TTT
Pre-Socratics worlds is a theme I started to work on in the middle of 2025. The goal is to represent different philosophers’ conceptions of the human soul or mind pictorially. The first five painting are of the five distinct soul types Plato describes in his Republic. Basically, there are three parts of the soul according to Plato, each of which can rule the whole soul: Reason (to logistikon), spirit or temperament (ho thymos), and passion (he epithymia)
Thales of Miletus, the first recorded philosopher (c. 625 – c. 545 BC) held that the bottom reality is water. He is also said that the world is full of gods.Fire was the key element for Heraclitus of Ephesus (fl. 500 BC). Opposites fight in an eternal struggle, nothing stays the same. Fire is the driving force.Parmenides from Elea (c. 515–c.459 BC) maintained that belief in change and plurality is sloppy thinkning: reality must be one and uniform. Hence, he likens it to a sphere. Chaos assumes form is a common idea in ancient Greek thought expressed by such different thinkers as Hesiod, Plato and Aristotle for whom it is best known as matter taking on form. It is deeply ingrained in Pythagorean doctrines under the name of the One and the Dyad. Empedocles from Acragas in Sicily (c. 494–c. 434) believed in cosmic cycles in which Love and Strife take turns in dominating. He was the first to propose that traditional four element fire, air, water and earth, which he called “roots”, as the building block of the universe. After a dominion of Love. Strife enters the scene as a vortex which separates the roots.Empedocles had a theory of evolution. He claimed that the first organisms were what we know as body parts, which were individual living beings. Thus, heads and limbs in the painting are organisms. The body parts sought to connect, sometimes successfully, but as a rule the composites were monstrose and certainly unable to procreate.There were, however, some successful combinations and these have given us the organisms that we know today. We see a fair example in the painting.