2) The Pre-Socratics: Xenophanes and Heraclitus

[@hadfgag]

Would love the reading list for this series if possible.

[@leakytuesday4054]

Me too!

[@andreas2289]

soooo, is the reading list available?

[@garrettp8225]

Philosophic Classics (Philosophic Classics (Pearson))

[@saraobeid6778]

I am not a student. You are an amazing teacher!!!

[@abdelrahmanmustafa8937]

We are all student

[@AlanDev09]

this isnt the xenophanes i was looking for

[@ismaelspechtintuition3519]

Prof Adam, your classes are excellent. Easy to understand even when you talk about complex ideas. I would like to ask you the possibility of talking about Philebus by Plato, and anything of your choice from NIetzsche. I just say it because it´s hard to find a good class anywhere on theses two topics. Thanks for all your classes. You are a great professor.

[@ericleahy6882]

These lectures are excellent. You’re a really funny guy.

[@ChikeJ]

I am enjoying watching this course for a number of reasons. Commenting, though, to mention that whether or not Zoroaster beats Xenophanes to the idea of monotheism, Akhenaten comes first.

[@adamrosenfeld9384]

My understanding is that Akhenaten is better described as a "henotheist" (or possibly a "monolatrist"). The distinction between this and monotheism is a fine one, for sure, but a fairly important one in its implications for Greek metaphysics. But this comes from a pretty casual 2nd and 3rd hand acquaintance with Egyptian history. If you can point me toward a good source that argues for Akhenaten as a monotheist (and not a henotheist), I'd love to learn more.

[@ChikeJ]

For a good secondary source arguing this point, see James K. Hoffmeier's Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism (OUP, 2015). I would also say, though, that simply reading Akhenaten himself makes it sufficiently clear, and you can do that in any of a number of collection of ancient Egyptian literature (Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature Vol 2, Simpson's Literature of Ancient Egypt, etc)

[@adamrosenfeld9384]

Thanks!

[@ChikeJ]

No problem. I actually would like one day to try to write something comparing Akhenaten and the Presocratics. Just as we see many of them, beginning with Thales, identifying divinity with the natural phenomena they are so interested in, so we see Akhenaten doing that long before them with the sun. He shares with Xenophanes not just monotheism but the radical rejection of anthropomorphism. Most tentatively, I have wondered whether it might be illuminating, no pun intended, to view him as holding that light = arche, in the sense applicable to the Presocratics. Relevant to pursuing that thought is another good secondary source, Erik Hornung's Akhenaten and the Religion of Light.

[@TarekFahmy]

Great course

[@ea6871]

Very! Enjoyable I will listen to entire series. Thanks For Your Hard Work. The Logos may exist outside of time. Since change seems to require time, eternal time meaning outside of time, or outside of the linear time continuem that we are bound to in the material world. My conjecture or " stab at it" lol.

[@roseb2105]

how about if G0d takes on multiple forms like black white etc?

[@stutisingh5007]

Wow it's really entertain me with knowledge

[@dhende3]

I don't think I would have been so quick to shoot down the student who connected "everything is fire" to energy. Einstein always gets credit for the "matter must be transmutable to energy" idea, but it's as old as recorded history if you really think about it. In the beginning God said "Let there be light" implies it, as does, in my opinion, Heraclitus saying that "everything is fire." Another philosopher I remember talking about it more explicitly was Schopenhauer.

[@LauraKnightJadczyk]

Think of plasma.