Hum 110 | Reed Classics | Reed Library | Reed | Perseus

I. Introduction: rationalism and the West

II. Definitions: philosophy and science

III. Mythos

IV. Logos

"We love wisdom/philosophize without softness." (Thucydides, 2.40).

Give us no fights with Titans, no, nor Giants

nor Centaurs--the forgeries of our fathers-- (Xenophanes, fr. 2)

Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all deeds

which among men are a reproach and a disgrace:

thieving, adultery, and deceiving one another. (Xenophanes, fr. 3)

Ethiopians say that their gods are flat-nosed and dark,

Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired. (Xenophanes, fr. 5)

But without effort he shakes all things by the thought of his mind. (Xenophanes, fr. 10)

All of him sees, all of him thinks, all of him hears. (Xenophanes, fr. 9)

Listening not to me but to the logos it is wise to agree that all things are one. (Heraclitus, fr. 44)

For this reason it is necessary to follow what is common. But although the logos is common, most people live as if they had their own private understanding. (Heraclitus, fr. 2)

For the waking there is one common world, but when asleep each person turns away to a private one. (Heraclitus, fr. 22)

This logos holds always but humans always prove unable to understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out, distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is. (Heraclitus, fr. 1)

The cosmos, the same for all, none of the gods nor of humans has made, but it was always and is and shall be: an ever-living fire being kindled in measures and being extinguished in measures. (Heraclitus, fr. 74)

For the same thing is for thinking and being. (Parmenides, fr. 3)

Come now, I will tell you...the only ways of inquiry there are for thinking: the one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, is the path of Persuasion (for it attends upon Truth), the other, that it is not and that it is necessary for it not to be, this I point out to you to be a path completely unlearnable for neither may you know that which is not...nor may you declare it. (Parmenides, fr. 2)