Monday, October 6, 2014

History Essay week three

Pre-Socratic Philosophy
    In the earlier days of Greece, due to the way their society was structured, certain people had time on their hands and could focus on more than just working to make a living. These men were early philosophers, called pre-Socratic philosophers because they cam before Socrates.
    While much of what they speculated was absurd, they asked some thought-provoking questions that would occupy the time of many philosophers to come. Some of them speculated that 'change' didn't actually exist, and if you percieved that it did, then your perceptions cannot be trusted. Another postulated that change was the only thing that was true, and nothing was consant.
    Very few of these philosophers agreed on anything, but thier speculations and postulations would later be adressed by philosophers such as Socrates and Plato, and as such the pre-Socratic philosophers were significant.

   
    The Cyclopes
    In Homer's book The Odessey, Odesseus encounters a race of creatures called Cyclopes. Did these Cyclopes have any kind of civiliation? In book 9 of The Odessey, it says: "Now the Cyclopes neither plant nor plough, but trust in providence, and live on such wheat, barley, and grapes as grow wild without any kind of tillage, and their wild grapes yield them wine as the sun and the rain may grow them. They have no laws nor assemblies of the people, but live in caves on the tops of high mountains; each is lord and master in his family, and they take no account of their neighbours."
    Is there any kind of civilization today, or in history, that does not work the ground to grow food? There is not. These Cyclopes simply live off the wild foods such as they found.
    It also says that they did not have any laws or stucture, beyond families. This does not bespeak a civilization of intelligent creatures. It is clear, then, that the Cyclopes had no civilization.

1 comment:

  1. In the second sentence of the 'Pre-Socratic philosphers' you misspelled 'came' as 'cam.' Just letting you know :)

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