A Brief History of Philosophy 2: Sophists and Socrates

I. Sophists

With the widely varying theories of the Presocratics, and the apparent ability of equally good arguments to support both, for example, Heraclitus (only change occurs)  and Parmenides (change does not occur), a loose group known as the "sophists" concluded that philosophy cannot be used to discover truth. And in fact, there is no truth. Man is the measure of all things. Philosophy should be used instead as a tool to convince others of whatever position you desire.

II. Socrates is Ignorant

The Oracle at Delphi was purported to have said that there is no one wiser than Socrates. Socrates took this to mean that he is wise because he recognizes his own ignorance. What he knows is that he knows nothing.

III. The Socratic Method

Thus, seeking knowledge was one of the goals of Socrates. Unlike the Presocratics, who were concerned primarily with speculations about the fundamental nature of reality, Socrates was more interested in ethics. His famous Socratic Method generally starts with a request for a definition of a moral concept (What is courage?), and after the person responds he asks more questions, eventually leading them to a belief that contradicts their original definition. In this way, he shows that they, like Socrates, are not knowledgeable after all.

IV. Socratic Ethics

Like the sophists, Socrates is more concerned with human events than with cosmological theories. However, unlike the sophists he is not a nihilist. He believes that there are moral truths. For Socrates, the goal of human virtue is to seek happiness, but happiness can only come by taking care of one's soul. Virtuous actions improve the soul, and vicious actions harm the soul. This is why doing harm to someone else is worse than receiving harm: the former harms one's soul, whereas the victim only has his body harmed.

Famously, Socrates denies that anyone ever knowingly does evil. Everyone does what he believes to be good for himself, but ignorance of what is genuinely right is what leads people to do evil. If they knew that a virtuous soul leads to happiness, then no one would harm his or her own soul by doing evil. So knowledge leads to morality.

A Brief History of Philosophy 1: The Presocratics

I. What Stuff is Fundamental?

The first philosophers were primarily interested in explaining everything in terms of one simple principle.

Thales: Water is the most fundamental element.

Anaximander: An infinite, unobservable, amorphus indefinite is the the most fundamental element.

Anaximenes: Air.

Pythagoras: Numbers. Also started a religious cult.

II. Permanence vs Change

In addition to this, we have the problem of change. Things around us appear to change, but things appear to stay the same as well. The water in a river is never the same, but the river itself persists. A person's physical body changes constantly, but the person persists over time. What accounts for this? What is fundamental? Change or permanence?

Heraclitus: Change is fundamental. "You can't step into the same river twice."

Parmenides: Permanence is fundamental. Existence "is", and non-existence "is not". Since change would involve something coming to be that did not exist (such as a property), and non-existence is not, then change is impossible. Everything is One.

Zeno: Follow of Parmenides. Agreed that change is impossible, and formulated his famous paradoxes to prove it. 

III. Responses to Permanence 

In many ways, the next philosophers tried to answer Parmenides' declaration of the impossibility of change, because it at least seems like change occurs. They attempted to combine elements into one (thus in keeping with Parmenides argument that all is One), or claim that there are several fundamental elements.

Anaxagoras: All elements exist in a single mass. Nous (mind) separates the elements into their individual forms.

Empedocles: Fire, air, earth, and water are fundamental.  

Democritus: Atoms are fundamental. Everything is composed of groups of small particles that cannot be broken down any further.