The Origins of philosophy Has its beginnings more than 2500 years ago. Previously there was a way of thinking - pre-philosophical - that sank its roots in mythical thinking.
From the myths, the doctrines explained the origin of the world - cosmogonías - and of the gods - theogonías - being the mythology of imaginary character, intuitive and irrational. The first philosophers saw the birth of philosophy as the passage from myth to logos: from an irrational knowledge to a logical knowledge, from a dogmatic knowledge to a knowledge that gave reasons and demonstrations.
History of Philosophy
The history of philosophy in the West began in ancient Greece in the sixth century BC, particularly with a group of philosophers called the pre-Socratics. It is necessary to take into account that in the Egyptian and Babylonian cultures there were antecedents of great thinkers, philosophers and writers in whose products they watered the first Greek philosophers.
However, early Greek thinkers integrated at least one element that differentiates them from their predecessors. For the first time in history, they not only addressed dogmatic claims about the world, but argued over the various beliefs about the world.
The classical Greek philosophy: Socrates
Socrates (470-399 BC, Athens, Greece) (Greek Σωκράτης Sōkrátēs) was an Athenian Greek philosopher, the main source of Western thought that later developed other intellectuals. Little is known about his life except the stories and writings that his students have recorded, mainly Plato Y Xenophon .
His method, Socratic , Laid the foundations for Western thought systems of logic and philosophy. When Greece's political climate changed, Socrates was sentenced to death for hemlock poisoning in 399 BC. He accepted this judgment and condemned instead of fleeing into exile.
Like Thales And the other pre-Socratics, Socrates also wondered about life and the origin of things. However, when the pre-Socratics were more concerned with cosmological questions, Socrates questioned: What is piety? What kind of life is worth living for a human? Can virtue be taught? What is justice? Is there more than one virtue? What is human excellence?
Socrates did not leave texts. The only written information about his philosophy is found in the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon. These dialogues deal mainly with issues of The good life , Human excellence and the cultivation of knowledge and virtues.
One of Plato's most important and well-known works is The Republic In which we find the allegory of the cave that explains the difference between perceived reality and reality real Which, according to Plato, can only be found in the realm of ideas.
The pre-Socratic philosophy
The pre-Socratic philosophy is the philosophy of ancient Greece, before Socrates and the contemporary schools of Socrates that were not influenced by him.
In classical antiquity, the pre-Socratic philosophers were called physiologoi (Greek: φυσιόλογοι - physical or natural philosophers). Aristotle He called them physikoi Physical , After physis, nature ) Because they sought natural explanations of phenomena, as opposed to earlier theologians, whose philosophical basis was based on the supernatural.
Diogenes Laertius Divides physiologists into two groups: the Ionian, led by Anaximander , And the Italiote, directed by Pythagoras . While most of the pre-Socratic philosophers left significant production, no text has survived completely. All that is available are quotations from later philosophers (often biased) and historians, and occasional textual fragment.
Although Hermann Diels (1903) popularized the presocratic term in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker - The fragments of the pre-Socratics -, the term pre-Socratic came into force with the work of George Grote (1865) Plato and the other companions of Socrates and in The thought Of Edouard Zeller, with the division of thought in before and after Socrates.
But the memorable analyzes of pre-Socratic thought have been made by Gregory Vlastos , Jonathan Barnes Y Friedrich Nietzsche in its Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks.
The pre-Socratic thought
The pre-Socratic philosophers rejected traditional mythological explanations of the phenomena they saw around them, in favor of more rational explanations. These philosophers asked themselves questions about the essence of things:
- Where does it all come from?
- From where has it all been created?
- How do we explain the plurality of things found in nature?
- How could we describe nature in mathematics?
Others focused on defining problems and paradoxes that became the basis for further mathematical, scientific, and philosophical studies. Later, other philosophers rejected many of the answers that the first Greek philosophers provided, but they continued to give importance to their questions. In addition, the cosmologies proposed by them have been updated by science in later trials and developments.
The common denominator of all was the efforts that led to research on the essential nature of the external world and the primary matter of the universe.
They sought the material principle -archê- of things, and the method of their origin and disappearance. Like the early philosophers, they emphasized the rational unity of things and rejected mythological explanations of the world.
The pre-Socratic thinkers present a discourse on key areas of philosophical inquiry as being and the cosmos, primary matter of the universe, structure and function of the human soul and underlying principles that govern perceptible phenomena, human knowledge and morality.
Writing
There are no complete works. Only some fragments of the original writings of the pre-Socratics survive (many are titled Peri Physeos T the On nature , A title probably attributed later by other authors). The knowledge we have of them derives from the stories known as doxography of later philosophical writers (especially Aristotle, Plutarch Or Diogenes), and some early theologians (especially Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus of Rome ).
Presocratic schools
The pre-Socratic period of the ancient era of philosophy refers to the Greek philosophers active before Socrates, or contemporaries of Socrates, the following Greeks stand out:
- Thales of Miletus
- Anaximander
- Anaximenes
- Pythagoras
- Heraclitus
- Parmenides of Elea
- Anaxagoras
- Empedocles
- Zeno of Elea
- Protagoras
- Gorgias
- Democritus
School of Miletus
The Milesian School was founded in the 6th century BC, in the Ionian city of Miletus (a Greek colony on the Aegean coast, Anatolia, now Turkey). The main representatives are Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. They had very different points of view on most subjects, so grouping is more geographically than shared opinions. Thales was the teacher of Anaximander and of Anaximenes.
Pythagorean School
Pythagoreanism is based on the metaphysical beliefs of Pythagoras and his followers. His views and methods influenced many later movements, including Platonism, Neoplatonism and Cynicism.
The first Pythagoreans (530 BC) met in the Greek colony of Achaean in Croton, southern Italy. But after suffering persecution, the movement dispersed and those who survived returned to mainland Greece and settled around Thebes and Felius.
Pythagoras himself wrote nothing, his thoughts have come through the incomplete accounts of his followers and commentators, Parmenides, Empedocles , Filolao (480 to 385 BC) and Plato. Pythagoras saw the world as a perfect harmony, based on numbers and aimed at influencing humanity on the path of reflection towards a harmonious life.
School of Ephesus
The Ephesian School was created in the fifth century BC. Essentially, it refers to the ideas of Heraclitus, a native of Ephesus, in the Greek colony of Ionia.
Together with his colleagues at the Milesian School, he sought concrete answers to the enigma of change, his central idea centered on the constant change of the world. He argued that the transformation of matter from one state to another did not happen by accident, but within certain limits, at a certain time and according to a logical or Logos : All things are one.
He considered that the base of the whole universe is the fire always alive, in exchange with other elements.
Elementary proficiency
The Eleatic School was founded by Parmenides in the fifth century BC. C, in Elea, a Greek colony in southern Italy. Other important members of the school include Zeno of Elea, Samos Meliso And Xenophanes.
Xenophanes, in particular, criticized the belief in a pantheon of anthropomorphic gods and Parmenides took his ideas further, concluding that the reality of the world is a being , An immutable, timeless, indestructible set, in opposition to the theories of the early physicalist philosophers.
He later became an early exponent of the duality of appearance and reality, and his work was very influential in Plato's metaphysics.
The Eleatics rejected the epistemological validity of sensory experience, asserting that reason and logical standards of clarity and necessity were the criteria of truth.
School of Pluralist
Pluralism (5th century BC) is represented by three main philosophers: Anaxagoras, Archelaus And Empedocles. In general terms, they attempted to reconcile the total rejection of change by Parmenides and the Eleatic School, which generally accepted the permanent flow, sensory experience, birth and death, creation and destruction. The basis was change.
The Romanian philosopher Anaxagoras believed that all things had existed from the beginning, as an endless number of infinitesimally small fragments of themselves, but in a confused and indistinguishable form. The segregation of the like to the contrary was carried out by a pure and independent thing called Nous (Mind), which also causes the whole movement.
Atomist school
The atomistic school was established at the end of the fifth century BC by Leucippus of Miletus And his most famous student, Democritus. He taught that the substance hidden in all physical objects consisted of different arrangements of atoms and emptiness.
No writings of Leucippus have survived, only some fragments of the writings of Democritus are available, unreliable.
The best evidence is that which Aristotle related in his criticisms of Atomism. Epicurus, who studied with Nausífanes (Disciple of Democritus), adhered to the idea of atoms and emptiness but could not adequately explain natural phenomena such as earthquakes, storms, phases of the Moon. He founded Epicureanism.
References
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- Presocratic Philosophy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007. Retrieved on 1/31/2017 at wikipedia.org.
- William Keith Chambers Guthrie, The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus , P. 13, ISBN 0-317-66577-4. Retrieved on 1/31/2017 at wikipedia.org.
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