Ancient Philosophy

The Problem of Being in Ancient Philosophy

It is evident that the ancient philosophers' concept of the cosmos is not devoid of mythological elements; however, overall, it transcends the bounds of myth. The earliest philosophers did not dwell on the anthropomorphization of the universe and its phenomena; instead, they sought its fundamental principle, its first cause. The representatives of the first philosophical school of Antiquity, the Milesian school, which emerged in the late 7th century BCE in the city of Miletus—Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes—saw this first principle in a material, substantial origin. Thales, the founder of the school and one of the seven sages of Greece, identified water as this first principle, asserting that everything arises from water and ultimately returns to it. Aristotle noted that Thales reached this conclusion by observing that the sustenance of all living beings is moist and that the seeds of all life are likewise moist, with heat arising from moisture. Thales also believed that the Earth rests upon water. Anaximenes, on the other hand, posited air as the fundamental principle, which, when rarefied, transforms into fire, and when condensed, into wind, mist, water, earth, and stone. Anaximander argued that no known element—earth, water, air, or fire—could serve as the first principle; instead, he proposed the apeiron, an infinite and undefined matter that, through its inherent opposites—hot and cold, dry and moist—gives rise to everything in the world.

Closely aligned with the Milesians was Heraclitus of Ephesus, who considered fire to be the first principle. "This cosmos," he declared, "the same for all, was not made by any god or man but has always been, is, and will be an eternal living fire, kindling in measures and extinguishing in measures." Fire condenses into air, air into water, and water into earth, and vice versa. Everything in the world arises out of necessity and flows like a river. The world is governed by fate or Logos, which brings order to the cosmos and serves as its guiding principle.

The first principle, the ultimate cause of everything that exists, represents true being from which all things and phenomena of the visible world arise and into which they transform. However, the concept of being itself was not yet fully articulated until Parmenides, the founder of the Eleatic school and a student of Xenophanes, introduced it into philosophy. These early philosophers did not even refer to themselves as philosophers; they identified as physicists, as their focus was directed toward nature.

A more developed doctrine of being as a substantial first principle in ancient Greek philosophy was later articulated in the teachings of Leucippus and Democritus. They posited that the infinite universe fundamentally consists of atoms and void, which, according to Aristotle, embody being and non-being. Atoms are tiny, indivisible particles that differ from one another in shape, order, and position. There are an infinite number of atoms, and they move within an infinite void. Atoms themselves are unchanging; only the bodies they form undergo change, arising from the collision and combination of atoms and dissipating through disintegration back into atoms. Leucippus and Democritus' view of the nature of being is also shared by Epicurus.

Another approach to understanding the nature of being can be observed among the Pythagoreans. The founder of the Pythagorean society, which was a religious-philosophical and political organization established in Croton, Southern Italy—a colony of Greece—was Pythagoras, who migrated there from Samos. He and his followers, in the late 6th century BCE, developed a doctrine positing that the foundation of all that exists is number. Through deep engagement with mathematics, they concluded that the surrounding world bears greater resemblance to numbers than to fire, air, water, and earth. Thus, they believed that the essence of all things and phenomena lies in numerical relationships, with objects and phenomena merely imitating numbers. Furthermore, numbers and numerical combinations express the harmony of the cosmos most effectively. Therefore, true existence, genuine being, is number. Although the Pythagoreans did not oppose number to the material substance, Aristotle notes that "they accept number as the principle and as the matter of existence, and as [an expression of] its states and properties." In their doctrine, the emphasis in the study of being is not placed on the material substrate but rather on the structure and form of objects. This trajectory is further developed by Plato, one of the prominent representatives of ancient Greek philosophy, who was greatly influenced by Pythagorean teachings.

According to Plato, the sensory and material world cannot be considered true being; true being cannot be material. Everything that is material and sensory is mutable and transient. Plato emphasizes the necessity of distinguishing between two realms: "What is eternal, being that has no origin, and what is ever becoming, but never truly is." This eternal, ungenerated being consists of ideas (eidos), while the sensory world is merely a shadow of these ideas. The objects of the material world are doubly connected to the realm of ideas: first, an object participates in its idea, much like a shadow is related to the object casting it; second, ideas represent the ideals of the objects and phenomena of the sensory world. To illustrate his doctrine of ideas, Plato employs the analogy of a cave: "Imagine," he writes, "that people from a young age are shackled to the walls of a cave, along which there is a broad opening, and they can see only what is reflected on the walls of the cave, as they face away from the light and cannot turn their heads. The light comes from a fire burning at the top of a hill. Between the fire and the cave, a road runs along which people carry various objects, statues, and images of living beings, and so forth. The shadows of all these items fall through the opening onto the cave wall, and people see only these shadows. Naturally, they will accept the shadows as the only true objects. Similarly, people perceive the material world in which they live as true being, although this world is merely a shadow of the world of ideas. In the realm of ideas, all ideas are interconnected, and the highest idea is the idea of the good, which embodies the unity of the cosmos.

Thus, Plato seems to split the world into two realms—the ideal and the sensory-material. However, it should be noted that the opposition between the world of ideas and the material world in Plato should not be interpreted as a contrast between matter and consciousness, as observed later in modern times, but rather as a contrast between matter and form.

Plato's doctrine of ideas is critiqued by another eminent philosopher of Antiquity—Aristotle, a student of Plato. According to Aristotle, the duality of the world proposed by Plato not only fails to clarify understanding but complicates it further. Plato speaks of the participation of things in eidos but does not explain what this participation entails. Furthermore, "it must... be considered impossible for essence and that of which it is the essence to exist separately from one another; how can ideas, if they are the essence of things, exist apart from them?" Aristotle himself posits that there are two first principles: "matter, which in itself is not something defined..." and "form or shape, by which it is already called something defined..." Matter is inert, devoid of motion, and in itself is being only potentially. It becomes actual being only when combined with form. Matter is akin to clay, while form is akin to the potter who shapes it into cups, jugs, and other pottery. When these two first principles combine, they create the sensory-material real world.