The Dawn of Western Philosophy: Pre-Socratic Thinkers

Historical and Geographical Context

The basic framework of Greek life was the polis, the city-state. An essential part of the polis was the agora, a meeting place for citizens. Throughout this period, the pressure of the Persian Empire was constant.

Fundamental Social Changes

These changes questioned the traditional view of the world and paved the way for philosophical inquiry:

• The emergence of the hoplites (foot soldiers), changing the traditional model of war and replacing the Homeric hero.
• The emergence of alphabetic writing and the introduction of currency restructured traditional mental space.
• The emergence of a new commercial class brought new approaches and new values. New skills were needed that myth could not provide.

The polis of Miletus, between the 7th and 6th centuries BC, was the focus of all these transformations.

Defining the Pre-Socratic Thinkers

These early thinkers shared several key agreements:

• The search for the archē (or principle) of things.
• The use of the Logos as an instrument of understanding.
• Confidence in an orderly cosmos (the world).
• Investigation of the physis (or nature).

The Milesian School and Pythagoras

The first Pre-Socratics were the Milesians: Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. They proposed the archē as water and the Apeiron (the unlimited), respectively. They were followed by the school of Pythagoras, which took numbers as the archē and developed major advancements in mathematics.

Parmenides and Heraclitus: Paths of Reason

Parmenides and Heraclitus of Ephesus developed philosophies that placed the Logos above information derived from the senses.

• Heraclitus conceived of a changing world whose principle is the struggle of opposites.
• Parmenides, following a purely logical deduction from the unquestionable premise that “what is, is,” concluded that reality must be immutable.

The Pluralist Response to Parmenides

After Parmenides, pluralist philosophers attempted to reconcile the possibility of change with the logical necessity expressed by Parmenides' principle by introducing several first principles. This group of pluralist thinkers considered a multi-archē—not a single principle, but many.

Key Pluralist Thinkers

• For Empedocles of Agrigento (492–432 BC), there are four principles that have a long history in Western thought: earth, water, air, and fire.

• Democritus of Abdera (470–370 BC) argued that the ultimate realities are material atoms arranged in various ways.

• Finally, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (500–425 BC) stated that “in everything, there is a portion of everything.” The principles are basic seeds of all things, which Aristotle later called homeomeríai.