Eleatic school of philosophy: basic ideas

Philosophy, the science of thinking, found its principles in the period of antiquity. Basic concepts of the possibilities and methods of human cognition are formed in the schools of ancient Greek philosophy. The development of thinking in its history follows a well-known triad: thesis-antithesis-synthesis.

The thesis is a certain statement that is characteristic of a given historical period.

Antithesis is the negation of the initial principle by finding contradictions in it.

Synthesis is the affirmation of a principle based on a new level of historical thinking.

The logic of development can be traced both in the history of the formation of thinking and in the system for the formation of a concept characteristic of a certain historical form, whether it is a school or a direction in the rational development of the world. For the historical period, when the Eleatic school of philosophy was formed, a pro-materialistic approach to cognition was characteristic. The teaching of the Pythagoreans about the physical principle in nature became the thesis for the formation of the own teachings of the Eleans.

Eleatic school of philosophy: teaching

In 570 BC. The ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes refuted the polytheistic doctrine of God peculiar to this epoch and grounded the principle of the unity of Being. This principle was subsequently developed consistently by his students, and the direction entered the history of science as the Eleatic School of Philosophy. Briefly, the teaching of representatives can be reduced to the following theses:

• Being is one.
• Multiplicity is not reducible to a single, illusory.
• Experience does not provide a reliable knowledge of the world.

The teaching of the Aelian representatives can not be laid down in certain theses. It is much richer. Any teaching is a living process of knowing the truth or falsity of existing statements through the prism of experience. As soon as the philosophical approach in the cognition of nature and society is formulated as a concept, it becomes the subject of critical analysis and further negation.

Exegetics

Therefore, there is a certain style of interpretation of views, called exegesis. He also, as in ancient times, is determined by history, culture, the type of thinking of the era, the author's approach of the researcher. Therefore, canonization is impossible in philosophy, since the forms of thought clothed in words immediately lose their basic principle of negation. The same teaching within the framework of different paradigms changes its semantic load.

Eleatic school of philosophy, whose main ideas were interpreted differently in historical periods, the proof of this fact. The goal-like nature of the paradigm ratio is important, in the parameters of which the study is conducted and the very purpose of investigating the phenomenon.

Key representatives of the school

Representatives of a particular school of philosophy are thinkers of the historical era, united by a single principle, and extrapolating it to a subject-limited area of human knowledge: religion, society, the state. Some historiographers include the representatives of the school of the philosopher Xenophanes, others limit it to three followers. All historical approaches have the right to exist. In any case, the basis of the doctrine of the unity of Being was formulated by Xenophanes from Colophon, proclaiming that the one is God controlling the Universe with his thought.

Representatives of the Eleatic School of Philosophy: Parmenides, Zeno and Melissa, developing the principle of unity, explicated it in the spheres of nature, thinking, faith. They were the successors of the Pythagorean teaching, and on the basis of the critical development of the thesis on the material foundation of the world, formulated the antithesis of the One Nature of Being and the metaphysical nature of things. This served as a starting point for subsequent schools and directions in the development of philosophy. What does "One nature" mean? And what was the main content of each of the representatives of the school?

The theses of the school's teaching

Eleatic school of ancient philosophy, for which the category of Genesis became the central concept of teaching, formed the postulate of the static and immutability of being. Truth is available for the knowledge of the mind, in the experience only an erroneous opinion about the properties of nature is formed-this is how the Eleatic school of philosophy teaches. Parmenides introduced the concept of "Being", which became central to world philosophical reflection.

The provisions formed by Zenon in their own nominal "Aporias" reveal the principle of contradiction in the case of recognition of the plurality and variability of the surrounding world. In his treatise on nature, Meliss summed up all the views of his predecessors and brought them out as a dogmatic doctrine known as the Elleys.

Parmenides about Nature

Parmenides of Eleus was of noble origin, his morals were recognized by the townspeople; it suffices to say that he was a legislator in his policy. This first-time representative of the Eleatic school wrote his work "On Nature." The thesis on the material beginning of the world, characteristic of the Pythagoreans, became the basis of the critical doctrine of Parmenides, and he developed the idea of unity in different fields of knowledge.

The thesis of the Pythagoreans about the search for a unified principle in nature, Parmenides postulates the antithesis of the multiplicity of Being and the illusory conception of the nature of things. The Eleatic school of philosophy is briefly presented in his treatise.

He actually discovered the postulate of rational knowledge of the world. The external perception of the surrounding reality, according to his teaching, is unreliable, limited only by the individual experience of man. "Man is the measure of everything" is a well-known statement by Parmenides. It indicates the limited personal experience and the impossibility of reliable knowledge, based on personal involvement.

Zeno's aporias

Eleatic school of philosophy in the teachings of Zeno of Elea, received confirmation of Parmenides about the impossibility to comprehend nature in change, movement and discreteness. He leads 40 aporias - insoluble contradictions in natural phenomena.

Nine of these aporias till now are a subject of discussion and discussions. The principle of dichotomy, which is the basis of the movement in the aporia "Arrow" does not allow the arrow to catch up with the turtle ... These aporias became the subject of analysis of the teachings of Aristotle.

Meliss

Contemporary Zeno, a pupil of Parmenides, this ancient Greek philosopher expanded the concept of Being to the level of the universe and was the first to raise the question of its infinity in space and time. There are opinions that he personally communicated with Heraclitus. But, in contrast to the well-known materialist of Ancient Greece, did not recognize the material basis of the world, he denied the categories of movement and change as the basis for the emergence and destruction of material things.

"Essence" in its interpretation is eternal, it has always been, nothing has arisen and does not disappear anywhere. In his treatise, he combined the views of his predecessors and left the doctrine of the Eleatic in the dogmatic form to the world.

Followers of the Eleatic school

Eleatic school of philosophy, the basic principles and concepts of which in the teachings of the Eleatic became the starting point, the thesis, for the further development of philosophical thought. Parmenides's doctrine of opinion is presented in Socrates' dialogues and later became the basis for the teaching of the sophistry school. The idea of the separation of Being and Nothing served as the basis for Plato's teaching about ideas. Zeno's aporias served as the subject of research by the great Aristotle on the consistency of thought and the impetus for writing the multivolume Logic.

Importance for the history of philosophy

The Eleatic school of Ancient Greek philosophy is significant for the history of the formation of philosophical thought by the fact that it was its representatives who for the first time introduced the central category of the philosophy "Genesis", as well as the ways of rational comprehension of this concept.

Known as the "father of logic," the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle later called Zeno the first dialectician. Dialectics - the science of the unity of opposites, received in XVIII the status of the methodology of philosophical cognition. It was thanks to the Eleatics that questions were first raised about the truth of rational cognition and the unreliability of an opinion based on personal judgments and an experienced perception of reality.

In the later, classical, period of the formation of science, the relation of being and thinking as the main philosophical categories became a universal principle on the basis of which the spheres of ontology and epistemology were differentiated.

In the history of philosophical thought, posing questions is more important from the point of view of development, an element of cognition, rather than options for finding answers to questions. Since the question always indicates the limits of our possibilities, and consequently, the prospect of rational search.