Pre-Socratic Philosophers: From Thales to Democritus
Pre-Socratics: Monists
Thales of Miletus
Miletus was an island in the Aegean, the world’s largest ancient market. He was the first philosopher and was considered one of the “wise men.” He dedicated himself to public business and then to the study of nature. Many think he was the first to speak about the immortality of the soul. He said that the arche is water, that it is the last and eternal principle of all things.
Anaximenes
He was a disciple of Anaximander. He admitted that there is a unique and infinite, yet indeterminate, substance. He considered air, not water, as the first or main arche. With the rarefaction of the air, it becomes fire, and fire becomes stone.
Anaximander
He was the first to write a book about nature. He affirmed that the beginning of everything cannot be natural and called it “Apeiron.” From “Apeiron” arises a couple formed by the cold and the hot. The damp cold is the first ahistorical cosmology, and around it, there is fire. The mass occurs because cold wind becomes a cloud, and then rain falls. When it is hot, vapor occurs. Thus, a spherical Earth is surrounded, and through holes, there is fire; these holes are the stars.
Heraclitus of Ephesus
He thought that the principle of everything is fire. He considered it eternal and a substance in constant metamorphosis, and thus, its form is in reality a constant becoming. This obeys a law or measure. According to Heraclitus, fire is alive, and all things are born from it and become. At the end of each cycle, there is a cosmic doomsday where cosmic fire will bring justice. The cosmic cycles are not eternal, and what is external is perpetuating a cycle; when one ends, another begins, and so on. He also said that there was nothing static in the universe, that the whole universe is moved by a dislocation of opposites, and this is called dialectics.
Pythagoras
The Pythagoreans were formed by a group. Pythagoras said that arithmetic should be studied, and that the soul passes from one animal to another (transmigration of souls), which is why he, in turn, related philosophy to immortality. The Pythagoreans have a dual function:
- From an anthropological point of view, they maintain the immortality and transmigration of souls.
- From a cosmological point of view, they based their views on the mathematical structure of the universe, affirming that it is a cosmos made of numbers, and these are the principles of all things.
They had a dualistic vision.
Parmenides
His doctrine about the reality of what is and what exists is summarized in two assertions:
- Apart from a reality, the emergence of plurality is impossible. He said that what had not been caused could not originate, and what exists could not be destroyed. Therefore, what exists is ungenerated, indestructible, and immutable.
- He deduced that what exists is something unique, that is, a unique, single reality. From this reality, a plurality cannot emerge. Therefore, he declared that movement and plurality are irrational and unintelligible.
He also laid the groundwork for the radical opposition between reason and the senses. For him, the thing is the principle of being, deemed ungenerated and eternal, that is, something that cannot not be, something compact because it is indivisible and has no parts, so it is homogeneous. It has a spherical shape because a sphere is the shape that can least be divided into parts, and it is motionless because movement is an illusion.
Empedocles
He greatly respected Parmenides. He affirmed that reality is a sphere, and there is movement and plurality. The changes are due to cosmic forces that interact on four principles: fire, air, water, and earth. Their combination and disaggregation result in the cosmos under the action of two forces: attraction and repulsion, or love and hate. He called these cycles of love and hate continuous.
Anaxagoras
He thought that everything has always existed and that in humans, there are particles of all substances in the universe. These particles are homomeries, that is, a mass of all the elements of the world before the Big Bang. For him, there is plurality and motion. Motion is considered a whirlwind that moves around and puts things in disarray. He also said that there is an element that governs everything, Nous, whose objective is to achieve the highest perfection.
Democritus
For him, reality is not being plus non-being. This contradicts the claims of Parmenides. He suspected that there is a gap that can be as real as what is not real (not being), and everything is explained simply with atoms and a void. Atoms have always existed, so we can say that being is eternal because it is formed by atoms. For him, atoms are equal to each other and have the property to create different things.