Presocratic Philosophy

Presocratic Philosophy

Introduction

Greek philosophy began in the early sixth century BC in the Ionian city of Miletus, on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. By the end of the fifth century it had made astonishing leaps in sophistication and had framed many of the issues that have remained central to philosophical investigation until today. This period is known, not altogether appropriately (since some of the most important “Presocratics” were contemporaries of Socrates), as the Presocratic era. The Presocratics stand at the beginning of the Greek and therefore of the entire Western philosophical tradition1.

In an important sense they were also the first scientists the Western world produced and their accomplishments in the study of nature are the direct ancestors of science as we know it. Since none of the writings of the Presocratics survives, our knowledge of the men and their ideas comes from other ancient sources which quote their actual words or summarize and sometimes criticize their theories, a situation which leaves room for differing interpretations.

Discussion

The tradition of recognizing a certain succession of about thirty thinkers of the sixth and fifth centuries bc as the first natural philosophers goes back to aristotle. Two other groups, the Sophists (fifth century) and certain poets and mythologists (sixth century or earlier) are also occasionally included by Aristotle in his discussions of philosophical predecessors. In our own time the three groups have come to be known collectively as 'the Presocratics', even though many of the figures at issue are contemporaries or near contemporaries of Socrates2. With marginal exceptions, the works and doctrines of the Presocratics are known to us through fragmentary quotations and reports - some by plato and Aristotle; most in much later sources of the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods.

In spite of the gaps and the uncertainties of transmission, the record is ample enough to establish that the Presocratics played a formative role in the development of western metaphysics - both directly and through their influence on Plato and Aristotle, and on the major schools of later antiquity. The survey provided here refers primarily to the first group, Aristotle's physikoi3.

'There is no generation out of nothing' and 'There is no perishing into nothing' - these ancient metaphysical principles, which become thematically prominent in the philosophies of Parmenides of Elea (early fifth century) and of Melissus of Samos (mid fifth century), are already implied in the earliest cosmologies (see cosmology), those of the Milesians Anaximander and Anaximenes. This reflects a strong demand for rationalist and naturalistic explanation that is characteristic of the physikoi as a whole: no mysterious changes, no intervention by the gods in world-processes; explanation must appeal only to the nature intrinsic to each thing, to its physis.

Also reflecting the Presocratics' rationalism is deployment - notably in Anaximander, Parmenides and in the atomists - of versions of the principle of sufficient reason (see atomism). A related theme is that of kosmos, 'a well ordered array of things' and harmonia, 'coherent structure'. In Anaximander (mid-sixth century bc), in Heraclitus of Ephesus ...