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Before Socrates, there were the Presocratics — the first people in the Western world to stop blaming the gods and start reasoning. This opening lecture from Academy of Ideas introduces that revolutionary group of early Greek thinkers. It shows how they replaced myths and spirits with natural causes, asked what reality is really made of, and lit the fuse that would become both philosophy and science. Where an ancient person once saw a rock inhabited by spirits, these pioneers saw an orderly world the human mind could decipher. It is the story of how the universe changed from a ‘thou’ to an ‘it’ — and why that shift still shapes us today.
Full Video Transcript
Introduction to the Presocratics.
In this series of lectures we will look at a group of ancient Greek thinkers who lived in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, known as the Presocratics.
The Presocratics are significant for a number of reasons, one of which being that they are widely considered the first philosophers.
In this introductory lecture, we will provide some background information about the Presocratics,
investigate the difference between mythology and philosophy,
and discover why the Presocratics deserve our attention.
In the following lectures, we will look at the ideas of the major Presocratic thinkers.
In particular, we will examine, in order, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and Democritus.
The term pre-Socratic refers to a group of philosophers who lived prior to and during the life of Socrates.
Hence the word pre-Socratic, meaning before Socrates.
The pre-Socratic thinkers were primarily interested in metaphysics and cosmogony.
Metaphysical questions being those concerned with the ultimate constitution of nature,
while cosmogonical questions are focused on the origins and structure of the universe.
The Presocratics posed and answered questions such as, what is reality made of? How did the world as we know it begin? And is everything in flux or is there some permanent substance underlying this reality?
For a period of time, Socrates was greatly interested in the metaphysical questions which concerned the Presocratics, and he studied their ideas with vigor and enthusiasm.
However, he soon became disillusioned with their ideas, as he felt that the philosophical questions they devoted their attention to had no bearing or impact on the quality of his own individual life.
This led Socrates to stop focusing on metaphysical questions, and instead directed his philosophical meditations toward determining how to live the best life possible.
In doing so, Socrates changed the face of ancient Greek philosophy, and ended the pre-Socratic era which had reigned for almost 200 years.
As Aristotle noted, it was during the life of Socrates that the investigation of nature came to a stop, and philosophers turned their attention to practical morality and political thought.
Or as the Roman philosopher Cicero stated more poetically,
Socrates called philosophy down from the skies and implanted it in the cities and homes of men, compelling it to attend to questions of virtue and vice.
However, it must be noted that this change initiated by Socrates, from metaphysical to political and ethical interests, is only a generalization.
The pre-Socratic philosophers, although primarily interested in metaphysical questions, were also concerned with ethical ideas, that is, ideas about how to live the good life.
For example, one of the more famous pre-Socratics, Heraclitus, stressed the importance of not overindulging in bodily pleasures, and profoundly stated,
To fight with desire is hard. Whatever it wishes, it buys at the price of soul.
Furthermore, it would also be incorrect to state that after Socrates, philosophers were no longer interested in metaphysical speculation.
As Plato, Socrates’ student, and Aristotle, Plato’s student, were both very interested in metaphysics.
In fact, both Plato and Aristotle drew heavily on the works of the Presocratics for inspiration
in constructing their interpretations of the universe.
So why do the Presocratics deserve our attention?
For they lived over 2,000 years ago, and to our modern scientific mind,
it would be easy to dismiss some of their ideas as primitive and childish.
The first reason why the Presocratics deserve our attention is because the ancient Greeks are the intellectual and cultural ancestors of Western civilization.
The height of Greek civilization in the 6th and 5th centuries was one of, if not the most, fruitful periods of philosophy and art in the history of civilization,
and greatly influenced the course of history through the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, and into the modern periods.
It is often said that if one wants to understand Western civilization, one must understand the works of Plato and Aristotle.
However, if one wants to truly understand the works of Plato and Aristotle, one must understand the ideas of the pre-Socratics,
as these early thinkers greatly influenced both men, laying the foundations on which these two philosophical giants built their castles of ideas.
As David Ruchnik pointed out in his book, Retrieving the Ancients,
Even if Plato and Aristotle were the unmatched giants of ancient Greek philosophy, they did not arise in a vacuum.
In the 6th and 5th centuries thinkers powerful in their own right set the stage for their emergence, these thinkers being of course the pre-Socratics.
However, independent of this influence on Plato and Aristotle, the pre-Socratics are interesting in their own right, for as we will see they constructed fascinating philosophical systems.
Moreover, while the answers they arrived at seem to us as unscientific based on our modern conception of science and philosophy, the questions they posed were, and still are, extremely pertinent.
They are, as Aristotle stated, eternal questions.
But perhaps for more than any other reason, the Presocratics deserve our attention, because they are responsible for one of the most momentous events that has ever occurred in the history of the human species.
That being, the emergence of rational thought from the confines of mythology.
It will be beneficial to examine what the differences are between myth and reason, or in other words, mythology and philosophy.
Individuals in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greek civilization, prior to the emergence of the Presocratics,
confronted and experienced the world in a very different manner than we do.
As Henry Frankfurt explained in his book, Before Philosophy,
the fundamental difference between the attitudes of modern and ancient man as regards the surrounding world is this.
For modern, scientific man, the phenomenal world is primarily an it.
For ancient and also for primitive man, it is a thou.
In other words, for modern man the world is populated with both living and non-living things.
Living things are animate and have a personality.
While for us, non-living objects are inert, inanimate, and wholly devoid of individuality.
We confront this inanimate world as an it, as an inert object to be manipulated and utilized for our benefit.
Ancient and primitive individuals prior to the birth of philosophy knew nothing of an inanimate world.
Everything in their world, including animals, rocks, trees, rivers, the moon, stars, and the sun,
son, were populated with spirits, gods, and forces which had personalities, desires, and
intentions of their own.
When we trip over a rock we curse ourselves for not looking where we were going and move
on with our day.
When an ancient or primitive individual tripped over a rock, on the other hand, he felt that
the rock was inhabited with evil spirits and forces which were out to punish and sabotage
him.
The experience of an ancient individual was felt as a confrontation with another personality, another being like himself.
In the words of Frankfort, such a world was confronted as a thou.
As Frankfort explained,
unknown clearing in the wood, the stone which suddenly hurts him when he stumbles while
on a hunting trip.
Any phenomenon may at any time face him not as it but as thou.
The Presocratics instigated a transformation in the way human beings experience the world.
Instead of explaining events and phenomena as caused by gods, spirits and personal forces
with agendas of their own, the Presocratics explained events in the world as the product
of impersonal and natural forces.
The shift from mythology to philosophy did not merely shift the way individuals theorize
or understand the world, but as Frankfurt explained, it transformed the way individuals
experience the world.
Moreover, prior to the Presocratics, individuals attempted to explain the world by telling
stories.
The stories often took the form of poems or myths.
Now these stories were not thought to be generated by the human mind alone, but instead, poets
and myth-makers were thought of as requiring divine intervention in order to obtain the
knowledge they shared with their fellow humans.
Hesiod, one of the most famous ancient Greek poets who lived approximately 100 years before
the pre-Socratics, wrote that he was nothing but a humble and lowly farmer when the goddesses
of inspiration, the Muses, daughters of Zeus, spoke to him and supplied him with knowledge
regarding the creation of the universe.
He then converted into his famous work the Theogony.
Even poets and myth-makers felt themselves to be doing nothing but channeling the knowledge
given to them by the gods.
The Presocratics transformed this view of knowledge.
Thales, a Presocratic philosopher who was born in the Ionian city of Miletus in the
early 7th century BC, and who is widely considered the first philosopher, made the bold leap
and concluded that the human mind alone, without divine assistance, is capable of reaching
into the depths of the universe and discerning its secrets.
This revolutionary change of attitude cannot be overstated.
For what this meant was that the world was beginning to be seen as orderly rather than
a largely incomprehensible place, governed by the whims of gods and spirits.
And this belief in irregularity in the natural phenomenon is an essential presupposition
for all scientific theorizing.
Thus in many ways, the Presocratics can be seen as ushering in the philosophic and scientific
mindset which would drastically alter the course of Western civilization.
To conclude, W. K. C. Guthrie nicely summarizes the importance of the Presocratics in a passage
from the first volume of his series of works on ancient Greek philosophy, explaining the
role they played in transforming civilization.
The birth of philosophy in Europe then consisted in the abandonment, at the level of conscious
thought, of mythological solutions to problems concerning the origin and nature of the universe
and the processes that go on within it.
For religious faith there is substituted the faith that was and remains the basis of scientific
thought with all its triumphs and all its limitations, that is, the faith that the visible
world conceals a rational and intelligible order, that the causes of the natural world
are to be sought within its boundaries, and that autonomous human reason is our sole and
sufficient instrument for the search.
In the following lectures we will investigate the ideas of the individual Presocratics.
Source: Academy of Ideas