pre-Socratic

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The pre-Socratic Greek philosophers were active before Socrates or contemporaneously, but expounding knowledge developed earlier. The popularity of the term originates with Hermann Diels' work Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (The Fragments of the Pre-Socratics, 1903).^[1] Major analyses of Pre-Socratic thought have been made by Gregory Vlastos, Jonathan Barnes, Gordon Clark, and Friedrich Nietzsche in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks.

It may sometimes be difficult to determine the actual line of argument some pre-Socratics used in supporting their particular views. While most of them produced significant texts, none of the texts have survived in complete form. All that is available are quotations by later philosophers and historians, and the occasional textual fragment.

The pre-Socratic philosophers rejected traditional mythological explanations for the phenomena they saw around them in favor of more rational explanations. These philosophers asked questions about "the essence of things"^[2]:

• From where does everything come?
• From what is everything created?
• How do we explain the plurality of things found in nature?
• How might we describe nature mathematically?

Others concentrated on defining problems and paradoxes that became the basis for later mathematical, scientific and philosophic study.

Later philosophers rejected many of the answers the early Greek philosophers provided but continued to place importance on their questions. Furthermore, the cosmologies proposed by them have been updated by views based on modern science.

List of philosophers and schools

The traditional cursus of pre-socratic philosophers and movements (there are minor variations) is shown below:

Graphical relationship among the various pre-socratic philosophers and thinkers; red arrows indicate a relationship of opposition.

• Milesian school

Thales of Miletus (624-546 BCE)

Anaximander (610-546 BCE)

Anaximenes of Miletus (585-525 BCE)

• Pythagorean Schools

Pythagoras (582-496 BCE)

Philolaus (470-380 BCE)

Alcmaeon of Croton

Archytas (428-347 BCE)

• Heraclitus (535-475 BCE)
• Eleatic School

Xenophanes (570-470 BCE)

Parmenides (510-440 BCE)

Zeno of Elea (490-430 BCE)

Melissus of Samos (C.470 BCE-Unknown)

• Pluralist School

Empedocles (490-430 BCE)

Anaxagoras (500-428 BCE)

• Atomist School

Leucippus (5th century BCE, dates unknown)

Democritus (460-370 BCE)

• Sophism

Protagoras (490-420 BCE)

Gorgias (487-376 BCE)

Thrasymachus

Callicles

Critias

Prodicus (465-390 BCE)

Hippias (485-415 BCE)

Antiphon (person) (480-411 BCE)

Lycophron

• Diogenes of Apollonia (C.460 BCE-Unknown)

Other early Greek thinkers

This list includes several men, particularly the Seven Sages, who appear to have been practical politicians and sources of epigrammatic wisdom, rather than speculative thinkers or philosophers in the modern sense.

• Seven Sages of Greece

Solon (c. 594 BCE)

Chilon of Sparta (c. 560 BCE)

Thales (c. 585 BCE)

Bias of Priene (c. 570 BCE)

Cleobulus of Rhodes (c. 600 BCE)

Pittacus of Mitylene (c. 600 BCE)

Periander (625-585 BCE)

• Aristeas of Proconnesus (7th Century BCE ?)
• Pherecydes of Syros (c. 540 BCE)
• Anacharsis (c. 590 BCE)
• Theano (mathematician) (5th century BCE, dates unknown)

References

• Burnet, John, Early Greek Philosophy, Meridian Books, New York, 1957
• Colli, Giorgio, The Greek Wisdom (La Sapienza greca, 3 vol. Milan 1977-1980)
• Kirk, G.S., Raven, J.E. & Schofield, M., The Presocratic Philosophers (Second Edition), Cambridge University Press, 1983
• Nahm, Milton C., Selections from Early Greek Philosophy, Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1962
• De Vogel, C.J., Greek Philosophy, Volume I, Thales to Plato, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1963
• Diels, Hermann, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed., rev. by Walther Kranz (Berlin, 1952).

External links

Look up Presocratic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• D. H. Th. Vollenhoven's History of the Presocratic Philosophers translated by H. Evan Runner
• Early Greek Philosophy and the Primary Substance
• Presocratic Philosophy

Notes