Greek Philosophy After Heraclitus - Continued In Verse - With the Pluralists

THE PLURALISTS : Empedocles & Anaxagoras That single primary substance the ‘arche’ of the Ionian philosophers , Was challenged by Emphedocles (b.495BC) and Anaxagoras(b.500BC) ! Emphedocles spoke of four qualitative elements of Nature ; As Earth , Air , Fire and Water ! And also of two mythical beings - love and hate ; Which caused all elements to unite , or to separate and break ! Therefore they were called ‘Pluralists’, - Since for them only a single primary substance , - did not exist ! This above position was refuted by Anaxagoras , Who claimed these elements were not merely four , But they were countless in number and many more ! It was neither love or hate but ‘nous’ , - a spontaneous active mind ; Was the source of all movements and life of Mankind ! THE ATOMISTS : Little is known about the Father of the School of Atomist called Leucippus , He was made famous by his pupil Democritus ! For him Parminedes’ non-being void did never exist ; And Democritus spoke of atoms as indivisible spatial entities ; Moving in a void or empty space , as the building stones of reality , - Which led to the formation of different objects and its multiplicity ! Just like the comedies and tragedies of those days , - Were composed of the same letters of the alphabets , - Democritus had said . He was a rationalist and maintained , all genuine way of knowledge began , - When sense perception ends ! For sense perception was obscure knowledge ; And thoughts which transcends sense perception and appearance , Reaching the very atoms in our being , Becomes the only genuine knowledge of human beings ! But these philosophical thoughts only marked a beginning ! THE SOPHISTS (481- 411BC) : They were wise and skilful men of Greek history, Lectured on art, rhetoric and oratory . Also trained young men for political life , Were like intellectual mercenaries of their time ; For all their teaching came at a price ! Beyond the reach of ordinary men , Which made Socrates later criticize them ! There chief exponent was Protagoras , Who had emphasized amongst all other things , - ‘Man as the measure of all things !’ But those Sophist had failed to see, the forest for the trees ! They failed to recognize ‘man’ from ‘men’ , While exaggerating the differences in human judgments ; Ignoring the common areas of agreements ! (To be continued)