Lecture
The Presocratics — a conventional name, adopted only in modern times, for the ancient Greek philosophers of the early period (7th—5th centuries BC), as well as their successors of the 4th century BC who worked outside the mainstream of the Attic Socratic and Sophistic traditions. The term may also be used purely in a chronological sense (which is not entirely accurate, since some of those classified among them were contemporaries of Socrates). The writings of the Presocratics are known only from fragments preserved as quotations by later ancient authors.
Presocratic philosophy originated in the 6th century BC with the three Milesians : Thales , Anaximander and Anaximenes . All of them attributed the arche (a word that could mean «origin», «substance» or «principle») of the world, respectively, to water , to the apeiron (the unbounded) and to air. Three more Presocratic philosophers came from nearby Ionian cities: Xenophanes , Heraclitus and Pythagoras . Xenophanes is known for his critique of the anthropomorphism of the gods . Heraclitus, who is famously difficult to understand, is known for his dictum on impermanence , ta panta rhei , and for attributing the arche of the world to fire. Pythagoras founded a cult of followers who claimed that the universe is composed of numbers . The Eleatic school ( Parmenides , Zeno of Elea and Melissus ) arose in the 5th century BC. Parmenides argued that only one thing exists, and that nothing can change. Zeno and Melissus largely defended Parmenides' view. Anaxagoras and Empedocles proposed pluralistic explanations of the creation of the universe. Leucippus and Democritus are known for their atomism and for the view that only void and matter exist. The Sophists developed philosophical relativism . The Presocratics exerted a significant influence on a number of concepts in Western philosophy , such as naturalism and rationalism , and paved the way for scientific methodology .
The term «Presocratics» became established in 1903, when the German scholar Hermann Diels gathered in his work «Fragments of the Presocratics» («Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker») the texts of philosophers who lived before Socrates. The book included more than 400 names along with fragments of Orphic and other pre-philosophical theogonies.
The term «Presocratics» goes back to the term «Presocratic philosophy», introduced by the German philosopher, philologist and theologian Johann August Eberhard (1739—1809), who in his 1788 book «Universal History of Philosophy» divided the history of ancient philosophy into two main periods — «Presocratic philosophy» and «Socratic philosophy» .
In the mid-19th-century work by the German scholar Eduard Zeller, «The Philosophy of the Greeks in its Historical Development», which became a classic, in the periodization of ancient Greek philosophy that he established, its first stage is distinguished as running from the early Ionians to Socrates . Before Zeller, Hegel in his history of philosophy defined the first period of ancient Greek philosophy as running from Thales to Aristotle .
We owe the conceptual grouping of the Presocratics together to the British-Scottish classicist J. Burnet. He called them «early Greek philosophers» .
Philosophy originated in Ancient Greece in the 6th century BC. The Presocratic era lasted about two centuries, during which the expanding Achaemenid Persian Empire extended westward, while the Greeks advanced in trade and sea routes, reaching Cyprus and Syria. The first Presocratics lived in Ionia , on the western coast of Anatolia . The Persians conquered the cities of Ionia around 540 BC, and they were then ruled by Persian tyrants . The Greeks rose in revolt in 499 BC, but were ultimately crushed in 494 BC. Slowly but surely, Athens became the philosophical center of Greece by the middle of the 5th century. Athens was entering its classical age , with philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle , but the influence of the Presocratics continued.
Several factors contributed to the birth of Presocratic philosophy in Ancient Greece. The Ionian cities, especially Miletus, had close trade ties with Egypt and Mesopotamia , cultures whose observations of the natural world differed from those of the Greeks. Besides technical skills and cultural influence, of primary importance was the fact that the Greeks had adopted the alphabet around 800 BC.
Another factor was the ease and frequency of travel within Greece, which led to the mixing and comparing of ideas. In the 6th century BC, various philosophers and other thinkers moved easily around Greece, especially attending pan-Hellenic festivals. Although long-distance communication was difficult in ancient times, people, philosophers and books traveled through other parts of the Greek peninsula, the islands of the Aegean Sea, and Magna Graecia , the coastal region in southern Italy.
The democratic political system of independent poleis also contributed to the rise of philosophy. Most Greek cities were not ruled by autocrats or priests , which allowed citizens to freely raise questions on a wide range of matters. Various poleis flourished and grew wealthy, especially Miletus, which was a center of trade and manufacturing in the early stages of Presocratic philosophy. Trade in grain, oil, wine and other goods between poleis and colonies meant that these cities were not isolated, but were embedded in — and economically dependent on — a complex and shifting network of trade routes.
Greek mythology also influenced the birth of philosophy. To a certain extent, the ideas of the philosophers were answers to questions that were subtly present in the works of Homer and Hesiod . The Presocratics emerged in a world dominated by myths, sacred places and local deities. The work of epic poets such as Homer, Hesiod and others reflected this environment. They are regarded as forerunners of the Presocratics, since they sought to make sense of the origin of the world and to systematize traditional folklore and legends. Greek folk religion contained many features shared with the religions of neighboring civilizations, such as the Egyptians, Mesopotamians and Hittites. The first Presocratic philosophers also traveled widely to other lands, which means that Presocratic thought had roots both abroad and at home.
Homer in his two epic poems not only personifies the gods and other natural phenomena, such as Night, but also hints at certain views on the origin and nature of the world that were later criticized by the Presocratics. In his epic poem «Theogony» (literally meaning «the birth of the gods»), Hesiod (c. 700 BC) describes the origin of the gods, and beyond the solid mythological framework one can discern an attempt to order beliefs through a degree of rationalization; an example is the claim that Night gives birth to Death, Sleep and Dreams. The transmigration of souls, a belief of the Orphics , a religious cult that arose in Thrace, influenced sixth-century-BC thought, but the overall influence of their cosmology on philosophy is disputed. [ 28 ] Pherecydes , a poet, magician and contemporary of Thales, describes in his book a distinctive cosmogony, claiming that there were three gods — a step toward rationality.
Although the term «Presocratics» is of modern European origin, the stereotypes embedded in it go back to Plato and Aristotle
The ancient authors themselves, when asking about the historical beginning of philosophy, pointed to the figures of the Seven Sages as its founders, among them Thales of Miletus, who since Aristotle's time has been considered the first philosopher of Greece. He is a representative of the Milesian school, to which Anaximander, Anaximenes, Pherecydes of Syros, Diogenes of Apollonia and others also belonged.
It is followed by the Eleatic school, which dealt with the philosophy of being (c. 580—430 BC). It included Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, and Melissus. Contemporary with this school was the school of Pythagoras, which studied harmony, measure and number, and to which, among others, Philolaus (late 5th century BC), the physician Alcmaeon (c. 520 BC), and the music theorist, philosopher and mathematician Archytas of Tarentum (c. 400—365 BC) belonged. Its adherents also included the sculptor Polyclitus the Elder (late 5th century BC).
The great solitary figures are Heraclitus, Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Democritus, with his encyclopedically all-encompassing thought, together with his semi-legendary predecessor Leucippus and the Democritean school, represents the culmination of Presocratic cosmology. The early Sophists (Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, Prodicus) can also be assigned to this same period.
At the same time, it is noted that the above grouping of Presocratic-era thinkers, which has become traditional, is conventional, and that any attempt to single out elements of doctrine common to them all is all the more artificial.
The term «Presocratic» was adopted in the 19th century to designate this group of philosophers. It was first used by the German philosopher J. A. Eberhard in the late 18th century as vorsokratische Philosophie . In earlier literature they were called physikoi («physicists», from physis , « nature »), and their activity physiologoi (physical or natural philosophers ), a usage that originated with Aristotle in order to distinguish them from theologoi (theologians) and mythologoi (storytellers and bards who transmitted Greek mythology ), who attributed natural phenomena to the gods.
This term was coined to emphasize the fundamental change in philosophical inquiry between the philosophers who lived before Socrates — who were interested in the structure of nature and the cosmos (the universe), implying that the universe has an order — and Socrates and his successors, who were primarily interested in ethics and politics. This term has its drawbacks, since many Presocratics showed a great interest in ethics and in how to live the best life. Moreover, the term implies that the Presocratics are less significant than Socrates, or even that they were merely a stage (implying teleology ) in the philosophy of the classical age. The term is also chronologically inaccurate, since the last of the Presocratics were contemporaries of Socrates.
According to James Warren, the distinction between the Presocratic philosophers and the philosophers of the classical age is determined not so much by Socrates as by geography and by the texts that have survived. The transition from the Presocratic to the classical period implies a shift from the dispersal of philosophers across the Greek-speaking world to their concentration in Athens. Moreover, starting with the classical period we have complete surviving texts, whereas from the Presocratic era we have only fragments. The scholar André Laks identifies two traditions of dividing the Presocratics from the Socratics, going back to the classical age and continuing to the present day. The first tradition — the Socratic-Ciceronian one — uses the content of their philosophical inquiries to divide the two groups: the Presocratics were interested in nature, whereas Socrates focused on human affairs. The other tradition, the Platonic-Aristotelian one, emphasizes method as the distinction between the two groups, since Socrates shifted to a more epistemological approach to the study of various concepts. Because of the shortcomings of the term «Presocratic», the term «early Greek philosophy» is also used, most often in English-language philosophical literature.
André Laks ( fr. ) and Glenn W. Most in particular popularized this shift in describing the era as «early Greek philosophy» instead of «Presocratic philosophy» through their comprehensive nine-volume edition of « Early Greek Philosophy» in the Loeb series . In the first volume they distinguish their systematic approach from that of Hermann Diels , starting with the choice of «early Greek philosophy» instead of «Presocratic philosophy», above all because Socrates was a contemporary of, and sometimes even preceded, philosophers traditionally regarded as «Presocratic» (such as the atomists).
The main subject of philosophizing among the Presocratics was the cosmos (nature). It appeared to them as composed of the ordinary sensory elements: earth, water, air, fire and ether, mutually transforming into one another through condensation and rarefaction. The Presocratics formulated two universal theses on which their reasoning was in one way or another built: «nothing comes from nothing» and «like is known by like». In that period, the human being and the social sphere were, as a rule, not separated out from cosmic life as a whole . For the Presocratics, humanity, society and the cosmos were subject to the operation of the very same laws. As F. K. Kessidi noted, their conception of nature «was meant to provide not only a natural (natural-philosophical) explanation of what happens in the world, but also to serve as a means of orientation in life within the surrounding reality: to determine the place and purpose of the human being in the „divine“ cosmos» . Dualism is noted as a stable Presocratic conception
A graphical representation of the relationships between various Presocratic philosophers and thinkers ; red arrows indicate relations of opposition.
The most well-known are
The Milesian school was located in Miletus , Ionia, in the 6th century BC. It consisted of Thales , Anaximander and Anaximenes , who most likely stood in a teacher-student relationship. They were primarily concerned with the origin and nature of the world; each of them attributed the Whole to a single arche (beginning or principle), thereby giving rise to the tradition of naturalistic monism. [ 43 ]
Thales' theorem: if AC is a diameter, and B is a point on the circle of that diameter, then angle ABC is a right angle.
Thales ( c. 624–546 BC) is considered the father of philosophy. [ 44 ] None of his writings have survived. He is considered the first Western philosopher, since he was the first to use reason, proof and generalization. He coined the word «cosmos» , the first word to describe the universe. He made contributions to geometry and predicted the eclipse of 585 BC. [ 45 ] Thales may have been of Phoenician origin . [ 46 ] Miletus was a meeting place and trading center for the great civilizations of the time, and Thales visited neighboring civilizations: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete and Phoenicia. [ 47 ] In Egypt geometry had developed as a means of dividing agricultural fields. However, Thales advanced geometry through his abstract deductive reasoning, arriving at universal generalizations . Proclus , a later Athenian philosopher, attributed to Thales the theorem now known as Thales' theorem . He is also known for being the first to state the equality of the base angles of isosceles triangles and that a diameter bisects a circle . [ 48 ] Like many Greeks of his time, Thales visited Sardis , where astronomical records were kept, and used astronomical observations for practical purposes (the olive harvest). [ 49 ] In antiquity Thales was regarded as a genius [ 50 ] and revered as one of the Seven Sages of Greece . [ 51 ]
The most important thing that marks Thales as the first philosopher is his posing of the fundamental philosophical question of the origin and nature of the world, and his providing an answer grounded in empirical evidence and reasoning. He attributed the origin of the world to an element rather than to a divine being. [ 52 ] Our knowledge of Thales' claim comes from Aristotle. Aristotle, discussing the opinions of earlier philosophers, tells us that «Thales, the founder of this kind of philosophy, says that the principle (arche) is water». What he meant by arche is a matter of interpretation (it could be origin, element, or ontological matrix), but regardless of the various interpretations, he represented the world as a single Whole rather than as an aggregate of different elements, and reflected on the connecting/original elements. [ 53 ]
Another important aspect of Thales's philosophy is his assertion that everything is full of gods. What he meant by this is, again, a matter of interpretation; views range from theistic to atheistic. [ 54 ] But the most plausible explanation, offered by Aristotle, is that Thales was advocating a theory of hylozoism: that the universe, the sum of all that exists, is divine and alive. [ 55 ] Another notable claim of Thales is that the Earth «rests on water». It is assumed that he arrived at this conclusion after observing fish fossils on land. [ 56 ]
That from which all things are born,
the beginning of all things,
the first foundation of everything that exists, is the Boundless (apeiron);
the source from which the coming-into-being of things arises, and
their passing away in accordance with necessity.
For they render justice and retribution to one another for their mutual
injustice, in accordance with the ordered course of time.
Anaximander (610–546 BC), also from Miletus, was 25 years younger than Thales. He belonged to the elite of Miletus, was wealthy, and served as a statesman. He took an interest in many fields, including mathematics and geography. He drew the first map of the world, was the first to conclude that the Earth has a spherical shape, and created instruments for measuring time, something like clocks. [ 58 ] In response to Thales, he posited as a first principle an indefinite, unlimited substance without qualities (the apeiron), from which the primary opposites — hot and cold, wet and dry — separated out. His response was an attempt to explain observed changes by attributing them to a single source that transforms into various elements. Like Thales, he gave a naturalistic explanation for phenomena that had previously had supernatural explanations. He is also known for his reasoning on the origin of humanity. He proclaimed that the Earth is not situated within any other structure but lies without support at the center of the universe. Moreover, he developed a rudimentary evolutionary explanation of biodiversity, in which constant universal forces influenced the life of animals. [ 59 ] According to Giorgio de Santillana, a professor of philosophy at MIT, Anaximander's concept of a universe governed by laws shaped philosophical thought for centuries to come and was as important as the discovery of fire or Einstein's scientific discoveries. [ 60 ]
Little is known about the life of Anaximenes (585–525 BC). He was a younger contemporary and friend of Anaximander, and they worked together on various intellectual projects. He also wrote a book on nature in prose. Anaximenes took aēr (air) as his principle, believing that it is transformed, through condensation and rarefaction, into the other classical elements: fire, wind, clouds, water, and earth. Although his theory resembled that of Anaximander, since both posited a single source of the universe, Anaximenes proposed intricate mechanisms by which air turns into other elements, chiefly through changes in density. Since classical times he has been regarded as the father of naturalistic explanations. Anaximenes extended Anaximander's attempt to find a single cause explaining natural phenomena, both living and non-living, without reducing, in James Warren's words, «living beings in any way to mere loci of material change». [ 61 ]
St. Elmo's fire (a glowing plasma produced by a corona discharge from a rod-shaped object) on a ship. Xenophanes's contemporaries attributed this phenomenon to the deity Dioscurus. Xenophanes maintained that the observed illumination was caused by small clouds subject to particular circumstances involving the stars — an example of naturalism and reductionism. [ 62 ]
Xenophanes was born in Colophon, an Ionian city near Miletus. He was a widely traveled poet whose main interests were theology and epistemology. Regarding theology, he pointed out that we do not know whether there is one god or many gods, or, if the latter, whether there is a hierarchy among them. Criticizing the anthropomorphic depiction of the gods by his fellow Greeks, he pointed out that different peoples depicted their gods as resembling themselves. He is famously said to have remarked that if oxen, horses, or lions could draw, they would depict their gods in the form of oxen, horses, or lions. This criticism concerned not only the appearance of the gods but also their behavior. Greek mythology, shaped mainly by the poets Homer and Hesiod, attributed moral failings to the gods, such as jealousy and adultery. Xenophanes opposed this. He believed the gods should be morally superior to humans. However, Xenophanes never claimed that the gods were omnipotent, wholly good, or omniscient. [ 63 ] Xenophanes also offered naturalistic explanations for phenomena such as the sun, the rainbow, and St. Elmo's fire. Traditionally these had been attributed to divine intervention, but according to Xenophanes they were in fact effects of clouds. These explanations of Xenophanes point to an empiricism in his thinking and may represent a kind of proto-science. Scholars ignored his cosmology and naturalism from the time of Aristotle until fairly recently (perhaps owing to Xenophanes's lack of teleology), but the modern literature suggests otherwise. [ 64 ] As for epistemology, Xenophanes questioned the reliability of human knowledge. People generally tend to claim that their beliefs are real and represent the truth. Although Xenophanes was pessimistic about people's ability to attain knowledge, he also believed in gradual progress through critical thinking. Xenophanes attempted to find naturalistic explanations for meteorological and cosmological phenomena. [ 65 ]
The historian of ancient philosophy Alexander Mourelatos notes that Xenophanes used a pattern of thought that is still used in modern metaphysics. Xenophanes, by reducing meteorological phenomena to clouds, constructed the argument that «X is in reality Y», for example, B32: «What they call Iris [the rainbow] is likewise in reality a cloud: a cloud that appears to the eye purple, red, and green». This is still used today in statements like «lightning is a massive electric discharge» or «objects such as tables are a cloud of microparticles». Mourelatos comments that this kind of cloud analogy is still present in scientific language and «…is a favorite example among contemporary philosophers for illustrating inter-theoretic identity». [ 66 ]
According to Aristotle and Diogenes Laertius, Xenophanes was the teacher of Parmenides; however, in the modern literature the question of whether Xenophanes should also be considered an Eleatic is a matter of debate. [ 40 ]
The distinguishing feature of Heraclitus's philosophy is flux. In fragment DK B30, Heraclitus writes: «This world order [Cosmos], the same for all, was created by neither god nor man, but always was, is, and will be: an ever-living fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures». Heraclitus maintained that all things in nature are in a state of eternal flux. Like the monistic philosophers before him, Heraclitus held that the archē of the world was fire, which is itself subject to change — this makes him a materialist monist. [ 67 ] From fire all things arise, and all things return to it again in a process of eternal cycles. Fire becomes water and earth, and vice versa. These eternal changes explain his view that the cosmos was, is, and will be. [ 67 ] The idea of continuous flux also appears in the «river fragments». There Heraclitus states that we cannot step into the same river twice, a position expressed by the slogan ta panta rhei (everything flows). One of the fragments reads: «We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not» (DK 22 B49a). Heraclitus appears to suggest that not only is the river constantly changing, but so are we ourselves, even hinting at existential questions about humanity. [ 68 ]
Another key concept of Heraclitus is that opposites somehow mirror one another, a doctrine called the unity of opposites. Two fragments relating to this concept read: «The same thing in us is living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old; for these things, having changed around, are those, and those in turn, having changed around, are these» (B88) and «Cold things grow warm, the warm cools, the wet dries, the parched moistens» (B126). [ 69 ] Heraclitus's doctrine of the unity of opposites suggests that the unity of the world and its various parts is maintained through tension generated by opposites. Moreover, each polar substance contains its opposite in a continuous circular exchange and motion, which brings about the stability of the cosmos. [ 70 ] Another of Heraclitus's famous aphorisms underscores this teaching (B53): «War is the father of all and king of all; some it reveals as gods, others as men; some it makes slaves, others free», where war signifies the creative tension that brings things into existence. [ 71 ]
The fundamental idea of Heraclitus is the logos, an ancient Greek word with many meanings; Heraclitus may have used different senses of the word on each occasion. The logos appears to be a universal law uniting the cosmos, according to the fragment: «Listening not to me but to the logos, it is wise to agree (homologein) that all things are one» (DK 22 B50). Although the logos is present everywhere, very few people are familiar with it. B19 states: [hoi polloi] «…do not know how to listen [to the Logos] or how to speak [the truth]». [ 72 ] Heraclitus's thoughts on the logos influenced the Stoics, who invoked it to affirm their belief that a rational law governs the universe. [ 73 ]
Pythagoras
Pythagoras (582–496 BC) was born on Samos, a small island near Miletus. At about the age of 30 he moved to Croton, where he founded his school and gained political influence. Several decades later he was forced to flee Croton and resettle in Metapontum. [ 74 ]
Pythagoras was known for his study of numbers and the geometric relations between them. Many followers of the Pythagoreans adopted and expanded upon his teaching. They developed his ideas to the point of asserting that everything consists of numbers, that the universe is created by numbers, and that everything is a reflection of analogies and geometric relations. [ 75 ] Numbers, music, and philosophy, all interrelated, could console the human soul in its striving for beauty, and so the Pythagoreans came to advocate the study of mathematics. [ 76 ]
Pythagoreanism regarded the world as a perfect harmony dependent on number, and sought to encourage humanity likewise to lead a harmonious life, including ritual and dietary prescriptions. [ 77 ] Their way of life was ascetic; they abstained from various pleasures and foods. They were vegetarians and placed great value on friendship. [ 78 ] Politically, Pythagoras was a proponent of a form of aristocracy, a position that later Pythagoreans rejected, but on the whole they were reactionaries and, in particular, suppressed women. [ 79 ] Other pre-Socratic philosophers mocked Pythagoras for his belief in reincarnation. [ 80 ]
Notable Pythagoreans include Philolaus (470–380 BC), Alcmaeon of Croton, Archytas (428–347 BC), and Ecphantus. [ 81 ] The most famous was Alcmaeon, a medical and philosophical writer. Alcmaeon observed that most organs in the body are arranged in pairs, and suggested that a person's health depends on a harmony between opposites (hot/cold, dry/wet), while disease arises from an imbalance between them. He was the first to regard the brain as the center of sensation and thought. Philolaus advanced cosmology through the discovery of heliocentrism — the idea that the Sun is at the center of the orbit of the Earth and the other planets. [ 82 ]
Pythagoreanism influenced later Christian currents, such as Neoplatonism, and its pedagogical methods were adapted by Plato. [ 83 ] Moreover, it seems that there is a continuity in certain respects between Pythagorean philosophy and that of Plato. As Carl A. Huffman notes, Plato tended to use mathematics to explain natural phenomena, and also believed in the immortality, even divinity, of the human soul. [ 84 ]
The Eleatic school is named after Elea, an ancient Greek city in the south of the Italian peninsula. Parmenides is considered the founder of this school. Other prominent Eleatics include Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. According to Aristotle and Diogenes Laertius, Xenophanes was the teacher of Parmenides, and there is debate as to whether Xenophanes should also be considered an Eleatic. [ 40 ] Parmenides was born in Elea into a wealthy family around 515 BC. [ 85 ] Parmenides of Elea was interested in many fields, such as biology and astronomy. He was the first to conclude that the Earth has a spherical shape. [ 86 ] He also took part in the political life of his city. [ 87 ]
According to Parmenides, Being, that which exists, is like the mass of a perfect sphere: undifferentiated, indivisible, and unchanging. [ 88 ]
Parmenides's contribution was of primary importance not only for ancient philosophy but for all of Western metaphysics and ontology. [ 87 ] Parmenides wrote a poem, difficult to interpret, called «On Nature» or «On That Which Is», which had a substantial influence on later Greek philosophy. [ 89 ] Only 150 fragments of this poem have survived. [ 90 ] It tells the story of a young man (a kouros in ancient Greek) devoted to the search for truth, which a goddess conveys to him during a long journey to the heavens. The poem consists of three parts: a prologue (i.e., a preface), the «Way of Truth», and the «Way of Opinion». Very few fragments of the «Way of Opinion» have survived. In this part, Parmenides, judging by references made by other authors, was likely concerned with cosmology. [ 91 ] The «Way of Truth» was then, and still is, considered far more important. In the «Way of Truth», the goddess criticizes the logic of people who do not distinguish between the real and the nonexistent («What-is» and «What-is-not»). In this poem Parmenides sets out his philosophy: all things are One, and therefore nothing can be changed or altered. Consequently, everything we consider true, even ourselves, is a false representation. [ 92 ] That which is, in Parmenides's view, is a physical sphere that is unborn, unchanging, and infinite. [ 93 ] This is a monistic view of the world, far more radical than that of Heraclitus. [ 94 ] The goddess teaches the Kouros to use his reasoning to understand whether various statements are true or false, discarding the senses as a source of error. [ 95 ] Other fundamental questions raised in Parmenides's poem are the doctrine that nothing comes from nothing [ 96 ], and the unity of being and thought. As quoted in fragment 3 DK: To gar auto noein estin te kai einai (For thinking and being are the same). [ 97 ]
Zeno and Melissus continued Parmenides's thoughts on cosmology. [ 98 ] Zeno is known chiefly for his paradoxes, that is, self-contradictory statements that served as proof that Parmenides's monism was correct and pluralism false. The most common theme of these paradoxes was the traversal of distance, but since this distance contains an infinite number of points, the traveler could never traverse it. The most famous of his paradoxes is the paradox of Achilles, mentioned by Aristotle: «The second is called the «Achilles», and it states that the slowest runner will never be caught by the fastest, because the pursuer must first reach the point from which the pursued started, so that the slower one must always be a little ahead». (Aristotle, Physics, 239b14–18 [DK 29 A26]) [ 99 ] Melissus defended and developed Parmenides's theory, using prose without recourse to deities or mythical figures. He attempted to explain why people believe that various nonexistent objects exist. [ 100 ]
The Eleatics' focus on Being by means of logic laid the foundation for the philosophical discipline of ontology. Other philosophers influenced by the Eleatics (such as the Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle) advanced logic, argumentation, mathematics, and especially the elenchus (refutation). The Sophists even subjected Being to analysis by means of the elenchus. Thanks to the Eleatics, reasoning acquired a formal method. [ 101 ]
The Death of Empedocles by Salvator Rosa. Legend has it that Empedocles committed suicide by jumping into the volcano Etna. [ 102 ]
The pluralist school marked a return to Milesian natural philosophy, though in a much more refined form owing to Eleatic criticism. [ 103 ]
Anaxagoras was born in Ionia but was the first major philosopher to emigrate to Athens. He soon became associated with the Athenian statesman Pericles, and probably because of this connection was accused of impiety by a political opponent of Pericles, since Anaxagoras held that the sun was not connected to divinity; it was merely a huge burning rock. Pericles helped Anaxagoras flee Athens and return to Ionia. [ 104 ] Anaxagoras also had a great influence on Socrates. [ 105 ]
Anaxagoras is known for his «theory of everything». [ 106 ] He claimed that «there is a portion of everything in everything». Interpretations of what he meant vary. Anaxagoras attempted to remain faithful to the Eleatic principle of the eternal (What-is) while also explaining the diversity of the natural world. [ 107 ] Anaxagoras accepted Parmenides' doctrine that everything that exists (What-is) has existed eternally, but, unlike the Eleatics, added the ideas of panspermia and nous. All objects were mixtures of various elements, such as air, water, and others. One special element was nous, that is, mind, which is present in living beings and causes motion.
According to Anaxagoras, Nous was one of the elements making up the cosmos. Things possessing Nous were alive. In Anaxagoras' view, all things are composed of certain basic elements; although it is unclear what these elements are. [ 108 ] All objects are a mixture of these building blocks and contain a portion of every element except Nous. Nous was also considered a building block of the cosmos, but it exists only in living objects. Anaxagoras writes: «In everything there is a portion (moira) of everything except mind (nous), but there are some things in which mind is also present». [ 109 ] Nous was not simply an element of things; it was in some way the cause that set the universe in motion. Anaxagoras developed Milesian thought in the field of epistemology, seeking to establish an explanation that could be valid for all natural phenomena. Under the influence of the Eleatics he also contributed to the investigation of metatheoretical questions, such as the nature of knowledge. [ 107 ]
Empedocles was born in Acragas, a city on the southern part of the Italian peninsula. According to Diogenes Laertius, Empedocles wrote two books in verse form: «On Nature» (Peri Physeos) and «Purifications» (Katharmoi). Some modern scholars argue that these books may actually be one; all agree that interpreting Empedocles is difficult. [ 110 ]
On cosmological questions, Empedocles borrows from the Eleatic school the idea that the universe was not born, has always existed, and will always exist. He also continues Anaxagoras' thought regarding the four «roots» (that is, the classical elements) which, by mixing, create everything around us. These roots are fire, air, earth, and water. Importantly, he adds two more components — the immaterial forces of Love and Strife. These two forces are opposites and, acting on the matter of the four roots, either unite it in harmony or tear it apart, resulting in a mixture that constitutes everything that exists. Empedocles uses an analogy to show how this is possible: just as a painter uses a few basic colors to create a picture, the same happens with the four roots. It is not entirely clear whether Love and Strife cooperate or have a larger plan, but Love and Strife exist in a continuous cycle that generates life. [ 111 ] Other beings, besides the four roots, Love, and Strife, according to Empedocles' «Purifications», are mortals, gods, and daemons. [ 112 ] Like Pythagoras, Empedocles believed in the transmigration of souls and was a vegetarian. [ 113 ]
Democritus, painting by Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1628. Democritus was known as the «laughing philosopher» [ 114 ].
Leucippus and Democritus lived in Abdera, in Thrace. They are best known for their atomic cosmology, although their thought covered many other areas of philosophy, such as ethics, mathematics, aesthetics, politics, and even embryology. [ 115 ]
The atomic theory of Leucippus and Democritus was a response to the Eleatic school, which held that motion was impossible because everything was occupied by what is. Democritus and Leucippus refuted the Eleatic axiom, arguing that, since motion exists, that which is not must also exist; therefore, a void exists. Democritus and Leucippus were skeptical about the reliability of our senses, but they were confident in the existence of motion. [ 116 ] Atoms, according to Democritus and Leucippus, possessed some of the characteristics of the Eleatic «that which is»: they were homogeneous and indivisible. These characteristics made it possible to find answers to Zeno's paradoxes. [ 117 ] Atoms move within the void, interact with one another, and form the plurality of the world in which we live in a purely mechanical way. [ 118 ]
One of the conclusions of the atomists was determinism — the philosophical view that all events are fully determined by pre-existing causes. As Leucippus said (DK 67 B2): «Nothing happens at random, but everything happens for a reason and by necessity». [ 119 ] Democritus concluded that, since everything consists of atoms and void, some of our sensations are not real but conventional. Color, for example, is not a property of atoms; therefore, our perception of color is a convention. As Democritus said (DK 68 B9): «By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color; in reality atoms and void». [ 120 ] This can be interpreted in two ways. According to James Warren, there is an eliminativist interpretation, according to which Democritus implies that color is not real, and there is a relativist interpretation, according to which Democritus implies that color and taste are not real but are perceived as such by our senses through sensory interaction. [ 121 ]
The Sophists were a philosophical and educational movement that flourished in Ancient Greece even before Socrates. They criticized traditional thinking, from the gods to morality, paving the way for the further development of philosophy and other disciplines, such as dramaturgy, the social sciences, mathematics, and history. [ 122 ]
Plato despised the Sophists, causing lasting damage to their reputation. Plato believed that philosophy should be accessible only to those with sufficient intellect to understand it; whereas the Sophists taught anyone who paid for instruction. [ 123 ] The Sophists taught rhetoric and taught people to consider questions from different points of view. Because the Sophists and their students were persuasive speakers at court or in public, they were accused of moral and epistemological relativism, [ 124 ] which some Sophists did indeed seem to advocate. Well-known Sophists include Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, Thrasymachus, Prodicus, Callicles, Antiphon, and Critias. [ 125 ]
Protagoras is known primarily for two of his sayings. One of them states: «[man…] is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not», which is usually interpreted as a statement of philosophical relativism, but can also be interpreted as claiming that knowledge pertains only to humanity, that moral rightness and other forms of knowledge relate only to human mind and perception and are limited by them. The other saying is: «Concerning the gods, I cannot know whether they exist or not, nor what form they take; for there are many obstacles to knowledge, including the obscurity of the question and the brevity of human life». [ 126 ]
Gorgias wrote a book called «On Nature», in which he criticized the Eleatic concepts of «What is» and «What is not». He argued that it is absurd to believe that non-being exists, and that «What is» is impossible, since it must either have been generated or be unbounded, and neither option is adequate. Modern scholars continue to debate whether he was a serious thinker, a forerunner of extreme relativism and skepticism, or simply a charlatan. [ 127 ]
Antiphon contrasted the laws of nature with the laws of the city. It is not necessary to obey the laws of the city if one is not caught. It can be argued that Antiphon was a cautious hedonist who rejected dangerous pleasures. [ 128 ]
Philolaus of Croton and Diogenes of Apollonia in Thrace (born around 460 BC) are considered the last generation of the Presocratics. Rather than advancing a cosmological perspective on the construction of our universe, they are mainly known for developing abstract thought and argumentation. [ 129 ]
Philolaus was influenced by Pythagoreanism, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles. He tried to explain both the diversity and the unity of the cosmos. He addressed the need to explain how the various masses of the universe interact with one another and introduced the term «harmony» — a binding force allowing mass to take shape. The structure of the cosmos consisted of apeira (unlimited things) and perainonta (limiters). [ 130 ] Diogenes of Apollonia returned to Milesian monism, but with a more refined line of thought. As he says in DK64 B2: «It seems to me, in general, that all things are alterations of the same thing and are the same thing». He explains that things, even while changing form, remain ontologically unchanged. [ 131 ]
The Presocratics are traditionally divided into representatives of Ionian philosophy (the Milesian school, Heraclitus, Diogenes of Apollonia), Italian philosophy (the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics), and the atomists. The Sophists are sometimes mistakenly counted among the Presocratics, but this is not entirely correct, since most Sophists were contemporaries of Socrates and he actively debated with them. Moreover, the teachings of the Sophists differ greatly from those of the Presocratics. In general, the eastern, Ionian tradition is characterized by empiricism and an interest in the diversity of the material-substantial being of the cosmos; the western, Italian tradition is more characterized by an interest in the formal — numerical and structural — aspect of things.
The mythologists, Homer and Hesiod, along with other poets, centuries before the Presocratics, believed that true knowledge belonged solely to the divine. But starting with Xenophanes, the Presocratics moved toward a more naturalistic approach to knowledge. The Presocratics sought a method for understanding the cosmos, while recognizing that human knowledge has a limit. [ 133 ]
While Pythagoras and Empedocles linked their self-proclaimed wisdom to their divinely inspired status, they attempted to teach or encourage mortals to seek the truth about the natural world — Pythagoras through mathematics and geometry, and Empedocles through experience. [ 134 ] Xenophanes believed that human knowledge is merely opinion, which cannot be confirmed or proven. According to Jonathan Warren, Xenophanes defined the nature of knowledge. [ 135 ] Later, Heraclitus and Parmenides emphasized humanity's ability to understand how things in nature are structured through direct observation, inquiry, and reflection. [ 133 ]
Presocratic thought contributed to the demythologization of Greek popular religion. The narrative based on their ideas contributed to shifting the course of ancient Greek philosophy and religion away from the sphere of divinity and even paved the way for teleological explanations. [ 136 ] They criticized traditional conceptions of the gods established by Homer and Hesiod and called Greek popular religion into question, initiating a split between natural philosophy and theology. [ 137 ] The Presocratic philosophers did not hold atheistic beliefs, but it should be remembered that being an atheist at that time carried social and legal dangers. Nevertheless, arguments rejecting deities were not forbidden in the public sphere, as can be seen in Protagoras' quotation about the gods: «Concerning the gods, I cannot know either that they exist or that they do not exist». [ 138 ]
Theological thought begins with the Milesian philosophers. This is evident in Anaximander's idea that the apeiron governs everything, and that it possessed other capacities usually attributed to Zeus. [ 139 ] Later, Xenophanes developed a critique of the anthropomorphism of the gods. Xenophanes put forward three preliminary conditions for God: he must be all-good, immortal, and unlike humans in appearance, which had a significant influence on Western religious thought. [ 140 ]
The theological thought of Heraclitus and Parmenides is not entirely clear, but it is generally accepted that they believed in some kind of deity. The Pythagoreans and Empedocles believed in the transmigration of souls. Anaxagoras claimed that the cosmic mind (nous) gives life to things. Diogenes of Apollonia developed this line of reasoning and possibly constructed the first teleological argument: «Without Mind it would be impossible to divide it so that it possessed measures of all things — of winter and summer, of night and day, of rain and wind, of fair weather. Other things, if examined, will also be found to be arranged in the best possible way». [ 141 ] While some Presocratics tried to find alternatives to divinity, others laid the foundation for explaining the universe in terms of teleology and the intelligent design of a divine power. [ 142 ]
Before the Presocratics, it was believed that health and disease were governed by the gods. [ 143 ] Presocratic philosophy and medicine developed in parallel, with medicine being part of philosophy, and vice versa. [ 144 ] It was Hippocrates (often called the father of medicine) who separated – though not completely – these two fields. [ 145 ] Physicians incorporated Presocratic philosophical ideas about the nature of the world into their theoretical framework, blurring the boundary between the two fields. An example is the study of epilepsy, which in popular religion was considered divine intervention in human life, but the Hippocratic school attributed it to nature, just as Milesian rationalism demythologized other natural phenomena, such as earthquakes. [ 146 ] The systematic study of anatomy, physiology, and disease led to the discovery of cause-and-effect relationships and more complex terminology and understanding of disease, which ultimately led to the emergence of rational science. [ 147 ]
The Presocratics were the first to attempt to give simplified explanations for a multitude of natural phenomena. [ 148 ]
First, they were preoccupied with the mystery of cosmic matter — what is the basic substance of the universe? Anaximander proposed the existence of the apeiron (the boundless), which, as Aristotle analyzed it, indicates the absence of a beginning and end both chronologically and spatially. [ 149 ] Anaximenes placed air (aêr) as the basic principle, probably recognizing the importance of air for life and/or the need to explain various observed changes. [ 150 ] Heraclitus, also seeking to solve the problem of a constantly changing world, placed fire as the basic principle of the universe, which turns into water and earth, creating the universe. This constantly changing nature is summed up in Heraclitus' axiom panta rhei (everything is in a state of flux). [ 151 ] Parmenides proposed the existence of two eternal basic building blocks, night and day, which together form the universe. [ 152 ] Empedocles increased the number of building blocks to four and called them roots, and also added Love and Strife, which were meant to serve as the driving force for the mixing of the roots. [ 153 ] Anaxagoras further expanded Empedocles' plurality, claiming that everything is in everything, with myriad substances mixing with one another, except for one, Nous (mind), which governs everything — but he did not attribute divine characteristics to Nous. [ 154 ] Leucippus and Democritus claimed that the universe consists of atoms and void, and that the motion of atoms is responsible for the changes we observe. [ 155 ]
The Presocratic intellectual revolution is widely regarded as the first step toward freeing the human mind from the mythical world and initiated a movement toward reason and scientific thinking, which led to the emergence of modern Western philosophy and science. [ 156 ] The Presocratics sought to understand various aspects of nature through rationalism and observation and proposed explanations that could be considered scientific, which gave rise to what became Western rationalism. [ 157 ] Thales was the first to seek a single arche of the world. It is unclear whether arche meant the beginning, the origin, the main principle, or the basic element, but this was the first attempt to reduce explanations of the universe to a single cause based on reason and not guided by any deity. [ 158 ] Anaximander proposed the principle of sufficient reason, [ 159 ] a revolutionary argument that also led to the principle that nothing arises from nothing. [ 160 ] Most Presocratics seemed indifferent to the concept of teleology, especially the atomists, who fiercely rejected the idea. [ 161 ] In their view, various phenomena were the result of the aimless motion of atoms. [ 162 ] Xenophanes also put forward a critique of anthropomorphic religion, rationally emphasizing the inconsistency of depictions of the gods in Greek popular religion. [ 163 ]
There is no doubt that the Pre-Socratics paved the way for science, but whether their work can be regarded as science remains a matter of debate. [ 164 ] Thales offered the first instance of reduction and generalization, which became an important milestone on the path to scientific thought. Other Pre-Socratics likewise attempted to answer the question of the archē, proposing various alternatives, but the first step toward scientific thought had already been taken. [ 158 ] The philosopher Karl Popper, in his seminal work «Back to the Presocratics» (1958), traces the roots of modern science (and of the West) back to the early Greek philosophers. He writes: «There can hardly be any doubt that the Greek tradition of philosophical criticism had its main source in Ionia… It is this tradition which created the rational, or scientific, attitude, and with it our Western civilization, the only civilization which is based upon science (though of course not on science alone)». Elsewhere in the same study, Popper dismisses as merely semantic the importance of the label they ought to bear. «Between the theories [of the Pre-Socratics] and later developments in physics there is the greatest possible continuity of thought. Whether they are called philosophers, proto-scientists, or scientists matters very little». [ 165 ] Other scholars did not share this view. F. M. Cornford regarded the Ionians as dogmatic speculators owing to their lack of empiricism. [
In recent times criticism of the concept of the «Pre-Socratics» has intensified. For example, Professor Andrei Lebedev, in his article «Getting Rid of the „Pre-Socratics“», argues that
The researcher who played the fateful role in creating the still-dominant stereotype of the «Pre-Socratics» as a mentally unified group was John Burnet (J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 1892). A brilliant philologist and connoisseur of the sources, Burnet was philosophically naive and forced all the early philosophers into a single positivist mold… The term «Pre-Socratics» ought to be abandoned as historically and chronologically incorrect and theoretically meaningless. It is more correct to speak of the «early Greek philosophers»… A purely formal replacement for the term «Pre-Socratics» can be found in the more correct term «pre-Platonic philosophers» (but not «pre-Platonists»), that is, philosophers who lived and worked before 400 BC, when Plato began writing his dialogues. Unlike the term «Pre-Socratics», this term not only avoids turning a wide variety of figures in the early science of philosophy into a chimerical unified tradition, but is also consistent with chronology, since it includes most of the ancient Sophists as well.
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