Anaximander 哲一智 王前軒

Anaximander(610-546 B.C)

The dialogue conversation; Q&A

Sean: Hey, Anaximander! Do you know the correct time that Chien-Ming Wang ‘s debut in Major League?

Anaximander: Woo…Are you Yankee’s fan? I am sorry. Maybe you can check the right time on TV program’s schedule.

Sean: Okay! It looks like a good idea, thanks a lot! My name is Sean.

Anaximander: Hi, Sean. I am Anaximander. But how do you know my name?

Sean: HaHaHa.... I’m a Fu Jen Catholic University student and major in philosophy.

Anaximander: Philosophy?

Sean: Yes. In this time, philosophy is not only a theory to explain or solve some special question, it’s also a learning about lots of philosophers and theories.

Anaximander: Sounds funny!

Sean: That’s right! Can you introduce “Milesian”?

Anaximander: Miletus’s attribution is nature philosophy.

Sean: Nature philosophy?

Anaximander: In that time, “how is the world becoming?” is the most important question.

Sean: In your opinion, what is the first principle of things?

Anaximander: I think that the first principle of things is the unlimited which is “eternal and ageless,” “deathless and indestructible.”

Sean: What’s the first Greek philosophers were looking for the origin or the principle?

Anaximander: Boundless or the Unlimited.

Sean: Who is Thales?

Anaximander: Thales of Miletus was the son of Examyes and Cleobuline. His parents are said by some to be from Miletus but others report that they were Phoenicians. And he is my teacher. He said the water is the source of everything, a vital matrix that he associated with water.

Sean: How about the soul?

Anaximander: Only one sentence. “As our soul, being air, keeps us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole cosmos.”

Sean: You are the first philosophy of Greece who has the author.
Can you tell me some information about your book?

Anaximander: The questions in this book are not only science and geophysic. The most important concept is “metaphysics.”

Sean: The word “unlimited” you said would be disappear?

Anaximander: No, it is deathless and indestructible.

Sean: Except the philosophy, what is your interesting?

Anaximander: Mathematics. Astronomy and geography!

Sean: How about love and hate?

Anaximander: These two energies let the first principle of thing
to one system.

Sean: Can you introduce your Astronomy?

Anaximander: OK. I think my theory of astronomy has some characteristic:
o Speculative astronomy
o The celestial bodies make full circles
o The earth floats unsupported in space
o Why the earth does not fall
o The celestial bodies lie behind one another
o The order of the celestial bodies
o The celestial bodies as wheels
o The distances of the celestial bodies
o A representation of Anaximander's universe
Sean: We also know very little of your life. Can you tell me about it briefly?
Anaximander: I have led a mission that founded a colony called Apollonia on the coast of the Black Sea. I also probably introduced the gnomon (a perpendicular sun-dial) into Greece and erected one in Sparta.
Sean: In the other word, you are really a much-traveled man!
Anaximander: Yes. In fact, traveling is so interesting and useful.

Sean: Well, I am so glad chatting with you. But I have to go checking the time of the ball game right now! See you later.

Anaximander: Ok. Bye.


Epikuros (374-270 B.C.)

Sean: What is your name?

Epikuros: My name is Epikuros.

Sean: Who is your teacher?

Epikuros: My teacher is Nausiphanes.

Sean: Whose theory is your epistemology’s reference?

Epikuros: Plato and Aristotle.

Sean: In helenistic philosophy time, what’s the contribution you think that Epikurean have?

Epikuros: Moral science. Cosmic philosophy and epistemology.

Sean: Can you introduce the Stoicism?

Epikuros: 1) The stoic system.
2) Theory of knowledge.
3) Nature. Form and matter.
4) Nature and the world order.
5) Determinism and freedom.
6) Ethics.

Sean: In your opinion, what is the biggest well?

Epikuros: Pursuing the biggest happiness and blessedness.

Sean: What is death?

Epikuros: Death is nothing to us; for that which has been dissolved into its elements experiences no sensations, and that which has no sensation is nothing to us.

Sean: What is the history of Epicureanism and your school?

Epikuros: I helped lay the intellectual foundations for modern science and for secular individualism, with many aspects of my system still highly relevant some twenty-three centuries after they were first taught to my students at school in Athens, called “the Garden.

Sean: What is the most different viewpoint in your philosophy?

Epikuros: The most important thing in our life is that pursuing the biggest happiness and emphasize the happiness of the sense.

Sean: Can you explain the word “happiness?”

Epikuros: A life without disturbs.

Sean: What is the source of Epicureanism’s cosmology?

Epikuros: Atomism of Demokritos.