Philosophers From Greece

"Te maris et terrae numeroque carentis arenae Mensorem cohibent, Archyta, Pulveris exiqui prope litus parva Matinum Munera, nec quidquam tibi prodest The sea, the earth, the innumerable sand, Archytas, thou coulds't measure; now, alas! A little dust on Matine shore has spann'd That soaring spirit; vain it was to pass The gates of heaven, and send thy soul in quest O'er air's wide realms; for thou hadst yet to die."

"The sum of his moral doctrine is; that virtue is to be pursued for its own sake in every condition of life; that all excess is inconsistent with virtue; that the mind is more injured by prosperity than by adversity; and that there is no pestilence so destructive to human happiness as pleasure."

"Concerning the philosophical tenets of Archytas... Aristotle, who was an industrious collector from the Pythagoreans, borrowed from him the general arrangements which are usually called his ten categories."

"Even thee, thou measurer of earth and sea, thou counter of the sands, Archytas, how small a portion of earth contains thee now! It profits thee not to have searched the air and traversed the heavens since thou wert to die. So Tantalus, Tithonus, and Minos have died, and Pythagoras too with all his learning hath gone down once more to the grave. But so it is: all must die alike; some to make sport for Mars, some swallowed up in the deep: old and young go crowding to the grave: none escape: I too have perished in the waters. But grudge me not, thou mariner, a handful of earth: so may the storm spend itself on the woods while thou art safe and thy merchandize increases. Is it a small matter with thee to bring ruin on thy children? Yea, perhaps retribution awaits thyself: my curses will be heard, and then no atonement shall deliver thee. 'Tis but the work of a moment—thrice cast earth upon me and hasten on."

"His death, which is said to have been occasioned by a shipwreck, is made a subject of poetical description by Horace, who celebrates him as an eminent geographer and astronomer."

"It is probable that Aristotle was indebted to Archytas for many of his moral ideas; particularly for the notion which runs through his ethical pieces, that virtue consists in avoiding extremes."

"Castoriadis has given this tradition [the tradition of praxis philosophy] new life by introducing a unique linguistic turn. His work has a central place among the new departures in praxis philosophy that have evolved since the mid-1960s, especially in Eastern Europe (in Prague, Budapest, Zagreb, and Belgrade), and that for a decade enlivened the discussions at the Summer School of Korčula. It is the most original, ambitious, and reflective attempt to think through the liberating mediation of history, society, external and internal nature once again as praxis."

"Wo Ich bin, soll Es auftauchen."

"Je désire pouvoir, avec tous les autres, savoir ce qui se passe dans la société, contrôler l’étendue et la qualité de l’information qui m’est donnée. Je demande de pouvoir participer directement à toutes les décisions sociales qui peuvent affecter mon existence, ou le cours général du monde où je vis. Je n’accepte pas que mon sort soit décidé, jour après jour, par des gens dont les projets me sont hostiles ou simplement inconnus, et pour qui nous sommes, moi et tous les autres, que des chiffres, dans un plan ou des pions sur un échiquier et qu’à la limite, ma vie et ma mort soient entre les mains de gens dont je sais qu’ils sont nécessairement aveugles."

"There is no proper meaning … every expression is essentially tropic."

"Rousseau already said this: the English believe that they are free because they elect representatives every five years, but they are free only one day every five years: the day of the election. And even that isn’t true. The election is rigged, not because the ballot boxes are being stuffed, but because the options are determined in advance. No one asked the people what they wanted to vote on. They are told, “vote for or against the Maastricht Treaty,” for example. But who made the Maastricht Treaty? It wasn’t us. There is Aristotle’s wonderful phrase responding to the question, “Who is the citizen?”: “The citizen is someone who is able to govern and to be governed.” Are there forty million citizens in France at the moment? Why wouldn’t they be able to govern? Because all political life aims precisely at making them forget how to govern. It aims at convincing them that there are experts to whom matters must be entrusted. There is thus a political counter-education. Whereas people should accustom themselves to exercising all sorts of responsibilities and taking initiatives, they accustom themselves to following the options that others present to them or voting for those options. And since people are far from being stupid, the result is that they believe in it less and less, and they become cynical, in a kind of political apathy."

"Either history is really governed by laws, and in that case a truly human-activity is impossible, except perhaps in a technical sense; or human beings really make their own history, and then the task of theory will not be directed to discovering 'laws', but to the elucidation of the conditions with in which human activity unfolds."

"A century after the Communist Manifesto was written and thirty years after the Russian Revolution, the revolutionary movement, which has witnessed great victories and suffered profound defeats, seems somehow to have disappeared. Like a river approaching the sea, it has broken up into rivulets, run into swamps and marshes, and finally dried up on the sands."

"Despite their noisy pretensions, all of them, the "Fourth International," anarchists, and "ultraleftists," are but historical memories, minute scabs on the wounds of the working class, destined to be shed as the new skin readies itself in the depths of its tissues."

"Only one force can arise today to challenge the continuing decay and increasing barbarism of all regimes based upon exploitation: that of the producing class, the socialist proletariat. Constantly increasing in numbers through the industrialization of the world economy, ever more concentrated in the process of production, trained through misery and oppression to revolt against the ruling classes having had the chance to experience the results of its own "leadership," the working class, despite an increasing number of difficulties and obstacles, has ripened for revolution. The obstacles confronting it are not insurmountable. The whole history of the past century is there to prove that the proletariat represents, for the first time in human history, not only a class in revolt against exploitation but a class positively capable of overthrowing the exploiters and of organizing a free an d humane society. Its victory, and the fate of humanity, are in its hands."

"Reification, the essential tendency of capitalism, can never be wholly realized. If it were, if the system were actually able to change individuals into things moved only by economic “forces,” it would collapse not in the long run, but immediately. The struggle of people against reification is, just as much as the tendency towards reification, the condition for the functioning of capitalism. Capitalism can function only by continually drawing upon the genuinely human activity of those subject to it, while at the same time trying to level and dehumanize them as much as possible."

"The woman who goes to bed with a man must put off her modesty with her petticoat, and put it on again with the same."

"All we are now concerned with is the search for “new and improved” version of whatever means are already available for attaining goals such means make possible. The value of the goals themselves is irrelevant … What counts is doing things better than before. Whether such things are worth doing in the first place is no longer a question."

"According to Heidegger, the blind desire for manipulation [of nature] came about because modernity turned reason—which was, for the ancients, and even for the medievals, a source of valuable goals—into a purely instrumental faculty."

"To study the art of living is to engage in one of its forms."

"Both dogmatism and metaphysics … are attempts to project one’s own views on the world, and they are just as much attempts to hide precisely this projection from themselves as well as from their audience."

"For Socrates, virtue was nothing but its own pursuit. And only the promise of happiness is happiness itself."

"Irony, which in Socrates’ case consists of saying “too little,” functions for him just as hyperbole, which is saying “too much,” functions for Nietzsche."

"The one reaction Nietzsche cannot tolerate is indifference, and this is what his use of hyperbole is designed to eliminate."

"Anaximander displays all the symptoms of the intellectual fever spreading through Greece. His universe is no longer a closed box, but infinite in extension and duration. The raw material is none of the familiar forms of matter but a substance without definite properties except for being indestructible and everlasting. Out of this stuff all things are developed, and into it they return... infinite multitudes of other universes have already existed, and been dissolved again into the amorphous mass. The earth is a cylindrical column, surrounded by air; it floats upright... without support or anything to stand on, yet it does not fall because, being in the centre, it has no preferred direction... if it did, this would disturb the symmetry and balance of the whole. The spherical heavens enclose the atmosphere "like the bark of a tree", and there are several layers... to accommodate the various stellar objects. ...The sun is merely a hole... the moon... it phases... due to recurrent partial stoppages of the puncture, and so are the eclipses. The stars are pin-holes in a dark fabric through which we glimpse the cosmic fire filling the space between two layers of "bark". ...it is the first approach to a mechanical model of the universe. ...yet the machinery looks like it had been dreamed up by a surrealist painter... closer to Picasso than to Newton."

"Anaximander the Milesian, affirmed the infinite to be the first principle, and that all things are generated out of it, and corrupted again into it. His infinite is nothing else but matter."

"Anaximandros... pupil and companion of Thales, was like him an astronomer, geographer, and physicist, seeking for a first principle (for which he invented the name); affirming an infinite material cause, without beginning and indestructible, with an infinite number of worlds;—and still showing the Chaldean impulse—speculating curiously on the descent of man from something aquatic, as well as on the form and motion of the earth (figured by him as a cylinder), the nature and motions of the solar system, and thunder and lightning. It seems doubtful whether, as affirmed by Eudemus, he taught the doctrine of the earth's motion; but that this doctrine was derived from the Babylonian schools of astronomy is so probable that it may have been accepted in Miletos in his day."

"Anaximander relies on the accuracy of geometry in matters beyond the range of any kind of verification—in its application to cosmic proportions—and also in contradiction to appearance, which suggests that the sun is about as large in diameter as the width of a human foot. The concept of geometrical similarity is also the precondition for Anaximander's attempt to construct a map of the world."

"The big bang and the steady state debate in some ways echoed that between the ideas of Anaximander and Anaxagoras from two and a half millennia earlier. Anaxagoras had envisaged that at one time "all things were together" and that the motive force for the universe originated at a single point... Anaximander on the other hand wanted a universe determined by "the infinite" and needed an "eternal motion" to explain the balancing process of things coming into being and passing away in an eternal universe... ancient philosophy was debating the alternatives of a creation event starting the universe from a single point versus a continuous creation in an eternal universe."

"All things must in equity again decline into that whence they have their origin for they must give satisfaction and atonement for injustice each in the order of time."

"Anaximander denied the fundamental substance to be... any of the known substances. He taught that the primary substance was infinite, eternal and ageless and... encompassed the world. This... is transformed into the various substances... Theophrastus quotes from Anaximander: "Into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more... for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time." In this... the antithesis of Being and Becoming plays the fundamental role. The primary substance, infinite... ageless... undifferentiated Being, degenerates into... forms which lead to endless struggles. ...Becoming is ...a ...debasement of the infinite Being—a disintegration into the struggle ultimately expiated by a return into that ...without shape or character. The struggle ...is the opposition between hot and cold, fire and water, wet and dry, etc. ...[T]emporary victory ...is the injustice for which they ...make reparation in the ordering of time. ...[T]here is "eternal motion," the creation and passing away of worlds from infinity to infinity."

"In Antiquity, Anaximander understood that the sky continues beneath our feet long before ships had circumnavigated the Earth. ...Only one small original fragment of his writings has survived... Things are transformed one into the other according to necessity, and render justice to one another according to the order of time. From one of the crucial, initial moments of natural science there remains nothing but... this appeal to "the order of time.""

"[[Physics|[P]hysicists]]... try to find a fundamental law of motion for matter from which all elementary particles and their properties can be derived mathematically. This fundamental equation... may refer either to waves of a known type... or to waves... which have nothing to do with any of the known waves or elementary particles. In the first case it would mean that all other elementary particles can be reduced in some way to a few sorts of "fundamental" elementary particles... In the second case all different elementary particles could be reduced to some universal substance... energy or matter, but none of the... particles could be preferred... as... more fundamental. The latter... corresponds to... Anaximander, and... this view is the correct one."

"There cannot be a single, simple body which is infinite, either, as some hold, one distinct from the elements, which they then derive from it, nor without this qualification. For there are some who make this (i.e. a body distinct from the elements) the infinite, and not air or water, in order that the other things may not be destroyed by their infinity. They are in opposition one to another — air is cold, water moist, and fire hot—and therefore, if any one of them were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be by this time. Accordingly they say that what is infinite is something other than the elements, and from it the elements arise."

"The Earth is cylindrical, three times as wide as it is deep, and only the upper part is inhabited. But this Earth is isolated in space, and the sky is a complete sphere in the center of which is located, unsupported, our cylinder, the Earth, situated at an equal distance from all the points of the sky."

"If I accede to Parmenides there is nothing left but the One; if I accede to Zeno, not even the One is left."

"It is said that he attempted to deliver his country from the tyranny of Nearchus. His plot was discovered, and he was exposed to (he most excruciating torments to reveal the names of his accomplices; but this be bore with unparalleled fortitude, and, not to be at last conquered by tortures, he cut off his tongue with his teeth, and spit it into the face of the tyrant. Some say that he was pounded alive in a mortar, and that in the midst of his torments he called to Nearchus, as if to reveal something of importance; the tyrant approached him, and Zeno, as if willing to whisper to him, caught his ear with his teeth, and bit it off."

"Zeno's arguments about motion, which cause so much disquietude to those who try to solve the problems that they present, are four in number. The first asserts the non-existence of motion on the ground that that which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal. [...] The second is the so-called 'Achilles', and it amounts to this, that in a race the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead."

"All skepticism is a kind of idealism. Hence when the skeptic Zeno pursued the study of skepticism by endeavoring existentially to keep himself unaffected by whatever happened, so that when once he had gone out of his way to avoid a mad dog, he shamefacedly admitted that even a skeptical philosopher is also sometimes a man, I find nothing ridiculous in this. There is no contradiction, and the comical always lies in a contradiction. On the other hand, when one thinks of all the miserable idealistic lecture-witticisms, the jesting and coquetry in connection with playing the idealist while in the professorial chair, so that the lecturer is not really an idealist, but only plays the fashionable game of being an idealist; when one remembers the lecture-phrase about doubting everything, while occupying the lecture platform, aye, then it is impossible not to write a satire merely by recounting the facts. Through an existential attempt to be an idealist, one would learn in the course of half a year something very different from this game of hide-and-seek on the lecture platform. There is no special difficulty connected with being an idealist in the imagination; but to exist as an idealist is an extremely strenuous task, because existence itself constitutes a hindrance and an objection. To express existentially what one has understood about oneself, and in this manner to understand oneself, is in no way comical. But to understand everything except one’s own self is very comical."

"Zeno of Elea, 5th c. B.C. thinker, is known exclusively for propounding a number of ingenious paradoxes. The most famous of these purport to show that motion is impossible by bringing to light apparent or latent contradictions in ordinary assumptions regarding its occurrence. Zeno also argued against the commonsense assumption that there are many things by showing in various ways how it, too, leads to contradiction. We may never know just what led Zeno to develop his famous paradoxes. While it is typically said that he aimed to defend the paradoxical monism of his Eleatic mentor, Parmenides, the Platonic evidence on which this view has resided ultimately fails to support it. Since Zeno's arguments in fact tend to problematize the application of quantitative conceptions to physical bodies and to spatial expanses as ordinarily conceived, the paradoxes may have originated in reflection upon Pythagorean efforts to apply mathematical notions to the natural world. Zeno's paradoxes have had a lasting impact through the attempts, from Aristotle down to the present day, to respond to the problems they raise."

"The truth is, that these writings of mine were meant to protect the arguments of Parmenides against those who make fun of him and seek to show the many ridiculous and contradictory results which they suppose to follow from the affirmation of the one. My answer is addressed to the partisans of the many, whose attack I return with interest by retorting upon them that their hypothesis of the being of many, if carried out, appears to be still more ridiculous than the hypothesis of the being of one. Zeal for my master led me to write the book in the days of my youth, but some one stole the copy; and therefore I had no choice whether it should be published or not; the motive, however, of writing, was not the ambition of an elder man, but the pugnacity of a young one."

"In this capricious world nothing is more capricious than posthumous fame. One of the most notable victims of posterity's lack of judgement is the Eleatic Zeno. Having invented four arguments all immeasurably subtle and profound, the grossness of subsequent philosophers pronounced him to be a mere ingenious juggler, and his arguments to be one and all sophisms. After two thousand years of continual refutation, these sophisms were reinstated, and made the foundation of a mathematical renaissance, by a German professor, who probably never dreamed of any connexion between himself and Zeno. Weierstrass, by strictly banishing all infinitesimals, has at last shown that we live in an unchanging world, and that the arrow at every moment of its flight is truly at rest."

"The followers of Heraclitus insisted the Immortal Principle was change and motion. But Parmenides' disciple, Zeno, proved through a series of paradoxes that any perception of motion and change is illusory. Reality had to be motionless."

"Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides, having attempted to kill the tyrant Demylus, and failing in his design, maintained the doctrine of Parmenides, like pure and fine gold tried in the fire, that there is nothing which a magnanimous man ought to dread but dishonor, and that there are none but children and women, or effeminate and women-hearted men, who fear pain. For, having with his own teeth bitten off his tongue, he spit it in the tyrant's face."

"That Anaxagoras regarded the senses as incapable of reaching the truth... is shown by... fragments preserved by Sextus. But we must not... turn him into a sceptic. ... He did say (fr. 21) that "the weakness of our senses prevents our discerning the truth," but this meant... we do not see the "portions"... [e.g.,] the portions of black which are in the white. Our senses simply show us the portions that prevail. He also said... things which are seen give us the power of seeing the invisible, which is the... opposite of scepticism (fr. 21a)."

"It was a happy thought of Anaxagoras to make sensation depend upon irritation by opposites, and to connect it with pain. Many modern theories are based upon a similar idea."

"The cosmology of Anaxagoras is clearly based upon that of Anaximenes... Theophrastos... [states] that Anaxagoras had belonged to the school of Anaximenes. The floating on the air, the dark bodies below the moon, the explanation of the solstices and the "turnings" of the moon by the resistance of air, the explanations given of wind and of thunder and lightning, are all derived from the earlier inquirer."

""There is a portion of everything in everything except , and there are some things in which there is Nous also" (fr. 11). In these words Anaxagoras laid down the distinction between animate and inanimate things. ...[T]he same Nous ..."has power over," ...[i.e.,] sets in motion, all things that have life ...(fr. 12). ...The Nous was the same, but it had more opportunities in one body than another. Man was the wisest... not because he had... better... Nous, but... because he had hands. ...Parmenides ...had ...made the thought of men depend upon ...their limbs."

"As all Nous is the same... plants were regarded as living creatures. ...Plutarch says... [Anaxagoras] called plants "animals fixed in the earth." ...Plants first arose when the seeds... which the air contained were brought down by the rain-water, and animals originated in a similar way."

"The formation of a world starts with a rotatory motion which imparts to a portion of the mixed mass in which "all things are together" (fr. 13), and this... motion gradually extends over... wider space. Its rapidity (fr. 9) produced a separation of the rare and the dense, the cold and the hot, the dark and the light, the moist and the dry (fr. 15). This... produces two great masses, the one... of the rare, hot, light, and dry, called... "Aether"; the other... [of] the opposite qualities... called "Air" (fr. 1). ...the Aether or Fire took the outside while the Air occupied the centre (fr. 15)."