Heraclitus

Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher describes change as “the only constant in life”. It is an unavoidable process of life and failure to constantly adapt and amend to inevitable change has negative effects. In the 1955 play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Australian playwright Ray Lawler, depicts how changes to our everyday life force us to re-evaluate who we are and what our future holds. Whether that change comes to group dynamics; or with age, we have to reconsider our dreams, our…

In the early 1500s, Pope Julius II ordered an artist by the name of Raphael to create one of the world’s most advanced artistic pieces of its time. Raphael’s “School of Athens” (among many others) establishes a new tone for Renaissance artists. As new color pallets arose and depth perception began to develop, Renaissance art began to parallel with its historical context through its complex societal concepts and profound artistic representations. In this painting, Raphael portrays historical…

The story “The Interlopers” written by Saki is also connected with Nietzsche’s philosophy on Apollo and Dionysus, which are central themes within his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy. I am going to argue that the Apollonian and Dionysian philosophy can describe not only humans and that someone can go from Dionysus to Apollo with just a few words. I am going to argue this despite the fact that in general this philosophy is applied on human beings, yet relating it with “The Interlopers”.…

Parmenides, like many pre-Socratic philosophers, was among the first to start questioning the world around him in a philosophical context. A student of Xenophanes’, Parmenides argued that change did not occur in the natural world and that the world is as it is and will remain so for eternity. He argued, quite fervently, that our personal observations of the natural world do not correlate with reality. While many see this as a fallacy in the modern era, the principle behind his ideas (that the…

In the book The Greeks and the Irrational, the author E.R. Dodds studies whether the ancient Greeks were rationalists, or contrary to popular belief, they were sensitive to the non-rational factors of human experience. During a museum visit, Dodds gets his inspiration for this book from a young man who thinks Greek art “lacked the awareness of mystery”(1) for it to be interesting. He then goes on to write this book, so that “anthropologists and scholars who had no specialist knowledge of ancient…

They did not have the visions of Heaven and Hell as we do now. Specifically, the idea that living a good life will lead one to a pleasant afterlife and that living a bad or immoral life will lead one to an unpleasant afterlife. The ancient Greeks saw life after death as something only attainable through glory in their present lives. As Achilles said in the Iliad (1997 trans.), “If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the…

of water, the ancient Greeks also considered him the first physics because of his ideas. Anaximander, who was a student of Thales, added to the aspect of Materialism. He believed that Earth began as a liquid and all of life began from the water. Heraclitus believed that fire and energy unifies all of reality, and “All things flow, nothing abides”(pg 5). Pythagoras was considered an idealist, his philosophy was based upon mathematics, specifically geometry. He believed that geometry was the…

conceive of something “not” in existence, we are in fact deluded. Parmenides’ central ideology is this: That which is not cannot be thought about or spoken about. While the Milesian philosophers look for a permanent element to explain the Cosmology, Heraclitus finds that constant change is the essential factor for existence. They come to these conclusions by way of sense perception, but Parmenides rejects this idea. He claims you cannot trust your senses, and you must only rely on reason to…

the influence of education. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Though influenced primarily by Socrates, to the extent that Socrates is usually the main character in many of Plato's writings, he [Plato] was also influenced by Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Pythagoreans”. Arguably one of the greatest thinkers of his own, and of all time, even Plato relied on ideas and influences from multiple other…

In 1689, John Locke published Two Treatises of Government, a politically philosophical essay designed to attack patriarchalism and alternatively offer ideas for a more civilized society. In the Second Treatise Locke develops the theory of ‘state of nature’ which entails that all individuals govern themselves and thus govern their own property. “To properly understand political power and trace its origins, we must consider the state that all people are in naturally. That is a state of perfect…