1. COSMOLOGY: (Introduction to Philosophy) Prepared by: FR.RONNIE B. RODRIGUEZ, MS University of La Salette

2. Man as a Microcosm… They understand man in the context of the world. They assign man’s place in the cosmos as the totality of all entities. As a microcosm, man is himself a world, a miniaturized world. What the world constitutes man also possesses. The stuff that constitutes the world is also the same stuff that constitutes man.

3. THALES: (624-546BC) WATER is the world stuff. He asserted that the world originated in water and was sustained by water and that the earth floated on water. Water is an essential element of life, versatile, common and powerful enough to account for every physical phenomenon. In the scientific knowledge, human brain contains 80% water and the human body 70%.

4. There is a natural change everywhere. The world is animated. Inanimate objects possess psyche, the principle of self-motion. Concerning the universe, Thales also asserted that “all things are full of gods.” Some kind of vital force permeates the world. All things are in some aspect besouled or partake of a common and unifying vitality.

5. Some of Thales’ contributions… He made the Haly’s river passable for King Croesus by diverting its waters. He discovered the solstices and measured their cycles. He discovered the five celestial zones (arctic, antartic, equator, and the tropics), the inclination of the zodiac, and the sources of the moon’s light. He explicated the rise of Nile as due to etesian winds.

6. In geometry, he discovered proofs for the propositions that the circle is bisected by its diameter, that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal, that two triangles are identical when they have one side and the angles formed by it with the other sides equal, and that in two intersecting straight lines the opposite angles at the intersection are equal. He also measured the height of the pyramids and the distance of ships at sea.

7. ANAXIMANDER : (610-546BC) Man is a being that has evolved from animals of another species which are lower than his. Anaximander says: Man sprang from a different animal, in fact from a fish, which at first he resembled…;man sprang from a different kind of animal…whereas all the other animals are speedily able to find nourishment for themselves, man alone requires a long period of suckling and if he had been at the beginning such as he is now, he would not had survived.

8. The primary element was indeterminate. He called the arche as apeiron (Greek: a – not; peirar or peiras – limit, boundary, so it means unlimited, boundless). The indefinite or indeterminate (apeiron) is all-enfolding, all controlling, divine and immortal. This material cause was not water but infinite, eternal and ageless.

9. ANAXIMENES: (585-528BC) A pupil of Anaximander The primary element was determinate. Air is the primary substance. All things ultimately come from air. The gods and the divine things are subordinate from it. Hot and cold are the common attributes of matter that come from the result of its changes. Matter comes first.

10. Matter is air. It is definite because it has its forms and properties such as fire, water, dirt, earth, stone, etc. It differs in rarity and density. These phases occur in condensation and rarefraction. From condensation comes cold. It implies continuous change. Motion is eternal. Every change comes from air. From rarefraction comes hot.

11. The earth resulted from felting, the thickening of air into earth. Sun and moon are fiery celestial bodies carried by air in their flatness. The origin of stars is called moisture exhalation. Air is god. Air has the same function to man and the universe. It is the vital principle or the soul. Without it, man does not only die but decomposed.

12. It controls man, holds the universe together, surrounds it and pervades it. It keeps the universe in the right place. Like man, it makes the universe alive; imbue all things with life force.

13. HERACLITUS : (504-501BC) He maintains that everything is in constant change. “You can’t step twice in the same river.” In his consciousness of change, FIRE makes the world-stuff. If the world is fire, man, too, has fire in him in the form of heat.

14. Heraclitus held that the world was not created but had always existed. Change is incessant and universal. Coherence and stability persist due to the process of unceasing transitions. This structural coherence is called “the logos.” Transitions are generated by the logos. All things are divine. To god all things are beautiful. Fire is the archetypal form of matter. The universe is an ever-living fire.

15. Fire is the logos incarnate, the material enactment of the principle of transition and flux. Heraclitus believed also that the dry soul is the wisest and best in comparison to wet soul. Soul is light, ethereal, and incorporeal. Virtuous soul become a part of the cosmic fire when they die. Sleeping, waking and dying are anchored with the aspect of fieriness in the soul. The soul of the sleeping person is anchored only by breathing.

16. The mind becomes forgetful. In the waking state, the soul is anchored with the world fire and the logos. In this state, reason is restored. Human disposition is not capable of authentic judgment, but divine disposition does. War is the father of all and the king of all, and some he presents as gods, others as man, some as slaves others as free.

17. PYTHAGORAS: Pythagoras’ view of man resembles those of later thinkers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the stoics, and the Epicureans down to the contemporary thoughts as it will be seen later. In saying this, it is not asserted that the Pythagoreans are the most original thinkers of the dipartite constituents of man not do it is postulated that the later thinkers merely developed the Pythagorean concept of soul and body.

18. The soul… Immortal, divine and is subjected to metempsychosis. As immortal and divine, the soul has fallen and is incarcerated in the body until it gets purified and finally assumes reunification with the divine. This reunification is possible only through constant reincarnation.

19. Pythagoras was more concerned with the mystical problems of purification and immortality. Mathematics is the best purifier of the soul. Mathematical thought could liberate men from thinking about particular things and lead their thought, instead, to the permanent and ordered world of universe. Mathematics is also a source of therapeutic result for certain nervous disorders as well as elements affecting man’s inner life. They intertwined this mathematical theory in music.

20. Good health is the outcome of harmony or balance or proper ratio of certain opposites. The true number or figure refers to the proper balance of all the elements and functions of the body. Number represents the application of limit (form) to the unlimited (matter). All things are numbers.

21. PROTAGORAS : (490-420BC) “Man is the measure of all things, of all things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not.” As the measure of all things, man is the ultimate criterion of truth. This epistemological Protagorean claim of man gives us the idea that man is the absolute possessor of truth.

22. SOCRATES: (469-399BC) Man is a being who thinks and wills. The human soul should be nurtured properly through its acquisition of knowledge, wisdom and virtue. Man, for Socrates, should discover truth, truth about good life, for it is in knowing the good life that man can act correctly. Man’s attitude towards life therefore should be oriented towards knowledge – knowledge of what the good life is so that he can properly translate such knowledge into really living a good life.

23. He contends that knowledge and virtue are not distinct from each other because the two are one. A man who converges the two into one is a wise man – a man of wisdom. He who is wise is a man who has disciplined his soul to know what is right and does what he knows to be right in the actual life situation. Knowledge is literally taken by Socrates as the ultimate criterion of action.

24. He maintains that… Knowing what is right means doing what is right. Does it follow? (yes or no)

25. How about the evil doers… For Socrates, these lost souls are ignorant of their evil acts. To Socrates, no one does evil volitionally. It is ignorance of the knowledge of the right and good life that enables man to do evil deeds. If only man acquires knowledge, wisdom, and virtue, man can certainly free himself from doing what is wrong.

26. Is this true?... Was Hitler ignorant of the genocide of the German Jews? Was Mussolini ignorant of the same? Are the corrupt public officials ignorant of their acts? Are the students who cheat during examinations ignorant of the evil embedded in cheating? Are the irresponsible instructors ignorant of their languor?

27. Socrates insists that all sorts of evil or all kinds of evil acts are circumstantial. He adheres to the idea that man does evil only accidentally due to ignorance. But we should neither rely on nor harken to this since practically the amount of knowledge we have concerning the right and of the good life is no guarantee that we live a right and a good life. Sometimes, even if know that the act is harmful and bad, we insist on doing it.

28. PLATO : (427-347BC) The nature of man is seen in the metaphysical dichotomy between the body and soul. The body is material; it cannot live and move apart from the soul; it is mutable and destructible. The soul is immaterial; it can exist apart from the body; it is immutable and indestructible.

29. Plato contends that the soul is a substance because it exists and can exist independently of the body; nevertheless, it is temporarily incarcerated in the body. What leads Plato to say this is his conviction that the soul existed prior to the body. Plato concludes that man is a soul using a body.

30. Plato believes that virtue is knowledge and the source of knowledge is virtue. It is not abstract but concrete knowledge, not theoretical but practical knowledge. Man must know what is good so that he may do so. Plato elaborated this by illustrating the four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage or fortitude, temperance and justice.

31. Man is a knower and a possessor of an immortality of the soul. Plato believes that the body dies and disintegrates. The soul continuous to live forever after the death of the body. The soul migrates to the realm of the pure forms.

32. The soul has three parts… 1. Rational part – located in the head, specifically in the brain. This enables man to think, to reflect and to draw conclusions and to analyze. 2. Appetitive part – located in the abdomen. It drives man to experience thirst, hunger, and other physical wants. 3. Spiritual part – located in the chest. It makes man assert and experience abomination and anger.

33. Plato believed that the rational part of the soul is the most important and the highest. For Plato, is it the rational part that specifically distinguishes man from the brutes. Man can control his appetite and self- assertion of spirit through Reason. For example, when a person is hungry and yet, he does not eat the available food because he knows or doubts that it has poison.

34. Plato contends that there is something in the mind of the person that leads him to crave for food and another thing that prohibits him from eating the poisoned food. The principle which drives the person to eat the food is what he calls “Appetite” while the principle which forbids the person to eat the available food because it is poisoned is Reason. Reason for Plato controls both Spirit and Appetite. When this happens man will have a well- balanced personality.

35. ARISTOTLE: (384-322BC) Man is a rational animal. Unlike his master Plato, Aristotle maintains that there is no dichotomy between man’s body and man’s soul. Body and soul are in a state of unity. In this unity, the soul acts as the perfect or full realization of the body while the body is a material entity which has a potentiality for life.

36. Per se, the body has no life. It can only possess life when it is united with the soul. In this regard, Aristotle speaks of man as a single essence composed of body and soul (as man’s matter and form principles). Man’s body matter and man’s soul form. That is why he speaks of soul as the body’s perfect realization because form for him is the perfect realization of matter.

37. Man as a rational animal… He is not the center of the universe. The focal point is the cosmos. Man is only a part of the universe. Aristotle believed that man’s actions and endeavors are motivated by the possession of the good. There are many goods. For Aristotle, the very goal of human life is happiness.

38. Kinds of soul… 1. Vegetative soul – plants possess this. It feeds itself, it grows and it reproduces. 2. Sensitive soul – exists in animals. It feeds itself, it grows, it reproduces and it has feelings (particularly pain and pleasure because it has a nervous system). 3. Rational soul – exists only in man. It assumes the functions of the vegetative and sensitive souls. It is capable of thinking, reasoning, and willing. Man is higher than the brutes, animals and plants. Man is capable of thinking and judging.

39. EPICURUS : (341-270BC) His philosophical theory is called “atomistic materialism.” According to this theory, the universe is composed of matter (in the form of atoms) in motion in empty space. All physical bodies, including human beings, are the result of combinations of these atoms. Because the soul is composed of atoms, death means its dissolution, so immortality is impossible. When the body disintegrates, so does the soul.

40. Epicurus regarded his atomic theory as the key to his moral theory. Death is not to be feared because it is simply the dissolution of the atomic structure which makes up the soul. One ceases to exist and no pain will be experienced after death. Epicurus advocates hedonism (from the Greek word “pleasure”). Pleasure is the only good in life.

41. Pleasure, per se, is not the summum bonum or the supreme good; it is pleasure as interpreted by prudence. Man should follow the dictates of prudence so that his life will be well-ordered and consequently wholesome and natural. Epicurus regarded pleasure as the beginning and end of the blessed life. Epicurus, a psychological and an ethical hedonist, believed not only that we ought to act in such a way as to produce the greatest amount of pleasure (ethical pleasure), but also that we are so constituted psychologically that we inevitably take pleasure in all our acts (psychological hedonism).

42. Epicurus’ conception of the good life, however, was mainly negative. He stressed the avoidance of pain rather than the pursuit of pleasure and gave us an analogy of health or disease. Pleasure is like health, which preserves, while pain is like a disease, which destroys.

43. STOICS: These thinkers belong to a group of philosophers who studied under Zeno, the founder of Stoa. They are commonly labeled as “the indifferent ones.” The Stoics teach resignation and determinism. It is from this teaching that the Stoics draw their view of human nature.

44. For the Stoics the soul is matter and that it has seven parts. These parts are the five senses, the power of speech, and the power of reproduction. For them, speech is tantamount to Reasoning so that it is considered as the ruling part of the soul. Because soul is matter, it has its end in the fiery worlds; the soul is determined for destruction; it is bound to resign to its fatal ruin.

45. Human nature is part of a determined universe. The Stoics emphasized that man should conform himself to the course of nature. The Stoics challenge man “to be a subject of the will of God and to the laws of nature.” It is man’s submission to the law of nature that makes man seek virtue. Only in doing this can man conform himself with the will of God. Man’s submission to the will of God is man’s conformity with nature.

46. To the Stoics, emotions are movements against nature. They assert that emotions have to be eradicated completely. If they are not, they become impediments to man’s striving to conform himself with the nature and the will of God. But why should man conform himself with nature? Why should man be virtuous? And why should man submit himself to God’s will?

47. Peace of mind… A virtuous man for the Stoics always strives to possess peace of mind. Peace of mind is attainable through contentment: contentment with here and now. Contentment is part of man’s conformity with nature; it is indeed resignation. Man can attain peace of mind by viewing things in their proper perspective.

48. This is to say, that man should be practical enough to consider that there are things that are under his control and that there are things that are beyond his control. In line with this, the Stoics claim that a virtuous man can only ask: “Why does God allow evil to exist?” They propose that the answer is this simple statement of resignation: God’s ways are not man’s.