ANCIENT

PHILOSOPHERS I
(THE PRE-SOCRATICS)
Pre-Socratics
■ Western philosophy began in ancient Greece in the 6th century BCE.
■ They were interested in a wide variety of topics, especially in what we now
think of as natural science rather than philosophy.
■ These early thinkers often sought naturalistic explanations and causes
for physical phenomena.
■ In most cases, did not entirely abandon theistic or religious notions, but
they characteristically posed challenges to traditional ways of thinking.
■ The foundation of Pre-Socratic thought is the preference and esteem
given to rational thought and argumentation over mythologizing.
■ This movement towards rationality and argumentation would pave the
way for the course Western thought.
1. Milesian School
■ The first Pre-Socratic philosophers were from Miletus on the western
coast of Anatolia, also referred as the early Ionian philosophers.
However, the Milesian philosophers do have connections that are not
merely geographical.
■ Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes each broke with the poetic
and mythological tradition handed down by Hesiod and Homer.
■ They were Protoscientists, concerned with cosmogony, which was the
generation of the cosmos; and cosmology, the study of or inquiry into
the nature of the cosmos.
■ Their cosmogonies and cosmologies are oriented primarily by
naturalistic explanations, descriptions, and conjectures, rather than
traditional mythology.
■ Milesians ostensibly sought to explain the cosmos on its own terms,
rather than pointing to the gods as the causes or progenitors of all
natural phenomena.
1. Milesian School
A. Thales of Miletus
(c. 620 BCE c. 546 BCE)
■ Thales was interested in almost everything, investigating almost all
areas of knowledge, philosophy, history, science, mathematics,
engineering, geography, and politics.
■ He proposed theories to explain many of the events of nature, the
primary substance, the support of the earth, and the cause of change.
■ Thales was much involved in the problems of astronomy and provided a
number of explanations of cosmological events which traditionally
involved supernatural entities.
■ He believes that the primary element of reality is water. He said that
everything comes from water. The world is nourished by water.
■ He had explained that water is a substance that is capable of changing
to the other elements in different conditions
■ Thales proposed a single congress for Ionia, effectively centralizing the
governmental powers, and making Ionia a single state
A. Thales of Miletus
(c. 620 BCE c. 546 BCE)
B. Anaximander
(c. 610-546 BCE)
■ The author of the first surviving lines of Western philosophy.
■ He speculated and argued about "the Boundless" as the origin of all that is.
■ He was the first metaphysician.
■ By drawing a map of the world, he was the first geographer.
■ He also worked on the fields of what we now call geography and biology.
■ He was the first speculative astronomer. He originated the world-picture of the
open universe, which replaced the closed universe of the celestial vault.
■ Anaximander said that all life comes from the sea and that in the course of
time living things came out of the sea to dry land.
■ He suggested that people evolved from creatures of a different kind. From this
process, opposing forces are inevitable which caused conflict and injustice
among living things (human). Like humans, injustice to others deserves
destruction and suffers punishment form reparation to one another for their
injustice.
B. Anaximander
(c. 610-546 BCE)
C. Anaximenes
(d. 528 BCE)
■ Anaximenes flourished in the mid 6th century B.C.E. and died about
528.
■ Anaximenes was an inhabitant of Miletus, in lonia (ancient Greece).
■ Anaximenes was an associate, and possibly a student of Anaximander.
■ Best known for his doctrine that air is the source of all things.
■ Anaximander thought that all things came from an unspecified
boundless stuff.
■ Anaximenes added that things are what they are by virtue of how
condensed or expanded the air is that makes up those things.
■ Differences in quality among things depend on the differences of
quantity.
C. Anaximenes
(d. 528 BCE)
 THANK YOU!

Arjun D. Villaceran Sobih Elijah L. Delgado

Instructor Demonstrator