PHIL0S0PHICAL ESSAYS

The following lectures, compiled into a booklet, were originally given to my students at the University of the Andes, Venezuela, during the First Semester 1982. I have translated them from Spanish into English, to be used by my students of the Department of Political and Administrative Studies, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Primarily as background material for final year studies, which concern Political and Philosophical Thought, and more specifically Scientific Socialism.

Port Harcourt, February, 1983.

A. The Origins of Greek Materialism: From the Sixth to the Fifth Century B.C.

1. Materialist Origin

About 6,000 B.C. homo sapiens said farewell to primitive communism in the Mediterranean Region; after having experienced the neolithic revolution, the great international agricultural revolution, it stepped forward into „civilisation“, forming various cultures along rivers and on islands. Agriculture and ancient city life enabled a higher form of specialisation of labour, division of labour, development of technology, and the emergence of specific classes, and therewith class struggles.

The island culture of Crete, which had been divided by its „discoverer“ Sir Arthur Evans into two „Minoan“ periods, i.e., approximately flourishing between 2600 and 1150 B.C., had reached its acme around 1570-1425 B.C. It ended with the destruction of the Palace of Knossus, the result of class struggle of the common people against their new Achaean rulers. A great fire razed the city to the ground. This Cretan civilisation had intensive cultural relations with the various ancient Oriental civilisations - Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Egypt - especially with Mykanean Hellas.

Around 2000 B.C., Indo-European peoples from the north had invaded Hellas, these Ionians and Aiolians had subjugated the native peoples. By 1500 B.C., Hellas had become a strong warrior state, led by the Achaeans. They invaded Crete, and ruled the region from Mykenai. Until the famous Cretan revolt against these Achaean rulers, the Cretan culture had a fundamental influence on the Greek mainland. Towards the middle of the 12th century B.C., great population migrations took place in the eastern Mediterranean region; the Illyrians invaded Mykanean Hellas from the north, this so-called „Dorian invasion“, destroyed the Cretan-Mykanean culture. The native Greek peoples, as far as they were not destroyed, subjugated or assimilated, could only survive in Arcadia, i.e., in the interior of the Peloponnes, and in Attica. Other authocthonous groups migrated to Asia Minor and the neighbouring islands, this is known as the „first colonisation“.

The Dorian invaders acculturated themselves only sporadically with the destroyed Cretan-Mykenaen civilisation. In fact, a cultural degeneration set in, the language was destroyed, even iron replaced bronze as means of production. Until 1200 B.C. various Dorian kingdoms existed in ancient Greece, basically, Hellas was a slave-owning society. The kings were not absolute rulers, like in Egypt or Babylonia. They were advised by a Council of Elders. From 1200 B.C. onward, there was a general development from monarchy to aristocracy, then to an alteration of tyranny and democracy. At first, a mighty aristocratic slave-owning class conquered power in various city-states, only in Sparta, Cyprus, Macedonia and Epirus, kingdoms remained.

In the various poleis, Phoenician writing was introduced, thus until today the epic works of Homer and Hesiod are preserved for us to study. Although fragmentary, they throw light on Hellas of around 1000 B.C. The Greeks changed the Phoenician alphabet to suit their language, and added vowels, instead of only consonants. A notable product of this new Hellenic civilisation was the „Homeric poems“. It is not clear whether Homer as an individual ever lived, however, experts place these epic poems between 750 and 550 D.C., thus the Iliad and Odyssey were probably written by a series of Greek poets.

The Homeric poems express the ruling ideas of the ruling slave-owning aristocracy. Religion in Homer is not religious, in our modern sense. The gods were the gods of a conquering class, and not, for example, fertility gods. The Olympic gods differed from ordinary human beings only in the sense that they possessed supernatural powers and that they were immortal. Morally they were human indeed, and were surely not awe-inspiring.

Of great relevance is that Homer is a product of Ionia, i.e., of Asia Minor and the neighbouring Greek islands. The most important commercial city in Ionia was Miletus, the birthplace of Greek philosophy, but also of materialism. Hellas as „cradle of European culture and civilisation” was enabled through the „second colonisation“ (750 - 550 B.C.), that is, the further extension of Hellas, especially to Asia Minor and to the various Mediterranean regions and islands.

2. The Age of the „Seven Wise Men”

Work created thinking. By 750 B.C., due to division of labour, this dialectical relation was already lost. In all slave-owning and feudalist societies, the ruling classes, the creators of ruling ideas, had scorned labour, especially manual labour. The development of commerce and trade enabled Greek society, that is, Greek thinking, the jump into another floor of the superstructure skyscraper, into political and juridical relations. No knights and no clergy had emigrated to the Greek colonies, to Asia Minor and the islands. Not in the metropolitan homeland, in Athens, but in the colonies Philosophy and Materialism came into existence. There were mainly merchants, artisans and slaves; monarchies and feudal times were already long forgotten in this region. Philosophy came into being in a highly developed slave-owning commercial society. Also, in Greater Hellas, there was not a clerical-priestly caste to spread extravagant religious ideas - the region was basically „heathen“. By then, the number 7 (seven) was already a „miraculous“, „holy“ or, at least, a mysterious number. Homer had seven birthplaces: the hexameter: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Ithaca, Pylos, Argos and Athenai. Already before we had seven „world wonders“; then Aeschylos’ drama „Seven Against Thebes“, the Seven Kings of Rome, or even, the Seven Hills of Rome; in the late Middle Ages, we find the seven liberal arts, septem artes liberales, grammar, rhetorics, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. When Jerusalem was captured, in 70 A.D., one of the precious things robbed was the famous „sacred“ seven-armed candlestick, in 455 it landed in Carthogo, then in 534 it was brought to Constantinople, around 565 it was back in Jerusalem, since then it is lost.

The „Seven Wise Men“ of ancient Greece were earthly, practical men, most of them organised in matters of the State. Each one of them had an opinion, a gnome (Latin: sententia), that is a wise expression (or more) of a very precise form, easily applicable to practical life. Some famous ones were; Bias of Priene, Solon, Thales, Pittakos of Mytilene, Periandros, Epimenides, the Schyte, Anacharsis, and Cheilon. Although they were more than seven, yet the first three were always mentioned in this sonorous group.

Cicero cited one of Bias’ gnomic expressions in his Paradoxa: omnia mecum porto mea, everything that I possess, I carry with me. This he is supposed to have said, when he was forced to leave his home-city and flee. Diogenes Laertius quoted Cheilon in his work, Cheilon, I, 3, 70, as having said, de mortius nil nisi bene, in free translation this means: concerning the dead, one should speak in a good and friendly way, because they cannot defend themselves. During the bitter class struggle between the nobility and common people, around 620 B.C., Pittakos was elected as referee in the social conflict; he was an excellent protagonist of the tyrants, and forced many noblemen to leave Lesbos, he is recorded as having been a great statesman. Another famous statesman was Solon, an Athenian aristocrat (born around 640 B.C.). In his famous constitution of Athens, all Athenians became equal before the law, but the laws concerning „rich and poor” remained valid. The interests of the rich were called a timocracy, that of the poor seisachtheia. Each party received something, but none of them was satisfied. His constitution remained under the reign of Peisistratos, and was only changed, in a radical democratic sense, by Kleisthenes in 508 B.C. Periandros was a tyrant, ruling 627 - 587 B.C., in Corinth; he was one of the mightiest rulers of that epoch; like most tyrants, he favoured art and science. About Epimenides, whose life is very little known, some place his acme around 500 B.C., others even around 600 B.C., miraculous theological things are told. He is supposed to have fallen into a deep sleep as a child, which had lasted 57 years, he became 299 years old, other sources give a modest age, 154 years. Anacharsis was a friend and adviser of Solon. Thales of Miletus (6213 - 5476 B.C.), philosopher and political adviser, probably of Phoenician parentage, is the most well-known and famous of the „Seven Wise Men’°. However, we have no knowledge of any writing of Thales; some uncertain fragments of his gnomic statements are preserved in quotations of later authors. How exactly he had formulated his famous philosophic statement we do not know, whether it was; „water is best“, „water is the arche“ or „water is everything“.

3. Concerning Bias

Omnia mecum porto mea: the philosophic drama commences, the epilogue begins. Bias steps on the stage, backwards to the „I“, who had entered before. That is, how he carries everything that belongs to him, with him. Nothing else is near or dear to him, his interest is inward. And yet, Bias is a „wise man“, a practical man. This gnome, wise attitude, is a message to his society, although it sounds at first private, to free oneself from the social burden, yet, Bias is carrying something, something social with him - without social human beings nothing can be thought or even carried.

4. Concerning Thales

Gnomes, wise statements alone do not change the world. Thales, as first „wise man“, stepped out of this tradition, into praxis, into philosophy. In a modern sense, he established the relationship between revolutionary theory and revolutionary praxis in a dialectical manner. He did not speak about the origin of things in a half mythical sense, for example, still as Pherekydes did. Thales focussed his attention away from the „I“ of human beings, turned, in contradiction to Bias, to the outer reality, which had to be demythologised. He is primarily concerned about the origin and essence of things. For him, this essence is not the titan, the god of time, Chronos, the father of Zeus and Hera, it is also not a kind of world-egg. What is ruling in the world is neither Zeus nor Hera, it is something very material and cool: water is the primordial element, from which everything comes into being, and into which everything passes away. Water is origin, beginning and essence at the same time. Nevertheless, every beginning is very hard. Thales thought that the magnet possesses a psyche, but not a soul in a religious or Christian sense. Thus the „ghost“ is still in everything. But the general essence of things was clear, it stood in water. Thales, at home in the commercial city of Miletus, was very much acquainted with commodity exchange relations. Water became the exchange element, comparable to money in commercial life. The differences and changes of things, Thales explained, as first philosopher, by the technique of condensation and-evaporation of water. Water is the One, the uniform primordial element, otherwise nothing else exists.

5. Concerning Anaximander (about 610 to 547 B.C.), also of Miletius

Anaximander is considered as both pupil and friend of Thales. His famous writing, Concerning the Phýsis (Nature), is lost, only a very important fragment is preserved. Later many philosophers will write works with the title, „Concerning Nature“. However, the word, „ph/sis“, at that early stage, cannot be translated as „nature“, in a modern sense. It had the connotation of something which gives birth, which brings into existence, like a womb, or even a mother mater (Greek: hyle).

From the preserved fragment of Anaximander, we learn the following: He did not consider water as the origin and essence of everything, also not like later Greek natural philosophers, air, fire or earth, or even all four together, but it is the apeiron, the Infinite. The apeiron is timeless, has no limits and no shape, but it is material. It is not composed of any of the known elements, it is chaos, a mixture of all of them, even the unknown ones, but not in their pure known form. „Chaos“ is a mythical concept, but it is immediately conceptualised as a material term, a substantial condition, a material essence, without characteristics, that is, without limitations or specific conditions. Apeiron is that which is common to all things, out of which all of them come into existence.

This Infinite did not come into existence, also cannot pass away - it is eternal self-moving matter. This hýle is hylozoistic, and this apeiron is later quoted by Aristotle in his book concerning „Metaphysics“, where he develops the concept „matter“, as „in-possibility-being“, as dynámei on. It can take on all kinds of forms. Things emerge out of the apeiron, depending on their weight. Due to the contradiction of coldness and warmth, water first emerges. And in this Anaximander is very dialectical, water is the synthesis of this contradiction. From the contradictions in water, new substances, with new contradictions emerge, thus the earth, the stars, the human beings came into existence.

The famous sentence of Anaximander, which is preserved, is very difficult to translate, not only because of the fact that the meaning of the concepts used are different today, but also because in the original practically every word has a specific meaning, which is lost in modern translation. The following is a free translation of Ernst Bloch’s German translation, and also, in my words, his explanation of this sentence.

Firstly, the original in German:

Bloch: „Woraus aber die Dinge ihr Entstehen haben, dahin geht auch ihr Vergehen nach der Notwendigkeit, denn sie zahlen einander Strafe and Busse für ihre Rücklosigkeit nach der festgesetzten Zeit.“

I just give Hermann Diels’ translation of this text, who is an authority on the pre-Socratic fragments, to indicate the difficulty: „Woraus aber das Werden ist den seienden Dingen, in das hinein geschieht auch ihr Vergehen nach der Schuldigkeit; denn sie zahlen einander gerechte Strafe and Busse für ihre Ungerechtigkeit nach der Zeitordnung.“ Bertrand Russell, the great English philosopher, translated this sentence as follows:

„Into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more, as is ordained, for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time.“ Now, my attempt to translate Bloch’s translation:

„Into that from which things come into existence, due to necessity, they pass away, for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice, according to the given time.“

„Due to necessity“ at that time had the meaning „according to habit“, it means a firm, generally accepted habit. „To one another“ does not appear in all the texts or quotations preserved; if it is absent in the sentence, then it means that the things do not pay reparation or make satisfaction to one another for their individual coming-into-being, but to the apeiron, to the divine one, as a kind of sacrifice. However, in all probability this „to one another“ is very important in Anaximander’s philosophy, contrary to Bias, thus, it must have been included in the original statement. We live with this „to one another“ in the real world, it is of vital importance.

In the process of their coming-into-existence, the things, in their individual strife, file themselves away. „The given time“ is simply history, understood in our sense. This phrase has a tone of the „Oracle of Delphi“, of the place where the Divine, Chronos, speaks, thus it is not easily to be understood. It not only necessitates deep reflection, but also precise interpretation, especially for us, who do not know the living meaning of this Greek word anymore. Thus this sentence of Anaximander can be interpreted in manifold ways, everything possible is contained in it. So far, the comments of Bloch, concerning Anaximander’s mysterious apeiron gnome.

As mentioned before, Anaximander stated that out of the apeiron, out of the indefinite, firstly the contradiction, cold - warm, comes, dialectically water is produced. Next to water, other contradictions are created, hardly building the earth. These again divide and mix, forming the many, a contradiction, then again, the individual or special in the many things. Things are in permanent strife with one another, battling for and against the place where they are, in the process of coming-into-existence. This „special existence form“ of the things, in the process of becoming, forms a contradiction to their original form, in the womb of the apeiron, this is „injustice“ or „inconsideration“ to the mater. The indefinite, infinite, timeless existence of the apeiron is justice. The injustice of the things, coming-into-being, forms a contradiction. The penalty of justice, according to time, to history, for this „becoming“ is „passing away”, necessarily things have to pass away. By „passing away“ they make reparation for their „injustice“.

Similar pre- or crypto-philosophic ideas can be found in Oriental and Near Eastern thinking of ??? especially in theology and religion. Just like, in Judaism and Christianity, God created everything, and everything returns finally to God, so for Anaximander, all things, according to the end of given time, return to the womb of mother apeiron. Anaximander is the first materialist philosopher who had introduced dialectic, the production of contradictions, and then again contradictions of contradictions. The next two philosophers, who had developed and understood dialectics to this fundamental intensity, are Hegel and Marx.

Finally, important is that Anaximander’s apeiron is a primal substance, „encompassing all the worlds“, which is alive and permanently fermenting. Aristotle gave us an excellent reason why Anaximander took the apeiron as arché: „in order that becoming must not end“ (Physics, III, 8, 208 a 8). Also for the first time matter is explained, not as something only to be perceived by our senses, but in an abstract, logical and cognitive manner. Also, not only is the apeiron eternal, but dialectical change, qualitative change, is eternal - motion is permanent.

6. Heracleitus and Parmenides

We are not going to treat all the materialist philosophers of ancient Greece, but only those who have directly contributed to the forward development of our philosophical knowledge of matter, its contents and laws. The next model, the two contradictory poles, Heracleitus and Parmenides, is of great significance. In a certain sense, they are contradictions of Anaximander$ and thus became contradictions in relation to each other.

Heracleitus of Ephesus (535-475 B.C)

Numerous fragments of Heracleitus have survived, I will cite some of the famous ones below. „This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living Fire, with measures kindling ‘and measures going out.“ „Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attune- …(3 pages missing in the Original, p. 7, 8, 9)

B. Materialism in Greek Philosophy: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle

„Hýle“ or „Arché“ - Search for the Primordial Substance

The first Greek philosopher who had used the concept „arché“ (the principium, origin) was Anaximander (or Anaximandros), and for all the so-called „pre-Socratic“ philosophers, this arché was a hýle (substance, matter), this applied also to the apeiron of Anaximander. All of them had tried to demythologise the world, to explain the world out of itself. The hýle was alive, that is why historians of philosophy have also called them hylozoists and their materialism „hylozoism“ (hýle - substance; zoe - life).

In Egyptian, Indian, Chinese or African mythology, there are innumerous examples about the search for the essence of being; Zeus, Jehovah, Osiris, Waqlimi, Unkulunkulu, Tixo, the Olympus, the Oracle of Delphi, or the Nirwana, are all such mythical creations. However, declaring the arché as a simple hýle, as water, air, earth or fire, was a specific Greek innovation - although crypto-traces of such a chthonic (chthon - earth) explanation of the essence of being we already find in early pre-Thalian times in Egypt and India. Thales made the step from crypto-materialism and pre-scientific investigation to philosophía, as the first sophós, wise man. Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heracleitus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, etc. all continued this philosophic tradition to demythologise the world of angels, devils, ghosts, and above all, from supreme gods.

Surely, it was a wry small step, made around 600 B.C.; and it seems unimportant, not guided by great intellectual superiority and scientific precision nonetheless, it was the first non-mechanical, dialectical, hylozoistic materialist explanation of nature, of the universe, far more advanced than the ideas of Berkeley or Heidegger of very recent times, or the ruling ideas of our bourgeois epoch, and their reflections in theological and religious beliefs in Africa, Asia and South America.

Greek materialism was not mechanical (in the strictest sense, not even by Democritus) and its explanation of the origin, the mater (mother, womb), was very simple and sober; the principium was not „holy water“, but simply chthonic (not tonic), that is, earthly water. Hýle, in ancient Greek, simply meant an earthly substance „wood“; imagine the process to search for wood, a substance, and then to find water: hýle, in Greek, is equivalent to materia, in Latin. Thus, etymologically „matter“ (English), „Materie“ (German) and „materia“ (Spanish) all developed from mater (Latin) - the mother, the womb of being. Also the hýle, the materia, the substance, is a zoon, is a living being, is alive, gives birth to life, like a mother.

In a strict scientific and philosophic sense, when matter is alive, and can produce life, then potentially, in the sense of Aristotle’s dynámei on, in its dialectical essence, it contains subjectivity, the ability to be a subject, or to produce a subject or subjects. All this was already implicit in the hylozoism of ancient Greek materialist philosophy. Only because of this, Marx could later speak about the dialectical process of humanisation of Nature and naturalisation of Man, the dialectical contradiction and unity of Subject-Object in the Universe.

Water (Thales), air (Anaximenes), fire (Heracleitus), the three together plus earth (Empedocles), all four substances plus the nous (the quintessence or spirit, Anaxagoras) all these were primordial substances, mixed with nothing else. The same applied to Anaximander’s apeiron (the Infinite and Indivisible) or Parmenides’ hen (one, World Sphere), even Pythagoras’ number; and definitively, Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus understood their Átomon as material, indivisible and eternal, not to be mistaken with the modern conception of an atom in physics. Anaxagoras also did not Understand his fifth element, the nous, in a mythological, religious or theological sense as a soul or spirit, butt as a material substance. as „Vernunft“ (German: meaning reason). Anaximander even went so far, as to give the gods an earthly material character, he declared his material apeiron as divine.

The ancient Greek philosophers were empirically and practically searching for and investigating sophía, which simply meant wisdom, with a direct relation to knowledge and science. The German equivalent of sophía, that is, „Weisheit“, derived from Middle High German, Wisheit or Wistoum, contains „Wissen“ (knowledge, understanding, comprehension) and even „Wissenschaft“ (science) already in it. Thales, as first philósophos (philos - friend, comrade, lover; sophía - wisdom) was a lover of sophía, that is, a sophós, a wise man. In this, like Socrates, who had called himself for the first time a philósophos, he differed from the Sophists, the sophistaí, who were only teachers, lecturers or professors of sophía. We have the same problem in contemporary universities, where students should be taught about the processes of the universe, universals, universality, etc., but unfortunately, there is a chronic lack of wise men and philosophers, teaching theoría-praxis in the various disciplines of universal knowledge. For the time being, due to our ruling class educational systems, we have to be satisfied with a majority of sophistaí, to whom could be said in the words of Boethius: si tacuisses philosophus mansisses, if you had remained silent, you would have remained a philosopher.

In ancient Greece, to study philosophy, and to qualify as a philosopher, one had to acquire wisdom and knowledge in a universal and praxical sense. A quick glance at the various disciplines, which were originally contained within philosophy, studied by some of the great Greek philosophers, gives us a concrete idea about the difference between a sophistes (a teacher of wisdom) and a philósophos (a lover of wisdom).

Thales was a statesman, a military engineer, an astronomer, a geographer, a viticulturer, a meteorologist, a merchant, a mathematician, a panpsychologist, etc. Anaximander was historian, cosmologist, physicist, astronomist, astrologist, geologist, cosmogonist, meteorologist, geographer, biologist, anthropologist, and probably even a seismologist. What Heracleitus, Plato, Aristotle or Democritus all were, measured by contemporary individual sciences and their sub-disciplines, would fill many pages. However, let us continue with Socrates, of whom we are not sure, whether he ever had lived, or if he was just a creation of the genius of Plato. However, he is supposed to have been declared as the wisest man by the Oracle of Delphi, and was the first person to have called himself a philósophos.

Socrates (probably lives from 469-399 B.C)

Anaxagoras, born in 500 B.C. in Klazomenai, Asia Minor, who became a friend of Pericles, brought philosophy to Athens, At the same time, the Sophist movement spread, gradually developing book printing. Anaxagoras’ book „Concerning the physis“ was heavily criticised, and due to asebeia, impietu, godlessness, blasphemy of the gods, he was banished to Lampsakos. In this intellectual atmosphere, Socrates began his occupation as philosopher, attacking the sophistaí, and introducing the art of interrogation, the dialektiké. We mainly know about him from Xenophon, Plato or Aristotle, and we either know a lot about him, or very little - in any case, this problem cannot be solved anymore.

Dialektiké was for Socrates an epistemology of moral, wise action. According, to Plato, he had argues that from the trees, mountains or other things outside in nature he could learn very little, but mainly from people in the polis, in the city. Furthermore, he could learn from his daimonion, an inner voice, an inner Oracle of Delphi. But this private daimonion, which Socrates always has with him, does not teach him about the Good, the summum bonum, it only warns him under specific circumstances. It does not really mediate knowledge to Socrates about what interested him most, the essence (ousía or to tí en eínai) of virtue (arete). The Good is for him the general and useful, everything r which serves practical, public and communal life, but the content of this virtues, which is valid for everyone, and which everyone is acting according to, once it has been recognised, is firstly defined negatively. While strolling through the market of Athens, Socrates exclaimed that there are many things which he does not need at all. Already here is noticeable the Cynic needlessness or even stoicism. The positive aspects of Socratic morality are even more difficult to define. The aim of his ethics is righteous action for the sake of happiness, but this conception is very vague, it could be interpreted in a hedonistic, Cynical or even Kantian sense. Nevertheless, for Socrates arete, virtue, is true human being, we just need to recognise, to become conscious of it.

Plato (427 - 347 B.C.) – Eros and Idea

The so-called „pre-Socratic“ philosophers did not deny the existence of a psyché or soul, only it was material: for Thales it was the „ghostly“ force which moves the magnet; by Anaximander it was breath, air; for Heracleitus it was special warm and dry fire; for Anaxagoras it was the nous, the fifth element; for Democritus it was an extra number of fire átomos. The great philosophers after Democritus, Socrates himself, Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, were everything else than materialists - a lonely exception was Epicurus.

As we have seen with Socrates already, thinking about the arché or cause (aitía) of everything became of a secondary nature, the doctrine of ethics, concerning arete, gained relevance. With Socrates’ famous maxim: Know Thyself, Greek materialism was cooling down, but its light was not completely extinguished - low flames continued to flicker in Aristippus, much higher in Epicurus, lower in the Stoics and the poet with fire, Lucretius - only Epicurus, with his specific theory of the „fall of the atoms“, furthering Democritus’ ideas, made an essential contribution.

Until now, we have dealt with the philosophic model, concerning a Subject Object relation, of Heracleitus Parmenides. We will continue to analyse other models in the history of philosophy.

Now, let us move from Socrates to Plato, or perhaps more correct, from the Socratic Plato to the Platonic Plato. However, according to ancient Greek reports and writings, Plato was the most devoted pupil of Socrates. Of relevance are the various voyages of Plato, which had brought him into contact with the Pythagoreans, with the ideas of the Egyptian priestly caste, but also with philosophic thinking in Lower Italy and Syracuse. Around 387 B.C. he founded a school of philosophy in Athens, the Academy. Thereafter he interrupted his lecturing activities, and made two further journeys to Syracuse, like Zenon (ox Zeno) before, who found a tragic end, he tried to advise the tyrant to establish an ideal state, an utopia. Changing praxis entered Greek thought, but Plato’s social utopia still had a hierarchical social structure. This venture nearly ended with his tragic death, but he was more lucky than Zenon - he escaped and returned to Athens, where he taught until he died in 347 B.C.

All Plato’s works of prose are extant, including some false ones. All of them are written in dialogue form; except the Laws, in all of them Socrates is the main figure. In the so-called Socratic-period, Plato wrote: The Apology, Kriton, Euthyphron, Laches, Charmides, Protagoras and Georgias. In these writings, Plato narrated about Socrates’ defence speech, his time in jail, obedience to law; concerning piety (Euthyphron), bravery (Laches) and friendship (Charmides); with Protagoras began the doctrine concerning the arete, and the struggle against the sophistaí especially in Georgian, rhetoric, that is, the dialektiké is developed. Then, we find a transition period of the mature Plato, but still under the influence of Socratic philosophy: at that time, Menon (the doctrine of anamnesis, recollection, re-remembrance), the Symposion (concerning éros), Phaidon (concerning immortality and the report of Socrates’ death), the Politeia (the ideal state) and Phaidros (the strive towards the world of ideas - éros) were written. In his more mature late period, many dialogues appeared, which extended his doctrines, criticised them, and partially arrived at completely different conclusions - it is very difficult to ascertain whether this late mature Plato was the real Plato, transcending Socrates. In fact, it is very difficult to find a logical thread through his works, to determine what exactly was the essence of his doctrines.

However, for our model construction of philosophy, relevant is his doctrine concerning éros and logos (reason) as central theme of his world and supra-world model of philosophy. In Greek mythology Eros was the God of Love, the son of Aphrodite, in Latino Venus. For Plato he is neither her son, nor a god, only a half-god, existing between mortality and immortality. In the Symposion, Diotima told Socrates that Eros is the son of Poros (wealth) and Penia (poverty). In Eros an inexorable dialectic between wealth and poverty, between have and have-not takes place; he is in the middle of knowledge (gnosis) and ignorance (agnosis). Plato applied the Socratic dialectic between pure concepts and categories; these he elevated to independent beings, to the original images of pictures of all things, to ideas.

With the being of idea, Plato made Parmenides’ hen kai pan, the One, together with the dialectics of Zenon, who defended this unomnia, victorious over Heracleitus’ panta rhei, over becoming. The ideas can only be comprehended via the soul (psyche), which has gyros, a drive inwards, this can only be realised in pure contemplation, in theoría. Thus éros is valid for the supra-world of ideas - our concrete material world is for Plato pure illusion; all worldly, earthly things are just shadows of images of this real supra-world of the ideas. Not-Being is for Plato matter, something of great insignificance. It is responsible that some appearances cannot participate in the ideas. In Phaidros, Eros is related to beauty, to the psyché, to the divine, but later the same Plato reduced the arts to the level of reflection of the reflection of the ideas, even stating that poetry portrays lies.

The concept hýle, the equivalent of matter, as a philosophic concept only appeared by Aristotle for the first time. As we have seen, for Plato matter, (or its equivalent) is the indefinite, the opposite of that which is, or is formed; for him it is to kenón, empty space, the vacuum or void. Of course, this Nothing (matter) was mixed with all being things, at the first stage, in a mathematical or geometric manner, so to say, with the forms at the doorstep towards the, world of ideas. For Plato, matter is indeterminate; it has nothing in common with our current matter concept, it has no form, cannot be perceived. For Plato, philosophía is the „vision of the truth“, the shining of the Alétheia (truth), the veritas in us; it has much in common with Spinoza’s „intellectual love of God“ as „wisdom“, the crown of philosophy. Only, for Plato, philosophy is still the „love of wisdom“. This vision of Plato’s world of ideas is very important; we will encounter it later again by Plotinus, the neo-Platonist, as Original Light. The Beautiful (kalos; Latin: pulcher) became by Plotinus the shining of the idea, the original light, whose shine still continued in the appearances of things. Eros, amor, is the force, the drive towards philosophía, episteme and gnosis (scientific knowledge), the lifting force to take off from the field of sense perception, flying towards the supra-world of ideas. In this Platonic Eros, Ernst Bloch sees traces of not-yet-determined matter, „an investigation of tendency and latency with the éros to the not-yet-becoming, the not-yet-achieved.“

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) – Not Yet Accomplished Entelecheía

At the age of 18, Aristotle, the son of a Greek medical doctor of Stageiros, left for Athens and became a pupil of Plato in his Academy. In 342 B.C. he went to Asia Minor and became the teacher of Alexander the Great; in 335 B.C. he founded an independent school, the Lykeion, in which he taught his pupils; the peripatos was the curriculum which his students had to absolve. After Alexander’s death, he was accused of impiety, asebeia (just like Zenon, Anaxagoras, Socrates and Plato), and he had to flee; he died in Chalkis in 322 B.C. Aristotle did extensive writing in dialogue form, however, only his esoteric works, used for teaching purposes, are extant; the exoteric ones, meant for a larger reading public, are all lost. Among the extent works, the most famous are the Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Metaphysics, Physic and Historia Animalium.

Aristotle reversed the whole process of the ideas, from the abstract supraworld to the real concrete world. The ideas are brought down, back into their process of becoming. A development, a relationship between ideas and appearances (or phenomena), in fact, a dialectical development between them now takes place. From an indefinite substance to a definite one, to a specific form in it. In the Logic of Aristotle there is a development of concept and judgement towards a definite end. The world is now a process, development, a development of forms. These forms build matter, to achieve higher forms of telos (aim, task, endeavour). Like later in the philosophic thoughts of Avicenna and Avicebron, development is also eductio formarum ex materia, the extraction, in a dialectical sense, of the form from matter.

Aristotle changed the Platonic Eros - the drive in philosophic man - in a cosmopolitical drive towards a lively and inorganic world, into entelecheía (derived from en - in; telos (aim); and échein: to have), to that which has its aim in itself. The idea is now contained in the phainómenon, and the dialectical action of permanently taking out forms of matter, and matter out of forms, this huge universal process was exactly reflecting the social move away from the Greek polis towards the Great Hellenic Empire of Alexander the Great. Aristotle was transcending Socrates and Plato, moving from the polis to Great Hellas.

In the thing, in Being, is at the same time the telos (aim), which it wants to bring into existence, the entelecheia. Form (morphe) and matter (hýle) are central categories for Aristotle; although morphé as essence (ousía, to ti en einai), cause (aitia) and aim (telos) of a thing (Greek: chrema or pragma; Latin: res or ens; German: das Ding or die Sache; Spanish: cosa) is different than substance, matter or hýle, nevertheless, in the last analysis, by Aristotle, there is no division between form and matter. It is a subject-object relation which cannot be separated, due to its dialectical relation and inter-connection. Form as the active, subjective element, the energeia, is dependent on matter as possibility (dýnamis), similarly, matter as the passive, objective element is dependent on the form for its full realisation. Thus Aristotle had interconnected the hýle concept of the „pre-Socratic“ philosophers with the Pythagorean-Platonic idea. Matter Aristotle determined three-fold:

Firstly, as Could-Being in matter, in the sense of what is still without concept, is accidental, as to symbebekóta (chance, accident). In the sense of Bloch, this is still not yet formed, negative utopia; that which blocks the road, which could end in Nothing.

Secondly, matter as Kata to dynatón, according-to-possibility-being. As kata to dynatón, matter puts limits to the development of the entelecheía, not enabling all kinds of developments at all possible times.

Thirdly, matter as dynámei on, in-possibility-being. It is the still indefinite, undetermined, formless possibilities in the world, having in latency and tendency the dynamics and probabilities to be realised. Prom Plato’s Not-Being (to kenón) as matter, his entrance towards the world of ideas, Aristotle made dynámei on, matter as womb, as mater of all forms and things.

However, matter in its pure passive form, as potentia, pure theoría without the active form of entelecheía, energy, praxis, cannot bloom, blossom or be realised. The relation between matter and form, between dýnamis and energeía, although not explicitly expressed by Aristotle, should be thought as motion, movement. Thus, that matter brings form out of itself does exist in embryonic form in the philosophy of Aristotle. Later Avicenna and Avicebron will state this more clearly.

Thus there is an utopian function, a concrete substantial utopian function in matter, a yearning to take higher forms, a pregnancy, in which the very forms assist to give birth to becoming-being in future. And also in the concept of matter of Aristotle, we find the dialectical subject-object relation between dýnamis and energeía, the passive and active elements of existence - in short, a praxis-theoría relation in a historical and universal sense.

C. History and the Contents of the Concept Matter: From Greek Antiquity to the Renaissance

Not Always the Same

Wise things may have been thought seven times already, but when they are thought again, at another time, at another place, then they are not the same anymore. Not only the Wise Man has changed in the meantime, but also that which is to be thought about.

Searching for the Arché, the Principium

Concerning the origin of all existence, the basic principle of Everything, surely thinkers have thought about since two million years, long before the birth of the Seven Wise Men of ancient Greece. At some time or the other every human being asks itself, Who am I?, Where do I come from?, Where do I go?, Who are we?, etc. The answers given to such questions, as far as our records go back historically, and we know almost nothing about philosophic thought of Africa and Latin America before 500 B.C., were primarily of a mystical, mythical, superstitious or magical nature. Ever: the questions were asked in a superstitious or pre-religious fashion.

Nevertheless, on the continent of Africa, as early as 2000 B.C. in the old Egyptian slave-owning society already crypto-materialistic, atheistic conceptions of the world, nature, the cosmos developed. These ideas and thoughts then already conflicted with the Pharaon slave-owner ruling class religious ideology. It seems from the origin, from the arché, that those who were oppressed, exploited and discriminated were the ones who tried to explain the world, nature, the cosmos out of itself, in a modern sense, they were searching for substance, matter, as the basic explanation of everything. According to a preserved papyrus manuscript of that ages „Man disintegrates and his body changes itself into earth“. Man who intends to eternalise his name should not focus his thoughts on the „here-after“, bat should rather concentrate on his chthonic (earthly) action. A „white book“ is worth more than „palaces and sepulchres in the City of Death“.

A thousand years later, in ancient Indian philosophy, for example, in the Upanishads, ancient doctrines are mentioned which regarded the elements, water, air, fire, time and space as the original principle (arché) of all things. Hence the ancient Greeks, like Thales, Anaximenes or Heracleitus were not even original as far as this was concerned. a. Radhakrishnan, in his book, The Principal Upanishads, translated the „Chandogya-Upanishad“. It contains the following passage: „When water evaporates, then it becomes air, truly, air consumes everything.“

Around 700 B.C. the Samkhya School taught that everything originates from the prakrti, an infinite matter. Also in Ancient China the Dschou Jan School regarded matter to consist of five original elements: water, earth, fire, wood and metal.

Originally Man Was Not Teleologically Searching for Immortality in „Hereafter”

Even as late as the 3rd Century B.C., the Jewish religion did not preach personal immortality of the human soul, In the Holy Bible, in the book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verses 19 - 29 we find these remarkable sentences: „For men and animals both breath the same air, and both die. So mankind has no real advantage over the beasts; what an absurdity: All go to one place the dust from which they came and to which they must return. For who can prove that the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward into dust. So I saw that there is nothing better for men that they should be happy in their work, for that is what they are here for, and no one can bring them back to life to enjoy what will be in the future, so let them enjoy it now“. The author, Solomon, not King Solomon, seems to have been influenced by ancient Greek naturalists and sceptics. Only much later, individual immortality entered Catholic Philosophy, ideologically to be used as a power instrument by the Papal Church, which held the keys to Heaven and Hell, making sinners fear the Second Death more than the first one.

Philosophy - Not Created by the Ancient Greeks, but Discovered by them

In the same way, as in the middle of the 19th century, scientific socialism was born as a dialectical synthesis of European scientific endeavours, Greek philosophy was rooted historically in the scientific achievements of all the Mediterranean, North African and Oriental peoples. The intellectual and practical achievements of the Cretans, Mycenaeans, Phoenicians, Hittites, Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Nubians, Indians, Chinese, etc., all contributed to that specific Greek weltanschauung, which we classify as philosophy, the love for wisdom. The Greek philósophos not only loved sophía wisdom, but primarily knowledge - gnosis.

The basic knowledge of mathematics and astronomy the Greeks received from the Egyptians and Babylonians, of medicine from the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, of writing from the Phoenicians. All these the Greeks transformed with their specific genius into a knowledge which was more logical, uniform and abstract, into scientific knowledge. They added their own achievements which were then philosophically reflected as the works of the original natural scientists (natural philosophers), cosmologists or Hylozoists, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heracleitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, etc. These hylozoists considered the cosmos, the universe, to a composed of an original substance (hyle - substance) and that it was alive (zoé - life). They searched for the origin (Ur-grund, Ur-sache, Ur-quell - German, that is, the original (Ur-) basis, thing, source) - the arché.

The First Philosophers – The Milesians

Thales (ca. 624-546 B.C.)

Thales, the first philosopher, a contemporary of Solon and Kroisos, the symbol of wisdom, the label of a mathematical theorem, was already not known anymore to Herodotus (484-425 B.C.), the „father of history“ (Cicero). Independent of the fact whether the man Thales had ever lived, he is for humanity the symbol of all human beings who had before 500 B.C. tried to explain the world out of itself, that is, to reduce all Being, man and its surrounding, all existing things, to a uniform principle, of having natural origin. According to philosophic tradition, Thales regarded water as the arché (Urstoff); this principium is solid and fluid at the same time.

Anaximander (611/10 - 547/46 B.C.)

About Anaximander’s life is as little known as that of Thales. According to tradition, he regarded the to apeiron, the infinite, eternal and ageless, as the single primal substance. He argued against Thales that the arché could not be a known substance like water, if water is primal, it would conquer all the others. The to apeiron is transformed into substances with which we are familiar, and these are again transformed into each other. In a preserved fragment, he stated: „Into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more, as is ordained, for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time.“ Important is that Anaximander’s to apeiron is a primal substance „encompassing all the worlds“, which is alive and fermenting.

Aristotle gave an important reason why Anaximander took the to apeiron as arché: „In order that Becoming must not end“. (Physics, III, 8, 208 a 8). The primal substance must be infinite, in order to create everything infinitely. Also for the first time, he explained matter not as being perceived with our senses, bat in a cognitive, abstract, logical manner. Thus Anaximander is also the first natural scientist. Hippolytos, 1, 61, even tells us that not only is the to apeiron eternal, but also „motion is eternal“, and because of this eternal motion of the arché things come into existence „due to neutralisation of opposites“, but not as qualitative change of the to apeiron. Thus for Anaximander, motion or change is mechanical, qualitative. The opposites are qualities like cold and warm, wet and dry, etc. From one state to the other, things permanently change.

Anaximenes (dates uncertain, flourished before 494 B.C.)

For Anaximenes, air is the fundamental substance. Fire is rarefied air, when condensed, air becomes first water, then earth, and eventually stone. Thus the difference between substances is quantitative, depending on degree of rarefaction or condensation. The world, nature is alive, it breathes. Air or breath holds us, in fact, the whole cosmos together. Thus Thales put eternal Being, the primal substance, as being fluid, flowing; Anaximenes as breath, life-giving air; Anaximander as eternal fermentation; the permanent and, at the same time, the solid thing appears the all-flowing: nobody took the stone as arché. It was self-understood for them that matter was eternal and alive, and in permanent motion.

Heracleitus - Fire - Becoming

Heracleitus lived at the end of the 6th Century B.C* H2 preferred fire to be the primordial element. Later Empedocles would suggest a gentlemanlike agreement: all four, water, air, fire and earth, the only elements of ancient Greek philosophy-chemistry. Centuries later, the Arab alchemists will search for the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life, which would change metals into gold.

Heracleitus plainly stated: „This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever living Fire, with measures kindling and measures going out.“

About the unity and contradiction of opposites, he wrote: „Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre.“ „Couples are things whole and things not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and the discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.“ „Good and all are one.“ „The way up, and the way down is one and the same.“ „It is the opposite which is good for us.“ „We must know that war is common to all, and strife is justice.“ And his famous „Santa rhei“ doctrine: „You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you“. Another version, „We step and do not step into tree same rivers: we are, and are not.“ And: „The sun is new everyday.“

Parmenides and Xenophanes – World Sphere, One - Immobility

Xenophanes (dates uncertain), a rhapsodist and satirist, but also philosopher, must have been a contemporary of Heracleitus and Pythagoras. He took earth and water as the primordial substances, hence for the first time two. However, he already had an agnostic attitude: „The certain truth there is no man ..who knows, nor ever shall be, about the gods and all the things whereof I speak. Yea, even if a man should chance to say something utterly right, still he himself knows if not - there is nowhere anything but guessing.“ Parmenides (first half of the 5th century), stated that Being is the One, infinite and indivisible, it is material, a sphere, which is everywhere.

Our sense perception, also that of the Ancient Greeks, sometimes shows movement, sometimes immobility. Parmenides takes the one pole, Heracleitus the other. But since then, the Greeks became conscious that the world is not necessarily that or such as portrayed by our senses.

Sense Deception and the Paradox of Truth

Slowly the consciousness emerged that the world, reality, is not necessarily identical with our sense - „knowledge°“, our opinion, the common sense of mortals. Thus according to Parmenides: „Thought and (immobile) Being is the same, ... hence it is only names when mortal beings call Being Becoming and Pass Away, when they speak about change of place or change of a glittering colour.“ The essence of this argument is; when a human being thinks, he must be thinking of something; when he uses a certain name, it must be the name of a certain thing. Whatever can be thought of or spoken about in language must therefore exist at all times, and must not change. Thus for Parmenides matter, the Indivisible One, is static. The whole universe is one single solid sphere - like later, only one of Democritus’ atoms. Parmenides did not care much about sense perception, and knowledge derived from it. For him the „way of truth“ is knowing the One, in which there is no becoming or pass away, no past and future, only present. His concept of matter is all-encompassing, but in reality empty. The ‘Way of opinion’, our senses only give us an illusionary world.

Heracleitus argued from the opposite pole: „What one can see, hear and experience, I give preference.“ In other words, he did not leave so radically the world of senses, as Xenophanes of Parmenides, he taught Becoming, Change, permanent flux, but he never denied Being. Fire as archer as world substance, he stressed with a pathos that is unique in Ancient Greek philosophy. The opposite of Being is not becoming, as so many people have misunderstood Parmenides and Heracleitus, on the contrary, it is Nothing. Heracleitus is not the ,antagonist of Parmenides, it is the Sophist, Gorgias, who denied Being three times: Being can neither be, nor known, nor being mediated. He. is the ancient Greek absurd nihilist. For Heracleitus Becoming is Become-Being, and not even this is absolute. The appearance of rest is just temporary, a temporary unity of opposites, this is the reason, why he allows one to step into the river at least once. It was Cratylos, his pupil, who sharpened his statement, saying that one cannot even step once, because while stepping, new waters flow in and pass.

Heracleitus could explain appearance, but in Parmenides’ Granite-One, which knows no Note-Being, no Void, or empty space, there is no place for motion, also not for single things and many things. It is an eternally, infinitely equal, immovable, indivisible, material Being. This Hen kai Pan, the One, has no other number. Philolaus and specifically, later, Pythagoras and his school, expressed the thought „immobility or rest“, by differentiating the continuum in numbers, now regarding the arché as number.

Pythagoras flourished about 532 B.C., and is known to have stated „all things are numbers“. Now the arché, like with Anaximander, is again an unknown, an abstract thing, number. But he thought about numbers much more concrete, like those on dice, or on playing-cards. Now One is at the beginning of Being, but it is not One and All, unomnia, and also not the highest of Being. Number 2 or 3, could be higher developed and more perfect. Philolaos said: „The One is the beginning of everything. What first adds itself together, the One, lies in the middle of the Sphere and is called the hearth.“ And: ‘Number Seven is equal to the motherless virgin, Athena, ... she (the 7) is the ruler and loader of everything, an eternal, permanent, immovable God, equal to itself, and different to anything else.“

Essential is that the One has the Odd and Regular in it. Only through the separation of these, and placing regular and odd numbers in relation to each other, e.g., the octave (1:2), quintet (2:3), quartet (3:4), etc. can rest and unrest exist together as Harmony. Unrest, the irregular number, for example, 3, concerns sensuous, bodily things of the world; the regular number, for example, 4, denotes rest, it concerns the godly in the world, logically deduced. Less in the number of Pythagoras, but more in his number-harmony, we find for the first time the concept order, higher order, higher Rest, which means the relationship between rest and unrest. Here we see, that change is put to a lower order, it concerns things „under the moon“, whereas rest, immobility belongs to the heavens, to the universe:, the harmonic relation is with the heavenly, with the godly already.

The Relation of Movement to Immobile Arché, Primal Substance

Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus

From now onward, the thesis of Fire or Solid Sphere could not be kept up anymore. Motion was attacking Rest, the substance of Rest split into many parts. Empedocles chose air, water, fire and earth. Each one of these elements-were everlasting; but they could be mixed in things in different proportions. They, were combined by Love, and separated by Strife. But even Love and Strife were for Empedocles primitive material elements, on a level with the others. No purpose, or higher purpose, governs changes in the world, things change by Chance and Necessity. Every compound substance is temporary, only Love-, Strife and the elements are everlasting. It is not only Strife (War), like by Heracleitus, but now also Love, both together produce Change.

Anaxagoras (born around 500 B.C.) took the same four elements, but added nous (mind, reason) as fifth element. low out of motion itself, Anaxagoras made the motion-spirit, the nous, the power substance, the quintessence. But like Empedocles, and all his forerunners, he still denied that the void, the vacuum, empty space, exists. These elements are mixed in infinitely minute spermata (thing-seeds), also called „homoioméreiai“, in which all the qualities of the elements are retained. This is in contradiction later to Democritus’ „átomos“, which are quality-less, and are quantitatively different from each other, by weight, size, forms position, etc.

Democritus (flourishing around 420 B.C.) and Leucippus (round 400 B.C.) are known as the Ancient Greek Atomists. Democritus added a coolness into the fierce battle for the arché. He smashed the Eleatic Sphere, the One, into an infinite number of indivisible endless Átomos, which exist in infinite empty space, being a part of matter itself. The spermata of Anaxagoras still had qualities, however, the atoms differ quantitatively from each other.

Traces of the anánke (necessity, divine fate, force) we already can find in the matter-concept of the predecessors of Democritus, e.g. the play of hue, when referring to the movement of the celestial bodies, by Pythagoras. Democritus added Motion to the Atoms, and necessity (anánke) to Motion. Anánke - Necessity is now understood mechanical necessity, the „rest“ of law (nómos) in Nature; as Fate she does riot hang above the world anymore, necessity is now an essential part of existence. Anánke regulates the pressure, banging or jumping around of the atoms. Even the nous (mind, reason, Latin: intellectus), which a s we can remember was material, already had this regulating, guiding power. But even Anaximander’s to apeiron, again material, generates regulating, guiding necessary movement or motion. All these were attempts to explain the world, reality, out of itself. All these concepts were later interpreted idealistically, especially by the Catholic philosophers of the Middle Ages. The truth is that the original gods were heathen gods, and the Greek hylozoists were heathens.

The Sophists - The Wandering Educators

In the second half of the 5th Century B.C. a group of Greek philosophers came into existence, known as the Sophists (sophistes, means „to make wise“). Important Sophists were: Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodikos and Hippias. They moved away from the explanation of the world out of itself, and began to concentrate on thought (thinking) itself. Protagoras formulated the famous homo-mensura-sentence: „Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are and of things that are not that they are not”. Latin: „omnium rerum homo mensura est” - man is the measure of all things. He also clearly stated: „whether there are gods, and what they are, I cannot say.“ The above homo-mensura-sentence plainly states that there is no Absolute Truth; this is the reason, why the essentially idealist philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, will heavily attack it. Also, as we have seen before, it was Gorgias, the Sophist, who denied Being three times.

Body and Thought