Early Greek Philosophers: Miletus, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides

The School of Miletus

Ionia (Asia Minor) in the 6th century BC, was the first cradle of philosophy.

Thales initiated philosophy. He and his disciples, Anaximander and Anaximenes, began to question the value of mythical explanations, which they considered arbitrary, and sought logical, necessary explanations. They were the first to start the transition from myth to logos. They sought to answer questions by searching in nature for the necessary causes of phenomena and trying to find a law from which to rationalize reality. They thought there was a fixed reality, a principle (arche).

  • For Thales, the principle is water.
  • For Anaximander, it is the Apeiron (the indeterminate).
  • For Anaximenes, it is air.

The circumstances that made it possible to produce the “Greek miracle” of rationality were:

  1. Relatively open societies.
  2. Contact with people from brilliant civilizations (Babylon, Egypt, etc.).
  3. Their religion and myths were not controlled by dogma. Poets expressed myths.
  4. The Greeks engaged in constant criticism, i.e., a desire for continuous improvement.

Pythagoras and His School

In the 6th century BC, in southern Italy, Pythagoras and his community were involved in the birth of an alternative form of rational thought.

Pythagoras founded an intellectual, religious, moral, and political movement: a sect of initiates for the purpose of purification of the soul at the physical and intellectual level. This sect reflected on religion and the soul, defending its immortality and the Orphic doctrine of transmigration.

For Pythagoras, the structure of the cosmos could be understood through mathematics. He discovered that music can be reduced to numbers; he felt that all objects can be reduced to geometric figures, and these to numbers. Therefore, the structure of the universe is mathematical.

Change: Heraclitus vs. Parmenides

Heraclitus

Heraclitus of Ephesus conceived the world as a continuous process of change. His fundamental thesis lies in the affirmation of the perpetual flow of things. He affirmed vitality and universal mobility. Fire is the metaphor used: all things are flames of a large fire. The flames are processes, but the fire (arche) endures. In the same way, under the opposing elements in constant struggle lies a logos (order). If there is justice, the struggle of opposites is not unfair. Confrontation/polemic is justice; war.

Parmenides

Parmenides of Elea proclaimed the immutability of reality. Changes are apparent to the senses, Heraclitus says. Reason leads us to negate them. The Pythagoreans despised sensory contributions. If the senses tell us one thing and reason another, we should be guided by reason. Parmenides says that God has revealed an indisputable truth: “Being is, and non-being is not.” Parmenides deduced the negation of change, where change would be the passage of a certain thing to the non-being of that thing, or conversely, the transition from not being a certain thing to being. But because of the unquestionable truth of the goddess’s assertion, change is absurd.

The Pluralists

Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus (the Atomists) accepted that physis, as Heraclitus said, is a process of constant change, and that of Parmenides, that what is cannot come from what is not.

Empedocles

Empedocles proposed four stable principles (water, air, earth, and fire). Natural things are combinations of these, governed by two forces: love (linking) and hatred (splitting).

Anaxagoras

For Anaxagoras, there are as many primal elements as there are kinds of things. In everything, there are seeds of all things. The echo of an element that predominates depends on a force called Nous (mind or intellect).

The Atomists (Leucippus and Democritus)

The atomistic view is that reality is made up of countless small objects: atoms. These atoms move by chance. All things are a conglomeration of atoms. The changes we observe are reconfigurations of these atoms, made possible by the vacuum.