Pre-Socratic philosophy


Pre-Socratic philosophy is ancient Greek philosophy before Socrates and schools contemporary to Socrates that were not influenced by him. In Classical antiquity, the pre-Socratic philosophers were called physiologoi. Their inquiries spanned the workings of the natural world as well as human society, ethics, and religion, seeking explanations based on natural principles rather than the actions of supernatural gods. They introduced to the West the notion of the world as a kosmos, an ordered arrangement that could be understood via rational inquiry. Coming from the eastern and western fringes of the Greek world, the pre-Socratics were the forerunners of what became Western philosophy as well as natural philosophy, which later developed into the natural sciences. Significant figures include: the Milesians, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Zeno of Elea, and Democritus.

Overview

was the first to call them physiologoi or physikoi and differentiate them from the earlier theologoi, or mythologoi who attributed these phenomena to various gods. Diogenes Laërtius divides the physiologoi into two groups: Ionian, led by Anaximander, and Italiote, led by Pythagoras.

Focus and aims

The pre-Socratic philosophers rejected traditional mythological explanations of the phenomena they saw around them in favor of more rational explanations. Their efforts were directed to the investigation of the ultimate basis and essential nature of the external world. They sought the material principle of things, and the method of their origin and disappearance. As the first philosophers, they emphasized the rational unity of things and rejected supernatural explanations, instead seeking natural principles at work in the world and human society. The pre-Socratics saw the world as a kosmos, an ordered arrangement that could be understood via rational inquiry. Pre-Socratic thinkers present a discourse concerned with key areas of philosophical inquiry such as being, the primary stuff of the universe, the structure and function of the human soul, and the underlying principles governing perceptible phenomena, human knowledge and morality.
It may sometimes be difficult to determine the actual line of argument some pre-Socratics used in supporting their particular views. While most of them produced significant texts, none of the texts have survived in complete form. All that is available are quotations, and testimonies by later philosophers and historians, and the occasional textual fragment.
These philosophers asked questions about "the essence of things":
Others concentrated on defining problems and paradoxes that became the basis for later mathematical, scientific and philosophic study.
s and thinkers; red arrows indicate a relationship of opposition.

Tradition and modern rediscovery

The knowledge we have of them derives from accounts - known as doxography - of later philosophical writers, and some early theologians. Modern interest in early Greek philosophy can be traced back to 1573, when Henri Estienne collected a number of pre-Socratic fragments in Poesis Philosophica. Hermann Diels popularized the term "pre-Socratic" in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker in 1903. However, the term "pre-Sokratic" was in use as early as George Grote's Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates in 1865. Edouard Zeller was also important in dividing thought before and after Socrates. Major analyses of pre-Socratic thought have been made by Gregory Vlastos, Jonathan Barnes, and Friedrich Nietzsche in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks.
Only fragments of the original writings of the pre-Socratics survive. The translation of Peri Physeos as On Nature may be misleading: the "on" normally gives the idea of an "erudite dissertation", while "" may refer in fact to a "circular approach"; and the traditional meanings of "nature" for us may be in contrast with the meaning of "physeos" or "physis" for the Greeks.
Later philosophers rejected many of the answers the early Greek philosophers provided, but continued to place importance on their questions. Furthermore, the cosmologies proposed by them have been updated by later developments in science.

The different schools

Milesian school

The first pre-Socratic philosophers were from Miletus on the western coast of Anatolia. Thales is reputedly the father of Greek philosophy; he declared water to be the basis of all things. Next came Anaximander, the first writer on philosophy. He assumed as the first principle an undefined, unlimited substance without qualities, out of which the primary opposites, hot and cold, moist and dry, became differentiated. His younger contemporary, Anaximenes, took for his principle air, conceiving it as modified, by thickening and thinning, into fire, wind, clouds, water, and earth.

Pythagoreanism

The practical side of philosophy was introduced by Pythagoras. Regarding the world as perfect harmony, dependent on number, he aimed at inducing humankind likewise to lead a harmonious life. His doctrine was adopted and extended by a large following of Pythagoreans who gathered at his school in south Italy in the town of Croton. His followers included Philolaus, Alcmaeon of Croton, and Archytas.

Ephesian school

The Ephesian philosophers were interested in the natural world and the properties by which it is ordered. Xenophanes and Heraclitus were able to push philosophical inquiry further than the Milesian school by examining the nature of philosophical inquiry itself. In addition, they were also invested in furthering observations and explanations regarding natural and physical process and also the functions and processes of the human subjective experience.
Heraclitus and Xenophanes both shared interests in analyzing philosophical inquiry as they contemplated morality and religious belief. This was because they wanted to figure out the proper methods of understanding human knowledge and the ways humans fit into the world. This was much different than natural philosophy that was being done by other philosophers, as it questioned the way the universe operates as well as the place of humans within it.
Heraclitus posited that all things in nature are in a state of perpetual flux, connected by logical structure or pattern, which he termed Logos. To Heraclitus, fire, one of the four classical elements, motivates and substantiates this eternal pattern. From fire all things originate, and return to it again in a process of eternal cycles.

Eleatic school

The Eleatics emphasized the doctrine of the One. Xenophanes declared God to be the eternal unity, permeating the universe, and governing it by his thought. Parmenides affirmed the one unchanging existence to be alone true and capable of being conceived, and multitude and change to be an appearance without reality. This doctrine was defended by his younger countryman Zeno of Elea in a polemic against the common opinion which sees in things multitude, becoming, and change. Zeno propounded a number of celebrated paradoxes, much debated by later philosophers, which try to show that supposing that there is any change or multiplicity leads to contradictions. Melissus of Samos was another eminent member of this school.

Pluralist school

appears to have been partly in agreement with the Eleatic School, partly in opposition to it. On the one hand, he maintained the unchangeable nature of substance; on the other, he supposes a plurality of such substances - i.e. four classical elements, earth, water, air, and fire. Of these the world is built up, by the agency of two ideal motive forces - love as the cause of union, strife as the cause of separation. Anaxagoras in Asia Minor also maintained the existence of an ordering principle as well as a material substance, and while regarding the latter as an infinite multitude of imperishable primary elements, he conceived divine reason or Mind as ordering them. He referred all generation and disappearance to mixture and resolution respectively. To him belongs the credit of first establishing philosophy at Athens.

Atomist school

The first explicitly materialistic system was formed by Leucippus and his pupil Democritus from Thrace. This was the doctrine of atoms - small primary bodies infinite in number, indivisible and imperishable, qualitatively similar, but distinguished by their shapes. Moving eternally through the infinite void, they collide and unite, thus generating objects which differ in accordance with the varieties, in number, size, shape, and arrangement, of the atoms which compose them.

Others

from Thrace was an eclectic philosopher who adopted many principles of the Milesian school, especially the single material principle, which he identified as air. He explained natural processes in reference to the rarefactions and condensations of this primary substance. He also adopted Anaxagoras' cosmic thought.

Sophists

The sophists held that all thought rests solely on the apprehensions of the senses and on subjective impression, and that therefore we have no other standards of action than convention for the individual. Specializing in rhetoric, the sophists were typically seen more as professional educators than philosophers. The sophists traveled extensively educating people throughout Greece. Unlike philosophical schools, the sophists had no common set of philosophical doctrines that connected them to each other. They did, however, focus on teaching techniques of debate and persuasion which centered around the study of language, semantics, and grammar for use in convincing people of certain viewpoints. They also taught students their own interpretations of the social sciences, mathematics, history, among others. They flourished as a result of a special need at that time for Greek education. Prominent sophists include Protagoras from Abdera in Thrace, Gorgias from Leontini in Sicily, Hippias from Elis in the Peloponnesos, Prodicus from the island of Ceos, and Thrasymachus from Chalcedon on the Bosphorus.

Other early Greek thinkers

The first mythologoi were:
The Seven Sages of Greece or Seven Wise Men was the title given by classical Greek tradition to seven philosophers, statesmen, and law-givers of the 6th century BC who were renowned for their wisdom.