Pre-Socratic Philosophy
600 – 450 B.C.
 “The
history of philosophy began on May
28, 585 B.C. At 6:13 p.m. Greek Standard
Time.” (Gordon Clark)
 Asia
Minor (Ionia)
• Thales, Anaximander, & Anaximenes (Miletus)
• Heraclitus (Ephesus)
• Anaxagoras
• The Atomists
 Southern
Italy
• The Pythagoreans
• Parmenides, Zeno, and Empedocles
 Thales
 Anaximander
 Anaximenes
Fundamental to their cosmogony was the belief
that the world came into being, that is, the first
reality was a single living stuff.

Naturalists
Tries to explain the world without any reference to a
supernatural being

Materialists
• Referred to the Arch as divine, but probably meant
nothing more than that it was eternal.

Hylozoists

Monists
Living matter (ex: magnet)
The ultimate explanation for reality is one basic thing
 Arch
one of four basic elements
 Mixed by the weather
 625-546
B.C.
 First to predict the eclipse of the sun
 Scientist, philosopher, and businessman
• Fell in an open well while contemplating the
heavens
• Bought up the olive presses
 Cosmogony
moist”)
= Arch is water (“the
 585-525
B.C.
 The arch is aer (breath)
• Method:
 condensation – increase in density (turns into earth)
 rarefaction – decrease in density (clouds & fire)
 610-546
B.C.
 Given credit for Inventing the sundial,
making the first map, and making
astronomical discoveries.
 Apeiron - the boundless is the arch
Peiron = fence, boundary
Formless, shapeless, propertyless
 535-475
B.C.
 The “dark one”
 First to use logos as a technical term
 Pantheistic
 Philo, Stoics, John the Bishop of Ephesus
• Valuable for expressing Christian truth
• Christians use of the same language to explain
something is not necessarily a sign of influence
 Died
in deep doo-doo
 Nous
- mind
 Leucippus
 Democritus
(460-370 B.C)
 Matter is made up of propertyless,
imperishable, indivisible elements
called atoma
 Nothing beyond the natural order.
 Only two things, atoms and empty space.
 The
first rationalist (vs. empiricism)
• Starting point for Platonic dialectic and
Aristotelian logic [Armstrong, p. 12]
 God
is one; an immanent all-pervading
world soul
 Philosopher most respected by Plato
 Bill Clinton’s favorite philosopher
• What is, is. What is not, is not.
 Zeno’s
paradoxes
 Infinite division of space so movement is
not possible
 Tortoise and hare
 Ascetic
life
 Purification rituals to release the god
inside us all
 Fantastic cosmologies (like Scientology)
 Reincarnation until our inner god is
released by Orphic practices
 Killing an animal is murder
• Vegetarians
 Pythagoras
??? (580-500 B.C??)
 Monastic brotherhood
 Pebbles / Calculus
• By contemplating form, order, proportion &
harmony, the soul is purified, thus mathematics
and music
• “things are numbers”
 Good vs. Bad
• Form, the male principle, is good
• Matter, the female principle, is evil
 Emphasized
purification of the soul to
escape the reincarnation cycle
• Don’t poke a fire with a knife
• Get out on the right side of bed
• Put on the right shoe first
• Don’t let the swallows land on your roof
• Don’t eat beans!
 Influenced
Plato (Phaedo and Meno)
 Mind-body
dualism!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 Immortality of the Soul
 Body is a Prison of the Soul
 Transmigration of the Soul
 “Philosophy
in the sense in which the
word was generally used in the ancient
world may be defined as the search after
the truth about the nature of the universe
and man, a search that philosophers (with
certain exceptions) believed could result
in the attainment and sure knowledge of
the truth sought.” (A. H. Armstrong, An
Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, page
1)
 An
Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, by
A. H. Armstrong
 Lives and Opinions of Eminent
Philosophers, by Diogenes Laertius
 A History of Philosophy, Vol. 1, by
Frederick Copleston