Study Questions Presocratic Philosophy 1. How Does the Homeric

Study Questions Presocratic Philosophy

1. How does the Homeric tradition illustrate the ancient Greek interest in finding explanations for phenomena, especially the phenomena of order and regularity? 2. How are the gods depicted in the Homeric literature? What role or function do the gods have within the Homeric worldview? 3. Besides the intentions and powers of gods, to what does Homer appeal to account for phenomena. 4. What is anthropomorphism? Why are in the gods depicted in this manner in Homeric literature? 5. Who are the naturalists? In what general time frame did they appear in ancient Greece? 6. What was the basic interest of the naturalists? 7. What is arche? What role did it have among the naturalists? 8. What’s the relationship between the arche and popular theological concepts in ancient Greece? 9. Why did some naturalists argue that the arche must be one and unchanging? 10. What development among Presocratics contributed to a tendency among some of them to see the arche as similar to God, a supreme mind? 11. What was the view of the arche for the following Presocratics: Thales, Anaximander, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides. 12. What was Anaximander’s sui generis principle? 13. What aspect of Xenophanes’s view of the arche resembles the Olympian theology of Homeric literature?

14. How does Heraclitus’s view of explaining regularity and order differ from that of Anaximander? 15. Did Heraclitus believe that cosmos (orderly arrangement) came into existence? Why or why not? 16. In contrast to reading Heraclitus as advocating universal flux, it’s also possible to read him as advocating what view of change? 17. What is the “transformational equivalence of opposites”? 18. What is Heraclitus’s view of God? 19. In Heraclitus, what is the logos?

20. According to Parmenides, what is reality and how does his view of reality compare/contrast with Heraclitus’s view? 21. What is Parmenides’s view of Anaximander’s idea that opposites (perata), initially latent in the Boundless, became separated out from it? 22. What is Parmenides’s view of change? 23. What is Parmenides’s view on the senses and reason as possible sources of knowledge? 24. In Parmenides’s Proem, what are the two main ways of inquiry?