Pre-Socratic Philosophers: Shaping Western Thought
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus is not known through preserved fragments of his original writings. His profile suggests he was a great observer of nature, and he is held to have given ideas to his fellow citizens that served to interpret natural phenomena. His activities can be described as scientific rather than philosophical. He made a series of statements that were regarded as philosophical. According to his theory, water is the principle of everything. He stated that water is the source of everything, so he thought that the thing that draws dampness is born of moisture and also lives, and that things are born from their inception. This meant a new way to see nature; natural phenomena could only begin to be understood by observing the appearance of things.
Anaximander
Anaximander continued Thales’ ideas but in a more rational way, focusing on the relationship between man and the universe around him. He used *apeiron* as a principle and element of existing things, containing all the causes of the birth and destruction of the world. “Where things have their birth, there they find their destruction. They pay each other just penalties and retribution for their injustice in accordance with the order of time.” This text conveys a fundamental idea: order in the process of justice, a reality that has to balance all disorder provoked by men.
Anaximenes
For Anaximenes, the foundation of things is air, a nature behind an indefinite, but not vague, specific substance called air. The air becomes one thing or another through rarefaction and condensation, the eternal movement that causes all changes. Observation of breath as the beginning of life suggests the idea of a living, breathing cosmos that gives life. He supposed that the more or less condensed vapor of the cosmos is the cause of various phenomena that occur with this reality.
Heraclitus
Heraclitus is known for the obscurity of his style, his misanthropy, his melancholy. If everything flows and nothing escapes us, then joy, remoteness from the world, and vegetarianism are possible. In his words, we feel the voice of the philosopher who first let us understand some clear perspectives of his intellectual project. Fire is another element that shows the top and bottom of unstable reality. “This cosmos, none of the gods nor man has made it, is and will always be a living fire.” It expresses intelligence; fire is the intelligent cause and the organization of everything. The ever-running water, “everything flows,” everything moves, and nothing remains identical. You could not submerge in the same river twice, for the currents flow. It is the same one that lives who dies, who dreams and who watches, the young and the old. It is a reality that is alive but dying, which is young but ages. Fire transforms matter, and this divinity is such that everything matches and is an expression of its unity. Harmony, union, coupling, time stability, and events flow seamlessly over time. The world is not only the real world, it is also the opposite of the game (feelings).
Logos
Logos is a sort of universal reason that unifies everything, even though men still disregard it. Most people never think about the things they have to face; once instructed, they do not understand, maintaining their own views. A target of the logos is intelligence and a present reality in things. It shows ease towards truth and clarity and obscurity. “Thinking is common to all.”
Pythagoras
Pythagoras believed that man is like an animal; other animals feel but do not understand. The organization of common life is governed by strict rules. He forbade eating certain foods such as fish and beans. Pythagoreans had a conglomerate of ideas that came from Orphism and their theories on the soul and reincarnation. He affirmed that the soul is immortal, transmigrates to other species, that what has happened is repeated periodically, and that all living beings are united by ties of kinship. The Pythagoreans believed that the soul is dust in the air and is introduced into the baby through breathing. Harmony is the result of real actions between the number of distances of stars. “The Pythagoreans were devoted to math and made progress. They soon perceived that fire, earth, and air…” It emphasizes the fundamental nature of numbers. They made real scientific contributions, such as the Pythagorean theorem.
Parmenides
Parmenides organized a city with its laws so excellently that every year the judges swore to the people that they would always act in accordance with the laws of Parmenides. He had full power over the image transmitted. He was worried about the immutability of numbers and the forthrightness of being, immortal and unchanging. The discovery of this wonderful brand is an unrealistic way of thinking and defines the limits of perspective of two conflicting thoughts. He wrote a poem to communicate his thinking on truth, justice, public opinion, the way of not-being, birth, and necessity. It had three parts: an introduction, the path of truth, and the path of chance. For Parmenides, being and thinking are the same thing. This principle of identity shows the start of formal thought to knit Pythagorean ideas. Being in itself assumes all manifestations of reality, within meters of things if there is a link that connects and organizes.
Key Ideas of Parmenides
- The whole world of experience and reality is in a structure that absorbs and removes variety.
- The limit is being thought.
- Intellectual thinking seems dehumanized.
- The door actually stays in the mind.
Opinion towards the objects of the senses makes reference to abandoning the path of truth, which is only with objects of the mind.
Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea passed into history for his aporias, presented as a result of the conception of the being of Parmenides. He focuses on the problem of plurality and movement. He speaks of the relativism of the senses, ideas that appear in the theory of atoms developed by Democritus.
Empedocles
A common feature in all the major characters is an emphasis on the power of words that spring from a single existence, singular men who break the mythical language, one characteristic of which is to have no master. Empedocles designed a field, this being “round,” containing in itself the four elements: air, fire, earth, and water, the roots of everything. He made the discovery of love and hatred as the engines of the world, two principles that embody the experience of human beings, the origin of what unites or separates nature. In the rule of love is when the field of stability and fullness may arise, and splits or corrupts. Love as a source of creativity is a crucial input into the vision of the world; friendship or love appeared as a force that dragged beings.
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras’s ideas about astronomy were due to an accusation of impiety. He was based on the idea that it is not possible that something has a source or an end, a birth or a death. There must be a unit originating in that’s all. Everything is in everything; all beings make seeds, homeomeries. Things manifest differences between them and receive different names depending on their nature. The homeomeries are eternal and immutable, qualitatively different, can be divided infinitely, and have no movement. Intelligence is a new principle of order, a kind of love, but an “intellectual” love that the cosmos is promoting; it is independent, eternal, and bright.