Ancient philosophy. Democritus - some thoughts about his philosophy and the doctrine of atoms

Democritus is born in Abdera on the Thracian coast. He traveled to Greece, Egypt, Babylon. He was a natural scientist and a connoisseur of the teachings of quite old and modern philosophers. He died in 360 years. Excerpts from his writings are preserved. Founder of the Atomic School (Levkin). According to Cicero, atomists have not learned that the atoms fall down, but have learned that they move in all directions, as the concepts "farther" do not make sense when speaking of the whole universe.

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Democritus distinguishes two kinds of attributes of objects (later called primary and secondary). Some unconditionally belong to objects without regard to the perceiving man. They are: shape, size, weight, hardness. The others are due to objective properties of matter, but they also depend on the perceived subject and his sensory organs. They are: temperature, taste, color and smell of objects. Atomists have denied the expedience, the prudent arrangement in the world, and have accepted a blind mechanistic law and necessity: everything in the world originates not in terms of plan and end purposes but because of the inherent properties of matter and power due to mechanical movements. For knowledge, Democritus teaches that it is two kinds: dark and clear, untrue and clearly real. Dark and false - is sensory knowledge: by taste, smell, sight, hearing, and touch. True and clear: knowledge through reason and thinking. Where it stops the sensible, prudent unity guides us.

But with reason, man can not fully know the reality. "Indeed, we do not know anything, because the truth lies in the depth." "We do not really know anything, but everyone's mind depends on different external impressions." There are many speeches in Democritus. There is an interesting teaching about Democritus religion. On the one hand, he first created a so-called naturalist hypothesis about the origin of religion, according to which the hypothesis God does not exist, and humans have deified the terrible natural elements such as thunder, lightning, earthquake, floods, sun and moon shadows, etcetera; on the other hand, he has accepted that there are but more and more evil and evil spiritual beings - not immortals and creators of the world, not long-dead, powerful and omnipresent. They are found in people in different ways and influence one way or another of their lives. These people, according to him, have deified them. Materialism of Democritus has left little space for God's creation and provision according to the ancient authors, so philosophers such as Plato and Cicero reproached him for imposing impiety and thus undermining society.