According to Bertrand Russell Philosophy begins with Thales

According to Bertrand Russell, "Philosophy begins with Thales. "

Themes of Presocratics • Search for essence of all things – materialist All that exists is matter. • Difficulty of kinesis – ‘movement’ or ‘change’ • Whether matter is single (monism) or many • Efforts to rationalize, to comprehend the structure of things and to systematize them

Start in Miletus

Ionian Thinkers • Thales of Miletus (late 7 th-early 6 th BC) – 585 BC Predicted an eclipse an astronomer and physicist ‘World originates from and returns to water. ’ • Anaximander of Miletus (ca 610 -540 BC) astronomer and map-maker ‘First principle and element is the Infinite or Indefinite. ’ • Anaximenes of Miletus (a little younger than Anaximander) ‘Air is the originative substance and basic form of matter; it changes by condensation and rarefaction. ’

Heraclitus (o kryptos, of Ephesus), ca 550 -? • Obscure thinker, even to ancients • All things change; nothing remains (the same) ‘the weeping philosopher’ • ‘Men should try to comprehend the underlying coherence of things: it is expressed in the Logos, the element of arrangement common to all things • ‘The path up and down is one and the same. ’

Italian Schools • Pythagoras of Samos (then of S. Italy, c. 531) ‘Universe is based on number. ’ Pythagoras Interested in mathematics & music Students lived monkish, mystic lives. P. believed in transmigration of the soul, influenced by Orphics. • Parmenides of Elea (c. 475) ‘World of senses is illusion. ’ Doctrine of complete skepticism. If all that exists is matter with no empty space—all ‘movement’ is illusion and we are deceived. • Zeno of Elea – fond of mathematical/spacial paradoxes e. g. Achilles & the tortise in a race.

Parmenidean Canons • • Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing passes away into nothing. Plurality cannot come from unity. Motion/Change must be explained

Post-Parmenides – end of monism, start of pluralism. • Empedocles of Acragas – Elements are 4: earth, air, fire, water (there never was a unity) Change is explained by re-arrangements of these elements – two motive forces are Love and Strife (attraction & repulsion) Nothing is lost – elements are unchanging Empedocles was a teacher of Gorgias.

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, c 500 -428 BC • Universe is a mixture of all things – ‘seeds’ —from which the world evolved. • Motivating force is ‘nous’ or ‘mind’ • Friend of Pericles & Euripides • Brought up on charges in Athens and forced to leave

Atomists – monism, materialism, & movement! • Leucippus of Miletus, c 450 Studied in Elea – atomic theory to answer Eleatic dilemma All that exists is void & atoms. • Democritus of Abdera (Thracian) c 440 added an ethical spin – ‘harmony of atoms’ Democritus

Diogenes, the Cynic – c late 5 th-4 th century BC

Diogenes • Lifestyle better known than philosophy • He rejected conventions (lived in a jar) and searched for an honest man • Back to unity…all things must be modifications of one basic substance – AIR • World and its parts are arranged by a divine intelligence in the best possible way. • Made a virtue of extreme poverty, studied in Athens under a pupil of Socrates

Rationalism & Relativism 1. Litigious nature of polis life and significance of assembly of male citizens made speech-making a high skill 2. Philosophical trends were rational, analytic, systematizing – questioned traditional views 3. Gorgias of Leontini arrived in Athens (427 BC) from Italy and set up a school of rhetoric with a doctrine of complete skepticism – taught alliteration, assonance, matching sound & sense, antithesis

Sophists – Professional teachers • Protagoras of Abdera – ‘Man is the measure of all things. Of the things that are, that they are. Of the things that are not, that they are not. ’ Accused of impiety in 415 BC in Athens. • Prodicus of Ceos – made a fortune in Athens with conceits like ‘The Choice of Heracles’, between difficult virtue or easy vice.

Athens • Pericles had met Protagoras – story is that the two spend a day arguing about a theory of punishment • Socrates had met Pythagoras and knew his school in Thebes

"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. " Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929