The Sophists, but mostly Anthiphon

After reading the excerpts about Antiphon, I realized that the majority of Plato's writings about Justice, especially his conversations in The Republic about the nature of Justice, were constructed on the foundation that Antiphon provided.

First of all, Antiphon posits that Justice is following what the nomoi prescribe when there are witnesses present, and following the decrees of phusis when witnesses are not present. After a little research, I discovered that that the numoi/nomos are laws, lawmakers, having to do with societal law, etc., and that phusis is essentially the law of nature, or that natural conscience you have within you. Essentially,  Antiphon says that following the phusis are necessary, while the numoi are simply extra laws that everyone has agreed upon. Thus, when one is in private, one need only follow the phusis, but in public or in society you must follow the agreed upon laws. To do this is Justice.

Now, he goes on to prove that being Just is best, or leads to the most happiness, which Plato also argues in the Republic. He says that though the numoi may seem to be in conflict with phusis, and may seem to cause discomfort or pain, or at times seem not adequately just, it is better to live in communion with others and heed the numos rather than to abide in nature and live by the phusis. Thus, Hobbes' saying "human nature is nasty, brutish..." seems also to be an echo of Antiphon. He argues that nomos is grounded in phusis.

Antiphon also lays down the foundation for the idea that only the person who is Just in private as well as in public is the truly Just person (Ring of Gyges and all that...).

He then moves on to talk about eunomia and anomia, eunomia meaning proper order and right conduct, and anomia meaning the opposite (I think basically Justice and injustice). Antiphon argues that tyranny springs from "nothing else but anomia". He says that this only happens when nomoi and justice dissipates.

Thus, the groundwork is laid for Plato's Just city in The Republic

Democritus' Epistemology

Democritus is a materialist: he believes that physical matter is the only reality and that psychological states can be explained as physical functions.

So he starts thinking about what someone can know, and he comes up with two things
      First, he believes that only things that can be perceived are real or true.
     Secondly, he thinks that the truth of something is in its appearance.

But, given his atomic theories, he realizes that there are opposite and infinite appearances of one thing due to the shape, arrangement, and position of its atoms…and all of these appearances can’t be true!

So….What can we know?

Well, he says that thought and sensation are caused by atoms impinging on the body from the outside, but this leads us to a huge epistemological problem: If what we know about the world is derived from our sense experiences, but the senses themselves are not in direct contact with the nature of things, just these atoms, then we can’t really know anything. And, he’s not a skeptic, so he wants a better answer than that.

He wonders if the mind could overthrow the senses, but this wouldn't work because he still thinks that the senses are the mind’s only route to truth. They’re all we’ve got to go on, but they just aren’t substantial enough. For example, you can’t perceive atoms with your mind, you have to sense them. Our knowledge of the properties of atoms is always based on the senses. But then you have this conflict because the senses report properties that the atoms don’t really possess in their nature, like colors and tastes. This means that there’s this huge potential for doubt – there’s a large gap between what we can perceive, and what actually exists.

So basically, here’s where we’re at. Democritus says that the knowledge of truth is difficult, because perception through the senses is subjective. The same senses prescribe different impressions for each individual, meaning that we can’t perceive the Truth through our senses. We can only interpret the sense data through the intellect and try to grasp the truth.

 So, he comes up with the fact that there are two kinds of knowledge.

        The first is bastard knowledge, which is Concerned with the perception through the senses. He says this is insufficient for knowing truth, because it is subjective according to the individual. It’s subjective because sense-perception is due to the effluences of the atoms from the objects to the senses. When these different shapes of atoms come to us, they stimulate our senses according to their shape, and our sense-impressions arise from those stimulations.

          The second is legitimate knowledge. It’s achieved through the intellect, and you must evaluate “Bastard” knowledge/sensory perceptions through inductive reasoning.  After you take into account subjective sense impressions, you can:

1)      Examine the causes of the appearances
2)      Draw conclusions about the laws that govern the appearances
3)      Discovery the causality by which they are related.

Once you have these three things figured out, you can be pretty sure of your knowledge!

Anaxagoras and Metaphysics

Anaxagoras, evidently influenced by Parmenides' theories about the "what-is", proposed a metaphysical theory that said the entire cosmos was driven by the "nous," which refers to the intellect or the mind. His physical theories state that, basically, everything is in everything. Here he draws from the Milesians as to the ingredients of the cosmos, and says that whatever these ingredients are, they are all mixed up together. They cannot be separated, but the mixture is not homogenous. Thus, there is a bit of everything in everything, even if one thing is distinguishable from another. These distinguishable things are formed when the nous starts the mass swirling. So basically, the universe is like a giant oreo milkshake. The oreos are part of the milkshake, but distinguishable from the milkshake stuff, and the blender is the nous.

In his aphorisms, we can see that there are 3 undergirding principles to Anaxagoras's metaphysical theory:
1) There is no becoming or passing away.
2) Everything is in everything.
3) There is no smaller or larger.

In aphorism 17, Anaxagoras says that there is no coming to be or passing away, but that everything is either mixed together or dissociated. So apparently the laws of the conservation of mass and energy have been around since 500BCE (Sorry Antoine Lavoisier, he beatcha to it). I guess if he thinks that everything is one ginormous swirling vortex, it would be hard for something to separate out of it, and it would also not make sense for things to be able to be created or discarded, because everything that exists is IN that giant swirling vortex.

From this, it naturally follows that everything is in everything. He strangely distinguishes, in aphorism 11 that nous is not only the driving force behind everything, but is also IN some things (yet not in others).  Perhaps he means that not all objects are sentient or intellectual beings, thus, nous would not be present in things that are not humans, animals, or plants (he thinks plants have intellects too).

He has an interesting discourse on the topic of the smaller or the larger. I think what he's getting at is that the cosmos is so big that everything in relation to the cosmos looks to be equally miniscule. In aphorism 3, he explains this and says "...there is a smaller for what-is cannot not be, but also for the large there is always a larger. And the large is equal to the small in extent, but in relation to itself each thing is both large and small." This is where he's reminiscent of Parmenides because he realizes that the what-is can never not be, which directly influences statement #1 in the list above.

Zeno

After reading Zeno, I am sure of only one thing: I am not a metaphysics person. That being said, the following is an attempt to talk about Zeno without talking about metaphysics.

Zeno says that his many metaphysical arguments are purely efforts to defend Parmenides' argument that the what-is is one. In this spirit, he advances many different metaphysical arguments countering things like plurality and movement. Through them, he shows that there is only one thing in the universe, which runs counter to what we are able to perceive. In a roundabout way, Zeno is not only focused on metaphysics but also on epistemology. Just because we can perceive something doesn't mean we can know it - we must think logically about things in a metaphysical manner to be able to know things.

However, I'm not so sure that Zeno accomplishes what he sounds like he's trying to prove. Parmenides, when speaking about the what-is, was speaking about Truth. Parmenides is a monist and was saying that there is only one, objective Truth, NOT that there was only one single entity in the entire universe.

That being said, I don't think that Zeno misunderstand Parmenides and what he was trying to say (how could he, if they were so close?). I think that those who heard Parmenides' monism may have misunderstood him to be saying that there is only one actual thing in the whole universe (let's be honest, the whole "what-is" thing is just a tad confusing), and that Zeno was actually defending Parmenides' thesis by making counter-arguments to what common people thought Parmenides was saying. Thus, in order to be Parmenides' defender, he didn't  have to defend Parmenides ACTUAL thesis, he just had to counter what others interpreted that thesis to mean (which was also easier).

In doing this, Zeno challenges common perceptions of the physical world, and shows that there is much more than meets the eye (and the ear).