2) The Pre-Socratics: Xenophanes & Heraclitus

Court so welcome back to you and to all the people at home occasionally talk to this robot as if it's like another student in the class continuing our conversation about pre-socratics today we're going to be talking about two more pre-socratics in addition to whom we've discussed already thus far we're gonna be talking about zenith knees and Heraclitus remind me though who we talked about already I know that was like a whole weekend ago and like our minds are sibs and just like forgotten all that stuff but catch me back up first of all let's start with the pre-socratics why are we calling pre-socratics yeah cuz there before Socrates good yeah ever like pre-socratic right yeah before Socrates which is as we had noted an unfair label to just like slap on a whole group of people that just happened to come before Socrates but it's a relatively useful sort of historical term we want to be a little bit more subtle though right we don't want to just say like all the pre-socratics paint them all with one big broad brush we want to kind of identify their little sub movements within the pre-socratics and we discussed one of those what was the first group of priests Craddock philosophers that we talked about called Eric the my lesions yeah Susan you had something similar the my lesions is that what you're going to say yes he's one of my lesions right how many are there three yeah we usually talk about three my leaves and philosophers some of them my lesions and they were who doesn't Anaximander yeah he's the one that comes to mind first for me sometimes because he's maybe the most interesting of those three chronologically though he's the second of the three right yeah go ahead and fill in the blanks there Susan for us Bailey's right and who's the last one anacs M&E it's yeah good and max Emma knees excellent pronunciation as well well then so yeah Bailey's Anaximander annex Emma knees all get lumped together we call them my leavings why do we call into my lesions because there before Socrates no no right because they're from my leaders exactly yeah they're from my lead it's a city in Asia Minor let's draw the map because I'm gonna show us where the new guys are from as well so first the boot and then the Adriatic Sea and then Greece and then the Peloponnese and then up into Macedonia and then the Dardanelles to here and then eventually to the Black Sea and then coast of Asia Minor the Ionian coast that's where all these guys are from sometimes they get called the Ionian philosophers because they're all from over here ba-ba-ba-ba and then to each a minor and know where they're in Africa uh-hmm my latest where all of my legions are from we also mentioned that this is a pretty thin thread to tie three philosophers together they're proto philosophers together with what else groups them together as like potentially one big school besides their hometown they all had principals they all had principals I would go so far as to say probably most philosophers are going to end up having principles but they all had a certain sort they all had one principal one and like a very particular that we use that principle can be used to interpret it hmm what is it's a Greek word starts with a and rhymes with park' yes Cameron okay yeah good right so they're all like pointing towards some RK 1 RK a single RK they're monists this is what we usually say they have one fundamental organizing principle let's get that term on the board because we'll come back to it over and over and over again RK kind of a fundamental organizing principle and all three of these fellows from Meletis are proposing one single RK daily says that single RK is the watery RK yes and that NX M&E says it's air Anaximander says it's the Oparin which is like a weirder concept and gets us makes our eyes squint a little bit makes us lean into the page just a little more like whoa what are you talking about there buddy harder to just dismiss to when you're just kind of like that's not right and you're like wait a minute how do you know it's not right if you don't know what he's talking about yet okay grant I'll have to look a little bit closer in addition to them having one single RK what's this other thing that we talked about it's like we propose that it's not just one thing it's one yeah Thomas has it's one material thing this is why these three fellas are sometimes in addition to like us pointing out that they all come from my latest will sometimes refer to all three of them as material monists material because the RK that they're proposing there is matter or some kind of material right and the the Devils in the details for Anaximander there and that's what your first reflection draft is about like does he really fit in this group or does he belong someplace else but they'll ease and annex Emma needs definitely seen be proposing one thing that's a fundamental organizing principle of the universe of the entire cosmos it is one thing so they are monists and here Anaximander the monist as well and maybe all three of them certainly two out of the three our materialists to boot in Contra distinction to pythagoras and the pythagoreans who are the other philosophers that we looked at put that in blue just to keep our colors all thematic Baggara sand the pythagoreans who are also coming from Ionia originally Pythagoras born on a tiny little island just off the coast of my latest called Samos and because of people's intolerance for cults Pythagoras and the pythagoreans move all the way over here to Croton this is the area usually associated with the development of Pythagorean philosophy far away from the Maya lesions perhaps we can kind of get some sense of like yeah it's got to be far away because we have a radically different approach to this question of what the fundamental organizing principle of the cosmos is instead of a material RK the Pythagorean czar suggesting someplace something else what is it yeah Cameron mathematical ratio yeah mathematical ratio everything is everything everything is water everything is via payor on everything comes from and goes back to the up a run everything is air everything is mathematical ratio that's the fundamental organizing principle that's going to answer all the Y questions that we have but like why do things be the way they do so yeah we get this kind of abstract mathematical review I'll go ahead and toss this word into the mix now so we can start getting used to it mathematical form not the material that undergirds everything like fire or sorry or like water or air or the up a run but the form that that material goes into that it has a certain kind of proportion or ratio insofar as it becomes a thing bicycle gotta have two wheels right otherwise not a bicycle and number two is like a big part of what makes bicycle a bicycle if one wheel is like enormous and the other one is tiny tiny tiny it's a silly bicycle right might not even be a riot about bicycle proportion is going to be essential to like what makes that bicycle do what it do and be what it be Pythagoras and the pythagoreans different approach do we get how this is a different approach very different in flavor from the material monists such that we would say like yeah you'd have to like be like on the other side of the Mediterranean to be talking that talk what else did we learn about the pythagoreans reincarnation yeah and all of this seems to kind of almost spin out of that that turned towards mathematics these abstract formal aspects of mathematical ratio reincarnation because if it's not matter that makes things what they are then you can do whatever you want to the matter you can destroy the matter and perhaps the mathematical ratio the form the harmony or something like that might still be around when we read we read Plato's Phaedo we're gonna read somebody a Pythagorean in the conversations gonna put forth this idea that like maybe the body is like a harp and the soul is like a harmony that the harp plays we'll come back to that idea eventually but that's something that we might be thinking about now right such that like once destroyed it's not like the harmony gets destroyed necessarily maybe well we'll pick that up and really wrestle with it when we read Plato's Phaedo but we can see how like yeah that turn away from matter and towards abstract form maybe it suggests something like yeah the soul doesn't die when the body dies and then we're left wondering so where does it go I guess into another body reincarnation what else did we get if we're not super impressed with bodies then gender equality right then if like bodies are like yeah bodies don't make a big difference it's your immortal immaterial soul then like yeah maybe gender equality it's going to look very different as well and that idea of harmony I think we talked a little bit about how it's not just mathematical descriptions about how things work but suddenly this idea of like proportion and harmony seems to suggest ideas like justice and beauty and things like that it's not just kind of like a cold valueless description of the world we have a description of the world that allows us to talk about like when things are working in harmony when things are in discord when things are the way they're supposed to be when there the way that they're supposed to be questions about these folks just yet before we jump into the new stuff all right oh one more thing I want to get on the board over here Before we jump into the new stuff is at our last meeting we talked about this movement this kind of like if we think that philosophy is kind of coming into being here we're not sure was like what's Davies a philosopher I don't know was that attack was an accent and er maybe was Pythagoras getting warmer by the time we get to Heraclitus today I'm gonna suggest that like maybe we're there like I don't know when we got there but I think by the time we get to Heraclitus were there by the time we get to Parmenides I think we're definitely there but it's this movement from mythos to Lagos that seems to be describing this movement into philosophy this kind of birth of philosophical thinking such that we might want to pretend to talk about these folks as the first philosophers the first philosophers like in the whole world nobody else was a philosopher before this but that's probably not true there are plenty of philosophers before but we are getting some sense of kind of like the beginnings of philosophical thought in one particular region and looking how it begins to come into being in take shape hmm this word Lagos is going to come back into the conversation today when we start talking about what it is that Heraclitus has to say about the logger so for today we are talking about Z nopony's and Heraclitus Z Malkin easin Heraclitus and Pythagoras all get put together and our readings that are posted online are taken for the Pythagoras re for the pre-socratics at least are taken from this forest Baird collection but I've got here Baird groups Pythagoras Xena off knees and Heraclitus together in one big group but you probably saw it in the heading they're like the three solitary figures or something like this which seems also just kind of like a last-ditch effort like the my legions they all had something in common and these three guys are three solitary figures it's almost like there's nothing that binds them together they came before Socrates and they seemed to be solitary figures what this guy he formed a cult-like that's not so solitary yeah okay sure like I don't know exactly what hangs all these guys together but we have a conversation that's beginning here we're gonna start to see Z nominees and Heraclitus or perhaps us reading Zenith needs in Heraclitus now after having had the discussion that we had before building on the ideas that we started to put together in our previous conversation Zenith eni's and Heraclitus also Ionian coasts over here Heraclitus from Ephesus or a thesis you can still go there the ruins are still there anybody ever like been to the west coast of Turkey you can still like check out ruins in Ephesus and khalaf on is where Z nopony's is from what scene often uses big deal fire jumping ahead like a little bit of a bunny rabbit that's the Heraclitus talk but also yeah it seems like maybe it's the like water I pay her on air like how come nobody said fire yet fire is dope y'all like if anything's gonna be like the one thing that make it it's gonna be fire yeah we'll pick that up with Heraclitus for sure yeah Gabriel yeah so the background like theology such as it exists for the for the Greeks at this time is a polytheistic theology right we're we're roughly aware of this and there's a whole pantheon of gods yeah yeah yeah so in this movement away from polytheism we start saying something like rule there's only one not polytheism then it's gonna be mano mano mano mano monotheism right yeah yeah I'm so Greek I can't even say it mm yeah monotheism and lots of stuff comes along for the ride there right it's not just like God there's one God like wait a minute what's it gonna mean for their to only be one God and is there gonna be some stuff that just kind of like logically comes along with that idea Zenon fenice takes I think what it seems like a pretty interesting approach insofar as we can decipher an approach because we're still only dealing with like a relatively small body of fragments that are attributed to Xena Oni is in the first place but the way that these fragments are organized for us by Baird and by others we get this sense that maybe this begins from not so much just kind of stepping out and saying like here I'm going to tell you about God the first move that we do is we say how do people come up with the ideas of gods in the first place there's a little bit of a meta philosophical moment where there's kind of like this kind of attitude of criticism that says like we have these ideas where do they come from and do they come from someplace reliable and if we can say no then maybe that sends us on some other track and the way that like it seems like the way that we come up with gods is not particularly reliable is I've you mentioned it already anybody else want to kind of chime in and repeat how is it that we so I was just saying good thanks when we say that Z nominees is first taking aim or at least in the fragments that we have first directs our attention to this problem with how it is that we come up with the ideas of gods how do we come up with the ideas of gods and what's so problematic about it yeah Brian yeah we invent gods in our own image that's a little bit of phrasing that we might kind of like supply there mostly because maybe some of us are theologically familiar with the idea of like humans being created in God's image this would be the reverse right to create God in humans images and if you look at the Greek guts and we say like those guys were created in the human image we like what like humans have wings on their feet like no no none of that stuff but like the pettiness the like the having bodies for example the like traveling from atop Olympus down to like hang out with all of the humans there having favorites to having quarrels between them in fact the fact that there are many of them seems to suggest that like we're thinking about these gods as just kind of like pumped up human beings superheros more than theological beings in the proper sense if you look at the Thracian gods as we all know people from Thrace what are the Thracian gods like they're like the Thracians red hair that's what the Thracians are like yeah when you see the three from gods the three from gods have red hair surprise surprise and us in 2019 or like mmm Thracians have red hair Oh got it got it the African gods look like the African people darker skin facial features shaped a little bit differently than the Thracian gods Xena PD says if cows and Lions had gods what kind of gods would they have cow gods and lion gods good thing we got past all of that right we don't think of like gods in human forms anymore we don't create them in our own image as we all know like every image that we see of Jesus in a church like that's what he looked like like white like fair hair blue eyes like that's Jesus we don't create gods in our own image anymore so yeah that's a problem right to create God's in your own image and as an antidote we get this idea of like if we're talking about like a God if we're talking about a theological concept in such a way that it's maybe going to be able to play this game that everybody else is playing some kind of RK some kind of fundamental organizing principle for the entire cosmos and stop for just a moment and see if like you can square your idea of God believe in God don't believe in God like I don't really care about that just at this moment let's get square on what the idea of God is in the first place before we say if we believe or disbelieve in that idea but fundamental organizing principle for the whole universe that seems like one way of answering that like why are things the way they are because of the gods except instead of just being like because the gods and they're fickle like humans instead of that mythos kind of explanation we have a little bit of theology theost they asked Lagos right a little bit of like logic applied to this idea of a god and see nothing he says like this won't do if it is the ark a then we have one God an addition to that oneness some other things going to some other things are going to come along for the ride there was a hand that I was steamrolling yeah Cameron well if there's only one then maybe we want big G and if like we're gonna believe Heraclitus are easy nopony's on this we might even say like we might even want to adopt some kinds of like strategies to make sure that we're not oversimplifying what this is we might even do something like something like that to be like super iconic class that can be like you can't even sum it all up in one word don't say the name that sort of thing that answer the question that if we have lots of if we have many gods than their lowercase G gods if it's like just the one and what is it that we get all from this like one god lindane Ching then moving it moves everything else without moving Zenith Anu says God moves everything without himself moving maybe even himself is like too limiting but like without himself moving just through the activities of God's mind does God move things unchanging unmoving what else is in my notes hole not having parts right now there's not like God's elbow and God's knee those are like different parts of yet God is like one whole thing not something that breaks up into parts so do you have like oneness and wholeness coming together and that if something is one and whole then it need not change how could it change if it's one and whole what would it change to if this is some sort of Supreme Being for example zenith knees isn't drop in words like perfection or like infinity in this conversation just yet but we know that these sorts of ideas will tend to come along with theological ideas like one unchanging unmoving whole God then if God changed what would God change to something different then a perfect beam that sounds like an imperfect beam if you're going to stay perfect don't change don't move unchanging unmoving unbreakable in two parts another big on one more on different and important enough that I'll get a different colored marker for it and you guys can yeah good good move that was the right move back to the text I mean I ran around right there's another on there aren't that many fragments here right it won't take you long to run through all of them comprehensible yeah unknowable was I was gonna say yeah but incomprehensible if you think you've got like God all figured out guess what you miss the idea says Xena pennies one God unchanging unmoving whole and unknowable which introduces some aspect like we haven't really quite seen just yet that in this articulation of like God as this singular whole unchanging unmoving unknowable are K we've introduced something this this won't go away this will hang with us until the end of the semester this idea of skepticism that yeah perhaps there's like perhaps there's a truth of this matter but it's unknowable if you think you know this then like no you don't know this as soon as you think you do have it like that's exactly when you missed it Gabriel you've got you've got like an I just ate a bug face that like is also I think something that's going on in my mind what do you got yeah no this is fragment 11 in our reading no man knows or ever will know the truth about the gods and about everything I speak of for even if one chance to say the complete truth yet oneself knows it not but some but seeming is wrought over all things that's not the most graceful of sentences let me try that again for even if one chance to say the complete truth yet oneself knows it not but seeming is wrought over all things still yeah it wasn't a whole lot more graceful in the second pass even if you said the truth about God you wouldn't know what you were saying it's just too big of an idea for your finite mind and that's God that was easy we saw something kind of like this when we were looking at Anaximander zapped a run when we said what's the up hey Ron can somebody please define the up a run for me what's the definition of the appear on that which is indefinite tell me about God what do you know about God well I know that God is one unchanging and moving whole and unknowable that's what I know about ah unknowable though right does this actually work or does he does he end up tripping over himself like here here's what we know about God that one thing God's unknowable oh well I don't need to hear anything more from using nopony's like shut up about everything on well but there's more God is one God is unchanging like no no no you already said unknowable yeah good question yeah what do you think does that count as knowing or may my being like too much of a stickler are we gonna say like no this isn't really all like that it's not that weird and fancy we can define something as like an undefinable we can say that something I know that it is unknowable like I know that I just don't know anything else perhaps but even then still like we have some trouble like I don't know anything else except that God is unknowable no that's not true you do unchanging unmoving whole unified yeah Anastacia so there's that there do exist here so let's be careful here I don't want to say something like there do exist irrational ratios because if their ratios then they're rational right but there are we like there are irrational numbers for example that was the sort of thing yeah we we mentioned this at our last meeting I don't know if the online folks got this in the last video but this there's a bit of apocryphal legend that the first Pythagorean who discovered that the yeah that for a right triangle with equal shorter sides the long side is going to be the square root of two times the shorter sides and that that's not a rational number and that's big trouble for the pythagoreans they didn't find a way to deal with that they were like oh so the world is irrational they just drowned that guy as the legend goes and said like we don't talk about that you can't talk about it right because it's irrational is like that's a that's a Latin construction Greeks would have said instead of irrational they would have said I'll log on you can't talk about that which is not talked about able not clearly at least may is that what's going on here you can't talk about God clearly because God is not the sort of thing that can be talked clearly about that's one way of doing it another way of doing it might be to say that like no no no it's not that like the idea of God doesn't make any sense it's that like there's something wrong with our puny mortal minds that can't read this the kind of like the perfect infinite sense of a perfect infinite unchanging and moving being yeah that's right but then again God is whole so I don't know if there are partial truths about God because God is not a partial sort of thing right facets of a whole thing with no parts gipset facets gems have facets gyms have parts tops bottoms stuff like that left side right side God's not so much weird idea right weird enough that I'm like I don't know about you I'm not like sending any five-year-old kid to Sunday school to like learn about this weird idea just yet cuz like I'm like you're not ready you're not ready for this idea this idea is big first like learn about mathematical infinity and then come back and we'll talk about this other kind of infinity maybe I don't know really quite what to say about it but one of the things that Dean often is revealed here is that like this is a much stranger idea than we might first give it credit for and it it's deceptive because it seems so like ho-hum you're like Oh monotheism thanks teeing off Aeneas knew that already by the way he wasn't even first on the scene roughly in the region Zoroaster Beatson some Egyptians arguably get there first Abraham is like maybe it like somewhere in the neighborhood of depending on who you ask him where between like five hundred and a thousand years earlier than this but he's working out the logic of this idea which is one of the reasons why he's a compelling proto philosopher one of the reasons why we bring him into our conversation today is because we get to see this one idea play out some more and we get to see that concept pop up unchanging unmoving that's not a new idea that popped up when we were talking about the my legions as well that we are not talk we were talking about something that's unchanging that underlies all of the change right this is why it's plausible when thay Lee says plausible it's like a little bit plausible we understand his thought process when thay Lee says everything's made out of water because we're thinking to ourselves whatever that one thing is it's got to be suitable to like change into other things because the cosmos as we see them as like we understand them as they appear to us is just full of change everything is constantly changing in the world so whatever that one thing is it's gonna have to be a changeable thing but now we've kind of seen like neuro hold on if it's gonna be one thing maybe it has to be an unchanging that moves other things without being moved itself change becomes a theme for us now which gives us an excellent opportunity to transition to Heraclitus with Heraclitus we have way more fragments than we did for any of the other folks and they're relatively the they're the sorts of things that like I think there's relatively good confidence that a lot of these are accurately attributable to Heraclitus not like he wrote them down exactly like there's Heraclitus his notebook that somebody found because a lot of this stuff is coming generations later but at least such that like there's just this way that Heraclitus turns a phrase is the sort of thing where it's just kind of like as soon as you see it you're like oh that's totally Heraclitus like that's not the sort of thing that like with dailies were getting like family said that everything was made out of water with Heraclitus we get we get we get things like the path up-and-down is one in the same like fortune cookie like this is like before when I said at our last moment I said Anaximander that idea of the appear on is this thing that makes you kind of like lean in a little bit it's an idea that like you can't really figure out what it is until you pick it up and play with it some we've got the same sort of thing going on here with Xena phonies and this idea of God in a singular God at least as opposed to like multiple gods created in humans images with Heraclitus we get these weird little riddles that like you can pick these things up and play with them for days and it's you've just got like one after another some of them are like I'll grant they're like things that I'm just like I don't really know what to do with that time is a child playing a game of drafts the kingship is in the hands of a child in the same river we both step and do not step we are and we are not for the record if you turn into it like that for an assignment I will not be happy Heraclitus sometimes called the obscure philosopher of the dark philosopher sometimes dark because he is so obscure it's tough to figure out like what is that guy even talking about speaks in riddles seeming contradictions but often times those contradictions are the sorts of things where like the weirdness is what kind of grabs you and pulls you in and we find that there's there's actually a feast there if you can kind of like pick it up and start to play with it like oh wow that idea goes someplace really interesting sometimes not so much and this is like that kind of like quasi wisdom or pseudo wisdom or like it's when people mistake obscurity for wisdom it's the sort of thing that like I don't know you like you spend enough time in intro philosophy classes you see it every now and again somebody raises their hand and says like but what is being and like I'm thinking myself like is that a serious question or is that like are you just messing with me you're just like trying to appear intelligent and it makes it a little what will we make of this or is this like do you have some kind of idea going on here and it seems like more often than not there's something going on in Heraclitus it's weird it's like difficult to figure out what to make of him and for that reason he's sometimes a polarizing figure it's rumoured I think this is attributed to diogenes laërtius in the fourth century AD that when asked about Heraclitus Socrates said oh yeah I've read Heraclitus the parts that I understood were awesome and the parts that I didn't understand they were probably awesome as well I don't know I've kind of feel like that kind of sums up my attitude for Heraclitus as well he did write one book a book that or at least it's rumored that he wrote a book called on nature that doesn't survive I mentioned that because the next philosopher that we're going to look at Parmenides wrote a poem that did survive called on nature and so will will get a look at that but what we do have like all of these fragments I'm kind of curious which ones jumped for you which were some of your favorite fragments from Heraklion so yeah I get it number 25 that's good like I like this and we'll just do philosophy like this number 20 I write number 25 anybody else should we look at what number 25 is yeah that's all right oh that was time as a chat that was when I just made fun of time as a child playing game of drafts oh that's much later yeah 48 the Ephesians would do well to hang themselves that that's the that's the other reason why sometimes called the dark philosopher is that like he's a he's a little bit of a misanthrope you can tell he's a he's a grumpy Gus the Ephesians would do well to hang themselves every adult man and leave their City to the adolescence since they expelled her moderates the worthiest man among them saying let us not have even one worthy man but if we do let him go elsewhere and live among the others silly Ephesians they got rid of her moderates firma doris every dyke to pronounce it who apparently was an awesome guy they banished him was that the one thing everything about Gary well apparently the Ephesians said that there was an excellent man in their midst and maybe we might have to supply some stuff here like why would they get rid of somebody who was such an excellent person why would they expel him from the city why would they banish him ostracize him maybe he wasn't so excellent a person what do you think is that what Heraclitus is saying here the Ephesians would do well to hang themselves for appropriately recognizing that herma Doris was not as excellent as people thought no no no no it's the Ephesians messed it up right Herman Doris was an excellent person but they they thought he was not excellent when in fact he was excellent sometimes people don't like to have excellent people in their midst because it makes them look bad by comparison so they're like get that guy out of here me hard to tell I don't know enough about a feat in history I don't know if anybody knows enough about Ephesian history to sort that one out but it seems like somebody was ostracized I'm supplying a lot of this because kind of like projecting the story of Socrates onto this a little bit as well who's like also somebody that like his whole city turns around and goes like you should die and he's like but I'm trying to help you and they're like no die he's like okay that's kinda like the Cliff Notes version of the story of Socrates and so maybe that's the sort of thing that's going on here in fragment 48 oh we don't know yeah this is a thorough collection some of them are like good and so that's why when I said what are your favorites I was kind of open for it like maybe not the the the orphan ones maybe not the ones that were like what's that doing yeah yeah you can never step in the same river twice that's kites move to that because like changing and moving we're a theme earlier right and now we're gonna develop this a little bit more in Plato's cratylus there's a character so this is only a couple generations after Heraclitus in plato's cratylus there's a character who purports to believe in the teachings of Heraclitus and summarizes them thusly that all things flow panto ray but all is in flux and sometimes we'll also point to this other fragment that you can't step in the same river twice that fragment is so famous that we still say that maybe maybe we doesn't include you like people today still say can't step in the same river twice what do they mean when they say this can't step in the same river twice Boulogne River me step step out step back in there I just did it so like it's not like if I try like somehow I like I'll freak oh I can't do it Heraclitus was right you know what's what's preventing me from stepping in the same river twice different River all things flow rivers flow step in the river once step out go to step back in it ooh different River all the water that was in there before is now way downstream brand new water completely different River can't step in the same river twice it's not the same because it's not the same river both times by the way all things flow all is in a state of flux or change not just rivers not just water great handwriting rosin film all things flow all things are in a constant state of change not just rivers including you so if you're kind of curious like why can't I stuff in the same river twice that's cuz it's a different River the second time it's also a different you the second time you can't do anything twice because for a moment two moments you've changed if the river is a different River after it's flowed and changed why not you be a different thing as you flowed and changed this is an interesting move I'll point out that like some of this is reading a bit into Heraclitus and some of this is actually going to be in conflict with some of these other fragments will kind of attend to that in just a second because in putting what it is that Heraclitus is talking about sometimes like it's just tough like I don't know what was going on with her Medora sand the Ephesians but some of this stuff I'm I might be getting the sensitive you get the sense as you were reading that like these aren't unrelated fragments that they're all ooh all many of them are kind of related to one another and they paint a full picture all things flow can't step in the same river twice I get I get what's going on there and as before when we were saying that we're picking 1rk maybe this is our RK and it's a pretty abstract RK as these abstract arcades are kygo Heraclitus is saying what's the fundamental organizing principle that tells us why the cosmos is the way that it is it's change the only constant is change for that one before - the only constant is change isn't that changing - no no no that one stays still that things are always changing does that seem about right very different than this right that the the RK of all of the cosmos is something like singular and unmoving and unchanging here we're saying like no all things are constantly changing including God I don't know Heraclitus doesn't say much about God but at least all the rest of the things yeah who's that said fire earlier Christine any of you guys get excited when you saw Heraclitus say that like everything is fire or like all is in every letting fire because you were thinking to yourself like today it's like these guys right he's like another one of these days it is tempting sometimes sometimes you'll see this on kind of like I don't know like really nerdy dorm room posters or something like that and like have all the philosophers and like everything is everything is and for Heraclitus it's like everything is fire and it's tempting to sometimes think of Heraclitus is just another material monist he just gets to a different of the natural elements instead of earth wind or fire nobody says earth by the way poor earth gets left out yeah but I don't think he's saying God is earth mostly because earth has parts right there's like this part over here in this part over here and God is whole so like move all right all right good God's not the earth but yeah maybe Zenith and he says like yeah earth everything comes from and goes back to the earth so we have something but would you agree with me that like to classify Z nopony's as a material monist is to like radically it just take one thing that he said out of context and ignore all the rest same thing going on with Heraclitus if you're like oh he said fire material monist and he goes for fire then I think we're just taking one thing that he said out of context and misinterpreting it and we get an impoverished version of Heraclitus when we do that but I do think we should look at this fire thing as in fact here oh I'll even write it and read and I'll make it on fire there because fire is let's be honest fire is cool and for all of that stuff that we were saying before about like water because it's like because everything that's alive requires water and water happened like a life happens when there's moistness everybody loves that word and air did we mention like air as breath when we talked about an examinees that maybe this is if you're doing the whole like the principle of life is going to be like the 1rk for the entire cosmos that like when annex M&E says air we might recognize that like will breath is air and things that are alive breathe at least I do and so yeah that's the thing that moves everything but fire fire isn't just like where life happens fire isn't just like something that living things do like fire is plausibly alive watch fire it acts like an animal it eats things finds new things to eat and it goes and eats those things that moves it changes it's constantly dancing you can't fire doesn't stand still have you ever seen a fire that's just like you can take a picture of it right but it's like freezes it an actual fire is really blue it's like always doing that all things flow everything is constantly changing this is maybe why fire is an excellent metaphor for the sort of thing that Heraclitus is talking about that if we can think about fire it gives us some clues into how we think about all things flowing in all things changing for example I just mentioned that like fire consumes right fire consumes its fuel where does fire come from comes from wood fire needs wood in order to be a fire need some kind of fuel right what happens to that fuel when the fire burns goes away it gets destroyed right the fuel is destroyed in order for the fire to be everything that like allows the fire to come into being the fire destroys in the process we don't just have this process of change what we have is a continual process of creation and destruction every change is a destruction of a prior state I'm spitting that's how excited I am about this every change is a destruction of a pack of a prior state and the coming into being of some new state we saw something kind of like this with an X address when he was saying like according to the debt that when something comes out of the up a run something is going to eventually have to go back in all that comes into being must eventually someday be destroyed and pass out of being with Heraclitus we're getting this like idea that like every change when we say that like can't step in the same river twice we're saying that like a change is a brand new thing being created it also involves the destruction of that previous state perhaps this is why people fear change they don't want to change because to do so would be to destroy your prior self do you think of this when you're like you're all in school presumably because you would like to better yourself which is like one way of changing you can't better yourself without changing right just like God can't change if God is perfect because it's gotta change to something that was like other than perfect but if you want to improve yourself you got to change that means you have to destroy yourself destroy who you are so that you can become who you will be it's kind of bold a little bit scary to fire flows fires constantly changing and changes in such a way that it destroys in order to create and it's constantly to destroy create destroy create destroy create that's that's what's going on in every single fire and that's what's going on with every single change this constant flow of creation and destruction from moment to moment every moments a brand new thing all of the other things gone destroyed all of the new things boom created get some sense of how it is that this statement in this statement are talking about roughly the same thing blank stares good time to raise a hand bad time to raise a hand I don't know what we're talking about oh so raise your hand join the conversation let's toss a third set of throw a third set of fragments into the mix here the ones about war and strife in opposition what does it Harris with it what is it that Heraclitus has to say about war and strife father of all things father the King depending on how you translate father a king of all things war is the father of all things dark philosophers write holy moley but do you see how somebody thinks that like every single creation involves a destruction is also going to say something like words the father of all things strife is insofar as like anything does stick around for an inter far as like things stop moving and constantly like flowing and changing insofar as that even appears to be the case it's because things come into opposition with one another I'm not saying that Heraclitus understood all of this but like if you've taken a mechanic's class like a basic physics class maybe learned about like normal forces and stuff like that that like I'm standing here like not moving not doing anything so like nothing's really happening but like no tons is happening my feet are exerting a force on the floor the floor the floor is exerting a force on my shoes and then my shoes on my feet and then my feet on my ankles etc etc etc there is like a war of electrons between the atoms in my shoe and the atoms in the floor that's just like on a micro scale right where like apparently nothing's moving it's just like everything's just bouncing into one another that's what creates calm and stasis is when it's like rock on the small scale but on the large scale like everything's just hanging out in order for you not to die what do you got to do you got to eat which means you've got to kill some stuff and you're like not me I eat vegetables that you kill right not personally somebody else kills them for me oh good for you war on strife father of all things do we see like a picture that's kind of like coming into interview here and what's required for this is to keep going back through these fragments and kind of make connections and have little theories but then also maybe check and see like is there anything in this that maybe conflicts with other stuff that Heraclitus is saying do I have some idea of what Heraclitus is saying that like he comes right out and says like that's not what I'm saying I'm saying the opposite of it here like for example it's very tempting and as a matter of fact like I tend to read Heraclitus this way I think one of the big things that's going on here is that he's giving us a picture of like what change looks like as a principal what change looks like as this kind of conceptual problem for us to try to wrap our heads around it's a difficult one to try to wrap our heads around because as soon as you start saying something like everything changes which is the sort of thing that you could just like fire off carelessly in a conversation the only constant is change right Nevers like yeah right okay but like what does that mean that's like a crazy idea to say that everything is constantly changing because it means that everything is constantly being created and destroyed whereas one there whereas once there was just me and the river like one me one river now there are like billions of rivers as the river keeps flowing billions of Me's as I keep changing platos gonna make a joke about this in Mena where he says like stop making many out of one as Joker say when somebody like breaks a vase like this this literally shatters the world if you thought the world was like one big thing like all of these other monists are saying the world is one big thing Heraclitus says yeah that thing has changed and if you play around with that idea long enough you'll realize that this one big world just gets broken into a billion tiny little things that all exists for just a moment and are constantly being created and destroyed that's what it means to commit to the idea of change as like the fundamental RK of the cosmos that's a tempting reading I'm gonna push that reading even as like something that's the ghost of Heraclitus hanging around a lot of the stuff that Plato is doing in the later parts of this semester but check out this fragment listening not to me but to the law Gossett is wise to agree that all things are one fragment seven I was just saying that Heraclitus is telling us that like the one thing is actually like blown up into like an infinite many things and then Heraclitus says well listen not to me but to the law Gauss there's our friend law goes don't listen to my words listen to the law Gauss and you'll recognize wisely that all is one well me and if all is one then how come there's so many damn rivers in the same river we both step and do not step we are and we are not what what for a secondary theme like hold on my theory of Heraclitus was contradicting Heraclitus but now i say like Heraclitus is contradicting Heraclitus sometimes he just comes out and says it in like one big sentence in the same river we both step and do not step we are and we are not my ass we are and we are not yeah Ken well no it's not where some of the Buddhist philosophy comes from there's some resonance with Buddhist philosophy but there's not enough contact between between this is happening around the same time though I think that's maybe important to recognize that Siddhartha Gautama is like in becoming enlightened and becoming the Buddha at roughly the same time as Confucius as doing his work roughly the same time as like all these there's like something in the air globally where like folks are just kind of like let's do philosophy and I was like yeah sure why not but they're not actually in communication but there's there are some folks who will try to advance the idea that there is some little communication during these periods or later on so that like it's not at the time Heraclitus and early Buddhists were thinking about we're talking to one another and kind of influencing one other but maybe our interpretations of both traditions as they come to us now have kind of been read through mutual influence or something like that that maybe seems a little bit plausible so there's some crossover and the ideas but I don't think there's any kind of case that could be made that like the Buddha read Heraclitus or even heard people talking about him or vice versa so wait where were we oh yeah Heraclitus doesn't make any sense which maybe is appropriate by the way yeah Katie are you gonna help us make sense of Heraclitus or are you gonna jump on the you don't make sense bandwagon okay at a time yeah right but from moment to moment different me different River okay so but then over time so is that the sense in which into the same river we both step and do not step I'm still having trouble with that one but yeah that's a that's a noble try what is it one of the rest you guys think about that is that is Katie rescuing it is she maybe like maybe not rescued it but she's found a path to rescue it it's like here's Heraclitus is shoe I think I'm on the trail guys I'd also like to I'd also like to suggest that like if everything is constantly changing and today I say you can't step in the same river twice tomorrow if everything is constantly changing maybe I say something completely different everything's changing right the rivers changing I'm changing my mind is changing fickle human minds will like change from moment to moment everything is in flux after all right so if you remember he said listen not to me but to the Lagos give me the Lagos is unchanging everything's changing except the Lagos well maybe the Lagos is changing too how crazy would that be if like logic itself was subject to this principle of flux and change so suddenly this is starting to look a whole lot more skeptical too we were saying like listening not to me to the law das it's wise to agree that all things are one you know that whole section on fragments about the law goes in the census it's just all kinds of like zany rich stuff get right to you in the second day let me read one of these fragments of the law goes which is as I describe it men always proved to be uncompromising deeds as I explained when I distinguish each according to its constitution with clear how it is but the rest of men failed to notice on camera I guess I'll just start over of the logos which is as I describe it men always proved to be uncomprehending both before they have heard it and once and when once they have heard it for although all things happen according to this logos men are like people of no experience even when they experience such words and deeds as I explained when I distinguish each thing according to his Constitution and declare how it is but the rest of men fail to notice what they do after they wake up just as they forgot what they do when they do when asleep all right all right mm-hmm did we catch what was going on there you can explain something to somebody and they're kind of like yeah yeah they'll agree with you while you're talking but as soon as you've left have you had this experience by the way have you had this experience this week have you had this experience maybe in the last hour in this classroom where like I'm talking and you're like yeah yeah yeah and then perhaps if I were to leave the room and someone was like what was Rosenfeld talking about you'd be like I don't remember that make sense anymore made sense when they were explaining it like she didn't say this all the time to me everything makes sense in class when you're explaining it but when I'm by myself it doesn't make sense anymore I'm like that's because you don't understand it yet right makes sense for now or maybe as Heraclitus is pointing out that like human minds are subject to the flux that all things are subject to you hold on to an idea for a little while it's like when you dream and when you wake up you remember the dream but then it fades away you don't remember it anymore unless you can write it down or tell somebody about it yeah Thomas right yeah so that was this the last question on the reading quiz the last question did anybody else have like a little bit of trouble with that last question you were kind of like eventually you've found the right answer no and not eventually yeah if you had four tries I bet you would have found it Yeah right right so we could interpret some of these fragments to mean some of the other some of those other answer choices and I'll like invite us to do that right now but there was one answer that was like Heraclitus pretty clearly said exactly that if that's the in those sorts of questions like go for the better answer go for the thing that's that's more clearly what he said and if you start kind of if you start guessing and you're like no he says that and I'm like app that's not the correct answer one of two things is going on either there are multiple things that like could be right but one is more right than the others and that's the one that I want you to like zero in on or it's always possible that I've miscoded the correct answers on this quiz and if you're sitting there thinking like no that is definitely the right answer shoot me an email and we can get that sorted out but yeah what fragment was that oh three fragment three that Thomas is pointing out those who and I would recommend like everybody who has the text right now have it open to that section on Lagos and the census and be looking at all of those fragments as we're talking because this is for my money this is one of the big puzzles that Heraclitus just kind of drops off on us which is like what are we even to make of all of this that Heraclitus is saying like is it the sort of thing where like one moment he'll say one thing in one moment he'll say the opposite thing and like par for the course everything's changing I suppose or is this a sort of thing where we're expecting to see like one coherent consistent theme throughout the whole corpus of the Herrick lady in fragments mm-hmm so yeah Thomas directs us to fragment three those awake have one ordered universe in common but in sleep every man turns away to one of his own that waking and sleeping is a metaphor by the way although we can think of it literally as well that when we're awake we're all in the same world right but when you dream you go off to your own private idiosyncratic world nobody else I don't think so does anybody else get to experience your dreams no team dreaming just yet that would be cool if like you can multiplayer video games and everything but not exactly the same thing yeah multiplayer video games oh this is not a time before they knew what drugs could do to you they just didn't have the exactly the same attitude they knew for example that if you drank a bunch of wine you would see and experience the world in a slightly different way and in fact Heraclitus had something to say about that too right he says like don't be drunk because you'll mess up things and a dry soul is better than a wet soul maybe aunt Keith Ellie's maybe a temperance sort of a movement there but in addition to that like they were eaten found mushrooms and they were like we'll see the Athenians not the Athenians in the Oracle at Delphi they just like plop a young lady on top of like a gaseous vent where various vapors were coming up from down deep in the earth and intoxicating her and making her speak in tongues and people would listen to what she said and take that as prophecy and then go run with it they'd like launch Wars on the basis of this sort of stuff so like people knew about altered states they just didn't have Dare programs those a week have one ordered universe in common fragment for the thinking faculty it's common to all seven listening not to me but to the law Gossett is wise to agree that all things are 1/6 therefore it is necessary to follow the common but although the law Gus is common the many live as though they had a private understanding the lago seems to grant some kind of like unified in so far as like we stick to the lagos and make sense we'll all speak roughly the same language we'll find some agreement with one another but if we abandon that and each of us goes with our own private seeming x' then many worlds right or as if there's many worlds the lagos is speaking to us saying like one everything is one but we just don't hear it of the lagos which is as I describe it men always proved to be uncommon men always proved to be uncompromising faculty is common to all which is it Heraclitus is it common to us all are we all on hearing when it comes to the lagos what's on the line here is this question of like which version of this is going to like possibly remember we introduced the skepticism idea with zenith eni's that like yeah god is like one unchanging whole unmovable thing and completely incomprehensible to your mind and here we have Heraclitus saying like with some of the logos and it'll show you how like all things are one or you know go back to sleep and dream and let everything be many listening not to me but to the Lagos you'll see that all things are one but if you listen to me by the way when I speak I'm gonna say all things flow all things change an infinite plurality of things who does that who says like here's what I'm gonna say by the way don't listen to me listen to the exact opposite dark philosopher indeed pretty obscure but lots of fun right just some faces just now I would say a very different sort of an activity than we've done so far with any of these figures because there are so many fragments and some potential inconsistencies in the fragments that we get to go through this exercise of trying to figure out like what is he saying is there a way that I can make it all knit together into one kind of coherent picture and if not what's going on there Garrett and I were talking earlier today about like if you're ever reading a philosopher particularly somebody who's like a fairly big name in the cannon and Heraclitus is definitely that twenty five hundred years old and like people are still writing district I saw two dissertations on Heraclitus when I was in graduate school there's only like 50 fragments like how much could you possibly write about this guy but people managed to because it's so rich right because like once you start picking it apart it kind of starts coming to life all on its own it drags you into the thinking process does so though at the expense of clarity possibly at the expense of coherence but let's keep in mind that like one of the things that might be going on here is not that like oh Heraclitus dah dah now remember the idea let me finish it if you're reading some of these figures who are big-name figures people are still reading them to this day and you're thinking to yourself that's just dumb that doesn't make any sense you should at least start with the possibility entertained that you're just not understanding them properly and Heraclitus leaves himself one big giant escape hatch in all of this stuff all of the possible inconsistencies with all those fragments about the logosol those confusing fragments about the Lagos that suggests that like there's this kind of tense and determinant relationship between our minds and how we speak and the law goes capital L as if it's like some independent thing that is unchanging maybe outside of the natural world which does flow and change how are we doing with these ideas if you're thinking yourself like I don't know they're kind of confusing I'd be like all right then you're in the right place like it should be a little confusing we're gonna keep building on this stuff our next author's that we're going to read are the Elli attic monus they come there will pop all the way back to the other side of Italy and we're gonna get somebody who's gonna say I was gonna say it says the exact opposite of what Heraclitus says but Heraclitus says the exact opposite of what Heraclitus says but somebody who kind of puts a sustained sort of effort into talking about what it would mean for things do not change at all ever maybe something a little closer to what Zenith Nia's was talking about that's gonna be Parmenides as poem pari fou say oz on nature have fun with it I think it's the first time that we're encountering a relatively complete it's not complete because there are pieces missing but the poem is all from one poem so it's like one unified text that's the first time we're going to see that in this class enjoy your time till Thursday I'll see you later

Channel: Adam Rosenfeld

Views: 4,282

Rating: 4.9649124 out of 5

Keywords: Ancient Philosophy, Presocratic Philosophy, Ionian Philosophy, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Monotheism, Change

Id: PXTviSFBVPo

Length: 72min 31sec (4351 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 27 2019