The brilliant ancient Greek philosophy actually solved two questions, one is "what" and the other is "why". The former opened up ontology, and the latter opened up scientific (natural philosophy) exploration.
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Why do you need to say the above sentence first? This has to do with the two people we are talking about today. For details, please read below.
There are two people in ancient Greek philosophy. Their ideas have always been opposite, even incompatible. However, these two philosophers with very different ideas created many later Western philosophical schools. Who are these two people? They are the famous Heraclitus and Parmenides.
Anyone who knows the history of Western philosophy must know Heraclitus’s famous saying “A man cannot step into the same river twice”, but as everyone knows, his opponent, mortal enemy, existence Parmenides, a staunch defender of the theory, also has a famous saying, that is, "Thinking and existence are the same thing."
In order to better understand these two people, explore their ideological background, and also consider based on reality, which of their thoughts is closer to today's science, Philosophy Poetry and Painting specially compiled this article , come and enter together. If you have your own ideas or suggestions, or even fruitful thoughts on the truth, please leave a message in the background to discuss and improve with many philosophical fans.
Let’s talk about Heraclitus first
Heraclitus, a legendary philosopher in ancient Greece, was a representative figure of the Ephesian school. He was born into a royal family in the city-state of Ephesus in the Ionian region. He was supposed to inherit the throne, but he gave it to his brother and went into seclusion near the temple of the goddess Aldymes. It is said that the Persian King Darius once wrote a letter inviting him to teach Greek culture in the Persian court.
He is the author of the book "On Nature", of which fragments remain. He is recognized as a representative figure of simple dialectics and the first Western philosopher to propose epistemology.
Heraclitus believed that everything in the universe is in a state of flux, not only nature, but also people and society. Nothing lasts forever, and everything is constantly changing and passing. Therefore, in this sense, it is impossible for a person to step into the same river twice, because when you step into the river for the second time, the river has changed and is no longer the same river as the first time you stepped into it. One. It can be concluded from this that the human sensory world and all the experiences and understandings that people see and hear through their five senses are always in a state of flux. Therefore, he put forward the statement that everything is in flux, and thus established his own philosophical doctrine.
The main theme of Heraclitus’ philosophy is: everything changes, we are in a diverse world, and nothing is permanent. Using fire as the origin, he unified the diversity of the world into a concrete substance that was ever-changing and capable of transforming various heterogeneous things, thereby advancing Milesian philosophy to a new realm and showing a more complete picture. The world picture of naive dialectics. His view that "human knowledge can only arise from perceptual and concrete things" later developed into a branch of Western philosophy, namely phenomenology.
The basis of this idea of ??the change of all things is that the universe has been in a one-dimensional evolution of time from the beginning, that is, time comes first, and everything can only move forward according to the single arrow of time. Propulsion, like a river, can only flow forward, not backward. Change is the essence of the world and the origin of all things.
Look at Parmenides again
Parmenides, an ancient Greek philosopher. He is one of the most representative figures among the Pre-Socratic philosophers and the actual founder and main representative of the Eleatic school. He was a student of Xenophanes and was also influenced by the Pythagoreans.
The main work is "On Nature" written in verse, of which only fragments remain. He believed that reality is constantly changing and all changes in the world are illusions. Therefore, people cannot rely on their senses to understand reality and reality. exist.
Parmenides believed that the origin and development of the world are not changes but changes, and the world is one. All things develop from one.
The creation and evolution of the universe does not come first in time, but in logic and existence, that is, there is existence first, then other things, and finally everything develops and evolves in various forms. Among the appearances of these thousands of worlds, there are some unchanging things, namely existence. Existence is eternal, one, continuous and indivisible; existence is immovable, real, and can be thought; the specific things in the perceptual world are non-existences, illusions, and cannot be thought of. Human senses and experiences are always deceptive. We must see the essence through phenomena and understand reason through perceptibility.
Through the viewpoints of logic precedence, rational knowledge, and the immutability of all things, Parmenides wants to help people escape from the ever-changing world of sensory experience, transcend it, and turn to An essential world that is permanent, unchanging, and eternal. From this point of view, Parmenides's thoughts are opposite and opposite to Heraclitus's. Since Parmenides first proposed existence and logic, it developed and extended the later Plato's theory of ideas.
Parmenides believed that people have two paths in the process of understanding: the path of truth and the path of opinion. The former is existence, existence, and the entity of all things that originally existed from the beginning of all things; while the latter is non-existence, which is the world of human senses and experience; non-existence cannot be extracted, processed and organized by our thoughts. Ideas are formed because feelings and experiences are always changing and vary from person to person; therefore knowledge with universal necessity has only one path, the path of existence. Only existence, or truth, can be thought and spoken of. Knowledge is universal, opinion is not. Opinions and feelings always vary from person to person and cannot become knowledge.
For example, it is very hot today. This is just a feeling, not knowledge. Maybe if you ask another person, he will say it is not hot; it is raining today or the snow is very white. This is just a fact. Nor can it become knowledge. Only 2 2 = 4 or 2 times 2 equals 4 can be counted as knowledge and will not cause ambiguity (linguistic and cognitive).
Parmenides believed that thinking existence is the object of cognition, and anything that can be thought and stated must exist (this is related to Berkeley's existence as being perceived and Hegel's existence as rationality) Different meanings), it can be concluded from this: thinking and existence are the same thing, that is, the identity of thinking and existence, which means that only in thinking can the identity of knowledge and objects be achieved, and the world be understood. This cannot be done in sensory experience. This is also the prototype of Western speculative thinking and abstract thinking.
Through the above, Parmenides established the thinking mode of Western philosophy, which is to understand the essence of all things through an unchanging rational way of knowing. From this, he also established a major content component in philosophy-ontology. Starting from Parmenides, people began to use logical arguments and observational thinking to turn Western philosophy and science from cosmogenesis to existential ontology (that is, the world comes from rational and eternal things).
Conclusion:
Heraclitus believed that all things are in change, are many, are individual, are in feeling and experience, and are always changing, while Parmenides believes that all things remain unchanged. , is one, is general, the essence of all things is the identity of thinking and existence, and the essence is always static and unchanged.
Which of these views do you think is better? Which one is more helpful for us to understand the world? Welcome to leave messages behind the scenes.