Eleatic School
We still got stuck in Ancient Greece, but now we’re going to Velia, place where the Eleatic philosophy school was formed. And this is the third highly important group of ideas from Greece before Plato and Aristotle times. Xenophanēs (6–5 age before c.) said that there are no gods, but only one. That’s the first step from polytheistic religions to monotheistic ones, humanity will find it interesting later in 1–6 ages a.d. from 5 to 11 ages difference. But yeah, yeah, it’s just a religion, who cares, we’ve got more interesting things — science. Geology — Earth has just woke up from the ocean, it’s a direct way to plate-tectonic theory. Astrophysics — stars and Sun, all cosmic lights — condensed evaporation.
Recommended reading: From Thales to Pythagoras
Philosophical classification — subjective idealism, as many variations of truth as many subjects searching for it. Parmenides (6–5 ages before c.) is the main ideologist of the Eleatic school. He was the first guy who researched ideas of being and cognition, tried to understand and analyze it. Nowadays his understanding of being is more interesting than in the 18th century or somewhere in time before the 21st century. There’s no nothing, only being, cause if nothing exists, it will have its own being. Even Cognition is a being.
Do you remember Sartre’s being classification? — “Nothing — is being-for-itself”
(Being done by nobody — there’s no creator, cause if a being was created it had to come out from nothing, but nothing doesn’t exist. Being doesn’t have future or the past, it permanently present, existing in spherical form. But also there are lots of mistakes, which is no mystical at all, 25 centuries ago, people died at 30, so we have to forgive them for their mistakes).
We’re talking only about important philosophers, so I have nothing to tell about Zenon or Melissus. But what I can tell — ancient Greece is one of the most interesting periods of development of human mind. I even can be more radical — you rights for freedom or voting rights — Ancient Greeks did it, philosophers — neither science guys, nor religious ones. One more coin in the bank of the importance of philosophical thinking.
