I want to give a mental round of applause for ancient thinkers who conceptualized what we now know as very advanced scientific discoveries. I applaud them for doing this especially in an age where humans hadn’t been too deeply concerned with anything outside their immediate communities, modes of life were relatively simple, and everything was as far as they could tell as it was.
Democritus (and maybe Leucippus) in their studies of metaphysics challenged all types of theological and supernatural explanations of phenomena. Atoms or the “uncuttable”, had to be the what-is that so many before them had, to their standards, failed to explain. Arguably, atomist synthesized every working part of every philosophy and applied scientific reasoning for the parts that didn’t.
From Democritus I take away on face value that even thinking is the movement of atoms, and thus I cannot trust my senses (big surprise there). The depth then for me comes in evaluating Democritean ethics, but further a sense of determinism lends me to believe that Democritus would argue for no divine purpose, no final causations, no “deeper why” for any of it. Instead our biggest achievement is having euthymia or the good mind. In application of Democritean ethics it seems that almost anything is permissible so long as it does not taint the mind or cause grief. Seemingly then, Democritus was committed to a kind of enlightened hedonism, in which the good was held to be an internal state of mind rather than something external to it. Again, I applaud this for his time.
Democritus (and maybe Leucippus) in their studies of metaphysics challenged all types of theological and supernatural explanations of phenomena. Atoms or the “uncuttable”, had to be the what-is that so many before them had, to their standards, failed to explain. Arguably, atomist synthesized every working part of every philosophy and applied scientific reasoning for the parts that didn’t.
From Democritus I take away on face value that even thinking is the movement of atoms, and thus I cannot trust my senses (big surprise there). The depth then for me comes in evaluating Democritean ethics, but further a sense of determinism lends me to believe that Democritus would argue for no divine purpose, no final causations, no “deeper why” for any of it. Instead our biggest achievement is having euthymia or the good mind. In application of Democritean ethics it seems that almost anything is permissible so long as it does not taint the mind or cause grief. Seemingly then, Democritus was committed to a kind of enlightened hedonism, in which the good was held to be an internal state of mind rather than something external to it. Again, I applaud this for his time.
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