute reality. Such is the meaning of the famous statements of Parmenides: The thought and being are the mismoParménides undertakes the analysis of the nature of being. These characters will be assumed by Plato, as characteristics of their ideas. Being is “not begotten” and “incorruptible.” Being a “present” eternal, without beginning or end. As a result, also be immutable and immovable, because both the mobility and the mutation is a non-being to which the move would be or where transmutarse.El should be limited and finite in the sense that it is “finished”, “determined” and “perfect.” Absolute equality, the finiteness and completeness, the things are consistent, “I suggested the idea of a sphere, and to figure indicated the perfección.La Pythagorean third way is a problem: how can explain the phenomena, without violating The fundamental principle? Heraclitus said the tension of opposites, Parmenides alleged did not see that both are, ie they are “being.” Try to explain the phenomena based on the pair of opposites “light” and “night.” The fragments of this part of the poem have been lost and it makes impossible a resolution to the problem.If light and night are “being” phenomena is fixed in the ser.Sin invariablilidad But what are the characteristics of the doxa? 1) Doxa follows the world’s information, the information is much things.were and changing. Things are green, red, hard, cold, water, air, etc., Can transform into each other and are in constant flux. Pero2) Doxa means that movement, that change, as a reach ser.Y here is your error. Being does not exist in the senses, but in the nous-intelligence. ie, moving the feeling doxa, which is what you have, jump to be without using the nous, that lacks. And this is his falsedad.3) Doxa, besides being opinion, is mortal. Because your body is feeling, and this is composed of opposites and that is mortal, perishable as the things themselves. The opinion does not nous. So Parmenides interpreted the move as a light and a darkness, as a lighter and darker. Ie become no more than a becoming apparent. Therefore, the movement is variation, not generation: therefore, there is no point of view of being.