HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY LECTURE NOTES

HTCS

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Prepared by: Rommel U. Quiones, MPR
LECTURE ONE: INTRODUCTION

History of Philosophy and Philosophy
The history of philosophy is not a direct inquiry into any particular philosophical problem. It is an inquiry into
what historical philosophers thought. The inquiry is into what they thought and into why they had these thoughts.
Nevertheless, it should not be thought that the history of philosophy can proceed in the absence of knowledge of
philosophy. The history of philosophy is like the history of mathematics or the history of any other discipline. It is
necessary to know some mathematics to do good work in the history of mathematics. The same is true of the history
of philosophy. Central to the history of philosophy are three overarching problems, these may be dubbed as:
1. the problem of knowledge,
2. the problem of conduct,
3. the problem of governance.
The first of these would be developed within the fields now called epistemology and metaphysics. The second
is the domain of ethics and moral philosophy. The third is the province of political science and jurisprudence. But these
developed realms of reflective inquiry were slow to reveal themselves to human intelligence.

Methodology in the History of Philosophy
The history of philosophy is an inquiry into both what ancient philosophers thought about certain issues and
why they had these thoughts. The surviving texts are the primary evidence for this inquiry. The historian tries to
reconstruct what the ancients thought on the basis of what they wrote. If the historian has identified a thought but
can find no explanation in the texts for why the philosopher had this thought, then the historian tries to place the
philosopher within a broader historical context in which it would have been natural for him to have the thought in
question.
This methodology shows why the history of philosophy is difficult. To make progress in ancient philosophy, it is
necessary to understand the cultural context in which the ancient philosophers worked. This knowledge is not easy to
acquire. The ancient philosophers lived in a very different time. Much less was known about the world. They wrote in
a different language. Texts do not provide a complete record of a culture in the best of circumstances, and many of
the ancient texts have not survived. These things make it difficult to take up the perspective of the ancient
philosophers.

Mythos vs. Logos
Rather than uncritically accepting things because of the traditions or stories (myths) told about how they came
to be, thinkers in the West began in the sixth century BC to try to explain why things are the way they are. They tried
to give the logos or rationale of things, a rational (vs. mythic) explanation of nature. They did this by proposing that
there is something constant in nature beneath or behind the appearance of change. That is, they suggested that
reality should be understood primarily in terms of an unchanging principle in nature, and that things in nature change
as a result not of supernatural or divine intervention but as a result of internal forces. Furthermore, our senses are
unreliable in discerning what is fundamentally real: reality and appearance are different.
In contrast to experimental sciences like physics or psychology, philosophy is less concerned with facts about
the world or why people believe what they do. Instead, it investigates what those facts mean and whether people's
beliefs are justified based on reasoned argument. Getting a specific answer to a question (e.g., is there an afterlife?) is
thus not as important, from a philosophic standpoint, as determining whether a proposed answer to the question
makes sense.

How Philosophy Is Different From Science, Law, and Religion
Philosophy challenges the assumptions of science. It does not stop with what things there are; it also examines
what it means to be and questions whether thinking in scientific terms is itself justified.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY LECTURE NOTES
HTCS

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Prepared by: Rommel U. Quiones, MPR
Philosophy questions whether social beliefs and laws are justified. The sheer fact that a society has legitimated
a practice through law does not insulate it from philosophic examination and critique.
Unlike religion, philosophy does not depend on faith. Instead, it emphasizes understanding and defending
one's beliefs. Philosophy does not aim at commitment or salvation.

Early Beginnings

I. Central Features of the Homeric Tradition
Greek philosophy develops over against the background of the Homeric tradition as represented in the Iliad and
Odyssey.
A. Anthropomorphic Conception of Divinity (or the gods)
The gods are human in character (especially in that they share with humans the property of rational agency,
thereby making their goals and actions relatively predictable). The gods exert a limited power over the forces of
nature, but some things happen by chance.

B. The World is Rational or Intelligible
The Homeric tradition embodies a rational conception of the world, that the world is ordered. This order is
personified in Zeus (the chief of the gods). The Homeric tradition views the world as a place of personal, intelligent
determination. Events are often explained in terms of divine activity, i.e., caused by the gods. Call this the personal
and mythical explanatory framework of the Homeric period.

C. Partial Rationality and Order
Not all events are the outcome of personal, intelligent determination in the Homeric worldview. The character
of the Fates or moirai suggests an amoral and impersonal order in the world which is quite independent of humans
and gods. The world is a blend of rational order and chance, a world in which some things are within the control of
rational agents and other things are not.

Flashback:
Beginning in mimesis, in dance and ritual that encode and explain the world, the questions become more
insistent, and as a whole, communities begin to ponder the nature of things. The dance is augmented by song and
poetry, by epic tales so vivid that children never forget the main characters and their extraordinary experiences and
exploits and that pose, in different terms, the fundamental questions: What is the world? What should I do? How are
our lives to be ordered? Between 800 and 600 B.C., such accounts proliferated. Both the Hindu Upanishads and
Homers famous epics are rich in what may be called pre-philosophical reflections on the human condition and the
point and purpose of life. Such works are the background folk wisdom of an age; philosophy is a refinement or a
rejection of the claims of the dancer and the bard.

In the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, Theseus, having killed the Minotaur, is able to escape from the
labyrinth only because Ariadne had given him a golden cord by which he can retrace his steps.
Myths are an endless source of metaphor, and the cord of Ariadne is an apt metaphor for history: We solve a
problem or a puzzle by retracing the steps that got us where we are.

Outline
A. We begin with myth, which seeks to answer perplexing questions but does so in such a way as to create and
preserve a kind of civic coherence. The mythology of a people is the basis on which they recognize themselves
as a people and have a coherent relationship, not only to each other but with their own past.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY LECTURE NOTES
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Prepared by: Rommel U. Quiones, MPR
B. To some extent, philosophy is disruptive in this regard. The enterprise is not an essentially civic one. It does
not begin with a settled position on political and moral matters, then seek ways to enshrine the settled view.
Rather, the mission is a broadly epistemological one. The search, as we shall discover, is the search for truth.
C. Nonetheless, the questions that mythology must set out to answer are not unlike the questions that
philosophy sets out to answer. We can identify three overarching issues that consume much of the subject
matter of philosophy: the problem of knowledge, the problem of conduct, and the problem of governance.
1. The problem of knowledge is straightforward. How is it that we come to know anything? On what basis
do we undertake to frame and seek answers to questions? Long before the appearance of philosophy,
people facing the challenges of daily life were required to seek knowledge, if only practical knowledge.
In philosophy, the problem reaches beyond the practical and the everyday to more general and abstract
realms.
2. The problem of conduct is nothing less than the problem of deciding how ones life should be lived. How
should I conduct myself in such a way that my life is a satisfying one? How will I be able to act in a way
that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain? What sort of person should I strive to be? Whats the
nature of the relationships I have to others? Were there no basis on which to plan or conduct a course
of life, there would be no real problem to be solved politically. The problem of governance arises in
light of conflicts at the level of conduct. On what basis do people come to understand themselves as a
people? What is the basis on which modes of leadership are chosen? What is the basis on which leaders
are resisted, revolutions staged, radical upheaval fomented?
3. Long before the appearance of philosophy, issues of this sort were engaged, often heroically, by persons
and by entire communities. Indeed, philosophy comes about at a late stage in the development of this
daily encounter with the problems of knowledge, conduct, and governance.

I. The Upanishads are a brilliant example of the vast body of morality tales that appeared in many settled
communities between 800 and 600 B.C.
a. The etymology of the word Upanishad carries the action of sitting next to, as in sitting next to the
master. The Hindu Upanishads pose philosophical questions, but the answers are mythic.
b. The questions posed by the Upanishads are the abiding ones: Where do we come from? How do we
explain the fact that some things live and other things dont? How did this great earth come about, and
what are we to make of the objects in the sea and sky? What kind of life should I be living? Why is there so
much evil in the world?
c. Central to the Upanishads is the notion that the universe itself, and everything in it, exists in virtue of
some fundamental power or force or fire, a kind of cosmic soul, Atman, which because of its presence,
gives reality to things and to us.
i. We share something fundamentally in common with the universe itself. We have the breath of fire
within us. We have soul within us. It is an imperishable feature of our very nature. Everything that
there is participates in the cosmic Atman.
ii. There is a sense that there is something fundamentally identical between the life of the person
and the life of the cosmos, that one is the microcosmic expression of the macrocosm.
d. These teachings come to equate Atman not only with fire and life and creativity but also with Brahma, a
form of knowledge, knowledge as the manifestation of the spirit. The quest for knowledge then becomes
quite a natural undertaking for those invested with Atman, and Brahma becomes the search that renders
life meaningful.
e. All comes from the soul (Atman), even space itself. Creation is attributed to an imperishable and heavenly
person, Purusha, who though breathless, gives breath. Again, what is Brahma? It is breath; it is thought; it
is enlightenment. Thus, it is the macrocosm within the microcosm, which is oneselfboth the self and the
cosmos endowed with Atman.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY LECTURE NOTES
HTCS

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Prepared by: Rommel U. Quiones, MPR
f. Through the Upanishads, we have the beliefs of an ancient culture, a distinctly Eastern culture; however,
nearly all civilized people adopt the Hindu teachings on ethical grounds. The Buddhas teachings include
rules against killing and theft, against any form of moral degradation, against cruelty and deception.
Nonetheless, the teachings do not stand as philosophy.

II. Moving from East to West, we can make certain comparisons between the Upanishads and the famous epics of
the blind poet Homer, composed circa 750 B.C.
A. What moves the Homeric actors is not precepts coming from above but something arising inside
themselves. Diomedes, for example, is said to be overcome by lyssa, the blind rage of the wolf.
B. The gods in Homer are enlarged versions of the hero, in fact, often have sired or mothered the hero. What
divides humanity and divinity is mortality; otherwise, they have much in common, including little power
over destiny itself.
C. There is something terribly immediate and awesomely human and real in the Homeric epics. We find
ourselves on every page. There are no final answers to the questions of why things happen. Why, for
example, does the Trojan War take place? Is it the anger of the gods? The pride of men?
D. Iliad and Odyssey are entirely open-textured at the levels we call epistemology, ethics, and political
science.
1. The problem of knowledge is underscored in the epics in the form of delusional dreams, gods
imitating mortals, hallucinatory experiences.
2. The origin of conduct is illustrated repeatedly by our vulnerability to our own passions, our loss of
rational control.
3. The problem of governance in this war of princes and kings is written in blood and gore, where the
Destinies are more powerful than the rule of law.
E. The Upanishads would merge us with the eternal cosmic soul, but Iliad and Odyssey assert that we are
beings of this earth. Throughout the epics, the focus is on the problems of earth, on the beginning and
middle and end of human life, the need for a conservative approach to life, the recognition that we are
part rational and part passionate, and that there is an internal conflict taking place within us.
F. One character given to us in Homer, described as the most pathetic of all, the person in the worst
imaginable situation, is the hearthless, lawless, stateless man.
1. What Homer is claiming here is quite different from the Upanishads, which promotes a kind of
introspective and, indeed, isolating form of contemplative life.
2. Homer tells us that nothing is worse than to be outside the civic order of things, to be separated
from the laws and customs and habitats of ones people.
3. The human condition calls for life within a settled community, a polis in which one participates
and from which one draws lessons for life.
G. A final note about Homer is that everywhere in the epics, nature is the guide. In philosophy, at least in its
earliest stages, we will also see nature as a guide. How apt, in this connection, that one of the great
philosophers of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, would say of his own mission as a philosopher that
he attempted nothing more than to show the fly the way out of the bottle.


Questions to Consider:
1. Summarize the implications that follow when the soul of the cosmos is assumed to be within the person, in
contrast to the sharp Homeric division between the human and the divine.
2. The Upanishads feature a search for wisdom; Homers epics, for heroic achievement. Describe how both may
be regarded as perfectionist in their aims but in quite different ways.