The Great Conversation

• Ἡσίοδος: theogony, and justice is key. Chaos first, then Earth appears and gives birth to Heaven. Earth lies with Heaven and bears the Titans, and Cyclops and Hecatoncheires (which Heaven hides in Tartarus). Kronos (leader of Titans) has children with Rhea, and finds out that one of those children will dethrone him, so he eats them. But Rhea hides the next child, Zeus, who eventually gets Kronos to drink a potion and vomit up the children. Zeus and the children free the Cyclops, who give Zeus a lightning bolt, and they overthrow the Titans, casting them into Tartarus.
• Ὅμιρος: Gods preside over the world, very similar to humans but immortal. Honor is key. Illiad (Trojan Paris seduces Helen, so Agamemnon goes to retrieve her to defend his brother’s honor) & Odyssey (Odysseus returning home).
• Θαλῆς: water is the cause and element of everything, all things are filled with gods. Account for what you can see/touch in terms of things you can see/touch. In each thing is a principle that’s immortal. If we want to understand this world, we should look to this world, not another.
• Ἀναξίμανδρος: everything has a beginning, its beginning must have a beginning. So there must be something that has no beginning: the infinite/boundless. Everything either is a beginning, or has a beginning. The boundless is a chaotic mixture, separated out by moving in a vortex (like planets do in orbit). And there is a principle of balance: rainy season comes at the expense of the dry.
• Ξενοφάνης: it’s shameful to present gods as similar to humans. We made gods in our own image, and personified things that can be explained naturally.There is one god, entirely unlike humans. The truth hasn’t been revealed to us through muses, and if it were, we wouldn’t recognize it as the truth.
• Ἡράκλειτος: Everything is in flux. There is a many in one. Tension between opposites is a large part of existence. There is a logos, a pattern/structure, behind the world order. We can learn it by using eyes and ears, though they are bad witnesses.
• Παρμενίδης: Thinking and being are the same and inseparable. You can’t think something that is not. Things cannot change because that implies non being. All things are the same because to differentiate, you’d have to say that an aspect of one is, and that aspect of another is not. So there is no many, only the one, which is eternal and infinite. If our experience tells us otherwise, too bad for our experience.