[Lecture Two] Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 2 hours, 37 minutes
Course summary: Presented as two complementary twelve-lecture courses—Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume and Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present—The History of Philosophy covers the whole of western philosophy from its discovery in Ancient Greece to the twentieth century, including Objectivism. Dr. Peikoff argues that philosophy is the means by which we can understand any human culture and, more broadly, the history and changing course of a civilization. Read more »
In this lecture: In this lecture, Dr. Peikoff finishes his examination of the pre-Socratics by contrasting two major schools of thought that contrasted with Pythagorean idealism, the materialists and the skeptics. Peikoff explains the Atomic school’s deterministic approach that led to materialism and the Sophists’ relativism that led to skepticism. The lecture concludes with a summary of Socrates’ main methodological contributions and an examination of Plato’s metaphysics of dualism.
Study Guide
This material is designed to help you digest the lecture content. You can also download below a PDF study guide for the entire course.
| Can you think of any modern examples of the sort of behavior endorsed by the Sophists? |
| How do the sophists arrive at the argument for relativism in ethics? Why does this imply crude egoism? |
| Describe the three types of philosophic school detailed in this lecture. |
| Why does the atomic perspective in metaphysics imply a rejection of free will? |
| What is the basis of the Socratic method? Why is it so valuable even to this day? |
| What characteristics of Plato’s philosophy make it the work of a great genius? |
| Which of the four arguments for Plato’s argument about universals and particulars do you find most compelling? |
| What is the relationship between the world of forms and of particulars? |
| How does Plato’s myth of the demiurge lead to a denial of perfection? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 2:00:40 | In the history of philosophy, there have been both empiricist and rationalist sides to the reason/senses dichotomy. Why did the Greeks take the rationalist side instead of “the senses are valid and good and reason is not” side? |
| 2:03:40 | If the Sophists believe that one cannot know anything, how do they know what a desire is? |
| 2:04:47 | Did atomists hold that all atoms are the same? How do soul atoms differ from regular atoms? |
| 2:05:12 | Please give some additional arguments against mechanistic materialism. |
| 2:16:50 | If, according to Heraclitus, all is flux and nothing exists, how can definitive laws of change exist and why are these not subject to change? Isn’t this logically contradictory? |
| 2:17:20 | What about esthetics? Doesn’t a philosopher, for instance, have to know about music to have a philosophy of music and about painting to have a philosophy of painting? |
| 2:19:29 | If the world is made up of ultimate particles, there must be something between them if there is to be no vacuum. Is that something between them itself made of particles or is it continuous? If it is made of particles, then is there something between them, etc.? |
| 2:21:10 | Do you regard Plato’s metaphysics as being motivated primarily by his ethical viewpoint? |
| 2:23:17 | If, according to Heraclitus, “nothing is and everything is becoming,” how can it be that the quote you read last week from a modern commentator on this subject defined modeling clay as still being merely modeling clay after going through a series of changes in form? |
| 2:24:00 | You said that Socrates was the first philosopher-martyr. Could you tell us about some others? |
| 2:25:52 | According to Plato, what is the status of mythical concepts (which have no actual embodiment in this world)? |
| 2:28:35 | Regarding Plato’s empty space and its relation to matter. |
| 2:29:52 | If Pythagoras’s influence is responsible for the premise that only quantitative statements can be scientific, is it also not Pythagoras’s influence that gives rise to the outright philosophical mysticism and irrationalism of thinkers in abstract sciences such as mathematics? |
| 2:31:15 | Did Cratylus really stop talking? |
| 2:31:20 | Are “philosophical psychology” and “epistemology” synonyms? |
| 2:32:39 | Can you give me a line of progression of Aristotelian thinkers up to today? |
| 2:35:34 | How does Plato account for the fact that particular men are not omniscient if all men are born knowing everything? |