The Grade 11 Philosophy class held a fun philosophers’ roundtable to better understand the very first ancient Greek philosophers (e.g. Thales, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus…). Each student was assigned a philosopher to impersonate as they engaged and expostulated with each other. The students did an amazing job, with many of them bringing props to help make the case for their insights.
One concept that many of our burgeoning philosophers were grappling with was ‘arche’, the ancient Greek term for the originating source that everything comes from and ultimately returns to. Heraclitus thought this was fire. Empedocles believed that this was earth, wind, water, and fire, with love acting to bind these together and strife acting as a countervailing force separating them. Anaxagoras believed that things are composed of infinitely small seeds of different types; things are what they are, depending on which type of seed they have most of (Maddy bought a box of seeds to illustrate this!). Democritus further developed Anaxagoras’ idea, referring to these infinitely small seeds as atoma (ancient Greek for atoms!). Our philosophers also sought to help their co-citizens realize that the Olympian gods are fake, proposing an all-powerful Logos, or Mind in control and behind creation.
Thank you to our teacher Ms Francis for inspiring our class to resurrect the ancient Greek philosophers and to bring to life with clarity, coherence, and vigour their timeless endeavour of making sense of the world.
