The Pre-Socratics
The quotations used here are taken from a collection of the surviving Pre-Socratic fragments in their originally discovered contexts, which I used in a lovely Penguin edition called "Early Greek Philosophy" (Penguin Books: New York, NY 2001), edited by Jonathan Barnes.
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A long time ago there was yet no philosophy. It’s tough to say what exactly men and women thought about during that time, but it must have been a simpler existence. Not too many questions that needed to be answered, mainly because no really challenging questions were even asked. Not to say that there was no thought for things beyond immediate interest; people had their mythologies and whatnot, the standard examples being that of Homer and Hesiod.
It’s interesting that we first think of those two when we think of the start of mythology and stories about the world. After all, there are older stories (the Epic of Gilgamesh, for example) and most of us are more likely descended from other peoples (since most of the world was certainly populated by somebody or other by the time of those Greek poets). Why is it, then, that “civilization started at Greece?” What about the eastern Mediterranean stood out so much from the rest of the world, that an entire hemisphere wants to think itself to be descended in some respect from it?
The answer, of course, is philosophy. Oblivious as most people are, some still remember (and some have always remembered throughout history) that philosophy started with the Greeks (well, Miletans). Philosophy somehow separated “us” and “them” in more than a self-other fashion. With philosophy thought was re-worked into something beyond instrumental uses. It became seen as something valuable in itself. It was philosophy that marked the start of Western civilization as we think of it, and it was a few brave Greeks that started Western philosophy.
The Pre-Socratic philosophers were many and various, in both where they came from and the opinions they had. They started with virtually no concept of philosophical or scientific discourse and, by the time of Socrates, had established what could be called a consistent method of doing philosophy. Unfortunately it is very difficult to figure out much about most of them, since we hardly have anything left by them. That this is so is bad fortune more than anything else. But, in a way, it makes the search for the Pre-Socratics that much more exciting. What can we piece together from broken fragments and incomplete quotations of the thoughts of these complicated men? What exactly did they think about the world? How did they create what we think of as philosophy?
The first to take the plunge was Thales, and, considering he was starting from basically nothing, he didn’t do all that bad. Thales tells us that everything in the world is made of water. Well, that’s rather odd, to say the least. Apparently sand is just really dry water, and I would assume not useful to try and drink if one finds oneself wandering about in a desert. But he tried, right?
But Thales, in announcing that the foundation (the principle, if you wish to be more technical) of all things was water, had done more than appears on the surface. Thales looked at the things of the world and sought something beyond what he saw. He sought a source. “I know what I see looks like this, and this, and this, but why is that? What is behind all of this, what brings the world as I know it about?” An astute observer, Thales likely saw that everything appears to depend upon water. Animals and plants require water to survive. Water is capable of becoming ice and mist and can change from cloud to rain. At the edge of his seaside home he sees the infinite expanse of water, and living near the shore he sees the variety of life living under the waves. With modern science we know him to be even more correct than his compatriots may have realized. The human body is mostly water. Water’s component elements are two of the most vital elements on Earth, without which life would be nothing. So in fact we need not pity Thales. For a man starting from nothing, he did pretty well for himself.
But that’s not to say that we should accept his claims without challenge. A good philosophy challenges any claim, friendly or no, hard-earned or no, that crosses his desk. Thales likely lacked during his life the most vital tool that a philosopher has; an equal or better to challenge everything he says. People were too busy refusing to take him seriously (at least, until he predicted a bumper olive crop) to challenge his claims on any sort of intellectual level. Enter Anaximander. Pupil of Thales but no groupie, he had his own ideas about metaphysics (though this was, of course, long before metaphysics existed, and for the time should really be called science). Anaximander called his principle, his essential stuff, “the limitless.” He did not link it to a single physically linked thing, which was probably a sensible move on his part. With his limitless he also started to push philosophy in the direction of the eternal, the ageless, in a way that Thales’ essential water did not. While Thales had established the need for a principle, Anaximander was the first to posit it as something beyond, something greater than simple physical elements.
If Anaximander’s limitless is seen as a step forward, then the next few of the earliest of philosophers could perhaps be seen as steps backward by comparison. Up until only a few centuries ago, when Dalton’s atomic theory (a theory with much older origins, as we’ll see) displaced the alchemo-phlogiston theory of nature, the world was typically seen in terms of four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Also essential to early Greek thought was the idea of opposites, especially hot and cold, moist and dry. The natural philosophers coming after Anaximander tended to associate their principles with one or another of these elements, be it air, or fire, or earth, and then deriving the others from it by rarefaction or hardening or some such process. Thus would the primary fight in metaphysics be for a while.
While natural philosophy was proving to be the center of all thought, moral philosophy was also getting its (admittedly vague and incomplete) start, primarily in the skeptical hands of Xenophanes and Heraclitus. “[I]f cows and horses or lions had hands and drew with their hands and made the things men make, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, cows like cows, and each would make their bodies similar in shape to their own.” (Xenophanes, quoted in Clement, Miscellanies, V xiv 109.1-3) We see that pretentiousness wasted no time in associating itself with philosophy. Heraclitus was no better. “Of this account which holds forever men prove uncomprehending . . . .” (Heraclitus, quoted in Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1407b14 – 18) What moral words these earliest of thinkers had (at least, what we have left) are almost always maxims of a sort, offering pithy advice to he who would live justly. “A dry soul is wisest and best,” says Heraclitus (quoted in Stobaeus, Anthology III i 174 – 180). Much later Democritus would master the art of the maxim, but until then philosophy still ventured rarely into the moral.
Perhaps part of the reason that metaphysics remained front and center was due to the appearance of an associated of Xenophanes, the first real challenger to the forays of philosophy: Parmenides. Of the Pre-Socratics he may have been the most important, certainly in his own time and shortly after if not much later. The earlier philosophers had lacked a true critical element in their art; this is no doubt at least partly connected to the fact that there was no logic established, no unified way to criticize theories. Parmenides found this way, and he enforced it to the furthest lengths he could reach.
Being is eternal. Why? Because if it wasn’t, it would have to have come from nothing. But something cannot come from nothing, for nothing is not. It must have come from something. Yet that something must have come from something. We can see that whatever is there, always has been. It is also one. Why? Well, what would divide something if there were two? It would have to be nothing, and yet there is no nothing, for nothing is not, and what is not cannot be there to divide. Therefore we have demonstrated that everything is one, and it is a whole, and it is full. Further, there is no change at all, for then what was is no longer. And yet, what is cannot become what is not, for what is not is not. These sound like those logic puzzles that you see in magazine and whatnot, but these were serious, for no one had been trained in logic before. Philosophy had arrived at its first true philosophical challenge: how does one overcome the absurd conclusions of Parmenides? Or is there a way to reconcile what we see in the world (division, finitude, plurality) with Parmenides’ powerful arguments? Xeno, perhaps the most famous Pre-Socratic, would continue the claims of his teacher with subtle skill and refinement, creating paradoxes some of which are remembered to this day. Thus, with the arrival of a real challenge, philosophy has established what is most essential to it: the discussion.
As we know now, philosophy did not give up its task in the face of Parmenides’ arguments. Men continued to rise to the challenge, and their responses kicked in motion the process of refinement that is now basic philosophical procedure. Empedocles, for instance, did not appear to deny the basic facts of nature as presented by Parmenides, but he had views of his own as well: “there is no birth for any mortal thing, nor any cursed end in death; only mixing and interchange of what is mixed, those things are – but men name them birth.” (Empedocles, quoted in Plutarch, Against Colotes 1111F) This is a subtle move on Empedocles’ part. He can be read here as maintaining the essential points of the Parmenidean doctrine: that everything is one, that it is eternal, that there is no space. However, movement exists, and so does difference, for the world is a great mixing, one brought about by the opposite but complementary forces of Love (unification) and Strive (division). Their activity created change and generation of a sort while allowing for Parmenides’ arguments. Perhaps there was hope against Parmenides’ absurdities, after all.
Another feature present in Empedocles but that (perhaps due to the fragmentary nature of the remaining Pre-Socratic writings) hadn’t really been recognized up to that point was the idea of driving forces actively shaping the universe. If one goes back to Homer and Hesiod one can see the gods acting in human affairs, but it is quite obvious that, despite all their power over nature, the gods for the most part lacked a genuine creative power. They were members of the world just as human beings were, subject to certain laws. But who wrote the laws, so to speak? This most important of later philosophical questions hasn’t really been recognized up until now, besides the occasional references and allusions (for example, in the famous case of Heraclitus and the child playing). In Empedocles’ case, active creative forces are given an explicit case in understanding and explaining the world of phenomena, and they have not fully left since. A slightly later example, with an interesting wrinkle, is Anaxagoras. His creative force is nous, which is “mind” or “thought:” “All things were together. Then thought (nous) came and arranged them.” (Anaxagoras, quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers II 6 – 14) It’s tough to say the exact degree of influence that Diogenes thought nous had in shaping the world, or what the nous was like. It is certain that the traditional elements (earth, air, fire, and water) had at least a significant role in causation. Despite this, one very important philosopher saw the start of something in Anaxagoras’ idea, something that would have unrivaled influence on philosophy for the next two thousand years:
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That's right, I'm back and I've got very little to do for the next month, besides finish the application process for graduate schools (which, if I divide it into daily work, will amount to next to nothing each day). My next project is the completion of the Nietzsche project: the four Untimely Meditations. After that, well -
Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking
Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?
Derrida, Margins of Philosophy
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
This winter break is looking to be very Continental. And very painful. Until then!
-----
A long time ago there was yet no philosophy. It’s tough to say what exactly men and women thought about during that time, but it must have been a simpler existence. Not too many questions that needed to be answered, mainly because no really challenging questions were even asked. Not to say that there was no thought for things beyond immediate interest; people had their mythologies and whatnot, the standard examples being that of Homer and Hesiod.
It’s interesting that we first think of those two when we think of the start of mythology and stories about the world. After all, there are older stories (the Epic of Gilgamesh, for example) and most of us are more likely descended from other peoples (since most of the world was certainly populated by somebody or other by the time of those Greek poets). Why is it, then, that “civilization started at Greece?” What about the eastern Mediterranean stood out so much from the rest of the world, that an entire hemisphere wants to think itself to be descended in some respect from it?
The answer, of course, is philosophy. Oblivious as most people are, some still remember (and some have always remembered throughout history) that philosophy started with the Greeks (well, Miletans). Philosophy somehow separated “us” and “them” in more than a self-other fashion. With philosophy thought was re-worked into something beyond instrumental uses. It became seen as something valuable in itself. It was philosophy that marked the start of Western civilization as we think of it, and it was a few brave Greeks that started Western philosophy.
The Pre-Socratic philosophers were many and various, in both where they came from and the opinions they had. They started with virtually no concept of philosophical or scientific discourse and, by the time of Socrates, had established what could be called a consistent method of doing philosophy. Unfortunately it is very difficult to figure out much about most of them, since we hardly have anything left by them. That this is so is bad fortune more than anything else. But, in a way, it makes the search for the Pre-Socratics that much more exciting. What can we piece together from broken fragments and incomplete quotations of the thoughts of these complicated men? What exactly did they think about the world? How did they create what we think of as philosophy?
The first to take the plunge was Thales, and, considering he was starting from basically nothing, he didn’t do all that bad. Thales tells us that everything in the world is made of water. Well, that’s rather odd, to say the least. Apparently sand is just really dry water, and I would assume not useful to try and drink if one finds oneself wandering about in a desert. But he tried, right?
But Thales, in announcing that the foundation (the principle, if you wish to be more technical) of all things was water, had done more than appears on the surface. Thales looked at the things of the world and sought something beyond what he saw. He sought a source. “I know what I see looks like this, and this, and this, but why is that? What is behind all of this, what brings the world as I know it about?” An astute observer, Thales likely saw that everything appears to depend upon water. Animals and plants require water to survive. Water is capable of becoming ice and mist and can change from cloud to rain. At the edge of his seaside home he sees the infinite expanse of water, and living near the shore he sees the variety of life living under the waves. With modern science we know him to be even more correct than his compatriots may have realized. The human body is mostly water. Water’s component elements are two of the most vital elements on Earth, without which life would be nothing. So in fact we need not pity Thales. For a man starting from nothing, he did pretty well for himself.
But that’s not to say that we should accept his claims without challenge. A good philosophy challenges any claim, friendly or no, hard-earned or no, that crosses his desk. Thales likely lacked during his life the most vital tool that a philosopher has; an equal or better to challenge everything he says. People were too busy refusing to take him seriously (at least, until he predicted a bumper olive crop) to challenge his claims on any sort of intellectual level. Enter Anaximander. Pupil of Thales but no groupie, he had his own ideas about metaphysics (though this was, of course, long before metaphysics existed, and for the time should really be called science). Anaximander called his principle, his essential stuff, “the limitless.” He did not link it to a single physically linked thing, which was probably a sensible move on his part. With his limitless he also started to push philosophy in the direction of the eternal, the ageless, in a way that Thales’ essential water did not. While Thales had established the need for a principle, Anaximander was the first to posit it as something beyond, something greater than simple physical elements.
If Anaximander’s limitless is seen as a step forward, then the next few of the earliest of philosophers could perhaps be seen as steps backward by comparison. Up until only a few centuries ago, when Dalton’s atomic theory (a theory with much older origins, as we’ll see) displaced the alchemo-phlogiston theory of nature, the world was typically seen in terms of four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Also essential to early Greek thought was the idea of opposites, especially hot and cold, moist and dry. The natural philosophers coming after Anaximander tended to associate their principles with one or another of these elements, be it air, or fire, or earth, and then deriving the others from it by rarefaction or hardening or some such process. Thus would the primary fight in metaphysics be for a while.
While natural philosophy was proving to be the center of all thought, moral philosophy was also getting its (admittedly vague and incomplete) start, primarily in the skeptical hands of Xenophanes and Heraclitus. “[I]f cows and horses or lions had hands and drew with their hands and made the things men make, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, cows like cows, and each would make their bodies similar in shape to their own.” (Xenophanes, quoted in Clement, Miscellanies, V xiv 109.1-3) We see that pretentiousness wasted no time in associating itself with philosophy. Heraclitus was no better. “Of this account which holds forever men prove uncomprehending . . . .” (Heraclitus, quoted in Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1407b14 – 18) What moral words these earliest of thinkers had (at least, what we have left) are almost always maxims of a sort, offering pithy advice to he who would live justly. “A dry soul is wisest and best,” says Heraclitus (quoted in Stobaeus, Anthology III i 174 – 180). Much later Democritus would master the art of the maxim, but until then philosophy still ventured rarely into the moral.
Perhaps part of the reason that metaphysics remained front and center was due to the appearance of an associated of Xenophanes, the first real challenger to the forays of philosophy: Parmenides. Of the Pre-Socratics he may have been the most important, certainly in his own time and shortly after if not much later. The earlier philosophers had lacked a true critical element in their art; this is no doubt at least partly connected to the fact that there was no logic established, no unified way to criticize theories. Parmenides found this way, and he enforced it to the furthest lengths he could reach.
[B]eing, it is ungenerated and indestructible, whole, of one kind and unwavering, and complete. Nor was it ever, nor will it be, since now it is, all together, one, continuous. For what generation will you seek for it? How, whence, did it grow? That it came from what is not I shall not allow you to say or think – for it is not sayable or thinkable that it is not. And what need would have impelled it, later or earlier, to spring up – if it began from nothing? (Parmenides quoted in Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics 144.25 - 146.27)
Being is eternal. Why? Because if it wasn’t, it would have to have come from nothing. But something cannot come from nothing, for nothing is not. It must have come from something. Yet that something must have come from something. We can see that whatever is there, always has been. It is also one. Why? Well, what would divide something if there were two? It would have to be nothing, and yet there is no nothing, for nothing is not, and what is not cannot be there to divide. Therefore we have demonstrated that everything is one, and it is a whole, and it is full. Further, there is no change at all, for then what was is no longer. And yet, what is cannot become what is not, for what is not is not. These sound like those logic puzzles that you see in magazine and whatnot, but these were serious, for no one had been trained in logic before. Philosophy had arrived at its first true philosophical challenge: how does one overcome the absurd conclusions of Parmenides? Or is there a way to reconcile what we see in the world (division, finitude, plurality) with Parmenides’ powerful arguments? Xeno, perhaps the most famous Pre-Socratic, would continue the claims of his teacher with subtle skill and refinement, creating paradoxes some of which are remembered to this day. Thus, with the arrival of a real challenge, philosophy has established what is most essential to it: the discussion.
As we know now, philosophy did not give up its task in the face of Parmenides’ arguments. Men continued to rise to the challenge, and their responses kicked in motion the process of refinement that is now basic philosophical procedure. Empedocles, for instance, did not appear to deny the basic facts of nature as presented by Parmenides, but he had views of his own as well: “there is no birth for any mortal thing, nor any cursed end in death; only mixing and interchange of what is mixed, those things are – but men name them birth.” (Empedocles, quoted in Plutarch, Against Colotes 1111F) This is a subtle move on Empedocles’ part. He can be read here as maintaining the essential points of the Parmenidean doctrine: that everything is one, that it is eternal, that there is no space. However, movement exists, and so does difference, for the world is a great mixing, one brought about by the opposite but complementary forces of Love (unification) and Strive (division). Their activity created change and generation of a sort while allowing for Parmenides’ arguments. Perhaps there was hope against Parmenides’ absurdities, after all.
Another feature present in Empedocles but that (perhaps due to the fragmentary nature of the remaining Pre-Socratic writings) hadn’t really been recognized up to that point was the idea of driving forces actively shaping the universe. If one goes back to Homer and Hesiod one can see the gods acting in human affairs, but it is quite obvious that, despite all their power over nature, the gods for the most part lacked a genuine creative power. They were members of the world just as human beings were, subject to certain laws. But who wrote the laws, so to speak? This most important of later philosophical questions hasn’t really been recognized up until now, besides the occasional references and allusions (for example, in the famous case of Heraclitus and the child playing). In Empedocles’ case, active creative forces are given an explicit case in understanding and explaining the world of phenomena, and they have not fully left since. A slightly later example, with an interesting wrinkle, is Anaxagoras. His creative force is nous, which is “mind” or “thought:” “All things were together. Then thought (nous) came and arranged them.” (Anaxagoras, quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers II 6 – 14) It’s tough to say the exact degree of influence that Diogenes thought nous had in shaping the world, or what the nous was like. It is certain that the traditional elements (earth, air, fire, and water) had at least a significant role in causation. Despite this, one very important philosopher saw the start of something in Anaxagoras’ idea, something that would have unrivaled influence on philosophy for the next two thousand years:
I once heard someone reading, as he said, from a book of Anaxagoras and saying that it is thought which arranges and is responsible for everything. This explanation delighted me and it seemed to me somehow to be a good thing that thought was responsible for everything – I believed that if that were so, then thought, in arranging all things, would arrange and place each in the best way possible. So if anyone wanted to discover the explanation of anything – how it comes into being or perishes or exists – he would have to discover how it is best for it to be or to be acted upon or to act in any way . . . . (Socrates speaking in Plato, Republic 97BC)
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That's right, I'm back and I've got very little to do for the next month, besides finish the application process for graduate schools (which, if I divide it into daily work, will amount to next to nothing each day). My next project is the completion of the Nietzsche project: the four Untimely Meditations. After that, well -
Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking
Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?
Derrida, Margins of Philosophy
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
This winter break is looking to be very Continental. And very painful. Until then!
posted by Derek at 10:24 PM
2 Comments:
Welcome back to internet life, Snurp.
This was quite an interesting read. I was familiar with only three of the pre-Socratics you mentioned: Thales, Parmenides, and Xeno.
We've answered some of their questions. Xeno's classic paradox, for instance, was answered by Leibniz and Newton. Infinitely small distances divided by infinitely small time intervals does evaluate to something that makes sense. We now call them "derivatives" in calculus.
Yeah, Xeno was an interesting case, because many of his paradoxes seemed to have to do with specific problems in the understanding of space and time, which is something that we have improved upon.
I think Paul's point still stand in the more general sense, though, at least in terms of metaphysics: is there a "first principle" of things? Today, of course, much of Anglo-American philosophy says that those questions simply aren't answerable due to the nature of the mind and of language, but that doesn't eliminate them as questions (which reminds me, sid, I have a couple articles that I read over the semester that I think you would absolutely love).
Also, I should mention that I only talked about a couple of philosophers in what are really a large group. I didn't mention, for example, all the Pythagoreans. Now there's an interesting group (and not necessarily a math-centered one, either). There was really a strong variety of though that emerged quite early on, and there's always the hope that more will be found.
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