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Alan Cummins 1165236 – Vincent Judge - Introduction to Philosophy
Outline of the Importance the Pre-Socratics Had
On the History of western Philosophy
Alan Cummins 1165236 – Vincent Judge - Introduction to Philosophy 2 of 9
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
Alan Cummins 1165236 – Vincent Judge - Introduction to Philosophy 3 of 9
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)
Alan Cummins 1165236 – Vincent Judge - Introduction to Philosophy 4 of 9
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.”
Alan Cummins 1165236 – Vincent Judge - Introduction to Philosophy 5 of 9
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
Alan Cummins 1165236 – Vincent Judge - Introduction to Philosophy 6 of 9
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
Alan Cummins 1165236 – Vincent Judge - Introduction to Philosophy 7 of 9
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
Alan Cummins 1165236 – Vincent Judge - Introduction to Philosophy 8 of 9
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.
Alan Cummins 1165236 – Vincent Judge - Introduction to Philosophy 9 of 9
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.