COSMOLOGY:

(Introduction to
Philosophy)

Prepared by:
FR.RONNIE B. RODRIGUEZ, MS
University of La Salette
Man as a Microcosm…
 They understand man in the context of the
world.
 They assign man’s place in the cosmos as
the totality of all entities.
 As a microcosm, man is himself a world, a
miniaturized world.
 What the world constitutes man also
possesses.
 The stuff that constitutes the world is also the
same stuff that constitutes man.
THALES: (624-546BC)
 WATER is the world stuff.
 He asserted that the world originated
in water and was sustained by water
and that the earth floated on water.
 Water is an essential element of life,
versatile, common and powerful enough
to account for every physical
phenomenon.
 In the scientific knowledge, human brain
contains 80% water and the human
body 70%.
 There is a natural change everywhere.
 The world is animated.
 Inanimate objects possess psyche, the
principle of self-motion.
 Concerning the universe, Thales also
asserted that “all things are full of
gods.”
 Some kind of vital force permeates the
world.
 All things are in some aspect besouled or
partake of a common and unifying vitality.
Some of Thales’ contributions…
 He made the Haly’s river passable for King
Croesus by diverting its waters.
 He discovered the solstices and measured
their cycles.
 He discovered the five celestial zones (arctic,
antartic, equator, and the tropics), the
inclination of the zodiac, and the sources of
the moon’s light.
 He explicated the rise of Nile as due to
etesian winds.
 In geometry, he discovered proofs for the
propositions that the circle is bisected by
its diameter, that the angles at the base
of an isosceles triangle are equal, that
two triangles are identical when they
have one side and the angles formed by
it with the other sides equal, and that in
two intersecting straight lines the
opposite angles at the intersection are
equal.
 He also measured the height of the
pyramids and the distance of ships at
sea.
ANAXIMANDER: (610-546BC)
 Man is a being that has evolved from
animals of another species which are
lower than his.
 Anaximander says:
 Man sprang from a different animal, in fact
from a fish, which at first he resembled…;man
sprang from a different kind of
animal…whereas all the other animals are
speedily able to find nourishment for
themselves, man alone requires a long period of
suckling and if he had been at the beginning
such as he is now, he would not had survived.
 The primary element was
indeterminate.
 He called the arche as apeiron
(Greek: a – not; peirar or peiras –
limit, boundary, so it means unlimited,
boundless).
 The indefinite or indeterminate
(apeiron) is all-enfolding, all
controlling, divine and immortal.
 This material cause was not water but
infinite, eternal and ageless.
ANAXIMENES: (585-528BC)
 A pupil of Anaximander
 The primary element was determinate.
 Air is the primary substance.
 All things ultimately come from air.
 The gods and the divine things are
subordinate from it.
 Hot and cold are the common attributes of
matter that come from the result of its
changes.
 Matter comes first.
 Matter is air.
 It is definite because it has its forms and
properties such as fire, water, dirt, earth,
stone, etc.
 It differs in rarity and density.
 These phases occur in condensation and
rarefraction.
 From condensation comes cold.
 It implies continuous change.
 Motion is eternal.
 Every change comes from air.
 From rarefraction comes hot.
 The earth resulted from felting, the thickening
of air into earth.
 Sun and moon are fiery celestial bodies
carried by air in their flatness.
 The origin of stars is called moisture
exhalation.
 Air is god.
 Air has the same function to man and the
universe.
 It is the vital principle or the soul.
 Without it, man does not only die but
decomposed.
It controls man, holds the
universe together, surrounds it
and pervades it.
It keeps the universe in the right
place.
Like man, it makes the universe
alive; imbue all things with life
force.
HERACLITUS: (504-501BC)
 He maintains that everything is in
constant change.
 “You can’t step twice in the same
river.”
 In his consciousness of change, FIRE
makes the world-stuff.
 If the world is fire, man, too, has fire
in him in the form of heat.
 Heraclitus held that the world was not
created but had always existed.
 Change is incessant and universal.
 Coherence and stability persist due to the
process of unceasing transitions.
 This structural coherence is called “the
logos.”
 Transitions are generated by the logos.
 All things are divine.
 To god all things are beautiful.
 Fire is the archetypal form of matter.
 The universe is an ever-living fire.
 Fire is the logos incarnate, the material
enactment of the principle of transition
and flux.
 Heraclitus believed also that the dry soul is
the wisest and best in comparison to wet
soul.
 Soul is light, ethereal, and incorporeal.
 Virtuous soul become a part of the cosmic
fire when they die.
 Sleeping, waking and dying are anchored
with the aspect of fieriness in the soul.
 The soul of the sleeping person is
anchored only by breathing.
 The mind becomes forgetful.
 In the waking state, the soul is anchored
with the world fire and the logos.
 In this state, reason is restored.
 Human disposition is not capable of
authentic judgment, but divine
disposition does.
 War is the father of all and the king of
all, and some he presents as gods,
others as man, some as slaves others
as free.
PYTHAGORAS:
 Pythagoras’ view of man resembles those of
later thinkers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,
the stoics, and the Epicureans down to the
contemporary thoughts as it will be seen
later.
 In saying this, it is not asserted that the
Pythagoreans are the most original thinkers
of the dipartite constituents of man not do it is
postulated that the later thinkers merely
developed the Pythagorean concept of soul
and body.
The soul…
 Immortal, divine and is subjected to
metempsychosis.
 As immortal and divine, the soul has
fallen and is incarcerated in the body
until it gets purified and finally assumes
reunification with the divine.
 This reunification is possible only
through constant reincarnation.
 Pythagoras was more concerned with the
mystical problems of purification and
immortality.
 Mathematics is the best purifier of the
soul.
 Mathematical thought could liberate men from
thinking about particular things and lead their
thought, instead, to the permanent and
ordered world of universe.
 Mathematics is also a source of therapeutic
result for certain nervous disorders as well as
elements affecting man’s inner life.
 They intertwined this mathematical theory in
music.
 Good health is the outcome of
harmony or balance or proper
ratio of certain opposites.
 The true number or figure refers to
the proper balance of all the
elements and functions of the body.
 Number represents the application
of limit (form) to the unlimited
(matter).
 All things are numbers.
PROTAGORAS: (490-420BC)
 “Man is the measure of all things, of all
things that are that they are, and of
things that are not that they are not.”
 As the measure of all things, man is
the ultimate criterion of truth.
 This epistemological Protagorean claim
of man gives us the idea that man is
the absolute possessor of truth.
SOCRATES: (469-399BC)
 Man is a being who thinks and wills.
 The human soul should be nurtured properly
through its acquisition of knowledge, wisdom and
virtue.
 Man, for Socrates, should discover truth,
truth about good life, for it is in knowing the
good life that man can act correctly.
 Man’s attitude towards life therefore should be
oriented towards knowledge – knowledge of what
the good life is so that he can properly translate
such knowledge into really living a good life.
 He contends that knowledge and
virtue are not distinct from each
other because the two are one.
 A man who converges the two into one
is a wise man – a man of wisdom.
 He who is wise is a man who has
disciplined his soul to know what is right
and does what he knows to be right in
the actual life situation.
 Knowledge is literally taken by
Socrates as the ultimate criterion of
action.
He maintains that…

Knowing what is
right means doing
what is right.
Does it follow? (yes or
no)
How about the evil doers…
 For Socrates, these lost souls are
ignorant of their evil acts.
 To Socrates, no one does evil
volitionally.
 It is ignorance of the knowledge of the
right and good life that enables man to do
evil deeds.
 If only man acquires knowledge, wisdom,
and virtue, man can certainly free himself
from doing what is wrong.
Is this true?...
 Was Hitler ignorant of the genocide of the
German Jews?
 Was Mussolini ignorant of the same?
 Are the corrupt public officials ignorant of
their acts?
 Are the students who cheat during
examinations ignorant of the evil embedded
in cheating?
 Are the irresponsible instructors ignorant of
their languor?
 Socrates insists that all sorts of evil or
all kinds of evil acts are circumstantial.
 He adheres to the idea that man does
evil only accidentally due to ignorance.
 But we should neither rely on nor
harken to this since practically the
amount of knowledge we have
concerning the right and of the good life
is no guarantee that we live a right and
a good life.
 Sometimes, even if know that the act is
harmful and bad, we insist on doing it.
PLATO: (427-347BC)
 The nature of man is seen in the
metaphysical dichotomy between the
body and soul.
 The body is material; it cannot live and
move apart from the soul; it is mutable
and destructible.
 The soul is immaterial; it can exist apart
from the body; it is immutable and
indestructible.
 Plato contends that the soul is a
substance because it exists and
can exist independently of the
body; nevertheless, it is temporarily
incarcerated in the body.
 What leads Plato to say this is his
conviction that the soul existed
prior to the body.
 Plato concludes that man is a soul
using a body.
 Plato believes that virtue is knowledge
and the source of knowledge is
virtue.
 It is not abstract but concrete
knowledge, not theoretical but practical
knowledge.
 Man must know what is good so that
he may do so.
 Plato elaborated this by illustrating the
four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage
or fortitude, temperance and justice.
 Man is a knower and a
possessor of an immortality of
the soul.
 Plato believes that the body dies
and disintegrates.
 The soul continuous to live forever
after the death of the body.
 The soul migrates to the realm of
the pure forms.
The soul has three parts…
1. Rational part – located in the head,
specifically in the brain. This enables man
to think, to reflect and to draw
conclusions and to analyze.
2. Appetitive part – located in the
abdomen. It drives man to experience
thirst, hunger, and other physical wants.
3. Spiritual part – located in the chest. It
makes man assert and experience
abomination and anger.
 Plato believed that the rational part of
the soul is the most important and the
highest.
 For Plato, is it the rational part that
specifically distinguishes man from
the brutes.
 Man can control his appetite and self-
assertion of spirit through Reason.
 For example, when a person is hungry
and yet, he does not eat the available
food because he knows or doubts that it
has poison.
 Plato contends that there is something in the
mind of the person that leads him to crave for
food and another thing that prohibits him from
eating the poisoned food.
 The principle which drives the person to eat
the food is what he calls “Appetite” while the
principle which forbids the person to eat the
available food because it is poisoned is
Reason.
 Reason for Plato controls both Spirit and
Appetite.
 When this happens man will have a well-
balanced personality.
ARISTOTLE: (384-322BC)
 Man is a rational animal.
 Unlike his master Plato, Aristotle
maintains that there is no dichotomy
between man’s body and man’s soul.
 Body and soul are in a state of unity.
 In this unity, the soul acts as the
perfect or full realization of the body
while the body is a material entity
which has a potentiality for life.
 Per se, the body has no life.
 It can only possess life when it is united
with the soul.
 In this regard, Aristotle speaks of man
as a single essence composed of
body and soul (as man’s matter and
form principles).
 Man’s body matter and man’s soul form.
 That is why he speaks of soul as the
body’s perfect realization because
form for him is the perfect realization
of matter.
Man as a rational animal…
 He is not the center of the universe.
 The focal point is the cosmos.
 Man is only a part of the universe.
 Aristotle believed that man’s actions and
endeavors are motivated by the
possession of the good.
 There are many goods.
 For Aristotle, the very goal of human life
is happiness.
Kinds of soul…
1. Vegetative soul – plants possess this. It
feeds itself, it grows and it reproduces.
2. Sensitive soul – exists in animals. It feeds
itself, it grows, it reproduces and it has
feelings (particularly pain and pleasure
because it has a nervous system).
3. Rational soul – exists only in man. It
assumes the functions of the vegetative and
sensitive souls. It is capable of thinking,
reasoning, and willing. Man is higher than
the brutes, animals and plants. Man is
capable of thinking and judging.
EPICURUS: (341-270BC)
 His philosophical theory is called “atomistic
materialism.”
 According to this theory, the universe is
composed of matter (in the form of atoms)
in motion in empty space.
 All physical bodies, including human beings,
are the result of combinations of these atoms.
 Because the soul is composed of atoms, death
means its dissolution, so immortality is
impossible.
 When the body disintegrates, so does the soul.
 Epicurus regarded his atomic theory
as the key to his moral theory.
 Death is not to be feared because it
is simply the dissolution of the atomic
structure which makes up the soul.
 One ceases to exist and no pain will
be experienced after death.
 Epicurus advocates hedonism
(from the Greek word “pleasure”).
 Pleasure is the only good in life.
 Pleasure, per se, is not the summum bonum or
the supreme good; it is pleasure as interpreted
by prudence.
 Man should follow the dictates of prudence so
that his life will be well-ordered and consequently
wholesome and natural.
 Epicurus regarded pleasure as the beginning
and end of the blessed life.
 Epicurus, a psychological and an ethical
hedonist, believed not only that we ought to act
in such a way as to produce the greatest amount
of pleasure (ethical pleasure), but also that we
are so constituted psychologically that we
inevitably take pleasure in all our acts
(psychological hedonism).
 Epicurus’ conception of the good life,
however, was mainly negative.
 He stressed the avoidance of pain
rather than the pursuit of pleasure
and gave us an analogy of health or
disease.
 Pleasure is like health, which
preserves, while pain is like a disease,
which destroys.
STOICS:
 These thinkers belong to a group of
philosophers who studied under Zeno,
the founder of Stoa.
 They are commonly labeled as “the
indifferent ones.”
 The Stoics teach resignation and
determinism.
 It is from this teaching that the Stoics
draw their view of human nature.
 For the Stoics the soul is matter and that it
has seven parts.
 These parts are the five senses, the power
of speech, and the power of reproduction.
 For them, speech is tantamount to
Reasoning so that it is considered as
the ruling part of the soul.
 Because soul is matter, it has its end in
the fiery worlds; the soul is determined
for destruction; it is bound to resign to
its fatal ruin.
 Human nature is part of a determined
universe.
 The Stoics emphasized that man should
conform himself to the course of nature.
 The Stoics challenge man “to be a subject
of the will of God and to the laws of nature.”
 It is man’s submission to the law of nature
that makes man seek virtue.
 Only in doing this can man conform
himself with the will of God.
 Man’s submission to the will of God is
man’s conformity with nature.
 To the Stoics, emotions are movements
against nature.
 They assert that emotions have to be
eradicated completely.
 If they are not, they become impediments
to man’s striving to conform himself with
the nature and the will of God.
 But why should man conform himself with
nature?
 Why should man be virtuous?
 And why should man submit himself to
God’s will?
Peace of mind…
 A virtuous man for the Stoics always
strives to possess peace of mind.
 Peace of mind is attainable through
contentment: contentment with here and
now.
 Contentment is part of man’s conformity
with nature; it is indeed resignation.
 Man can attain peace of mind by
viewing things in their proper
perspective.
 This is to say, that man should be
practical enough to consider that
there are things that are under his
control and that there are things that
are beyond his control.
 In line with this, the Stoics claim that a
virtuous man can only ask: “Why does
God allow evil to exist?”
 They propose that the answer is this
simple statement of resignation: God’s
ways are not man’s.