7 ideas
21336 | Crates lived in poverty, and treated his whole life as a joke [Crates of Thebes, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Crates, with his bag and threadbare cloak, spent his whole life laughing and joking as though he were on holiday. | |
From: report of Crates (Theb) (fragments/reports [c.325 BCE]) by Plutarch - 30: Quiet of Mind 266e | |
A reaction: Crates sounds a little less alarming than Diogenes, while living a similar life. Was Crates the first ancestor of post-modernism? |
1767 | Everyone should study philosophy until they see all people in the same light [Crates of Thebes, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: A man should study philosophy up to the point of looking on generals and donkey-drivers in the same light. | |
From: report of Crates (Theb) (fragments/reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Cr.9 | |
A reaction: This seems to reject Aristote's idea that some people are clearly superior to others. |
1477 | Being manly and brave is the result of convention, not of human nature [Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Manliness is not a natural human attribute, otherwise women would be just as brave. It is due to pressure from laws, and this pressure has no free will, but is a slave of convention and criticism. | |
From: Plutarch (64: Gryllus - on Rationality in Animals [c.85], 988c) | |
A reaction: This is the first glimmerings of seeing gender as a cultural creation, rather than as a fact. Presumably he takes the same view of some of the supposed feminine virtues. |
1478 | Animals don't value pleasure, as they cease sexual intercourse after impregnation [Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Animals of both sexes cease to have intercourse after impregnation; that shows how little animals value pleasure, and that nature is all that counts. | |
From: Plutarch (64: Gryllus - on Rationality in Animals [c.85], 990d) | |
A reaction: A famous monkey had an implant to stimulate pleasure, and a button to trigger it. It apparently would have starved to death rather than release the button. Animal sex is dull? |
1479 | Animals have not been led into homosexuality, because they value pleasure very little [Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Because animals value pleasure very little, they have not been led into sex between males or between females. | |
From: Plutarch (64: Gryllus - on Rationality in Animals [c.85], 990d) |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |