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Philosophy Term Paper

Diana Ruiz-Rochel
Philosophy 1000
November 27, 2018
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When you hear of Philosophy you might think that it’s a lot of confusing thoughts by

people who are overly mindful about life, however Philosophy is the “Love of Wisdom” and

philosophers are people wanting to gain more knowledge about life. The birth of Philosophy

started in ancient Greece with famous thinkers such as Socrates, Plato, Xenophanes and

Parmenides. As Philosophy began its course, many highly powerful individuals attempted to

diminish or destroy “Philosophical thinking” by puting to death many of its practitioners.

However, despite the dislike of Philosophy, early Philosophers even between different years

apart they were able to develop off each other’s theories and thinking which helped the growth of

this study as centuries went by. Not only did early thinkers try to get early humans to think more

deeply about life, but try to realize that we should question everything in life to get to know

ourselves better and know how life really works. Until this day, these philosophies written by

early thinkers still attempt to influence our lives.

In 800 B.C., Greece was a successful society with its state of Athens being the most

powerful and famous. The society in Athens was arbitrary, cruel and capricious. The birth of

Western philosophy began in this city; however, the main religion of this country was

polytheistic and the belief of mythologic gods were never questionable to early Greeks. The

myths as well as the multiple gods provided standards of conduct, morality, social obligations,

education, art, religious practices, and so on.1 Even though mythology gave ancient Greeks a

purpose to live their life, gods such as Zeus, Athena, Hera, Apollo, Aphrodite, etc. were just

mere exaggerations of human beings and didn’t really provide any caring feelings towards them.

Everything in life at this time in Greece was based on a mythological view and the Greeks

1
Soccio, J. Douglas. “Overview of Classical Themes.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An
Introduction to Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 17.
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believed that knowledge is a right of divine only. In order to obtain explanations about life or

divine advise, Greeks would go to an Oracle which is basically a place where you go to seek

divine information about gods and the future. Apart from this, physical culture was highly

viewed in this society and Athens was the place where the Olympics began with footraces,

weight lifting, track, etc. This being said, you can see that life in Greece was very mysterious,

self-centered, and lacked knowledge.

As Greece continued to develop and colonization of other cities and communities spread,

the rise of philosophy began. This increase of interactions with other parts of the world helped

philosophical thinkers to grow. The mythological world view became less effective….explaining

events with “the gods willed it” became less and less satisfying.2 This is when the world’s first

philosophers came about. In the year 570 B.C., Xenophanes was born and influenced the start of

many philosophers in the future. He believed that wisdom in this life is superior to strength,

because strength cannot help the community in government and it cannot enrich anyone.

Xenophanes tries to look for a explanation more deeper than just “the gods are an explanation for

everything”. He states that human beings tend to anthropomorphize the Greek gods. To

anthropomorphize would mean to give the gods human characteristics and features to better

relate to them. As he said in one of his philosophical texts, “But mortals think gods are begotten

and have the clothing, voice, and bodies of mortals.”3 This being said, Xenophanes argues for a

god not like humans, but rather a god that is all hearing, seeing, and thinking hence he is

omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient.

2
Soccio, J. Douglas. “Overview of Classical Themes.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An
Introduction to Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 18.
3
Graham, W. Daniel, ed., “The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy”.:
https://slcc.instructure.com/courses/487744/files?preview=81950514
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While Xenophanes gives us the point that gods or god cannot be like human beings,

more early thinkers begin to examine more of what life really is. One such thinker would be

Parmenides of Elea, who was born in the year 515 B.C.E in Italy. Parmenides became a very

influential thinker and is accurately know as the father of Metaphysics (study that addresses the

problem of what is real). He was one of the first early thinkers that focused on Cosmology,

which is the study of the universe around us and joining it to Ontology, which is the study of

being. This thinker established that thinking and a being are the same. According to his view, he

tries to prove what is real in this life. He confronts a philosophical problem of “The one and the

many”. For this problem to be explained correctly, it is basically stating that everything in life

comes from one thing and if it’s just one thing, then there is only one explanation for everything

in life. “In other words, whatever we see, touch, taste, hear, or smell is not real, does not exist.”4

and the physical world is an illusion. Parmenides did not believe that changed occurred and

formed two paths of inquiry to prove this: “What is” and “What is not”. In these two paths,

“What is” is a thing that is complete, one of a kind, and whole, when that thing becomes

something else, it becomes “What is not”. However, since it is impossible for “What is not” to

exist, there is no “nothing” into which that thing can go into. For example a previously existing

bacteria cannot change into a something else “What is not” then where would the old bacteria go

if nothing doesn’t exist?. The views, paths of inquiry and analysis of life that Parmenides took

proved that in life change can’t occur and once again that everything in life is an illusion. We can

take into account this philosophers view that from nothing changes and is an illusion, however

human kind has been able to prove that life forms from change.

4
Soccio, J. Douglas. “The Sophist: Protagoras.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An Introduction to
Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 68.
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Up to this point, we have two philosophical thinkers Xenophanes and Parmenides who

focus on aspects of human life and the nature around us. However, later philosophers focused

more on concepts of the soul and mind to know who we really are. One of these philosophers is

Socrates. He lived from 470 – 399 B.C.E in Athens, Greece and is known to this day as a great

philosopher, enlightened individual and a man of god. Socrates surprisingly never wrote any

writing himself, but instead taught most of his philosophy to future thinkers such as Plato. The

teachings that Socrates taught include that we should listen to reason, tend to the health of the

soul, not harm others and to have political relationship between the individual and state.

However, apart from his teachings, Socrates noticed that Athens was a place where materials are

valued, physical culture is of importance, and life is never questioned. He then attempts to

provide some sort of an enlightenment and encouragement of knowledge for his fellow

Athenians by going around Athens questioning people from poor to high class to prove their

knowledge/truth of things they believed they knew. This method of questioning is called the

Socratic Method. Socrates strongly believed that humans can attain knowledge and it is not just

for the divine. With the Socratic Method, Socrates was able to show people that they actually

didn’t have any knowledge thus it proved their ignorance, however with Socrates acknowledging

that you don’t know anything is better than saying you know everything. This questioning of

knowledge and wisdom of others unfortunately lead to Socrates’ death since he criticized almost

everything in Athens and Athenians thought that this way of philosophical thinking was a threat

to the state and it should not continue to happen. One of the most important teachings we can

take from Socrates in my opinion is knowing yourself. One his statements said “The unexamined

life is not worth living”; the unexamined life is an unquestioned life, you live based on beliefs
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told to you, on materials, habits, etc. without ever questioning them.5 This life according to

Socrates in hardly a human life. We must always question and live an examined life, not to have

answers to all our questions in life, but to know yourself better and be consciously aware of life.

What Greece didn’t expect was that one of Socrates’s students was going to continue the

philosophical journey. This student was Plato. Plato was born in 427 B.C.E and lived through

348 B.C.E. By witnessing the death of his teacher and friend Socrates, he learned a lot of the

things that were missing from Greek society and in humans. His goals were to figure out the

reality of “What is”, continue Socrates search for morality, defeat relativism, and solve

government instability. In fact, “before he could provide satisfactory answers to ethical, social,

political, and other philosophical questions, he must first tackle the problem of knowledge.”6

Plato knew that in order to solve the problem of knowledge, we had to look at the efforts and

thinking that Parmenides and Heraclitus did to know what reality is. For informational purposes,

Heraclitus thought that everything in life is constantly changing, while Parmenides thought that

reality is an illusion and change cannot occur since everything comes from one thing. Plato

realized that reality is not just one thing, but it is two different things. He called this Conceptual

Dualism; in one half we have the eternal, unchanging reality and on the other our sensible

changing world. Plato knew that knowledge does not change, so it must be part of a different

reality. In order for us to know that knowledge is possible, he was then able to develop his

Theory of Forms. Forms are ideas or essences of things that only exist in the human mind. To

understand this better, Plato created 3 different concepts to explain the Theory of forms: 1) The

5
Soccio, J. Douglas. “The Wise Man: Socrates.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An Introduction to
Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 106.
6
Soccio, J. Douglas. “The Philosophers-King: Plato.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An
Introduction to Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 129
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Divided Line7, which being able to notice the difference between reality and appearance, 2) The

simile of the Sun8, which is knowing what is good in life, for example the sun is good because it

is the reality, truth, and has caused the existence for life. And 3) Allegory of the Cave9, is

basically being able to cast off any illusions in life in order to figure out the truth of how life

really is or who you really are (aka being enlightened). Apart from this theory, Plato was able to

develop other views on government and the soul.

The goals and aims that all four of theses philosophers shared is knowing what reality is

and the essence of human beings being able to attain knowledge. However, we can notice that

the first early philosophers, Xenophanes and Parmenides only were concerned which the nature

of things and the reality of our world. Philosophers such as Socrates and Plato were also

concerned with the reality of our world, but they were concerned as well with the mind and soul

of humans. In some ways these four philosophers had a connection between what they developed

and thought about the world we live in. They were actually able to take into account the thoughts

of each other to form new theories themselves.

According to theories and thoughts developed by Xenophanes, Parmenides, Socrates, and

Plato, we can see that even in early times the attainment of wisdom, knowledge, and finding the

truth of reality was important. Being able to examine our lives and question what we have

learned, allows us to know our world better, as well as understanding our soul. Even thousands

of years after these philosophers lived, we still to this day encounter much of the same

questioning they had about reality, mind, and soul. Even if the theories discussed are just mere

7
Ibid, 136.
8
Ibid, 139.
9
Ibid, 141.
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thoughts or actual knowledge, we are still able to learn from them to have some wisdom of what

life really is.

Bibliography

Soccio, J. Douglas. “Overview of Classical Themes.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An Introduction

to Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 17.
Soccio, J. Douglas. “Overview of Classical Themes.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An Introduction
to Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 18.

Graham, W. Daniel, ed., “The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy”.:

https://slcc.instructure.com/courses/487744/files?preview=81950514

Soccio, J. Douglas. “The Sophist: Protagoras.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An Introduction to

Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 68.

Soccio, J. Douglas. “The Wise Man: Socrates.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An Introduction to

Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 106.

Soccio, J. Douglas. “The Philosophers-King: Plato.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An Introduction

to Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 129.

Soccio, J. Douglas. “The Philosophers-King: Plato.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An Introduction

to Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 136

Soccio, J. Douglas. “The Philosophers-King: Plato.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An Introduction

to Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 139.

Soccio, J. Douglas. “The Philosophers-King: Plato.” In Archetypes Of Wisdom: An Introduction

to Philosophy., ed. 8, ( Boston: Wadsworth Cengage learning, 2013), 141.
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