Pre-Socratic Philosophy

FIRST PRINCIPLES IN PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY

Apaar Garg

201301041

Pre-socratic philosophers were the earliest Western philosophers. The pre-socratic philosophers were the major Greek philosophers mainly active during 600-500 BC. The major pre-socratic philosophers were Pythagoras, Democritus, Thales of Miletus, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Zeno etc. The understanding of their works is still not complete as only fragments of their works have survived. They wanted to discover ideas which could uniformly govern all natural phenomena and could explain the reason for everything that exists on earth and every event that happens without using mythology.[1] Everyone had their different school of thought, and tried to form their first principles which have been explained in the subsequent sections.

Thales of Miletus, Anaximander of Miletus, Anaximenes of Miletus have been grouped and called the “milesians” as they had a similar school of thought. They did not try to find th basic element of nature, but tried to find the ultimate principle which could govern everything.[2] They though of the world as one and beleived that beneath all the things in the universe, there is a hidden unity which remains invisible and indivisible. Thales identifed this reality as “water” and all things come from it.[3] Anaximenes believed it was “air”, which is responsible for everything around us, held everything together. He claimed it to be God.[4] Anaximender identifed this element to be the “indefinite” or “boundless”.[5]

Heraclitus of Ephisus and the Xenophanes continue the Milesian interest in the physical world by offering cosmological accounts. Xenophanes rejected the then-standard belief of polytheism, as well as the idea that the gods resembled humans in form. He ridiculed the idea by claiming that, if oxen were able to imagine gods, then those gods would be in the image of oxen.[6][7] Xenophanes claims that all meteorological phenomena are clouds, colored, moving, incandescent: rainbow, St. Elmo's Fire, the sun, the moon. The motions of earth and water, and hence of clouds, account for all the things we find around us.[8][9]

Heraclitus tried to give logical reasons for everything(logos which holds forever). This is the opening of his book. He concieved of being as a process or event and represented its essence as “fire”. Fire exists not as a stable object but as a process of burning. When it stops this process of changing, it ceases to exist.[10] He beleived that every being exists as a process of change. His well-known phrase, “No one can enter the same river again” expresses this thought.[11].

Parmenides of Elea explores the nature of philosophical inquiry, concentrating less on knowledge or understanding than on what can be understood. He beleived that human thought can reach genuine knowledge or understanding and that there can be marks/signs to show that one has achieved this. Parmenides' claims that what must be (cannot not-be, as Parmenides puts it) is more knowable than what is merely contingent (what may or may not be), which can be the object only of belief.[12]

Zeno of Elea was also a part of the Eleatics. He followed Parmenides and identifed essence with the being and argued that we cannot even think without presupposing the existence and permanence of being. He provided many paradoxes (Achillies and Tortoise paradox) to support the claims. Melissus also expands Parmenides idea and claims that the real is completely unlike the world that we experience: the split between appearance and reality is complete and unbridgeable. [13]

Empedocles and Anaxagoras had pluralist views. Unlike the materialists who believed that there is a single source of everything, these philosophers believed that there could be different immutable sources. Everything is created when these things mix. This mixture is set in motion by the mind. Mind is an independant entity which doesn't mix with anything else and decides how to combine, disperse and rotate these sources. Empedocles reduced reality into four elements – air, water, fire and earth along with the forces of Love and strife. Love is the force of unity- it combines these elements whereas strife is what separated theses elements.[14]

Pythagoras approached this question of reality from a different angle as compared to the other philosophers. He tried to find principles which govern order and give harmony to the universe unlike the earlier philosophers who tried to find out what the world was made from. He thought of nature as a structured system of numbers and thought that numbers give order, harmony, rhythm, and beauty to the world.[15] Pythagoras also stressed on the fact that the soul is immortal and the cultivation of the soul is achieved by the studies of truth and the ascetic life and also the migration of soul from humans to animals after death.[16]

Atomism was one of the most important theories given by the Greek philosophers as this theory is more or less true till date. Atomism means that atom(atomon) is the basic building block of reality. his consequence of atomism was openly discussed by Democritus. He, along with Leucippus thought that hidden substance in all physical objects consists of different arrangements of atoms and the void.[17] Leucippus tried to explain the human senses through this concept of atomism. He attributed various tastes, views and hearings to various atoms based on their size and dimensions.[18]