Early Greek Philosophers: Unveiling Reality's Arche

The Quest for Arche: Early Greek Philosophers

What kind of reality is the unitary order that justifies the diversity of things in the world? The answers given to this question may seem naive, but what is important is not the answers, but the very wording of that question.

The Ionian School

A common characteristic unites these thinkers: All things share one and the same first principle, or arche. Their basic concern is to find the foundation that explains the common constitution of everything; that which informs us about *physis*, i.e., the physical world.

• Thales: He sees the arche in water, observing the different forms it takes and how water is the essential element of life.
• Anaximander: The first to use the word arche. He posits that the basic element of all things is what he calls *apeiron*, assuming the primordial state of matter as something shapeless, indefinite, and undefined.
• Anaximenes: Sees the first principle in air, which is invisible but can be condensed into fog or water. He introduces the force of the contradiction of opposites in the process of condensation and rarefaction.

The Pythagoreans

Their representative and founder, Pythagoras, was the one who first used the term "philosopher" (a lover of knowledge) applied to the human subject. The Pythagoreans were mystical, religious communities dedicated to the study of music, mathematics, interior recollection, and respect for nature. They interpret the first principle in a more formal than physical way. Numbers are the first principle, serving as the essence of reality, an explanation and expression of its limit, order, proportion, shape/structure, and measurement.

The School of Ephesus

Its main representative is Heraclitus. He stated that the task was to uncover the hidden wisdom of reality and find its truth. Asked about the source, generation, and corruption of things, he affirms that reality has two manifestations:

• The senses know the changes of things.
• In spite of the senses, reason states that something remains and that there is a single principle (arche), a permanent world.

The arche is understood in terms of opposition and the struggle of opposites, of affirmation and negation in a continuous becoming (process): living-dead. The logos retains the balance of the universe as cosmos, i.e., as the law that leads to the universal order of all conflicting dualisms that exist.

The School of Elea

Its main representative is Parmenides, who is related to the Pythagoreans. When asked about the arche of reality, he presupposes a rational inability to explain its changes. His poem (whose characters are Truth, Justice, and Opinion) is divided into three parts:

• Introduction: A vindication of his thought, presented as infallible, sent by the goddess Justice.
• Two Ways of Knowing: Truth and Opinion. The first is based on reason as the only way to truth, which reports that the only common principle is the Self because the Self *is* and Non-Being *is not*; that Being and Thinking are the same thing; and that Being *is not* and *cannot be*.

The knowledge of reality (Being) is a matter of reason, and sensory information is misleading. The senses are a way of opinion. His thinking is abstract and logical, and it leads to later forms of doing philosophy. The characteristics attributed to Being are determined by the thought of later philosophers.

The Pluralists

(The implications of Parmenides' thought). Language is revealed as a weapon of great power, or as a dialectical way of constructing knowledge.