Outline of the Importance the Pre-Socratics Had

On the History of western Philosophy

Alan Cummins 1165236 – Vincent Judge - Introduction to Philosophy

 Philosophy covers many topics which include, but are not restricted to, the natural

world, mathematical, physics, liberal arts, ethics, politics and the more general quest for

knowledge, meaning and certainty and its relationship to knowing oneself and one’s

place in the world. The Pre-Socratic philosophers helped to form the basic arché, guiding

first principles upon which further work by the likes of Plato and Socrates was based.

Their work was not without flaw but rather instilled the spirit of the sceptical pursuit of

truth.

This short paper will give a broad definition of philosophy and proceed to give

some brief examples of early Pre-Socratic Philosophers whose logos, statements and

accounts were taken as guiding standards upon which further critique, consideration and

extended work was carried out by Plato and Socrates. Mythology, the natural world and

the virtues will be discussed in relation to Thales, Parmenides and Heraclitus to show the

evolution of philosophy and how ultimately a duality of sceptical rationalism was

combined with metaphysical idealism to form the basis of western philosophy.

Philosophy is the love of wisdom and the philosopher’s task is to provide the

foundation upon which both moral and scientific dimensions of the cosmos can sit. The

natural world plays a huge role in this through its combination of those things that can be

empirically proven, explained by the senses and the more divine ordering by a higher

power which lies outside the reach of human intelligence but which through the art of

philosophy true understanding can be found. The Pre-Socratics did not formulate such

concepts afresh, Philosophy has and always will be a lifelong quest or rather a never

ending pursuit where the more one questions, the less it seems one knows, an equivalent

of Socratic ignorance as such. They did however bring about a tradition of reflection and

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inquiry. Logic as a pure concept was not formulated but its inception begun by their want

to provide reason for those things around them, both real and unperceivable by the

senses. At once a feedback, cyclical loop of reasoning and counter-reasoning was

established as successive Philosophers outlined their guiding principles.

Thales of Miletus (580 BC) was the first natural philosopher or physicist. He had

a passion for the detailed account of natural phenomena such as the heavens and biology.

But importantly he also questioned less definable concepts of politics, culture and the

nature and unity of the universe. He accounted for the principle that everything is made

of a single element, namely water.

“There must be some nature – either one or more than one – from which, being

preserved itself, the other things come into being. Thales, the founder of this kind

of philosophy, says that it is water”

(Aristotle, Metaphysics 983b6-11,17-27)

He also discussed the characteristics of soul through his interpretation of magnets

which although somewhat fanciful was a pre-cursor to Aristotle’s discussion of the same

and based in reason.

“Thales, judging by what they report, seems too have believed that the soul is

something which produces motion – if indeed he said that magnets have souls

because they move iron”

(Aristotle, On the Soul 405a19-21)

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Perhaps most importantly, alongside Anaximander and Anaximenes (580BC), he made

the assumption that there was indeed an order and rational unity within the seemingly

dynamic, constantly changing flux of the world. They had begun the not so insignificant

transition from the mythic to arché based on impersonal conceptual rational explanation.

These explanations would be increasingly used to reject a world governed by the senses

alone. New insights had been provided about the structure and character of the cosmos.

Parmenides (510 BC) gave emphasis to the use of reason, rationality, ratiocination

and inference by argument. He rejected reasoning by mere senses alone. Nature was

wider than mere substance of perception but all could be defined by a pair of principles.

“To this are assigned the rare and the hot and brightness and the soft and the

light; and to the dense are given the names of cold and gloom and hard and

heavy;”

“and in the middle of them a goddess who governs all things. For everywhere she

rules over hateful birth and union”

(Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics 31.10-17)

Anything conceivable must exist. Therefore every subject of inquiry was worthy and

beneficial. He made use of a purely abstract rational approach.

“What can be said and be thought of must be; for it can be, and nothing cannot.”

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This was a fundamental logical progression in the realm of reasoning and thought. What

were real were not merely objects of sense but rather objects of intellectual apprehension.

His work was further extended and re-assessed by Empedocles (495 BC) and Anaxagoras

(480 BC), taking reality as one changeless monism and extending it out to nature being

the multiplicity of unchanging elements that at their root were constant but in

combination were shifting. Again this change in thought brought about further

clarification in terms of Atomists such as Leucippus and Democritus (460BC) who

reasoned for indivisible minute particles perpetually moving about and through whose

collisions the visible world had been produced. Thus Parmenides concept of the lack of

nothing had through feedback, iteration and critique formed a more complete and

astoundingly accurate interpretation of atomical forces.

Heraclitus (480 BC) spoke of all things in constant flux but that they were

fundamentally ordered and unified. His universal logos was of the belief in the balance of

opposites, that through contradictions a unity could be achieved.

“Heraclitus says that the universe is divisible and indivisible, generated and

ungenerated, mortal and immortal, Word and Eternity, Father and Son, god and

Justice”

(Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies IX ix 1-x9)

So while he was somewhat in direct contrast to Parmenides’ concept of reality being

static he had applied the same tradition of reasoning to produce his own arhé of the world

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around him. The guiding principles of fire, earth and water pervaded his thoughts and

again were a pre-cursor to the concept of pure Forms as described in the Platonic

philosophy.

“The World, the same for all, neither any god nor any man made; but it was

always and is and will be, fire ever-living, kindling in measures and being

extinguished in measures”

“Turnings off fire: first, sea; of sea, half is earth, half lightning-flash”

“Sea is dissolved and measured in the same proportion as before it became

earth”

(Clement, Miscellanies V xiv 104.1-5)

He had planted the seeds of the eternal and the perishing world, a duality which Plato

would extend.

The Pre-Socratics influenced Plato, particularly Parmenides with his concept of a

changeless and unitary intelligible reality, Heraclitus with his concept of the constant flux

of the sensational world and the Pythagoreans (which are not discussed above but who

ultimately embody the rationalist empirical scientific approach). Plato gathered these

together and formed his philosophic belief in the unitary and ordered while juxtaposing a

higher meaning that fell outside of pure empirical reasoning. Socrates had put it best that

he had quested to find knowledge that transcended mere opinion that informed a morality

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that transcended mere convention. Socrates would be provoked by investigation of the

Pre-Socratic notions provided by the sophists, atomists, rationalists and empiricists to

provide a robust critical method of proof and logic of reasoning that reconnected the

empirical with the archetypal. Mythos had been deconstructed, re-evaluated and re-

ordered to produce a world illuminated by universal themes and figures.

Each of these Philosophers briefly presented had attempted to rationalise theology

in place of anthropomorphic divinities. Gods had been replaced by ordered expressions of

transcendent first principles conceived as forms and archés. Mythical personifications

had been replaced with the archetypal principles of mathematics and the beginnings of

Platonic absolutes of the Good, the One, Existence, Truth and Beauty. Plato’s belief that

there exists a deeper timeless order of absolutes behind the surface of confusion and

randomness would be helped by this removal of, or rather reliance on, reasoned myth

although he would still rely on these allegorical figures to illustrate and elucidate. So

once more ancient Greek thought had pervaded the thoughts of the forefathers of

Philosophy. Greek gods as psychological attitudes had been linked to reason. A

compromise had been obtained and guided by the rationalism of the early Pre-Socratics

and by the religious and mythical beliefs. An important duality of the world as ordered

rational cosmos, attainable by human intelligence but which had a deeper meaning that

lead to divine immortality.

In conclusion, the Pre-Socratics brought about a spirit of reasoning, that no

system of thought is final and that the search for truth must be both critical and self-

critical. We should not take this as literally as the Sophists used this reasoning to

sceptically self-serve but even they through argument had provoked Socrates into

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searching for a greater meaning than pure relative moralism. Evaluation of both sense and

higher cosmology and the delineation of them are and were of great real and scholastic

benefit. Socrates and Plato took a combination of the various antithetical sets of

principles, illustrated by Thales, Parmenides, Heraclitus and more, and provided the

Western world with an intellectual basis that continues to incite a long burning revolution

in philosophical debate. The Pre-Socratics in moving from mythos to logos had produced

a polarisation of the ordered and the unpredictable world and given Plato, Socrates and

further Philosophers food for thought in formulating their combination or isolation.

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Bibliography

Jonathan Barnes (1987). Early Greek Philosophy. Penguin Classics.

Richard Tarnas (1991) .The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That

Have Shaped Our World View. Pimlico, Random House.

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