Sobre o Valor das Palavras

A palavra é a sombra do acto.

λόγος γὰρ ἔργου σκιή.

Demócrito DK B145 (= Graham Dmc 398 [F267]) 

The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: 2010.

Lc 17, 10

Men remember people's mistakes more readily than their good deeds, and this is appropriate. For just as there is no need to praise one who returns a deposit, but to accuse and punish one who does not, so with the ruler: he was elected not so he could do wrong but so he could do right.

Demócrito DK B265 (= Graham Dmc 374 [F243]) 

The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: 2010 (trad.: Daniel Graham).

Filosofia Política Clássica vs Moderna VI

fotograma de Barry Lyndon (1975), de Kubrick

It seems proper to me to act towards men as it is written we should act towards hostile beasts and creeping things: it is legal by tradition to kill an enemy in every society in which the laws do not prohibit it; but rites, treaties, and oaths peculiar to each place may prohibit it.

One who kills any highwayman or robber should be immune from punishment, whether he does it by his own hand, by giving an order, or by vote.

κιξάλλην καὶ ληιστὴν πάντα κτείνων τις ἀθῶιος ἂν εἴη καὶ αὐτοχειρίηι καὶ κελεύων καὶ ψήφωι.

Demócrito DK 259 e 260 (= Graham Dmc 368 e 367 [F237 e 238]) 

The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: 2010 (trad.: Daniel Graham).

And thus it is that every man in the state of Nature has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing the like injury (which no reparation can compensate) by the example of the punishment that attends it from everybody, and also to secure men from the attempts of a criminal who, having renounced reason, the common rule and measure God hath given to mankind, hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or a tiger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security.

John Locke, Segundo Tratado do Governo Civil II.11

De Amicitia

Para o Miguel

In a fish shared with another there are no bones.

ἐν γὰρ ξυνῷ ἰχθύι ἄκανθαι οὐκ ἔνεισιν.

Demócrito DK B151 (= Graham Dmc 312 [F181]) 

The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: 2010 (trad.: Daniel Graham).

Demócrito, O Anarca

Demócrito, de Johan Moreelse (1630)

He said laws were a bad invention and the wise men should not obey laws but live free.

ἐπίνοιαν γὰρ κακὴν τοὺς νόμους ἔλεγε καὶ οὐ χρὴ νόμοις πειθαρχεῖν τὸν σοφόν, ἀλλὰ ἐλευθερίως ζῆν.

Demócrito DK A166 (= Graham Dmc 198)

The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: 2010 (trad.: Daniel Graham).

Pré-Socráticos #5: Empédocles, Anaxágoras & Os Atomistas

Quinta sessão do ciclo Tertúlias Pré-Socráticas, promovido pela associação Origem da Comédia. António Pedro Mesquita fala-nos de Empédocles, Anaxágoras e os Atomistas. Empédocles é o filósofo pré-socrático com o mais extenso corpus sobrevivente - mais de 450 versos. A ele devemos a ideia dos quatro elementos - Ar, Fogo, Água, e Terra , que se combinam movidos por forças de amor ou de ódio para formar o universo. Anaxágoras, o primeiro filósofo ateniense, substitui esses quatro elementos por outros, de número infinito, que também por sua vez constituem, por obra de um intelecto regulador (o nous), todas as coisas do mundo. Demócrito e os atomistas por sua vez pegaram nesta ideia de multiplicidade e teorizaram que o mundo consistiria em dois elementos fundamentais: o átomo, que quer dizer indivisível, e o vazio, espaço onde a combinação de todos os átomos acontece. Sessão decorrida no dia 14 de Abril de 2010, no foyer do Teatro Académico Gil Vicente, Coimbra.

A Tese de Doutoramento de Marx

The first volume of the collected works of Karl Marx, which is being issued by the Marx-Engels Institute of Moscow, opens with a dissertation entitled 'Über die Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie' [Da Diferença entre a Filosofia da Natureza de Demócrito e Epicuro], which he presented for his doctorate at the University of Jena in 1841. It is interesting to find one who was afterwards to win fame in very different fields starting his career with an enthusiastic tract on Greek philosophy, which he evidently intended to make his work for years to come; for not only does he tell us in his introduction that this thesis is a prelude to a comprehensive study of Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Scepticism, 'the philosophical basis of Roman life and character', but appended to the dissertation are some seventy pages of preliminary notes for the larger work, which range over such varied subjects as 'The Immanent Dialectic of the Epicurean Philosophy', 'The Idea of the "Wise Man" in Greek Philosophy', and 'Parallels between the Epicureans, and the Pietists and Supernaturalists'.

Looking back on his work now it is almost astonishing to see how far he got considering the materials then available. He knew, of course, the main ancient authorities for Epicureanism, and the work shows a careful study of Diogenes Laertius, the Epicurean treatises of Plutarch, Cicero's dialogues, and portions of Clement of Alexandria and Sextus Empiricus. He had read Gassendi, but thought that his attempt to reconcile Epicureanism with Church tradition vitiated all his work — Marx's anti-theological bias is prominent throughout the treatise. Hegel had, as he says, published the great work 'from which dates the history of philosophy', and Ritter in 1829, unaccompanied as yet by Preller, had issued the first part of the History of Philosophy in Ancient Times. But there was no Diels, no Usener, and the whole wealth of material collected from casual references was as yet unavailable, except in so far as an individual inquirer might have come across it.

Yet Marx shows a penetrating acquaintance with the two philosophers, and produces in his notes a considerable array of illustrative passages, drawn nearly entirely from the main authorities. Almost as a pioneer he rejects the ancient tradition, repeated glibly in the histories of his time, that Epicurus adopted the Atomism of Democritus wholesale, changing it here and there for the worse. He sees rightly that, although the details of the theory have not undergone a great change, except in certain important points, the real difference between the two thinkers lies in their underlying 'theory of knowledge', and the consequent divergence of attitude in their conception of the relation of phenomena to reality. [...]

Like a true Hegelian, having once got his fundamental principle, he attempts to apply it in its workings throughout the theories of the two philosophers. And here, from a modern point of view, is the weakness of the thesis. An a priori theory, couched in the terms of contemporary philosophy, is forced upon ancient thinkers who really approached their problems in a far simpler frame of mind. We are told that Epicurus was always conscious of the contradiction involved in his theory between the abstract conception of the atom as the ' ultimate thing 'and its concrete workings as the foundation of phenomena [...].

But though to-day Marx's conclusions could hardly be accepted in detail, his thesis is of real interest to a modern student of Epicureanism, firstly because it exhibits the workings of a subtle and ingenious mind in the presence of a very difficult problem, and secondly because it does call attention in a very arresting way to the real difference between Democritus and Epicurus, and to the genuine originality of the later thinker. But perhaps it is most instructive because it shows how difficult it is for a critic to approach the ancient writers except in the atmosphere of his own time, how hard to resist the temptation of reading into them his own thought and that of his contemporaries. The thesis was well worth inclusion in the volume, and any student of Epicureanism who reads it must carry away some illuminating ideas.

Cyril Bailey (1928), "Karl Marx on Greek Athomism", The Classical Quaterly 22, 3/4: 205-206.