Preview

Pre-Socratic Philosopher Empedocles Research Paper

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
252 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Pre-Socratic Philosopher Empedocles Research Paper
Empedocles was the Pre-Socratic philosopher that I found to have the most compelling ideas. Empedocles was a Greek philosopher from 490-430 B.C.E. He felt that reality was everlasting and fixed. He also believed that the changes we go through are more than illusion, when another philosopher by the name of Parmenides believed just the opposite. Parmenides believed that "change and motion are illusions of the senses". Empedocles also partially believed what philosopher Heraclitus had said about reality being "ceaseless change". Empedocles took into account what both the other philosophers had held as truth and combined the thoughts of each. His teachings of his beliefs are still in existence today.

What Empedocles thought was that basic objects


You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    3. Socrates: (470-399 BCE) Socrates was an Athenian Philosopher. His thoughtful and reflective mind was driven by the understanding human beings and human affairs.…

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Heraclitus believed that fire is the basic element of the universe because of its ever-changing nature and that the reality of all mirrors this idea. According to Moore and Bruder (2008, p. 26,) “There is no reality, save the reality of change: permanence is an illusion.” He viewed change not as a random occurrence, but a determination by the harmonious balance of opposites through a cosmic order called the logos (Moore & Bruder, 2008, p. 26.)…

    • 289 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the reading Euthyphro, it is an argument between Euthyphro (the priest) and Socrates (who is being indicted by another man). This reading is a dialogue between the two men arguing on the same topic, even though they each gave examples, they still can’t figure out the answer but going “around and around” with the original question. Since Euthyphro and Socrates gave a lot of examples during the argument, I was really confused when reading it. I couldn’t organize my thoughts on the reading. However with the example of Euthyphro persecuting his own father for “murdering” a drunk murder, I start to have an idea of what they are arguing about, in my opinion, it is a question with no right answer for. No matter which answer was given, the result…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The founding father of Philosophy was known as Socrates, he was born on 469 BCE and was later executed on 399 BCE while Athens was dealing with the Peloponnesian war against Sparta (Ancient). The decision to execute Socrates during the war may had been the fragile state that Athens was dealing with while in war. If there wasn’t a war the outcome of his death could had been a different.…

    • 346 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Garner had the basic human right to live and not be shot to death for the commission of a nonviolent crime. However, man-made law was in effect and was interpreted literally without any regard for severity of crime and ultimate outcome of actions. Garner had the right to due process; a right that was asserted to have been violated when he was shot to death. However, Garner chose to violate the law and commit burglary and not surrender himself when ordered to do so, thus subjecting himself the myriad of possible actions and events that fell upon him. I am not condoning the killing, but at that time and place in society, those were the risks he took and faced regardless of the practicality of the law.…

    • 201 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    At one point during a philosophical debate between Socrates and Phaedo, Phaedo attempts to compares the human body to a lyre and the soul to the lyre’s harmony. Socrates, however, argues that this an inaccurate comparison. He explains that a harmony can be more and more fully harmonized or less and less fully harmonized, to which Phaedo confirms. Socrates then claims that a soul cannot be neither more nor less of a soul than another, a fact which Phaedo also confirms. Consequently, if the harmony of a lyre were to represent the human soul, then the harmony of all lyres must be the same, since no soul is greater nor lesser than another. Now, if virtue represents harmony and wickedness disharmony, then all souls must have the same amount of virtue…

    • 275 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The ability to see is a much more complex ability than just the physical attribute. Most individuals have the ability to see physically but are blind to the reality of certain circumstances. In the play, “Oedipus the King” by Plato, Oedipus, the tragic hero, is not a blind man but cannot see the reality in the outcome of trying to escape his given fate.…

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    World History Study Guide

    • 1130 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Plato: thought philosophers were best suited to govern people, believed that every material object in the world was only the reflection of a perfect ideal, for example all the trees growing in Greece were only reflections of a single ideal tree that did not actually exist.…

    • 1130 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Dbq Ancient Greek Culture

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Socrates was famous for questioning about life. He once said an “unexamined life is not worth living” as seen in document 1. This quote brings about many questions and possibilities about what life is and how it is cherished. Plato is the student of Socrates. He emphasized the importance of reason. The republic was written by Plato that describes the ideal state. As seen in document 2 Aristotle is known for believing that if people study life they will understand it more. Philosophers today still study, and get ideas from many of Ancient philosopher's…

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sophocles’s use of both plot and character within his classic tragedy “Oedipus the King” portray the religious and ethical views of the Classical period of Ancient Greece to such an extent that Knox goes so far as to say that “the audience which watched Oedipus in the theatre of Dionysus was watching itself.” Marlowe uses similar tools of character construction and plot in “Dr Faustus” to reflect the beliefs and moral attitudes held in Elizabethan England. The playwrights both use the conceptions of their protagonists to present contemporary beliefs; for example, the initial portrayal of the characters of Oedipus and Dr Faustus demonstrate ideological characteristics of a man within their respective contexts. On the other hand, with the…

    • 783 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Greek Civilization Dbq

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages

    An important contributor to philosophy was Socrates (470 – 399 BC). “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This is a quote from Socrates. He believed that a person must ask questions and seek to understand the concept and ways of life (Doc. 1). He used a form of teaching that used a question and answer formation to force pupils to see things in their own eyes and understand it in their own mind with their own words that make sense to them. This was called the Socratic method, which is still used today. He was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens and a little while after was sentenced to death. During a big part of his life, Socrates examined his own ideas and tried to discover the truth behind many subjects, by reason and logic. His contributions were an extremely important part of the Western Civilization and his legacies were that we should think for ourselves and stand up for what we believe in. Another big contributor to Greek philosophy was Aristotle (384 – 322 BC). Many consider Aristotle to be a scientist rather than a philosopher because of his contributions to physics and biology. Aristotle was also a student of Plato but did not agree with a lot of his ideas. Aristotle…

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Aristotle Research Paper

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Aristotle is one of the most well known philosophers in history. He was born in 384 BC in Stagira, which is in Macedonia. His father was personal physician to the king of Macedonia at that time, Amyntas. He lived until 322 BC when he died at a family estate in Euboea. Aristotle is credited with many great accomplishments during his time. He was pupil to a great mind, as well as a teacher to great leaders. Aristotle's thinking was beyond his time and rivaled the worldview at the time.…

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Empedocles Research Paper

    • 1390 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Empedocles is a widely known Greek in the world of philosophy. He became famous for his theories, his works on nature and on his wild antics he would preform and preach about thinking that he was a God. Everyone had an opinion about Empedocles, whether as a genious or a kook. Aristotle hailed empedocles as the inventor of the rhetoric. Galen coined him as the founder of Italian medecine. Lucretius admired his hexametric poetry.2 "He has been regarded variously as a materialist physicist, a shamanic magician, a mystical theologian, a healer, a democratic politician, a living god, and a fraud." (Campbell, 2005)…

    • 1390 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Empedocles Analysis

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Some things on Earth are everlasting, and according to Empedocles those things are the four root elements. These elements are fire, air, water and earth. They’re essential to life and therefore an eternal part of the world. Their importance speaks volume of their existence and they do not get created nor perished, they just exist. That is the argument that Empedocles is making, these elements are eternal and cannot be destroyed.…

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Pre-Socratic Philosophers

    • 10748 Words
    • 43 Pages

    Our understanding of the Presocratics is complicated by the incomplete nature of our evidence. Most of them wrote at least one “book” (short pieces of prose writing, it seems, or, in some cases, poems of not great length), but no complete work survives. Instead, we are dependent on later philosophers, historians, and compilers of collections of ancient wisdom for disconnected quotations (fragments) and reports about their views (testimonia). In some cases, these sources had direct access to the works of the Presocratics, but in many others, the line is indirect and often depends on the work of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and other ancient philosophers who did have access. The sources for the fragments and testimonia made selective use of the material available to them, in accordance with their own special, and varied, interests in the early thinkers. (For analyses of the doxographic tradition, and the influence of Aristotle and Theophrastus on later sources, see Mansfeld 1999, Runia 2008, and Mansfeld and Runia 1997, 2009a, and 2009b.) Although any account of a Presocratic thinker has to be a reconstruction, we should not be overly pessimistic about the possibility of reaching a historically responsible understanding of these early Greek thinkers.…

    • 10748 Words
    • 43 Pages
    Powerful Essays