The Mysterious Life of The Wandering Philosopher.

The “reality” is not always the truth. And the “truth” can also not be the reality.

Barlin Chaves December 10, 2017

Where you stand in this world isn’t something that could make you believe in what life is in all about, it is not something to define what you should be as well. People are programmed to believe in something that doesn’t even define the truth in life. Everybody seeks something they want and need. But why does it really matter? What is the most powerful thing to possess in this so cold reality living on this planet? What do we really believe and what we don’t? To rediscover  what helps us grow and develop not just physically, emotionally, spiritually, but also mentally. 

There are so many Philosophers who concluded their theories about how things were made and where does all these things coming from. Talking about these philosophers is probably going to bore anyone reading this, but if you missed any philosophers theories I will talk about some of the interesting theories from most famous Philosophers of all time. Now, probably most are thinking why does it matter. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. This is an exploration of better understanding about human behaviors and perspectives. Every each one of us has own perspectives about life from one’s own experiences in life on the process of living the “purpose” of it. Learning from what they experienced and will continue to what they are going to experience in the future for we already know that there is no other way to change what has been done in the past but only can learn from it to avoid the same thing to happen in the future. Every Success and failures have big impact on how one is going to handle the life that he/she is having to remain resilience and to achieve the goal/goals that they think would give them the satisfactions in life. Some are fortunate, some are unfortunates and these circumstances of “standing” in life will measure one’s power to live and strive to succeed despite of all the struggles and difficulties that one is having in life. Where’s the balance in this world and who really rules it?

Let’s talk about philosophy on human psychology and how understanding the different perspectives of every Philosopher in our human history can give us ideas on how our minds really works on things that can enlighten us on what really matters on our reality and to the truth that we should know about, not just about ourselves, but also about the systems that affected our lives from the past,  affecting the present, and  will affect the future. This short article will be talking about past Philosophers that influenced human thinking and it will be like digging deeper than our simple understanding of everything that we thought we know about. Everything that I will be talking about is my own personal theory and understanding about what I have read in one of my favorite Philosophy books that I had back when I was taking Philosophy class in college. I will be referring to everything from this book called “Looking at Philosophy: The Unbreakable Heaviness of Philosophy Made Lighter” Fourth Edition by Donald Palmer, if ever interested in checking that book out before or after getting to this topic you can pretty much purchase to it online or bookstores. This topic once again is my own understanding and interpretations of how I see things after studying each theory of every Philosophers in the book mentioned above.

Growing up, I got interested in how my own mind works compared to other people around me and I always get a lot of confusing thoughts about certain things that randomly kept running inside my head about how my thoughts explore certain things that I do not even understand and it kept me wondering for a long time if other people think the way I think and what they would feel about it. So many questions that ran in my mind that I think it even went outside of this planet and rather than thinking about what’s in here around me, I think about what other possibilities out there. Just like thinking about if there are living lives somewhere out there in the universe not just in our own galaxy. Pretty deep yet? I am trying to say where all this is coming from. Yes, I can’t blame anyone of you if you get lost for a minute. Take a deep breath as I would try to explain little by little while we explore each Philosophers that I came up with while I was taking this class back in college. Where everything started is from having a simple mind that wonders where life started back in “The Pre-Socratic Philosophers” time, and I bet most people have no idea who these Philosophers were, yet let’s start from the ten Philosophers of this era shall we?

What is Philosophy? “Philo” simply means “love” and “Logos” in Greek or “Logic” in English word means theory, study, or rationalization of something. So basically, this involves the “act of speaking” or “setting forth an idea” in a clear mind. This is designation a certain idea about the world and putting a logical analysis to things in a context of reasons and giving explanations to them with pure force of thought in a certain thing. Lastly, the word “sophia” simply means that an intellectual exercise was to lead to “wisdom.” “Wisdom” is one of my favorite word that gives so much strong impact in my being. One who puts love and wisdom to these logos is called a “Philosopher.” We have many Philosophers who shared their thoughts and theories about what, where, when, and how life is. These Philosophers that you might haven’t heard about are named Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus. These Philosophers who started wondering about little things created simple ideas where life started in the first place. This is just the start of exploring our minds and ways of thinking about certain things. If you aren’t interested in little things before going to the bigger picture of this topic, I suggest that you can just stop right here. But if you are interested on the other hand, please ready your mind as we travel back in time to know each one of them. 

Thales of Miletus is the first Philosopher recorded in the sixth century B.C.E. who most likely did not write something to leave behind for later generations or even if he did, it probably got misplaced or lost. Thales argument was something like this: 

“If there is change, there must be some “thing” that changes, yet does not change. There must be a unity behind the apparent plurality of things, a Oneness disguised by the superficial plurality of the world. Otherwise the world would not be a world; rather, it would be a disjointed grouping of unrelated fragments.” This idea of what is the nature of unifying, ultimately unchanging substance could be disguised from us by the appearance of constant change? This is something he came up with questioning about the changes that happened, are happening, and might happen in the future. Myth makers before him thought about where life originated from either of the four elements which are: air, fire, water, and earth. He is pretty much familiar with these four elements and he assumed that all things must be reducible to one of these four, but which one? He then came up with the idea that it might be the WATER because it transform from rivers to deltas, water turns into ice and then back into water, which in turn can be changed into steam, which becomes air, and air, in the form of wind, fans fire. So Thales concluded that all things are composed of water! “The first principle and basic nature of all things is water,” this is the actual words from Thales. He is the first philosopher who introduced the project of “reductionism.” 

Reductionism is a method of explanation that takes an object that confronts us on the surface as being one kind of thing and shows that the object can be reduced to a more basic kind of thing at a deeper but less obvious level of analysis. This is usually seen in a modern science now. Starting from Thales, this is just the beginning of all the arguments that came up in later generations that questions a lot about his theory. If you want to read more about it, you can find more about it from the book that I mentioned above. I will give brief summaries of the other Philosophers as we keep on going, but I would highly recommend to read the book so you can have a better understanding of where this topic is coming from and where it is going. Other philosophers after Thales have different perceptions about reality and if you haven’t read the book or don’t know the other Philosophers after Thales, this topic will no doubt bring discouragement to seek and find the difference between the truth and the reality. 

Anaximenes thinks everything comes from air, Heraclitus roughly thinks it was fire, Democritus very roughly thinks it was earth, Anaximander said it was an indeterminate “stuff”, and Pythagoras everything is numbers. These are briefly some of the Philosopher’s analysis of where everything comes from in this period of time. 

Let’s jump to the next period which is the The Athenian Period in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. where The sophists and the theories of the following philosophers named Protagoras, Gorgias, Thrasymachus, Callicles and Critias, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were introduced. The “Sophists” are rather known as “wise guys” were not really philosophers as such but rhetoricians because of the social shift toward political power and the study of rhetoric. They traveled  city to city and charged admission to their lectures – lectures not on the nature of reality or truth but on the nature of power and persuasion. Protagoras is one of the most famous Sophists who taught that the way to achieve success is through a careful and prudent acceptance of traditional customs- not because they are true, but because an understanding and manipulation of them is expedient. For them, all customs were relative, not absolute. In fact, everything is relative to human subjectivity. Their famous claim “homo mensura” means man is the measure. It means a man is the measure of all things, of things that are, and of things that are not, that they are not. (Stated on pg 49 of the book)

TO BE CONTINUED…