Jennifer Aranilla

BSIT CPT II

1.The Contributions of Parmenides to philosophy Are widely recognized. That is why his name
has lasted for almost 2500 years. For his contributions, Parmenides is one of the Pre-Socratic
philosophers More known. Parmenides was part of the Eleatic school, which denied movement
and justified the unity of being.
Development of the Eleatic School
Among its contributions was the development of the school eletatica. There, Parmenides became
involved in a philosophical activity that sought to give reasons explaining how it was cataloged
to be from the ideas of this school.

While some authors claim that Parmenides was the founder of the Eleatic school, others contend
that it was Xenophanes the true founder.

However, there is a consensus that Parmenides is the most representative philosopher of this
school.

About Nature
The only known work of Parmenides was his philosophical poem titled" About Nature ".

In this poem, Parmenides treats diverse subjects as the being, the truth, the origin of the gods and
the nature itself.

The greatest novelty of the poem was the methodology of his argument, which Parmenides
developed with rigor.

In his argument Parmenides made a discussion of principles that feel specific axioms and pursue
their implications.

Philosophical Discussions
Among the contributions of Parmenides, can be counted his critics to Heráclito.

Heraclitus expressed the principles of transformation and illustrated that there was no immovable
being who remained the same.

According to Parmenides, Heraclitus made everything impossible when he spoke of everything

flowing and nothing remained.

This discussion between presocrats has been one of the pillars of the development of philosophy
and many authors still work on these ideas.
Contributions to materialism
Parmenides in his work develops ideas close to materialism and that have propitiated the
development of this current of thought.

Parmenides' considerations of the movement and permanence of being are classified by some as
ideas of materialism.

This is based on the fact that these ideas deny an illusory world of change and movement and
focus on the material, existing and immovable.

Influence on the philosophy of denial

Some philosophers have based their work on what they regard as the denial of the sensible world
by Parmenides.

Such consideration has led to the development of idealistic philosophy. This is despite the fact
that this negation is not literally expressed in the work of Parmenides.

Various interpretations of the way he wrote his poem" About nature "They assert that
Parmenides not only denied the existence of emptiness as a physical void, but denied the
existence of the sensible world as such.

https://www.lifepersona.com/the-5-contributions-of-parmenides-to-philosophy

2.AnaxagorasAnaxagoras of Clazomenae was an important Presocratic natural philosopher and

scientist who lived and taught in Athens for approximately thirty years. He gained notoriety for
his materialistic views, particularly his contention that the sun was a fiery rock. This led to
charges of impiety, and he was sentenced to death by the Athenian court. He avoided this penalty
by leaving Athens, and he spent his remaining years in exile. Although Anaxagoras proposed
theories on a variety of subjects, he is most noted for two theories. First, he speculated that in the
physical world everything contains a portion of everything else. His observation of how nutrition
works in animals led him to conclude that in order for the food an animal eats to turn into bone,
hair, flesh, and so forth, it must already contain all of those constituents within it. The second
theory of significance is Anaxagoras’ postulation of Mind (Nous) as the initiating and governing
principle of the cosmos.

https://iep.utm.edu/anaxagoras/

3. Main contributions of Empedocles

The dual nature of Being and the four elements

He was perhaps one of the most multifaceted philosophers of ancient Greece. Nietzsche even
referred to him as"the most colorful character of this stage".
Unlike other thinkers, Empedocles is unique in its dual feature. That is to say, while some
philosophers developed totally mystical-spiritual ideas and others focused on the description of
reality and reason, Empedocles assuredly took up both ways in his thinking.

For these reasons, Empedocles is recognized as an eclectic. Eclecticism or eclectic thinking is

one that does not take extreme positions, but tries to reconcile and unite the different slopes,
values or ideas presented.

In this position, Empedocles takes up the statutes and ideas of his ancestors, as was the case with
Thales of Miletus , Anaximenes, Heraclitus and Xenophanes; They proposed the existence of
different elements: fire, water, air and land.

Empedocles proposes, returning them, that the Being in its totality is composed of these four
elements together. As noted in the flexibility of his ideas, he argues that Being is unity and
duality.

Before him, the philosopher Parmenides spoke about Being, and how nothing can emerge from
nothing, but at the same time, everything that exists can not simply disappear.

Empedocles agrees with this thesis, however, is reluctant to this rigid idea of Being as a"is or is
not." For the philosopher, every Being has a double facet, all Being is transient.

On birth and death, Empedocles takes up the idea of the four elements and proposes that they
never become or change their form, but they come into harmony with the rest of the elements
thus creating the life of things.

According to him, life then begins with the interaction of these elements. When these are
rearranged, the Self grows and develops. In the same way, death occurs when the vital elements
separate and resume their path.

Love and Discord: Cosmic Cycle

For the philosopher, there are two main forces that govern the cosmos: love and discord. The
union or separation of the elements depends on the struggle of these two forces: when there is
love, the elements come into harmony and unite; Discord, on the other hand, causes separation
and difference.

These forces that govern the cosmos were initially separated. The planet was a sphere where only
love lived and discord was found in the most hidden parts.

With these roots, the cosmos was in its most divine and pure state, yet this sphere which
contained only love was immobile and inactive.

It was until the discord began to have influence on the elements of the sphere that created life
and the cosmos was now composed of different things.
The more there was discord, the more the elements separated, and upon reaching their maximum
separation were created bodies unique to a single element, such as the oceans, the sky and the
mountains.

On the other hand, the more love, the more communion there was between the elements and the
creatures as the human and the animals came to life.

Empedocles refers to this as the cosmic cycle and ensures that there are four stages:

1. The sphere full of love, discord away in the recesses

2. Discord is approaching the sphere
3. The sphere full of discord, the love far away in the hidden
4. Love approaches the sphere
In his time, Empedocles said that humanity was in the second stage, where discord, increasingly
closer to the earth, could be seen in the dark events that afflicted humanity; In the past, in the
first stage, humanity lived in harmony with life. This, he says, is a cycle that is repeated for all
eternity.

The origin of living things

Having an idea of the composition of things, the philosopher devoted his time to the observation
of nature, plants, animals and the human being.

He even proposed a very early conception of natural selection and evolution by stating that living
beings with elements in harmony would be those who progressed most in life.

According to him, the balance is necessary, so a human with lamb legs - for example - was
destined to disappear. In addition, he established that thought is generated in the heart, and this
proposal was accepted for a long time in medicine.

Finally, Empedocles spoke of these cycles through which living beings passed, indicating that
each of us has to go through 10,000"reincarnations"to return to our pure state and ascend with
the gods. He even preached of himself having been male, female, bird and fish in the sea
previously.

There are several stories about his death, however, the most popular narrates that to be convinced
of its purity, to have been subjected to atonement and to have already lived the necessary cycles
was thrown to the volcano Etna.

Empedocles maintained that after his death he would be anointed as a god, thus cementing the
mystical and spiritual image of the philosopher.

https://www.lifepersona.com/3-important-contributions-of-empedocles-to-philosophy

4.It has been said that Socrates’ greatest contribution to philosophy was to move intellectual
pursuits away from the focus on `physical science’ (as pursued by the so-called Pre-Socratic
Philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and others) and into the abstract realm
of ethics and morality. No matter the diversity of the schools which claimed to carry on his
teachings, they all emphasized some form of morality as their foundational tenet. That the
`morality’ espoused by one school was often condemned by another, again bears witness to the
very different interpretations of Socrates’ central message.

https://www.worldhistory.org/socrates/

5.Plato’s Contribution to Philosophy: Plato carved out a subject matter for philosophy by
formulating and discussing a wide range of metaphysical and ethical questions. To explain the
similarities and resemblances among objects of the physical world, he developed a metaphysics
of Forms. His views about ethical questions could be grounded in his metaphysics of Forms via
the contemplation of the Form of The Good. Plato therefore found an inherent connection
between metaphysics and ethics. His greatest work, The Republic, developed an insightful
analogy between harmony in the state and harmony in the individual, and it is often considered
one of the greatest works ever written. Plato wrote dialogues that considered the nature of virtue
itself, as well as the nature of particular virtues. He also considered epistemological questions,
such as whether knowledge is justified true belief.

https://mally.stanford.edu/plato.html