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August 25, 2025
The Origins of Philosophy by Drew A. Hyland
“For all men begin, as we said, by wondering that things are as they are. . . . “—Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, Ch 2.
“All men desire by nature to know.”—Aristotle, opening line of the Metaphysics.
Thales—“Self knowledge is the most difficult of all things.”
Hegel—“The world is through and through rational.” Subsequent thinkers found that difficult to believe, esp. the existentialists.
Xenophanes in Fragments 24 and 25 speaking about god: “He sees as a whole, thinks as a whole, and hears as a whole.” //// “But without toil he sets everything in motion, by the thought of his mind.”
Utnapishtim said to Gilgamesh: “I will reveal to you a mystery, I will tell you a secret of the gods.”
Xenophanes Hexameter 11: “Both Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are shameful and a reproach among mankind: theft, adultery, and mutual deception.”
Xenophanes Hexameter 15: “But if oxen (and horses) and lions had hands or could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen of gods like oxen, and they would make the bodies (of their gods) in accordance with the form that each species possesses.”
Xenophanes Hexameter 16: “Aethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with grey eyes and red hair.”
When Empedocles remarked to Xenophanes that it is impossible to find a wise man, Xenophanes replied “Naturally, for it takes a wise man to recognize a wise man.”
Plato in the Phaedo: “Philosophy is a preparation for death.”
Thales saw water as the unity behind all things. Nous imitates the fluidity of water.
Anaximander saw behind all things: the apeiron, or the indefinite.
For Anaximenes the arche of things was air.
Parmenides: “Thinking and being are the same.”
Heraclitus Fragment 101: “I searched into myself.”
Heraclitus Fragment 116: “All men have the capacity to know themselves and act with sophrosyne.” Sophrosyne can be defined as moderation. “The Greeks understood it as self control as in knowing one’s place, knowing one’s limitations, and not aspiring for that which it is not given a man to be.” Greek tragedy is filled with men ignoring sophrosyne and striving to be gods. They become instead tragic heroes. But Aristotle said we should strive to be “as much like the divine as possible.”
Heraclitus’s famous river Fragments 91 and 12 express the flowing of all things: “You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on.”
Heraclitus Fragment 53: “War is both king of all and father of all, and it has revealed some as gods, and others as men; some it has made slaves, others free.”
But “Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.”
Heraclitus Fragment 24: “Gods and men honour those slain in war.”
Heraclitus Fragment 50: “The way up and down is the same.”
Parmenides is considered the father of rationalism, yet he begins his great poem with a Proem that describes a mythological journey of a youth driven by horses and maidens to a goddess who reveals to him the Truth. This is a metaphor for the journey of philosophy. It is not a revelation you get sitting at home pondering nothingness. The erotic implications are a symbol for the erotic desire for the wholeness of wisdom. There is that sense that what he is doing is good.
Parmenides Fragment 3: “For it is the same thing to think and to be.”
Parmenides Fragment 5: “It is all the same to me from what point I begin, for I shall return again to this same point.”
Parmenides Fragment 13: “First of all the gods she devised Love.”
Empedocles Fragment 117: “For by now I have been born as boy, girl, plant, bird, and dumb sea-fish.”
Anaxagoras Fragment 21: “Through the weakness of the sense-perceptions, we cannot judge truth.”
Leucippus Fragment: “Nothing happens at random; whatever comes about is by rational necessity.”
Democritus Fragment 4: “Pleasure and absence of pleasure are the criteria of what is profitable and what is not.”
Democritus Fragment 6: “One must learn by this rule that Man is severed from reality.”
Democritus Fragment 10: “It has often been demonstrated that we do not grasp how each thing is or is not.”
Democritus Fragment 31: “Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions.”
Democritus Fragment 34: “Man is a universe in little.”
Democritus Fragment 35: “If any man listens to my opinions, here recorded, with intelligence, he will achieve many things worthy of a good man, and avoid doing many unworthy things.”
Democritus Fragment 38: “It is noble to prevent the criminal; but if one cannot, one should not join him in crime.”
Democritus Fragment 39: “One must either be good, or imitate a good man.”
Democritus Fragment 40: “Men find happiness neither by means of the body not through possessions, but through uprightness and wisdom.”
Democritus Fragment 41: “Refrain from crimes not through fear but through duty.”
Democritus Fragment 45: “The wrongdoer is more unfortunate than the man wronged.”
Democritus Fragment 46: “Magnanimity consists in enduring tactlessness with mildness.”
Democritus Fragment 48: “When inferior men censure, the good man pays no heed.”
Democritus Fragment 49: “It is hard to be governed by one’s inferior.”
Democritus Fragment 50: “The man completely enslaved to wealth can never be honest.”
Democritus Fragment 55: “Men should emulate the deeds and actions of virtue, not the words.”
Democritus Fragment 60: “It is better to examine one’s own faults rather than those of others.”
Democritus Fragment 62: “Virtue consists, not in avoiding wrong-doing, but in having no wish thereto.”
Democritus Fragment 64: “Many much-learned men have no intelligence.”
Democritus Fragment 75: “It is better for fools to be ruled than to be ruled.”
Democritus Fragment 83: “The cause of error is ignorance of the better.”
Democritus Fragment 86: “It is greed to do all the talking and not be willing to listen.”
Democritus Fragment 105: “Physical beauty is merely animal unless intelligence be present.”
Democritus Fragment 226: “Freedom of speech is the sign of freedom; but the danger lies in discerning the right occasion.”
Protagoras Fragment 1: “Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.”
Gorgias Fragment 12: “One must destroy one’s adversaries’ seriousness with laughter, and their laughter with seriousness.”
“For all men begin, as we said, by wondering that things are as they are. . . . “—Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, Ch 2.
“All men desire by nature to know.”—Aristotle, opening line of the Metaphysics.
Thales—“Self knowledge is the most difficult of all things.”
Hegel—“The world is through and through rational.” Subsequent thinkers found that difficult to believe, esp. the existentialists.
Xenophanes in Fragments 24 and 25 speaking about god: “He sees as a whole, thinks as a whole, and hears as a whole.” //// “But without toil he sets everything in motion, by the thought of his mind.”
Utnapishtim said to Gilgamesh: “I will reveal to you a mystery, I will tell you a secret of the gods.”
Xenophanes Hexameter 11: “Both Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are shameful and a reproach among mankind: theft, adultery, and mutual deception.”
Xenophanes Hexameter 15: “But if oxen (and horses) and lions had hands or could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen of gods like oxen, and they would make the bodies (of their gods) in accordance with the form that each species possesses.”
Xenophanes Hexameter 16: “Aethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with grey eyes and red hair.”
When Empedocles remarked to Xenophanes that it is impossible to find a wise man, Xenophanes replied “Naturally, for it takes a wise man to recognize a wise man.”
Plato in the Phaedo: “Philosophy is a preparation for death.”
Thales saw water as the unity behind all things. Nous imitates the fluidity of water.
Anaximander saw behind all things: the apeiron, or the indefinite.
For Anaximenes the arche of things was air.
Parmenides: “Thinking and being are the same.”
Heraclitus Fragment 101: “I searched into myself.”
Heraclitus Fragment 116: “All men have the capacity to know themselves and act with sophrosyne.” Sophrosyne can be defined as moderation. “The Greeks understood it as self control as in knowing one’s place, knowing one’s limitations, and not aspiring for that which it is not given a man to be.” Greek tragedy is filled with men ignoring sophrosyne and striving to be gods. They become instead tragic heroes. But Aristotle said we should strive to be “as much like the divine as possible.”
Heraclitus’s famous river Fragments 91 and 12 express the flowing of all things: “You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on.”
Heraclitus Fragment 53: “War is both king of all and father of all, and it has revealed some as gods, and others as men; some it has made slaves, others free.”
But “Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.”
Heraclitus Fragment 24: “Gods and men honour those slain in war.”
Heraclitus Fragment 50: “The way up and down is the same.”
Parmenides is considered the father of rationalism, yet he begins his great poem with a Proem that describes a mythological journey of a youth driven by horses and maidens to a goddess who reveals to him the Truth. This is a metaphor for the journey of philosophy. It is not a revelation you get sitting at home pondering nothingness. The erotic implications are a symbol for the erotic desire for the wholeness of wisdom. There is that sense that what he is doing is good.
Parmenides Fragment 3: “For it is the same thing to think and to be.”
Parmenides Fragment 5: “It is all the same to me from what point I begin, for I shall return again to this same point.”
Parmenides Fragment 13: “First of all the gods she devised Love.”
Empedocles Fragment 117: “For by now I have been born as boy, girl, plant, bird, and dumb sea-fish.”
Anaxagoras Fragment 21: “Through the weakness of the sense-perceptions, we cannot judge truth.”
Leucippus Fragment: “Nothing happens at random; whatever comes about is by rational necessity.”
Democritus Fragment 4: “Pleasure and absence of pleasure are the criteria of what is profitable and what is not.”
Democritus Fragment 6: “One must learn by this rule that Man is severed from reality.”
Democritus Fragment 10: “It has often been demonstrated that we do not grasp how each thing is or is not.”
Democritus Fragment 31: “Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions.”
Democritus Fragment 34: “Man is a universe in little.”
Democritus Fragment 35: “If any man listens to my opinions, here recorded, with intelligence, he will achieve many things worthy of a good man, and avoid doing many unworthy things.”
Democritus Fragment 38: “It is noble to prevent the criminal; but if one cannot, one should not join him in crime.”
Democritus Fragment 39: “One must either be good, or imitate a good man.”
Democritus Fragment 40: “Men find happiness neither by means of the body not through possessions, but through uprightness and wisdom.”
Democritus Fragment 41: “Refrain from crimes not through fear but through duty.”
Democritus Fragment 45: “The wrongdoer is more unfortunate than the man wronged.”
Democritus Fragment 46: “Magnanimity consists in enduring tactlessness with mildness.”
Democritus Fragment 48: “When inferior men censure, the good man pays no heed.”
Democritus Fragment 49: “It is hard to be governed by one’s inferior.”
Democritus Fragment 50: “The man completely enslaved to wealth can never be honest.”
Democritus Fragment 55: “Men should emulate the deeds and actions of virtue, not the words.”
Democritus Fragment 60: “It is better to examine one’s own faults rather than those of others.”
Democritus Fragment 62: “Virtue consists, not in avoiding wrong-doing, but in having no wish thereto.”
Democritus Fragment 64: “Many much-learned men have no intelligence.”
Democritus Fragment 75: “It is better for fools to be ruled than to be ruled.”
Democritus Fragment 83: “The cause of error is ignorance of the better.”
Democritus Fragment 86: “It is greed to do all the talking and not be willing to listen.”
Democritus Fragment 105: “Physical beauty is merely animal unless intelligence be present.”
Democritus Fragment 226: “Freedom of speech is the sign of freedom; but the danger lies in discerning the right occasion.”
Protagoras Fragment 1: “Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.”
Gorgias Fragment 12: “One must destroy one’s adversaries’ seriousness with laughter, and their laughter with seriousness.”
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