DEMOCRITUS

Greek cosmologist and moralist, disciple of Leucippus, the father of ancient atomism. His native city was Abdera on the northern coast of the Aegean Sea. He lived to a very old age, and although his exact dates are unknown, his life spanned virtually the entire 5th century b.c. He traveled widely and may have visited Athens. Encyclopedic in his interests, Democritus further developed the cosmology of atomism, but was best known among the ancients as a moralist. Although several works have been attributed to him, only fragments remain. The best known work of his school was entitled The Great Diakosmos, although the authorship and manner of composition cannot be determined.

Greek atomism developed in the spirit of the earlier Milesian tradition and as a response to the Eleatic objections against the possibility of motion. The whole of reality was reduced to atoms, infinite in number, imperceptible to the senses, and possessing only the properties of solidity, size, and varying shapes. The early atomists did not attribute weight to their atoms, an addition made later by epicurus. Moving at random in a void the atoms coagulated into the larger and familiar objects of experience. Unlike empedocles and anaxagoras, the atomists felt no need to posit a moving force; the atoms were simply "given" in motion. The soul was understood as composed of spherical atoms of fire.

In the latter half of the 5th century b.c. the attention of Greek philosophers shifted to epistemological and moral problems, and Democritus shared these interests. He taught that sensation is produced by groups of atoms from external objects entering into the pores of the sensory organs. But sense knowledge for Democritus was subjective and did not provide true insight into the atomic structure of reality. This doctrine has been interpreted as an anticipation of the distinction between primary and secondary sense qualities.

Most of the extant fragments of Democritus are moral maxims. He taught that the moral ideal is the life of cheerfulness, unperturbed by chance occurrences and by excess or defect in human action. The sign of this ideal life is pleasure; he was not a sensualist, however, since he extolled the values of rational truth and the life of reason. He counseled moderation as the safeguard of true and lasting pleasure, and emphasized the values of law

and ordered civil society in assisting the individual to attain the life of cheerfulness.

See Also: greek philosophy; materialism

Bibliography: h. diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker Griechisch und Deutsch, ed. w. kranz, 3 v. (8th ed. Berlin 1956);v.1 (10th ed. Berlin 1960–61). English. k. freeman, tr., Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge, Mass. 1948). Secondary Studies. f. c. copleston, History of Philosophy: Greece and Rome (Westminster, Md. 1946; 2d ed. 1950) 1:72–75, 124–126. c. bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus (Oxford 1928). m. solovine, tr., Démocrite: Doctrines philosophiques et réflexions morales (Paris 1928).

[r. j. blackwell]