Classical Philosophy (A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps #1)

by Peter S. Adamson

philosophy occurs only in a society that can produce philosophers.

In what may be the first joke in the history of philosophy, albeit a joke with a serious message, Xenophanes sarcastically remarks that if cattle or horses could depict the gods, they would show them looking like cattle or horses (§169).

:)

God didn’t create man in His image, rather we create God in our image.

Pythagoreanism is associated both with dualist theories about the soul and with an emphasis on mathematics. The soul postulated by the dualist has a great deal in common with numbers. Both are abstract, immaterial entities and look like they will always exist, assuming they exist at all. How are you going to kill an immaterial soul, or assassinate the number seven?

After all, these philosophers lived in a time before electricity, and hence before light pollution. If you walked outside at night, even within the walls of a big city like Athens, you would see a stunning night sky, with more stars than most Europeans ever get to see nowadays. If anything in the world of the ancient Greeks cried out for explanation, it was the heavens.