Repetition opens
with, “When the Eleatics denied motion, Diogenes, as everyone knows, came
forward in protest, actually came forward . . . “ (1) From this line I could
tell that Kierkegaard was writing to an educated audience, one that would know
Greek philosophers. After all, I had to Google the information to figure out
what he was talking about.
Fortunately, my professor brought this very subject up in class. It turns out that the Eleatics were a group of Greek philosophers who denied motion. They clearly realized that we can move, but they believed that any real movement didn’t make sense, and thus could not be real. Their conclusion was then that we lived in an illusion (think Plato’s shadows on the wall of a cave) and that only things that did not change were worth studying. Diogenes thought that this was ridiculous and protested it by simply walking back and forth, or moving. The philosophical difference here might seem small at first, but symbolically it is monumental. After all, if the Eleatics believed that anything that changed was unimportant, they had to believe that the daily life of an individual was unimportant. For Diogenes, and Kierkegaard, this was unsettling. It is hard to have a philosophy that discounts your daily experiences, since those are all we really have.
I found a cool article on the subject that takes a very logical look at what the Eleatics believes (and there are pictures for the math part!):
http://mathpages.com/rr/s3-07/3-07.htm
Fortunately, my professor brought this very subject up in class. It turns out that the Eleatics were a group of Greek philosophers who denied motion. They clearly realized that we can move, but they believed that any real movement didn’t make sense, and thus could not be real. Their conclusion was then that we lived in an illusion (think Plato’s shadows on the wall of a cave) and that only things that did not change were worth studying. Diogenes thought that this was ridiculous and protested it by simply walking back and forth, or moving. The philosophical difference here might seem small at first, but symbolically it is monumental. After all, if the Eleatics believed that anything that changed was unimportant, they had to believe that the daily life of an individual was unimportant. For Diogenes, and Kierkegaard, this was unsettling. It is hard to have a philosophy that discounts your daily experiences, since those are all we really have.
I found a cool article on the subject that takes a very logical look at what the Eleatics believes (and there are pictures for the math part!):
http://mathpages.com/rr/s3-07/3-07.htm
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