The Pythagorean Society, II

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The Pythagorean Society, II

• The Pythagoreans regarded numbers spatially One
  is the point, two is the line, three is the
  surface, four is the solid or body. Every
  material body is the expression of the number
  four, since it results, as a fourth term, from
  three constituent elements (points, lines, and
  surfaces). Justice is declared to be four. Five
  is declared to be marriage, because five is the
  product of three (the first masculine number) and
  two (the first feminine number).

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The Pythagorean Society, III

• To the Pythagoreans the earth is not the center
  of the universe. The earth and the planets
  revolve, along with the sun, round the central
  fire or hearth of the universe.

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Heraclitus I

• An Ephesian noble, a melancholy man who expressed
  his contempt for the common herd of citizens as
  well as for the eminent men of the past.
• Many of Heraclituss sayings are pungent in
  character Mans character is his fate, Nature
  loves to hide, All things are in a state of
  flux.

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Heraclitus II

• The original contribution of Heraclitus to
  philosophy is his conception of unity in
  diversity, diversity in unity. One in many, many
  in one. Identity in difference, difference in
  identity. He use to say men do not know how
  what is at variance agrees with itself.
• For him the Urstoff is fire.

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The Eleatics Parmenides, I

• ParmenidesA citizen of Elea (Southern Italy) and
  the founder of the Eleatic School
• He argues that Being, the One, is, and that
  Becoming, change, is illusion.
• In rejecting change and movement, Parmenides
  rejects sense-appearance and appeal to reason. He
  introduces into philosophy the distinction
  between Reason and Sense, Truth and Appearance,
  something of cardinal importance in Platonic
  philosophy.
• His philosophy is not idealism but monistic
  materialism (the reality that the reason
  apprehends is material).

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The Eleatics Parmenides, II

• His first great assertion is that It is. It,
  i.e., Reality, Being, exists and cannot not be.
  It was not first possible, i.e., nothing, and
  then existent it was always existent. It never
  came into being, but simply is. What is, is
  uncreated, indestructible and without end.
• Plato uses the thesis of Parmenides concerning
  the unchangeability of Being and attributes it to
  Ideas rather that the material world.

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The Eleatics Parmenides, III

• Heraclitus affirmed the existence of the One or
  Being but argued that becoming, change and
  tension are essential to the One. Parmenides, on
  the other hand, asserted Being even to the
  exclusion of Becoming, affirming that change and
  movement are illusory. Sense tells us that there
  is change but truth is to be sought, not in
  sense, but in reason and thought.

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The Eleatics Zeno of Elea

• He argues for the impossibility of motion. His
  first argument is as follows Let us suppose that
  you want to cross a stadium. In order to do so,
  you would have to traverse an infinite number of
  points (on the Pythagorean hypothesis). Moreover,
  you would have to travel the distance in finite
  time, if you wanted to get to the other side at
  all. But how can you traverse an infinite number
  of points, and so an infinite distance, in a
  finite time? We must conclude that you cannot
  cross the stadium. Indeed we must conclude that
  no object can traverse any distance whatsoever
  and that all motion is consequently impossible

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Anaxagoras I

• A Persian citizen who came with the Persian army
  in the year of Salamis (480/479 BC) and settled
  in Athens. He was the first philosopher to settle
  in Athens which was later to become such a
  flourishing center of philosophic study.
• From Plato we hear that the young Pericles was a
  pupil of Anaxagoras

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Anaxagoras II

• Anaxagoras accepted the theory of Parmenides that
  Being neither comes into being nor passes away,
  but is unchangeable.
• For him the Urstoff is Nous or mind but he
  described it in material terms as being the
  thinnest of all things. He made Nous purer than
  any material thing but never reached the idea of
  the immaterial or incorporeal thing.

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Architecture

• Most important structures were temples
• Generic Greek architectural style was called
  post-beam-triangle construction.
• Doric Style the earliest temple style, a 4-sided
  structure with a porch winding all the way around
  an inner room, or cella (p.47)
• Temple of Hera

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Sculpture

• Kouros and Kore freestanding statues of youths
  and maidens
• Conventional memorial sculptures intended to
  honor the dead, but not the individual
• The archaic smile
• Early ones seem Egyptian
• Ptoon Kouros
• Peplos Kore