Pre-Socratic philosophy
Pre-Socratic philosophy, also known as Early Greek Philosophy, is ancient Greek philosophy before Socrates. Pre-Socratic philosophers were mostly interested in cosmology, the beginning and the substance of the universe, but the inquiries of these early philosophers spanned the workings of the natural world as well as human society, ethics, and religion. They sought explanations based on natural law rather than the actions of gods. Their work and writing has been almost entirely lost. Knowledge of their views comes from testimonia, i.e. later authors' discussions of the work of pre-Socratics. Philosophy found fertile ground in the ancient Greek world because of the close ties with neighboring civilizations and the rise of autonomous civil entities, poleis.
"Presocratics" redirects here. For the band, see Presocratics (band).
Pre-Socratic philosophy began in the 6th century BC with the three Milesians: Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. They all attributed the arche (a word that could take the meaning of "origin", "substance" or "principle") of the world to, respectively, water, apeiron (the unlimited), and air. Another three pre-Socratic philosophers came from nearby Ionian towns: Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Pythagoras. Xenophanes is known for his critique of the anthropomorphism of gods. Heraclitus, who was notoriously difficult to understand, is known for his maxim on impermanence, ta panta rhei, and for attributing fire to be the arche of the world. Pythagoras created a cult-like following that advocated that the universe was made up of numbers. The Eleatic school (Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, and Melissus) followed in the 5th century BC. Parmenides claimed that only one thing exists and nothing can change. Zeno and Melissus mainly defended Parmenides' opinion. Anaxagoras and Empedocles offered a pluralistic account of how the universe was created. Leucippus and Democritus are known for their atomism, and their views that only void and matter exist. The Sophists advanced philosophical relativism.
The impact of the pre-Socratics has been enormous. The pre-Socratics invented some of the central concepts of Western civilization, such as naturalism and rationalism, and paved the way for scientific methodology.
Terminology[edit]
Pre-Socratic is a term adopted in the 19th century to refer to this group of philosophers. It was first used by the German philosopher J.A. Eberhard as "vorsokratische Philosophie' in the late 18th century.[1] In earlier literature they were referred to as physikoi ("physicists", after physis, "nature"), and their activity, as physiologoi (physical or natural philosophers), with this usage arising with Aristotle to differentiate them from theologoi (theologians) and mythologoi (storytellers and bards who conveyed Greek mythology), who attributed natural phenomena to the gods.[2]
The term was coined to highlight a fundamental change in philosophical inquiries between the philosophers who lived before Socrates, who were interested in the structure of nature and cosmos (i.e., the universe, with the implication that the universe had order to it), and Socrates and his successors, who were mostly interested in ethics and politics. The term comes with drawbacks, as several of the pre-Socratics were highly interested in ethics and how to live the best life. Further, the term implies that the pre-Socratics are less significant than Socrates, or even that they were merely a stage (implying teleology) to classical era philosophy.[3] The term is also chronologically inaccurate, as the last of the pre-Socratics were contemporaries of Socrates.[4]
According to James Warren, the distinction between the pre-Socratic philosophers and philosophers of the classical era is demarcated not so much by Socrates, but by geography and what texts survived. The shift from the pre-Socratic to the classical periods involves a shift from philosophers being dispersed throughout the Greek-speaking world to their being concentrated in Athens. Further, starting in the classical period we have complete surviving texts, whereas in the pre-Socratic era we have only fragments.[5] Scholar André Laks distinguishes two traditions of separating pre-Socratics from Socratics, dating back to the classical era and running through current times. The first tradition is the Socratic-Ciceronian, which uses the content of their philosophical inquires to divide the two groups: the pre-Socratics were interested in nature whereas Socrates focused on human affairs. The other tradition, the Platonic-Aristotelian, emphasizes method as the distinction between the two groups, as Socrates moved to a more epistemological approach of studying various concepts.[6] Because of the drawbacks of the term pre-Socratic, Early Greek Philosophy is also used, most commonly in Anglo-Saxon literature.[7]
André Laks and Glenn W. Most have especially popularized this shift in describing the era as "Early Greek Philosophy" over "Pre-Socratic Philosophy" through their comprehensive, nine volume Loeb editions of Early Greek Philosophy. In their first volume, they distinguish their systematic approach from that of Hermann Diels, beginning with the choice of "Early Greek Philosophy" over "pre-Socratic philosophy" most notably because Socrates is contemporary and sometimes even prior to philosophers traditionally considered "pre-Socratic" (e.g., the Atomists).[8]
Sources[edit]
Very few fragments of the works of the pre-Socratic philosophers have survived. The knowledge we have of the pre-Socratics derives from the accounts of later writers such as Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Diogenes Laërtius, Stobaeus, and Simplicius, and some early Christian theologians, especially Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus of Rome. Many of the works are titled Peri Physeos, or On Nature, a title probably attributed later by other authors.[9] These accounts, known as testimonia (testimonies), often come from biased writers. Consequently, it is sometimes difficult to determine the actual line of argument some pre-Socratics used in supporting their views.[10] Adding more difficulty to their interpretation is the obscure language they used.[11] Plato paraphrased the pre-Socratics and showed no interest in accurately representing their views. Aristotle was more accurate, but saw them under the scope of his philosophy. Theophrastus, Aristotle's successor, wrote an encyclopedic book Opinion of the Physicists that was the standard work about the pre-Socratics in ancient times. It is now lost, but Simplicius relied on it heavily in his accounts.[12]
In 1903, the German professors H. Diels and W. Kranz published Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (The Fragments of the pre-Socratics), which collected all of the known fragments. Scholars now use this book to reference the fragments using a coding scheme called Diels–Kranz numbering. The first two characters of the scheme are "DK" for Diels and Kranz. Next is a number representing a specific philosopher. After that is a code regarding whether the fragment is a testimonia, coded as "A", or "B" if is a direct quote from the philosopher. Last is a number assigned to the fragment, which may include a decimal to reflect specific lines of a fragment. For example, "DK59B12.3" identifies line 3 of Anaxagoras fragment 12. A similar way of referring to quotes is the system prefixed with "LM" by André Laks and Glenn W. Most who edited Early Greek Philosophy in 2016.[13]
Collectively, these fragments are called doxography (derived from the latin doxographus; derived from the Greek word for "opinion" doxa).[14]
Pre-Socratic philosophers[edit]
Milesian beginning: Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes[edit]
The Milesian school was located in Miletus, Ionia, in the 6th century BC. It consisted of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, who most probably had a teacher-pupil relationship. They were mainly occupied with the origin and substance of the world; each of them attributed the Whole to a single arche (beginning or principle), starting the tradition of naturalistic monism.[43]
Topics[edit]
Knowledge[edit]
The mythologoi, Homer and Hesiod, along with other poets, centuries before the pre-Socratics, thought that true knowledge was exclusive to the divine. But starting with Xenophanes, the pre-Socratics moved towards a more natural approach to knowledge.[132] The pre-Socratics sought a method to understand the cosmos, while being aware that there is a limit to human knowledge.[133]
While Pythagoras and Empedocles linked their self-proclaimed wisdom to their divinely inspired status, they tried to teach or urge mortals to seek the truth about the natural realm—Pythagoras by means of mathematics and geometry and Empedocles by exposure to experiences.[134] Xenophanes thought that human knowledge was merely an opinion that cannot be validated or proven to be true. According to Jonathan Warren, Xenophanes set the outline of the nature of knowledge.[135] Later, Heraclitus and Parmenides stressed the capability of humans to understand how things stand in nature through direct observation, inquiry, and reflection.[133]
Theology[edit]
Pre-Socratic thought contributed to the demythologization of the Greek popular religion. The narrative of their thought contributed to shifting the course of ancient Greek philosophy and religion away from the realm of divinity and even paved the way for teleological explanations.[136] They attacked the traditional representations of gods that Homer and Hesiod had established and put Greek popular religion under scrutiny, initiating the schism between natural philosophy and theology.[137] Pre-Socratic philosophers did not have atheistic beliefs, but it should be kept in mind that being an atheist those days was not without social or legal dangers. Despite that, arguments rejecting deities were not barred from the public sphere which can be seen in Protagoras's quotation on the gods: "About the gods I am able to know neither that they exist nor that they do not exist."[138]
The theological thought starts with the Milesian philosophers. It is evident in Anaximander's idea of the apeiron steering everything, which had other abilities usually attributed to Zeus.[139] Later, Xenophanes developed a critique of the anthropomorphism of the gods. Xenophanes set three preconditions for God: he had to be all good, immortal and not resembling humans in appearance, which had a major impact on western religious thought.[140]
The theological thought of Heraclitus and Parmenides is not entirely certain, but it is generally accepted that they believed in some kind of divinity. The Pythagoreans and Empedocles believed in the transmigration of souls. Anaxagoras asserted that cosmic intelligence (nous) gives life to things. Diogenes of Appollonia expanded this line of thinking and might have constructed the first teleological argument "it would not be possible without Intellection for it so to be divided up that it has the measures of all things — of winter and summer and night and day and rains and winds and fair weather. The other things, too, if one wishes to consider them, one would find disposed of in the best possible way."[141] While some pre-Socratics were trying to find alternatives to divinity, others were setting the foundation of explaining the universe in terms of teleology and intelligent design by a divine force.[142]
Medicine[edit]
Prior to the pre-Socratics, health and illness were thought to be governed by gods.[143] Pre-Socratic philosophy and medicine advanced in parallel, with medicine as a part of philosophy and vice versa.[144] It was Hippocrates (often hailed as the father of medicine) who separated – but not completely – the two domains.[145] Physicians incorporated pre-Socratic philosophical ideas about the nature of the world in their theoretical framework, blurring the border between the two domains. An example is the study of epilepsy, which in popular religion was thought to be a divine intervention to human life, but Hippocrates' school attributed it to nature, just as Milesian rationalism demythologized other natural phenomena such as earthquakes.[146] The systematic study of anatomy, physiology, and illnesses led to the discovery of cause-effect relations and a more sophisticated terminology and understanding of the diseases that ultimately yielded rational science.[147]
Cosmology[edit]
The pre-Socratics were the first to attempt to provide reductive explanations for a plethora of natural phenomena.[148]
Firstly, they were preoccupied with the mystery of the cosmic matter—what was the basic substance of the universe? Anaximander suggested apeiron (limitless), which hints, as Aristotle analyzed, there is no beginning and no end to it, both chronologically and within the space.[149] Anaximenes placed aêr (air) as the primary principle, probably after realizing the importance of air to life and/or the need to explain various observable changes.[150] Heraclitus, also seeking to address the issue of the ever changing world, placed fire as the primary principle of the universe, that transforms to water and earth to produce the universe. Ever-transforming nature is summarized by Heraclitus' axiom panta rhei (everything is in a state of flux).[151] Parmenides suggested two ever-lasting primary building blocs, night and day, which together form the universe.[152] Empedocles increased the building blocks to four and named them roots, while also adding Love and Strife, to serve as the driving force for the roots to mingle.[153] Anaxagoras extended even more the plurality of Empedocles, claiming everything is in everything, myriads of substances were mixing among each other except one, Nous (mind) that orchestrates everything—but did not attribute divine characteristics to Nous.[154] Leucippus and Democritus asserted the universe consists of atoms and void, while the motion of atoms is responsible for the changes we observe.[155]
Rationalism, observation and the beginning of scientific thought[edit]
The pre-Socratic intellectual revolution is widely considered to have been the first step towards liberation of the human mind from the mythical world and initiated a march towards reason and scientific thought that yielded modern western philosophy and science.[156] The pre-Socratics sought to understand the various aspects of nature by means of rationalism, observations, and offering explanations that could be deemed as scientific, giving birth to what became Western rationalism.[157] Thales was the first to seek for a unitary arche of the world. Whether arche meant the beginning, the origin, the main principle or the basic element is unclear, but was the first attempt to reduce the explanations of the universe to a single cause, based on reason and not guided by any sort of divinity.[158] Anaximander offered the principle of sufficient reason,[159] a revolutionary argument that would also yield the principle that nothing comes out of nothing.[160] Most of pre-Socratics seemed indifferent to the concept of teleology, especially the Atomists who fiercely rejected the idea.[161] According to them, the various phenomena were the consequence of the motion of atoms without any purpose.[162] Xenophanes also advanced a critique of anthropomorphic religion by highlighting in a rational way the inconsistency of depictions of the gods in Greek popular religion.[163]
Undoubtedly, pre-Socratics paved the way towards science, but whether what they did could constitute science is a matter of debate.[164] Thales had offered the first account of a reduction and a generalization, a significant milestone towards scientific thought. Other pre-Socratics also sought to answer the question of arche, offering various answers, but the first step towards scientific thought was already taken.[158] Philosopher Karl Popper, in his seminal work Back to Presocratics (1958) traces the roots of modern science (and the West) to the early Greek philosophers. He writes: "There can be little doubt that the Greek tradition of philosophical criticism had its main source in Ionia ... It thus leads the 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 upon science alone)." Elsewhere in the same study Popper diminishes the significance of the label they should carry as purely semantics. "There is the most perfect possible continuity of thought between [the Presocratics'] theories and the later developments in physics. Whether they are called philosophers, or pre-scientists, or scientists, matters very little."[165] Other scholars did not share the same view. F. M. Cornford considered the Ionanians as dogmatic speculators, due to their lack of empiricism.[166]
Reception and legacy[edit]
Antiquity[edit]
The pre-Socratics had a direct influence on classical antiquity in many ways. The philosophic thought produced by the pre-Socratics heavily influenced later philosophers, historians and playwrights.[167] One line of influence was the Socrato-Ciceronian tradition, while the other was the Platonic-Aristotelian.[1]
Socrates, Xenophon and Cicero were highly influenced by the physiologoi (naturalists) as they were named in ancient times. The naturalists impressed young Socrates and he was interested in the quest for the substance of the cosmos, but his interest waned as he became steadily more focused on epistemology, virtue, and ethics rather than the natural world. According to Xenophon, the reason was that Socrates believed humans incapable of comprehending the cosmos.[168] Plato, in the Phaedo, claims that Socrates was uneasy with the materialistic approach of the pre-Socratics, particularly Anaxagoras.[169] Cicero analyzed his views on the pre-Socratics in his Tusculanae Disputationes, as he distinguished the theoretical nature of pre-Socratic thought from previous "sages" who were interested in more practical issues. Xenophon, like Cicero, saw the difference between pre-Socratics and Socrates being his interest in human affairs (ta anthropina).[170]
The pre-Socratics deeply influenced both Plato and Aristotle.[171] Aristotle discussed the pre-Socratics in the first book of Metaphysics, as an introduction to his own philosophy and the quest for arche.[172] He was the first to state that philosophy starts with Thales.[173] It is not clear whether Thales talked of water as arche, or that was a retrospective interpretation by Aristotle, who was examining his predecessors under the scope of his views.[174] More crucially, Aristotle criticized the pre-Socratics for not identifying a purpose as a final cause, a fundamental idea in Aristotelian metaphysics.[175] Plato also attacked pre-Socratic materialism.[176]
Later, during the Hellenistic era, philosophers of various currents focused on the study of nature and advanced pre-Socratic ideas.[177] The Stoics incorporated features from Anaxagoras and Heraclitus, such as nous and fire respectively.[178] The Epicureans saw Democritus' atomism as their predecessor while the Sceptics were linked to Xenophanes.[179]
Modern era[edit]
The pre-Socratics, along with the rest of ancient Greece, invented the central concepts of Western civilization: freedom, democracy, individual autonomy and rationalism.[180] Francis Bacon, a 16th-century philosopher known for advancing the scientific method, was probably the first philosopher of the modern era to use pre-Socratic axioms extensively in his texts. He criticized the pre-Socratic theory of knowledge by Xenophanes and others, claiming that their deductive reasoning could not yield meaningful results—an opinion contemporary philosophy of science rejects.[181] Bacon's fondness for the pre-Socratics, especially Democritus' atomist theory, might have been because of his anti-Aristotelianism.[182]
Friedrich Nietzsche admired the pre-Socratics deeply, calling them "tyrants of the spirit" to mark their antithesis and his preference against Socrates and his successors.[183] Nietzsche also weaponized pre-Socratic antiteleology, coupled with the materialism exemplified by Democritus, for his attack on Christianity and its morals. Nietzsche saw the pre-Socratics as the first ancestors of contemporary science—linking Empedocles to Darwinism and Heraclitus to physicist Helmholtz.[184] According to his narrative, limned in many of his books, the pre-Socratic era was the glorious era of Greece, while the so-called Golden Age that followed was an age of decay, according to Nietzsche. Nietzsche incorporated the pre-Socratics in his Apollonian and Dionysian dialectics, with them representing the creative Dionysian aspect of the duo.[185]
Martin Heidegger found the roots of his phenomenology and later thinking of Things and the Fourfold[186] in the pre-Socratics,[187] considering Anaximander, Parmenides, and Heraclitus as the original thinkers on being, which he identified in their work as physis [φύσις] (emergence, contrasted against κρύπτεσθαι, kryptesthai, in Heraclitus' Fragment 123)[188] or aletheia [αλήθεια] (truth as unconcealment).[189]