Plato's end: scepticism in Parmenides. Refutation of ideology.
8
CONCLUSION
Greek thought during the tragic age is pessimistic or artistically optimistic.
Their judgment about life implies more.
The One, flight from the Becoming. Aut unity, aut artistic play.
Deep distrust of reality: nobody assumes a good god, who has made everything optime.
{Pythagoreans, religious sect.
{Anaximander.
{Empedocles.
Eleates.
{Anaxagoras.
{Heraclitus.
Democritus: the world without moral
and æsthetic meaning, pessimism of
chance.
If one placed a tragedy before all these, the three former would see in it the mirror of the fatality of existence, Parmenides a transitory appearance, Heraclitus and Anaxagoras an artistic edifice and image of the world-laws, Democritus the result of machines.
. . . . . . .