Presocratics

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Presocratics

Natural Phenomena . The term Presocratic philosopher is used to describe several thinkers who lived in the late seventh through fifth centuries. They shared an interest in trying to explain natural phenomena, though many were also concerned with the nature of the gods, healing, politics, and ethics. The earliest of the Presocratics, including Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander, and Heraclitus, lived in Ionia, and are sometimes referred to as “Ionian nature philosophers.” Two philosophers, Xenophanes and Pythagoras, migrated from Ionia to Italy; these and other philosophers living in Greek colonies in Italy (therefore referred to as an “Italian” school) include Empedocles, Zeno, and Parmenides of Elea. Melissus, though he lived in Samos (native island of Pythagoras), because of his philosophical affiliations with Parmenides and Zeno, is usually grouped with the “Eleatics.” Knowledge of these philosophers is rather uncertain and only fragments of most of their work remain, often filtered through a somewhat unreliable doxographical tradition. Many ancient historians of philosophy tended to group thinkers into lines of succession, by constructing lineages of teachers and pupils, and modern accounts often echo these groupings as matters of convenience, even where there are grounds for skepticism concerning the actual historical connections among the various figures so grouped.

Characteristics . There are several striking characteristics shared by many of the Presocratics. The most radical is that it they no longer accepted the world as self-explanatory, but rather sought explanations of the diverse phenomena of ordinary experience in terms of simple underlying causes. Their explanations were often mechanistic, though they could include some sort of divine or rational forces as principles governing the material world. Several Presocratics attempted to achieve unified understandings of the physical, divine, and human worlds. The recent discovery and editing of a partial papyrus text of Empedocles’ poem, Purifications (fifth century b.c.e.), which almost doubles the number of surviving lines of Empedocles known to modern scholars, demonstrates that even though the Presocratics lived over two thousand years ago, new evidence can radically change perceptions of these distant figures.

Anaxagoras . The son of Hegesibulus of Clazomenae (an Ionian island), Anaxagoras moved to Athens in 480, where he became part of the intellectual and artistic circle surrounding the famous statesman Pericles. He lived in Athens for approximately thirty years, until he was charged with impiety and support of Persia. With the help of Pericles he escaped to Lampsacus, where he founded a school. He wrote a single philosophical work, of which few fragments are extant; ancient accounts of his work are contradictory and unclear. He thought that the physical world was composed of spermata (seeds) having fixed qualities. These seeds are infinitely divisible, with each piece containing the qualities of the parent seed. The cosmos began as a mixture of all types of organic and inorganic seeds (blood, bone, gold, or other matter). Nous (Mind) alone is separate and unmixed. Nous set the primordial mixture rotating, which separated the types of seed, with the dense, moist, cold, and dark ones tending toward the center and the rarified, dry, hot, and bright ones moving towards the circumference. The sun, stars, and planets are glowing rocks that revolve around a flat earth. He believed eclipses are caused by the moon’s passing between the sun and the earth.

Anaximander of Miletus . The author of the first philosophical treatise in prose (circa 546), Anaximander (circa 610-540 b.c.e.) also was known as the author of a complete map of the earth and the inventor of the gnômôn, an instrument used in astronomical observation. He thought the first principle of the universe to be the apeiron (Indefinite or Unlimited), which he considered divine in nature. Innumerable worlds separate from the Unlimited. The objects of ordinary experience are results of conflicting pairs of opposites that are out of balance. The universe is subject to some sort of natural law, violation of which Anaximander considers “injustice.” The earth is suspended in the center of the universe and the sun and planets are fiery substances wrapped in a dark vapor that revolves around them. Celestial bodies are seen through holes in the accompanying vapor. Anaximander also was reported to have held that animals and men evolved gradually from earlier entities.

Anaximenes . A follower of Anaximander’s, Anaximenes (mid-sixth century) wrote in prose, little of which is extant. He believed that the cosmos (ordered universe) comes to be and perishes in cycles. The universe is surrounded by a divine vapor (aêr) which it breathes. This air, when rarefied, becomes fire, and, when condensed, wind, cloud, water, earth, and stone. All other substances are variations or combinations of these simpler materials. The earth is a flat disk, floating on air. The sun, moon, and stars are flames exhaled by the earth and circulating around it. The sun at night is concealed behind distant mountains.

FRAGMENTS OF THE PRESOCRATICS

Heraclitus OF EPHESUS

(flourished circa 500 b.c.e.):

Those who step into the same river have different waters flowing ever upon them.

If it were not in honor of Dionysus that they conducted the procession and sang the hymn to the male organ [the phallic hymn], their activity would be completely shameless. But Hades is the same as Dionysus, in whose honor they rave and perform the Bacchic revels.

This ordered universe [cosmos], which is the same for all, was not created by any one of the gods or of mankind, but it was ever and is and shall be ever-living Fire, kindled in measure and quenched in measure.

The changes of fire: first sea; and of sea, half is earth and half fiery water-spout.. . . Earth is liquified into sea, and retains its measure according to the same Law as existed before it became earth.

To souls, it is death to become water; to water, it is death to become earth. From earth comes water, and from water, soul.

Much learning does not teach one to have intelligence; for it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again, Xenophanes and Hecataeus.

Sea water is the purest and most polluted: for fish, it is drinkable and life-giving; for men, not drinkable and destructive.

Immortals are mortal, mortals are immortal; [each] lives the death of the other, and dies their life.

There is an exchange: all things for Fire and Fire for all things, like goods for gold and gold for goods.

The sun will not transgress his measures; otherwise the Furies, ministers of Justice, will find him out.

PARMENIDES OF ELEA

(flourished circa 475 b.c.e.):

The mares which carry me conveyed me as far as my desire reached, when the goddesses who were driving had set me on the famous highway which bears a man who has knowledge through all the cities. Along this way I was carried; for by this way the exceedingly intelligent mares bore me, drawing the chariot, and the maidens directed the way. The axle in the naves gave forth a pipe-like sound as it glowed [for it was driven round by the two whirling circles (wheels) at each end] whenever the maidens, daughters of the Sun, having left the Palace of Night, hastened their driving towards the light, having pushed back their veils from their heads with their hands. . ..

And the goddess received me kindly, and took my right hand in hers, and thus she spoke and addressed me: “Young man, companion of immortal charioteers, who comest by the help of the steeds which bring thee to our dwelling: welcome!—since no evil fate has despatched thee on thy journey by this road (for truly it is far from the path trodden by mankind); no, it is divine command and Right. Thou shalt inquire into everything: both the motionless heart of well-rounded Truth, and also the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true reliability. But nevertheless thou shalt learn these things [opinions] also—how one should go through all the things-that-seem, without exception, and test them.”

Come, I will tell you—and you must accept my word when you have heard it—the ways of inquiry which alone are to be thought: the one that IT IS, and it is not possible for IT NOT TO BE, is the way of credibility, for it follows Truth; the other, that IT IS NOT, and that IT is bound NOT TO BE: this I tell you is a path that cannot be explored; for you could neither recognize that which is NOT, nor express it.

At this point I cease my reliable theory [Logos] and thought, concerning Truth; from here onwards you must learn the opinions of mortals, listening to the deceptive order of my words.

They have established [the custom of] naming two forms, one of which ought not to be [mentioned]: that is where they have gone astray. They have distinguished them as opposite in form, and have marked them off from another by giving them different signs: on one side the flaming fire in the heavens, mild, very light [in weight], the same as itself in every direction, and not the same as the other. This [other] also is by itself and opposite: dark Night, a dense and heavy body. This world-order I describe to you with all its phenomena, in order that no intellect of mortal men may outstrip you.

Source: Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948).

Democritus . Born sometime around 470, Democritus was known as the “laughing philosopher” because his ethics emphasized cheerfulness. He is associated with the older thinkers, Protagoras and Leucippus, in the ancient biographies, but the details ancient authors give are contradictory. According to Diogenes Laertius, he wrote many books on such varied topics as ethics, physics, mathematics, music (including philology and literary criticism), and various notes, handbooks, and miscellaneous works. Only a few fragments of his works remain. Both Leucippus and Democritus (whose theories are often confused with each other in ancient accounts) believed that the world consisted of atoms and the void. Atoms were invisibly small, indivisible, undifferentiated matter, differing from each other only in size and shape. The variety observed in the phenomenal world is due to differences in the way atoms are combined with one another (dense or sparse, various shapes) to form larger objects. Atoms themselves do not change, but they do move and suffer random collisions, giving rise to changing phenomena. This world is one of many, and both the natural world and all life evolved gradually from random atoms to more complex structures. The soul is made of small round atoms and perishes with the body. Sensation is the reaction of the soul to eidôla, fine particles emanating from all objects and striking sense organs. Democritus recommended that happiness consists of an untroubled soul, the atoms of which are protected from sudden shocks and changes; thus, well-being is a product of moderation, good judgement, and cheerful acceptance of external circumstances. His beliefs strongly influenced Epicurean philosophy.

Eleatic School . The term Eleatic School refers to a tradition of philosophy beginning with Parmenides and continued by his pupil Zeno. Melissus, although not personally associated with either of the others, held similar doctrines, and thus is considered an Eleatic. An earlier philosopher, Xenophanes, who was originally from Ionia but traveled widely in Sicily, because of his monotheism, was considered an Eleatic by Aristotle. Empedocles, although influenced by the Eleatics, differed from them on several doctrinal points. Gorgias, who was better know as a rhetorician than as a philosopher, may have been influenced by Empedocles. He wrote an essay On Non-Being similar in theme and style to the work of Parmenides.

Empedocles . The son of Meton and grandson of the Empedocles who won the Olympic chariot race in 496, Empedocles (circa 493-433 b.c.e.) was a Sicilian aristocrat and, possibly, follower of Parmenides and/or Pythagoras. He was active in politics in his native city of Acragas. The story that he committed suicide by jumping in the volcano on Mount Aetna is unlikely to be true, but it has inspired many literary works. Empedocles was a polymath, who combined interests in medicine, nature, science, poetry, oratory, mysticism, and politics. He was credited with miraculous healings and claims to divinity, as well as with political and literary influence. Aristotle considered him the founder of rhetoric and, possibly the teacher of Gorgias, and Galen credited him with founding a Sicilian school of medicine. His account of the transmigration of the soul is connected to his notions of the relationships among the elements and the divine. Empedocles denied Parmenides’s claim that all reality was permanent and unchanging, but instead suggested that it consisted of permanent elements in changing combinations. These four quasi-divine roots or elements (earth, air, fire, water) mix and separate under the influences of two forces, Love and Strife, giving rise to mortal things (the things we perceive with our senses). The spherical earth is at the center of the universe. A light and a dark hemisphere revolve around it, giving rise to day and night. Matter emits effluences that travel to our eyes, giving rise to vision.

Heraclitus of Ephesus . The son of Bloson, Heraclitus was born into a royal family around 540 b.c.e. He renounced his inherited position, which passed to his brother. His preserved writings are over eighty prose fragments found as quotations in later authors. These may have been parts of a continuous book, or, perhaps, originally composed as a collection of short maxims, or just scattered sayings transmitted in the notes and memories of his followers. (The earliest major sources for Heraclitus are Plato and Aristotle, who wrote more than seventy years after his death.) The most famous of Heraclitus’s fragments, and one which is quoted and commented on by several later authors, claimed that one cannot step into the same river twice. He explained this statement by pointing out that if one stepped off a bank twice in the same place, new water would flow over one, the previous waters having flowed downstream. Heraclitus considered the cosmos similar to the river in that even apparently stable objects are always in changing, or in flux, and that the appearance of stability, in rivers or flames (which seem to be his standard cases), is the result of what modern scientists might call dynamic equilibrium. Although the universe always changes, it does not do so at random. The world is composed of opposing elements, of which the most important is fire. The changes of these elements he described as regulated in accordance with logos. The role, and even meaning, of logos in Heraclitus is unclear. Even ancient Greeks described his sayings as obscure and paradoxical, and the intervening millennia and loss of much of his work have not clarified them. In Greek, logos had an extremely wide semantic range, covering such disparate concepts as reason, logic, ratio, account in the sense of bookkeeping tallies, rational explanation, or word. Perhaps the most that could be claimed with any certainty about the position of logos in Heraclitus is that it functions to maintain order in a constantly changing world. Many of Heraclitus’s sayings were polemical, criticizing the claims to wisdom of the masses, the poets, and other philosophers. He argued that true knowledge is universal rather than idiosyncratic, but, nonetheless, known only to the few rather than the many. His work was extremely influential. Cratylus (who claimed that one could not step in the same river even once) and others promulgated his philosophy in classical Athens, Plato and Aristotle discussed him at length, and the Stoics, one of the most important schools of Hellenistic philosophy, followed Heraclitus in several important doctrinal areas.

Leucippus . Little is known of the life of Leucippus (died late fifth century b.c.e.), the teacher of Democritus and the originator of atomic theory. His philosophies are so blended with those of Democritus that it is difficult to distinguish what doctrinal differences, if any, they might have had.

Parmenides of Elea . Born circa 515 b.c.e., Parmenides was an extremely influential thinker who also was involved in civic affairs. He appears in one of Plato’s dialogues, Parmenides (circa 360-355 b.c.e.), and is mentioned in several others. Socrates, in Plato’s Theaetetus (circa 360-355 b.c.e.), describes Parmenides as the thinker he admires above all others, and a follower of Parmenides, the anonymous “Eleatic Stranger,” is portrayed positively in two other Platonic dialogues, Sophist and Statesman (both circa 355-347 b.c.e.). Substantial portions remain of his long poem, written in dactylic hexameters. Parmenides’s poem consists of three parts, a Proem (introduction), the “Way of Truth,” and the “Way of Seeming.” The Proem begins with a description of a chariot journey on which Parmenides meets a goddess who instructs him in philosophy, echoing such traditional epic openings as that of the Theogony (circa eighth century b.c.e.), in which Hesiod describes the Muses’ appearing to him and teaching him about the gods. The goddess tells Parmenides that there are three ways of thinking, namely [it] is, [it] is not, or [it] both is and is not. For an Anglophone reader, the first difficulty encountered in understanding Parmenides is the lack of reference or antecedent to the implied “it,” which is the subject of “is.” The verb Parmenides uses is estin, the third person singular present active indicative of “to be.” Because “to be,” like all Greek verbs, is inflected (varies its form or ending to indicate tense, voice, mood, and sometimes person and number), subjects are often implied rather than explicitly indicated. Parmenides’s “is” has no subject, and so, when he talks about the three paths of “is,” “is not,” and “is and is not,” one can only conjecture about the implied subject. Was he referring to all physical being? Was he formulating a logical theory of noncontradiction or the impossibility of making true negative statements? Was he referring to any given object, or was the ambiguity deliberate? The second section of the poem, the “Way of Truth,” begins with the goddess’s explaining that since it is impossible to know what is not, and thus also impossible to know what both is and is not (since it partially is not), one can only know what is. Of what is, it is not possible that it is not, and thus it must by its nature be indivisible, unmoved, perfect, complete, permanent, and spherical (descriptions, it is worth noting, that later thinkers, such as Aristotle, would apply to their gods). The world of appearances, in which things are generated and perish and change in attributes and position, is illusory. The goddess also, however, in the third part of the poem, the “Way of Seeming,” describes the world of appearances. The connection between these two parts of the poem is obscure, possibly due to the fragmentary condition of the existing text. The “Way of Seeming” presents a cosmology in which things are derived from a pair of opposing forms, Light and Dark, and changing phenomena are accounted for in apparent contradiction to the “Way of Truth.”

Pherecydes of Syros . One of the earliest Greek prose writers was Pherecydes, who flourished around 550 b.c.e. He composed a book on cosmology, none of which is extant. From reports of later authors, it appears that his work may have been intermediary in character between systematic mythography and scientific cosmology, thus having affinities with both Hesiod and Thales. His cosmology posits three deities—Zeus, Chronos (time) or Kronos, and Ge or Khthonie (earth)—as the source of the universe.

Philolaos of Croton or Tarentum . An important Pythagorean, Philolaos was born around 470 and may have written original works on cosmology. It is difficult to establish the contributions of specific Pythagoreans because important works of the school tended to be considered, like physical property, communal (belonging or attributed to either the community as a whole or its founder, Pythagoras).

Pythagoras of Samos . The son of Mnesarchus of Croton and founder of an influential philosophical and religious community, Pythagoras was born in Samos around 580 b.c.e. but immigrated to the Greek colony of Croton in Italy. He was a follower of the god Apollo, and later members of his school considered him a manifestation of the Hyperborean Apollo. He himself did not write, but his sayings were preserved by his followers, although their tendency to attribute all important discoveries, doctrines, or maxims of the school to its founder makes it difficult to distinguish his doctrines from those of his followers. Pythagoras believed in metempsychosis (transmigration of the soul). He thought that the soul was originally divine, descended down to a body, and continued to be incarnated in various plant, animal, and human bodies until it purified itself sufficiently to return to its divine origins. Because Pythagoras and his followers considered the aim of life escape from the cycle of reincarnation, they lived an ascetic life, eschewing meat and meditating in silence. The Pythagoreans probably held all property in common, having philosophical objections to individual ownership. They were active in the government of Croton, but were eventually overthrown and exiled, leading to the destruction of their community in the fifth century. The Pythagoreans were especially interested in mathematics and musical harmony, to which they attributed metaphysical significance. They considered the Limited and Unlimited to be the governing principles of the universe, with the Limited representing order (and goodness) and the Unlimited, disorder. Mathematical understanding of order (especially musical harmony) was seen as a path towards reestablishing divine harmony in the human soul. Their work on mathematics resulted in several advances, including the Pythagorean Theorem for calculating the length of the hypotenuse for right-angled triangles.

For the Pythagoreans the principle of all things was the number and the universe, ordered in harmonic proportions. The sun was at the center of the universe, and the planets, including earth, were spherical and moved around the sun in circular orbits at regularly spaced harmonic intervals (causing a “music of the spheres” or celestial harmony). Pythagorean philosophy was extremely influential in the Classical Period (480-323 b.c.e.) and later. Plato was strongly influenced by the Pythagoreans and discusses Pythagorean cosmology in detail in his dialogue Timaeus (circa 355-347 b.c.e.). Several later Platonists, especially iamblichus, revived Pythagorean philosophy, and it continued to influence philosophy in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Xenophanes of Colophon . A poet and philosopher, Xenophanes (born circa 570 b.c.e.) traveled around Greece, reciting poems. He may have been a major influence on Parmenides. Like many other Presocratic thinkers, he criticized the traditional poetic conception of the gods, arguing that there could only be a single, nonanthropomorphic deity rather than many gods engaged in immoral acts. His deity provides a rational order for the universe. Many of his poems seem concerned with reforming his listeners and advocating some sort of personal seriousness or austerity. He advises, for example, that symposia (parties at which men drank and conversed) be dedicated to serious conversation and not involve excessive consumption of alcohol and asserts that poetry is worth more than athletic contests.

Zeno of Elea . A follower of Parmenides, Zeno appeared in Plato’s dialogue Parmenides and was credited by Aristotle with the invention of dialectic. He was best known for his paradoxes proving the impossibility of motion, of which two are preserved. In one paradox he argues that an athlete can never cross a stadium, for he first would need to cross half the distance, then half the remaining distance, then half the remaining distance, ad infinitum. The second paradox asserts that if a tortoise is given a head start in a race, Achilles will never be able to catch it, for by the time Achilles reaches the tortoise’s previous position, the tortoise will have moved to another position, and when Achilles reaches the tortoise’s second position, the tortoise will have moved to yet another position, and so forth.