Presocratic Philosophers Notes

Who Were the Presocratic Philosophers?

Fragmentary evidence makes understanding the Presocratics challenging.
No complete works survive; rely on quotations (fragments) and reports (testimonia) from later philosophers and historians.
Sources include Hippias, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Simplicius, and others with direct access.
Selective use of material by sources based on their interests.
New material emerges occasionally; for example, "The Derveni Papyrus" (4th century B.C.E.) concerned with Orphic religion.
Another papyrus found in Upper Egypt contains texts from Empedocles.
"Presocratic" term coined in the 18th century to contrast Socrates' moral focus with predecessors' cosmological and physical speculation.
Chronologically inaccurate as some Presocratics were contemporaries of Socrates.
The term may suggest inferiority to Socrates and Plato.
Referring to these thinkers as "philosophers" is also problematic because they wouldn't have described themselves this way.
Heraclitus: "those who are lovers of wisdom must be inquirers into many things" (DK22B35/LM9D40).
Presocratics saw themselves as distinct from ordinary people, poets, and historical writers.
They inquired into a vast range of subjects: physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, astronomy, embryology, psychology, theology, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.
Fundamental characteristic: naturalistic explanation of the world through its own inherent principles.
Hesiod's Theogony (7th century BCE) tells the traditional story of the Olympian gods, beginning with Chaos.
Gods are connected with the physical universe or human experience; theogony is also a cosmogony.
Hesiod's world is god-saturated; gods intervene in all aspects of the world.
Presocratics reject this account, viewing the world as a kosmos, an ordered natural arrangement.
Xenophanes: Iris (the rainbow) is a colored cloud, not a supernatural sign from the gods (DK21B32/LM8D9).
Presocratic thought differs in its understanding of the world and the explanation of it that is possible.
Heraclitus rebukes Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus: "Much learning does not teach understanding" (DK22B40/LMD20).
Heraclitus suggests that he alone truly understands because he grasps the account that enables him to "distinguish each thing in accordance with its nature."
Human knowledge of the world must be ordered in a corresponding way.

The Milesians

Aristotle says Thales of Miletus was the first to search for "causes and principles" of the natural world.
Thales lived around the beginning of the 6th c. BCE.
Thales declared water to be the first cause (Metaphysics 983b27–33).
Anaximander and Anaximenes were also from Miletus.
Thales predicted a solar eclipse in 585 BC (DK 11A5/LM 5P9, P10), introduced geometry into Greece from Egypt (DK 11A11/LM 5P4, P5, R11), and produced engineering marvels.
Anaximander invented the gnomon, created a sphere of the heavens (DK 12A1/LM 6P2, P4, P11), and drew a map of the inhabited world (DK 12A6/LM 6P6, D4).
The Milesians' interests were in measuring and explaining celestial and terrestrial phenomena.
They didn't see "scientific" and "philosophical" questions as separate disciplines.
Aristotle claims the Milesians explained things only in terms of their matter (Met. I.3 983b6–18).
This claim is anachronistic (presupposes Aristotle's view of material, efficient, formal, and final causes).
Aristotle links Thales' claim that the world rests on water with the view that water was the archē, or fundamental principle.
Thales chose water because of its fundamental role in coming-to-be, nutrition, and growth.
Aristotle's general account: Presocratics claimed a single enduring material stuff is both the origin and continuing nature of all things.
Thales claimed water was the first principle because everything comes from water.
Thales may have thought certain characteristics of the original water persisted, particularly its capacity for motion.
Thales' reported claims that the lodestone and amber have souls suggest this (DK11A22/LM5D10, D11a).
Milesian view may not have clearly distinguished the notions of an original matter and an enduring underlying stuff.
Anaximander emphasized the orderly nature of the universe; order is internal rather than imposed from outside.
Anaximander claimed that the indefinite (to apeiron) is both principle (archē) and element (stoicheion) of the things that are.
The indefinite is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but some other indefinite nature.
From the indefinite comes all the heavens and the worlds in them.
Things pass away into those things from which they came to be; they give penalty (dikê) and recompense to one another for their injustice (adikia) in accordance with the ordering of time.
At the genesis of this world, something productive of hot and cold was separated off from the eternal, and from this, a sphere of flame grew (DK12A10/LM6P6, D4).
Opposites act on, dominate, and contain each other, producing a regulated structure.
This system, ruled by the justice of the ordering of time, contrasts with the chaotic world of the Greek gods.
Anaximenes replaced Anaximander's apeiron with air.
Basic principle must be neutral but not so lacking in properties that it seems to be nothing at all.
Air can take on various properties of color, temperature, humidity, motion, taste, and smell.
Condensation and rarefaction of air determine the characters of things produced from the originating stuff.
Rarified air becomes fire; more and more condensed, it becomes progressively wind, cloud, water, earth, and finally stones.
Releasing air from the mouth with compressed lips produces cool air, but relaxed lips produce warm air (DK13B1/LM7D8,R4).
The Milesians may not have thought in terms of enduring underlying substances.
The original/originating stuff is transformed into other substances.

Xenophanes of Colophon and Heraclitus of Ephesus

Xenophanes and Heraclitus were interested in the nature of the physical world and offered cosmological accounts.
They also focused on the human subject and the nature of inquiry itself.
Xenophanes claimed all meteorological phenomena are clouds.
Rainbow, St. Elmo's Fire, the sun, and the moon are clouds fed by exhalations from the land and sea.
Motions of earth and water account for all things around us.
Xenophanes: Iris is by nature cloud (DK21B32/LM8D39).
Star-like phenomena seen when aboard ship are cloudlets (DkA39/LM8D38).
Xenophanes employs explanation: X is really Y, where Y reveals the true character of X.
He reduces phenomena often taken as divine signs to natural occurrences.
He notes anthropomorphic tendencies in conceptions of the gods (DKB14/LMD12, DKB16/LMD13).
He makes positive claims about the nature of the divine, including a single greatest god:
- "One god greatest among gods and men, Resembling mortals neither in body nor in thought" (DK B23, B24, B25, B26 / LM D16, 17, 18, 19).
This divine being comprehends and controls a cosmos infused with thinking.
Xenophanes asserts epistemological autonomy: we must rely on our own capacity for inquiry.
"Indeed not even from the beginning did the gods indicate all things to mortals, but, in time, inquiring, they discover better" (DKB18/LMD53).
This suggests that human thought can mimic divine understanding.
However, there's also skepticism: "And of course the clear and certain truth no man has seen" (DKB34/LMD49).
"Let these thing be accepted to be like the truth" (DKB35/LMD50).
Heraclitus writes in an aphoristic style, raising questions about knowledge and the nature of the world.
Heraclitus refers to a "logos which holds forever": an objective law-like principle that governs the cosmos (DK22B1/LM9D1, D110, and R86 and DKB2/LM9D2 as well as DKB50/LMD46).
The single order that directs all things is divine and is sometimes connected with the traditional gods (DKB32/LMD45).
Sign of the unchanging order of the eternal system is fire.
The logos is the unchanging account that explains the alterations and transformations of the cosmos.
The order steers the cosmos and is itself a rational order.
Heraclitus claims human prescriptive law must harmonize with divine law.
The cosmos itself is an intelligent, eternal system that orders and regulates itself in an intelligent way.
We can grasp and understand at least part of this divine system.
Heraclitus regards the cosmos as an ordered system like a language that can be read or heard by those attuned to it.
Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to those with barbarian souls (DKB107/LMD33).
Those who love wisdom must be good inquirers and grasp how phenomena are signs of the larger order (DKB35/LMD40, DKB101/LM36, DKB123/LMD35).
Evidence is the interplay of opposing states and forces.
There are fragments that proclaim the unity or identity of opposites: the road up and down are one (DKB60/LMD51), the path of writing is both straight and crooked (DKB59/LMD52).
Anaximander's orderly arrangement is replaced by a system ruled by what Heraclitus calls war: "It is right to know that war is common and justice strife" (DKB80/LMD63).
Changes are regular and understandable.
Heraclitus: "The lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives a sign" (DKB93/LM41).
Treats soul as the seat of emotion, movement, and intellect.
Understanding is a function of soul (DKB107/LMD33).
A fiery, i.e., hotter soul is best (DKB118/LMD103).
It is death to souls to become water, and to water death to become earth; from earth water comes to be, from from water, soul (DKB36/LMD100).
Humans who care for their souls and search for truth can approach the understanding that Heraclitus himself has obtained.

Parmenides of Elea

Parmenides argues that human thought can reach genuine knowledge or understanding.
What must be (cannot not-be) is more knowable than what is merely contingent.
Parmenides gives us a poem narrating the journey of a young man (kouros) taken to meet a goddess.
She promises to teach him "all things" (DK28B1/LM19D4).
The goddess gives the kouros the tools to acquire knowledge himself:
- Learn the unshaking heart of well-persuasive truth, and the beliefs of mortals, in which there is no true trust (DKB1.28–32/LMD4.28–32).
She teaches him how to evaluate claims about what-is.
For Parmenides, the mark of what is known is that it genuinely is.
What-is not only is but must be and cannot not-be.
The routes are methods of inquiry; correct route leads to what-is.
- The one that it is and that it cannot not be is the path of Persuasion (for it attends upon truth).
- The other, that it is not and that it is right that it not be, this I point out to you is a path wholly inscrutable (DKB2 and B3/LM19D6).
The truth is testable by reason or thought itself.
We must control our thought in the face of sense-experience (DKB7/LMD8).
The kouros can reach a decision through his logos (thinking or reasoning).
The test is "is or is not?"
Inquiry whether or not the supposition that something is would entail the reality of what-is-not (impossible).
One can think well or badly; correct thinking takes the correct route and reaches what-is.
Mortals on the incorrect route are thinking, but their thoughts have no real object.
Parmenides sets out criteria for the being of what-is:
- Ungenerable and imperishable, a whole of a single kind, and unshaking and complete; nor was it nor will it be, since it is now all together one, cohesive (DKB8.1–6/LMD8.6–11).
These are signs for what any ultimate cause or principle must be like.
The goddess turns to the route of mortals, in an account she calls "deceptive."
Parmenides may allow for justified belief about the contingent world.
The problem of mortals is that they mistake what they perceive for what there is.
Details of Parmenides' own cosmology are given, arguably as justified belief.
Parmenides was the first Presocratic to claim that the moon gets its light from the sun and that the earth is spherical.
Parmenides marks a sharp distinction between being and becoming, and between knowledge and perception-based belief or opinion.

The Pythagorean Tradition

Pythagoras of Samos arrived in Croton and established a community of followers with his political views and way of life.
The Pythagorean way of life included adherence to religious rites and dietary restrictions.
Pythagoras wrote nothing himself but influenced those who followed him.
He had a reputation for great learning and wisdom.
He seems to have advocated the reincarnation of the soul and the transmigration of the human soul into other animal forms.
Pythagorean writers stressed the mathematical structure and order of the universe.
The early Pythagoreans conceived of nature as a structured system ordered by number.
Post-Parmenidean Pythagoreans like Philolaus and Archytas held complicated views about the relation between mathematics and cosmology.
Split after Pythagoras' death between philosophically inclined Pythagoreans and those who adopted ethical, religious, and political attitudes.
The latter, called acusmatici, followed the Pythagorean precepts, or acusmata ("things heard").
The former, philosophical Pythagoreans (including Philolaus and Archytas), were the so-called mathematici.
Philolaus of Croton seems to have blended the Pythagorean life with awareness of and appreciation for Parmenides' arguments.
"Nature in the cosmos was fitted together out of unlimiteds and limiters" (DK44B1/LM12D2).
Unlimiteds are unstructured stuffs and continua; the limiters impose structure (shape, form, mathematical structure).
The structure can be expressed in a numerical ratio that allows for understanding: "All things that are known have number" (DK44B4/LMD7).
Philolaus developed a theory of the cosmos that displaced the earth from the center, replacing it with Hestia, the central fire.

Other Eleatics: Zeno and Melissus

Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos extended and explored the consequences of Parmenides' arguments.
Zeno paid particular attention to the contrast between logical argument and the evidence of the senses.
His four paradoxes of motion purported to show that ordinary motion is impossible.
- Motions can never be begun (the Achilles) or completed (the Dichotomy), entail contradictions (the Moving Blocks), or are impossible (the Arrow).
The Dichotomy: a runner can never complete a run because they must first reach an infinite number of halfway points.
Zeno produced paradoxes showing that plurality is impossible.
Melissus expands Parmenides' arguments about the nature of what-is.
Melissus claims that only one thing can be: if what-is is unlimited, it must be one and all alike.
Melissus specifically argues against the empty (the void) and rejects the possibility of rearrangement.
Melissus claims that what is real is completely unlike the world that we experience.

The Pluralists: Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and Empedocles of Acragas

Anaxagoras and Empedocles accepted Parmenides' arguments against coming-to-be and passing-away.
They developed cosmological systems that addressed their particular concerns.
Anaxagoras claims, "The Greeks do not think correctly about coming-to-be and passing-away" (DK59B17/LM25D15).
Generated objects are temporary mixtures of ingredients (earth, air, fire, water, hair, flesh, blood, etc.).
Ingredients are primarily powers that manifest in mixtures.
Original state was universal mixture: "All things were together, unlimited both in amount and in smallness" (DK59B1/LM25D9).
This mixture is set into rotary motion by the operation of Mind (Nous – DK59B12/LM25D27, DKB13/LM25DD29b, DK59B14/LM25D28), a separate cosmic entity.
Rotation causes a winnowing or separating effect, and the cosmos emerges from the mixture.
Everything is in everything (DK59B5, B6, B11/LM25D16, D25, D26), in some proportions.
Anaxagoras attributes the motion of his ingredients to an independent, intelligent force.
Causes of the heavens and phenomena apparent to us are the same at both macro- and micro-levels.
Empedocles proposes a cosmos formed of four roots (earth, water, air, and fire), along with the motive forces of Love and Strife.
Love unites opposed things, while Strife sets unlikes in opposition.
Love overcomes Strife, bringing together unlikes and preventing the clinging together of likes, resulting in the Sphere.
Strife breaks up the Sphere by attracting like to like.
The cosmos we know is a result of intermediate phases between the two extremes.
Fragments and testimonia show keen attention to perception, knowledge, the workings of the body, and psychology.
Empedoclean way of life included dietary restrictions and a story of transmigrating daimōns.
Cosmological and ethico-religious aspects of Empedocles' thought are intertwined.
Correct understanding of the physical world and the correct way to live cannot be separated.

Presocratic Atomism

Ancient atomism: what is real is an infinite number of solid, uncuttable (atomon) units of matter.
Atoms are made of the same stuff, differing only in shape, position, and arrangement.
Later sources say that atoms differ in weight.
Presocratic atomists, Leucippus and Democritus, endorsed the reality of the empty (or void).
The void separates atoms and allows for differences in shape, position, arrangement, and weight.
Phenomenal objects and characteristics emerge from the background mixture of atoms and void.
Shapes of the atoms and their arrangement give objects their apparent characteristics.
Democritus: "By convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color: in reality atoms and void" (DK68B125/LM27D14, D13a = DK68B9/LM27D4, D14, D15, D23a, R108).
Democritus makes sweet that which is round and quite large, astringent that which large, rough, polygonal and not rounded (68A129/LM27D60).
Things composed of sharp atoms are hot and fiery; those with the opposite character come to be cold and watery (67A14).
Iron is harder than lead but lighter because of the uneven arrangements of atoms and more void (68A135/LM27D64).
Democritus was seen as a skeptic: "In truth, we know nothing; for truth is in the depths" (DK68B117/LM27D24).
Democritus allows for knowledge through the understanding, which he calls genuine (DK68B11/LM27D6).
Evidence of the senses, interpreted by reason, can be a guide to reality.
Moderation and cheerfulness are linked with small measured movements in the soul (DK68B191/LMD226).
Democritus was identified with "good cheer" (euthumiē) as the guiding objective in living one's life.

Diogenes of Apollonia and the Sophists

Diogenes of Apollonia claimed that "all the things that are are alterations from the same thing and are the same thing" (64B2/LM28D3).
He identified this single basic substance with air.
Only things that are alike can affect one another (DK64B2/LM28D3).
If there were a plurality of basic substances, there could be no interaction between them.
The cosmic system is ordered by intelligence.
"That which possesses intelligence (noēsis) is what human beings call air" (DK64B5/LM28D10).
Air governs and rules all things and is god (DK64B5/LM28D10).
Intelligence orders things in a good way (DK64B3/LM28D56).
Diogenes: "Anyone beginning a logos (account) ought to present a starting principle (archē) that is indisputable" (DK64B1/LM28D2).
Theophrastus says that Diogenes was the last of the physical philosophers.
The Sophists were active about this time, with Plato contrasting them negatively with Socrates.
They were not completely uninterested in theoretical problems.
Gorgias of Leontini questioned the possibility of certainty.
Protagoras doubted the possibility of strong theoretical knowledge.
The Sophists raised ethical and political questions.
They traveled widely, entertained, taught rhetoric, and taught skills necessary for succeeding in Greek political life.
They gave public displays of rhetoric.
Ethics and political thought become more prominent aspects of Greek philosophy with the Sophists and Socrates.

The Presocratic Legacy

The first philosophers' interests extended to religious and ethical thought, perception, understanding, mathematics, meteorology, explanation, and the roles of matter, form, causal mechanisms, and structure.
Almost all the Presocratics seemed to have something to say about embryology.
Overlap between ancient philosophy and ancient medicine is of growing interest.
Discoveries like the Derveni Papyrus show that interest in the early philosophers wasn't limited to a small audience.
They passed on basic concerns to Plato and Aristotle, and the whole tradition of Western philosophical thought.