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• 1 Presocratics

• 1.1 Xenophanes

• What are the three points of Xenophanes's criticism towards the poets (Homer&Hesiod) about anthropomorphizing the gods?

  1. Poets say scandalous things about the gods: they're too human.
  
  2. God is not like humans but exactly the opposite
  
  3. No one really knows anything about the gods: there is a distinction between knowing and believing.

• What do these quotes mean?Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are blameworthy and disgraceful for men: stealing, committing adultery, deceiving each other.But mortals think gods are begotten, and have the clothing, voice, and body of mortals.Ethiopians snub-nosed and black Thracians blue-eyed and red-haired.Now if cattle, or lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and perform works like men, horses like horses and cattle like cattle would draw the forms of gods, and made their bodies just like the body had.

  Xenophanes mentions how the traditional view of the gods is human-like. What it boils down to is that the traditional view of gods is in a body of a human. We only do this because we are humans ourselves, but if for example cattle we're to come up with gods they would be cattle- like. Therefore, we cannot know what the gods truly look like. We anthropomorphize the gods.

• What does this quote mean?One God, greatest among gods and men, not at all like to mortals in body nor in thought.

  Xenophanes was monotheistic instead of polytheistic. He believes in one God that has no human qualities.

• What do these quotes mean?Now the plain truth no man has seen nor will any know concerning the gods and what I have said concerning all things. For even if he should completely succeed in describing things as they come to pass nonetheless he himself does not know: opinion is wrought over (or: comes to) all.Not from the beginning have the gods revealed all things to mortals, but in time by seeking they come upon what is better.

  Certain knowledge about the gods is not possible according to Xenophanes, because the gods are not giving us all the knowledge, just parts of it. That's why we can't be certain about our knowledge. And even if we would have found the truth, you wouldn't know it was the truth. We only have opinions about the gods, no real knowledge.

• 1.2 Heraclitus

• What do these quotes mean?Poor witnesses for men are the eyes and ears of those who have barbarian souls.Dogs too bark at anyone they do not knowLearning many things does not teach understanding. Else it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, as well as Xenophanes and Hectaeus.

  Heraclitus thinks of barbarians (meaning foreigners and non-Greek people) as animals. He says humans have two inputs of knowledge: your senses and your mind. He says that if you have a barbarian mind, you're not capable of attuning your mind with your senses, this means you can't understand what you're seeing. He says that other thinkers can know facts, but do not have the skill of understanding.

• What do these quotes mean?As the same thing in us are living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and those in turn having changed around are these.They do not understand how being at variance with itself it agrees: back-turning structure as a bow or a lyre.Sea is the purest and most polluted water: for fish drinkable and healthy, for men undrinkable and harmful.

  Underneath every harmony, there are opposites. These opposites need each other and are in balance. It is a cycle of opposites. It is also all about perception, about your point of view.

• What does this quote mean?This world-order, the same of all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: everlasting fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures.All things are exchange for fire and fire for all things, as goods for gold and gold for goods.

  What fire means to Heraclitus is that it is the basis of everything, just like water to Thales and air to Anaximenes. Heraclitus thinks the gods don't interfere with human life, the cosmos runs its own way, because of the fire. Fire is some kind of energy, which is always at the same level.

• In what two ways can you interpret the two following quotes?It is not possible to step twice into the same river...On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow...

  1. There is constant flux in the world. Nothing stays the same and everything constantly changes. The river won't be the same the second time you step into it.
  
  2. We don't live in a world of fixed identities, we change constantly. We can change. (revolutionary for his time)

• What do the following quotes mean?They try vainly to purify themselves with blood when they are defiled by it, as if someone who had stepped into mud should bathe in mud to wash it off. One would be thought mad if some man noticed him doing that. And they pray to these statues as if one should talk with houses, not knowing what gods and heroes are.To God all things are fair, good and just, but men suppose some things are unjust, some just.

  Heraclitues says also, just like Xenophanes, that people anthropomorphise the gods. He criticises the way the Athenians worship their gods. You can see that when he compares washing of your sins with blood, something purely human and not god-like, with washing off mud with mud. He is also monotheistic instead of polytheistic, when re refers to God. Heraclitus adds that ethics, the rules or way to live a good life, is purely a human invention and is not determined by God. To God there is only fair, good and just.

• 1.3 Protagoras (sophists)

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• What does it mean when we call Protagoras a sophist?

  A sophist is a wise person, which is marked by scepticism, relativism, rhetoric, persusion and mostely the power of speech (fake truth?).
  They taught their students to speak persuasively