School
Pre-Socratics
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How can you talk about non-being without turning it into a something?
Every morning I practise taiji in the park and every evening I read a few lines of the Laozi with my grandson's dictionary. Chapter 40 says, roughly, that the things of the world are born from being, and being is born from…
Started by Liu Jianguo0 replies80 views -
What did Xenophanes actually say about horses, oxen and the gods, and what was he arguing for?
My students love to quote "if horses could draw, they would draw gods like horses" as a knock-down argument against religion. As a theology teacher I find that interesting, because the man who said it was not an atheist, as far as…
Started by Nikos Stavridis4 replies110 views -
Heraclitus, Vasubandhu, Zhuangzi, Mulla Sadra: four routes to process, or four destinations?
It is often said that four thinkers, with no documented transmission between them, all arrived at a process view of reality: Heraclitus in Greece, Vasubandhu in India, Zhuangzi in China, and much later Mulla Sadra in Safavid Iran. The convergence is real.…
Started by Kenneth Leung Chi-ho5 replies218 views -
A source that is not one of the things it produces: Anaximander’s apeiron and Plotinus’s One
In my library we keep a small display on the Alexandrian Neoplatonists, and I have been rereading Plotinus between cataloguing jobs. What strikes me is a move that appears, in different forms, at both ends of Greek philosophy. Anaximander, very early, said…
Started by Mona Fathy6 replies280 views -
Hui Shi’s Ten Theses: paradoxes for their own sake, or a theory of space?
I am writing my dissertation on the Later Mohist canons, and I keep being drawn sideways to Hui Shi, Zhuangzi's friend and sparring partner. Almost nothing of his own survives. What we have is a list of ten theses preserved in the…
Started by Chen Yuting4 replies178 views -
Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea was a Greek philosopher, a student and defender of Parmenides, whom Plato depicts visiting Athens with his teacher. His book of…
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Thales
Thales of Miletus is traditionally counted as the first Greek philosopher. He left no writings that survive, and what is known of him comes…
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Xenophanes
Xenophanes of Colophon was a Greek poet-philosopher who left Ionia as a young man and spent a long life travelling the Greek world, especially…
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Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos founded a religious and philosophical community at Croton in southern Italy in the later sixth century BCE. He wrote nothing, and…
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Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea was a Greek philosopher of the early fifth century BCE whose hexameter poem survives only in fragments, mostly quoted by later…
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Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus was a Greek thinker of the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE whose single book survives only as fragments quoted…
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Empedocles
Empedocles of Acragas in Sicily was a Greek philosopher, poet, physician and public figure, around whom many legends gathered, including his supposed leap into…
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Democritus
Democritus of Abdera developed, with his teacher Leucippus, the atomist theory of nature. He held that division cannot go on forever: reality consists of…
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Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was a Pre-Socratic philosopher who spent much of his career in Athens, reportedly the first philosopher to settle there. He held…
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Anaximander
Anaximander of Miletus was a Pre-Socratic philosopher, traditionally a pupil or associate of Thales. He held that the source of all things is the…
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Anaximenes
Anaximenes of Miletus was the third of the Milesian Pre-Socratics, after Thales and Anaximander. He held that the underlying principle of all things is…