Study Questions on The Presocratics, by Edward Hussey
Modified September 21, 2012
Chapter 7
The focus will be on Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists, all of whom seem to be reacting to Parmenides’ Way of Truth. None of these questions will relate to Parmenides’ Way of Opinion, which speaks of a theory of the nature of the cosmos attributed to “mortal men” who have based it upon a “mistaken decision.” (128)
Note: “Eleatic” refers to the view of Parmenides of Elea, which was presumably shared by Zeno of Elea. Elea was a town in southern Italy across the sea from and to the northeast of Sicily. (See map p. 62) The Eleatics are the first philosophers we have considered who were not from Ionia. Pythagoras, however, who lived earlier, moved from Samos in Ionia to Sicily. (Hussey’s Chapter 4 can provide insights into early Pythagoreanism.)
Empedocles
1. What Eleatic thesis does Empedocles accept at the outset? (130)
2. To what did he reduce change?
3. How many, and what, are the basic elements in his theory?
4. What exists besides those elements? How do we know that they exist? Are they located in space?
5. How do Empedocles and others in his time understand krasis, which Hussey translates as duly proportioned mixture? (bottom 130-top 131)
6. Which of the following provides the best example of krasis: granola, composed of oat flakes, nuts, and dried fruit pieces; a wine and water blend; bronze (which is composed of tin and copper)?
7. What is the primary cause of kraseis (plural of krasis)? What is the primary cause of the separation of what has been mixed in a krasis? (131)
8. How do Love and Strife operate with respect to living beings, households, communities large and small? (131)
9. How do the two forces operate in the kosmos as a whole? When Love is in complete control what are the characteristics of the kosmos? To what entity in Parmenides’ philosophy does it seem comparable? (131)
10. What is the kosmos like when neither Love nor Strife dominate? (131) In what cosmic phase did Empedocles think he lived? (132)
11. How would Empedocles likely describe the life history of a typical individual human being? (132)
12. Does he think the kosmos has a mind? At all times? (132)
13. In what sense is natural action what we would call mechanical? What we would call psychological? (132)
14. What kinds of things mutually attract one another according to Empedocles? (133) (Heraclitus seems inclined to an opposite view!) How is this “X to X” principle distinct from the operation of Love in Empedocles’ view? (133)
15. How is Empedocles’ philosophy of nature designed to permit the incorporation as aspects of Parmenides’ true way? (133)
Anaxagoras
16. What did Anaxagoras attempt to do? (141, last paragraph in the section on Anaxagoras)
17. What Eleatic thesis already accepted by Empedocles does Anaxagoras accept? How is apparent change to be explained? (134)
18, How does A break with the Milesian scheme? (134) The “controlling deity” is discussed systematically beginning on p. 138.
19. For A, how many ultimate constituents are there? What three consequences does he draw? Are large and small absolute terms for him? (135)
20. What important, yet somewhat surprising but reasonable, step does he take? (135)
21. How does A. express what Hussey calls his principle of maximum variety? (135)
22. Of what kind of “things” must A, be speaking in such utterances? (135-36) List some of the “things” he obviously had in mind.
23. What Eleatic objection must have been brought against Empedocles’ view? (136) This objection is one with which Anaxagoras would have been sympathetic.
24. What makes a lump of X, which must contain every element according to A., a lump of X, say, gold, and not Y, say, copper or hair? See the “rule” mentioned at the top of 137?
25. What difficulties of visualization does this solution present? (137) What stand does Anaxagoras take in frr. 6 and 8? (137 bottom half)
26. What are the characteristics of Mind (Nous) in Anaxagoras’ scheme? How does it different from the uniform elements? How does it differ from, say, Love in Empedocles or the Unbounded in Anaximander? (138-39)
27. Why does Anaxagoras draw on the analogy with mind or intellect rather than on the analogy with psyche, which in ordinary Greek is the animating principle of living beings, which may be operating in Heraclitus’ and in Anaximenes’ visions? (138-39)
28. What interesting claim did Anaxagoras likely make, though it is not attested in the texts we have from him? Why did Plato and Aristotle complain about the details of his cosmology in light of that claim? (139-140)
29. If Mind is the standard of goodness and reality, what kind of life with the best sort of human being lead? (140-41) There is a link here between Anaxagoras and Aristotle’s description of contemplative happiness in Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics.
The Atomists
30. Why are Leucippus and Democritus often called Presocratics even if they were contemporaries of Socrates (and Democritus probably died well after Socrates)? (142)
31. What was the starting point for the Atomists? (142)
32. What did the Atomists take seriously (thus disagreeing with Anaxagoras)? (142)
33. What “drastic” step did Leucippus introduce? (142)
34. Why did Democritus affirm that the “nothing” (to medenˆ) exists just as much as the “thing” (to den, a term coined just for the occasion)? What does he seem to mean by “thing” here? (143)
35. What two functions does the “nothing” serve in atomism? How does the “nothing” function? What are some of the more usual terms used to talk about it? (144)
36. What characteristics do the “things” have in the atomist system? (144-45) What is their traditional name? What does its source-word mean? (144)
37. Distinguish theoretical divisibility from physical divisibility, i.e., define these two concepts. (144-45) Which kind of divisibility did the atomists certainly rule out for their ultimate “things”? (145)
When Hussey refers to the Epicureans, he is talking about those who held a version of the atomist philosophy of nature developed by Epicurus, who founded a philosophical school in 306 BCE, i.e., after the death of Aristotle (322 BCE). Epicurean atomism differs in some ways from Democritus’ atomism.
38. How did the atoms move? (146) Did they have weight? If so, what determined their weight?
39. What similarities exist between atomist explanations and those of earlier natural philosophers? (146-147)
40. In what respect was the system of the atomists revolutionary? (147-148)
41. To what did the “inner logic” of the Atomist theory lead? (What seems to have blocked the possibility that each atom itself possessed a soul or consciousness and might be able to initiate movement?) (148)
42. What did Democritus mean by “gods”? (148)