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Footnotes to Democritus: The Ancient Roots of Materialism and Secular Humanism
Alfred North Whitehead famously remarked that the European philosophical tradition consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. But that’s only because history chose the wrong philosopher.
Decades before the rise of Plato, Democritus argued that reality consists of nothing but atoms moving through the void. There was no need to invoke the gods, supernatural forces, or hidden purposes to explain the world. Nature could—and should—be understood on its own terms through a quantitative reckoning of matter’s constituent parts. This materialistic view also translated to a more egalitarian ethics and political philosophy that lies in sharp contrast to the rigid authoritarianism of the Republic.
This article argues that Democritus was the ancient world's most important philosopher, and that Western history would have been better off had it followed him rather than Plato.
#religion
Alfred North Whitehead famously remarked that the European philosophical tradition consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. But that’s only because history chose the wrong philosopher.
Decades before the rise of Plato, Democritus argued that reality consists of nothing but atoms moving through the void. There was no need to invoke the gods, supernatural forces, or hidden purposes to explain the world. Nature could—and should—be understood on its own terms through a quantitative reckoning of matter’s constituent parts. This materialistic view also translated to a more egalitarian ethics and political philosophy that lies in sharp contrast to the rigid authoritarianism of the Republic.
This article argues that Democritus was the ancient world's most important philosopher, and that Western history would have been better off had it followed him rather than Plato.
#religion
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