I mentioned in the previous lecture that the first philosopher in the west is generally
considered to be the pre-Socratic thinker --- Thales. His date is typically given as 585
BC. Of course that’s approximate. As I also mentioned in the first lecture, our source
material for pre-Socratics is very fragmentary. Historians, however, have agreed on
this date 585, and that’s where we will begin. Actually, however, I’m going to first
take a step backwards. I found in my experience of teaching that in order to explain
anything, it’s often useful, in order to explain what something is, to try to explain
what it is not. That’s what I’d like to do in the first part of this lecture. I want to take
us backwards to the time before philosophy, before 585 BC. And before philosophy,
the Greeks, of course, were not silent. They were not unintelligent, they were
extremely active. The time was pre-philosophical. But it certainly was productive.
Before philosophy, there was myth. To use the Greek word, there was muthos, a word
which can be translated as myth as its exact cognate, which can also be translated as
simply “story”. Before philosophy, there was story telling, there was poetry. We’ll
take a short step backwards and take a quick look at one of the great pre-Socratic
storytellers, the poet Hesiod, as way of preparing ourselves to make the transition to
Thales and the beginning of philosophy. The greatest of all poets, in ancient Greece
was Homer. Homer wrote in approximately 700. He wrote about the Trojan War,
which in fact was some sort of historical event, which probably occurred 400 years
before Homer wrote, around 1100 BC. He was very much the combination of tradition
of oral poetry about the Trojan War and about the return of the Greek fighters from
Troy back to Greece and you’ve heard, I hope, of the poem, the Iliad, which is the
story of Achilles and the Trojan War, and the Odyssey, which is story of Odysseus
returning from Troy to Greece. The poet I want to concentrate on, however, is Hesiod,
who also wrote somewhere around 700 BC. What I think is so interesting about
Hesiod is his poem, the Theogony, which is a creation story. It’s a myth creation. It is
therefore naturally akin to philosophy. At the same time, however, and I hope to
explain, it is fundamentally different from philosophy. The Theogony tells the story of
the coming into being of the Greek gods. The Greeks were polytheists. They had
many gods. The Theogony tells of the story not only of the Greek gods and their
coming into being, but the coming into being of the natural world of the mountains,
and the rivers and forests. The coming into being of the human world. What I’d like to
do is to focus your attention only on the very very beginning of Hesiod’s Theogony
and use that once again as a way of preparing for our transition to Thales and the
beginning of philosophy.
First thing to notice about Hesiod’s poem and this would also be true of Homer’s
poem is that it begins with an invocation to the Muses. The Muses were the daughters
of Zeus who was the king of the gods and Memory. They were the goddesses of
inspiration . Hesiod tells a little story about himself. He was a poor shepherd,
shepherding his sheep, when the Muses breathed to him, inspired him with a voice to
sing of the very beginning of the world itself. Everything that Hesiod has to say,
therefore, is directly linked to the Muses. In that sense, Hesiod is the first to admit
he’s not responsible for his poem, his poem has external source, that source is the
Muses, the gods of inspiration. Let me read the very beginning of the most important
section in Hesiod’s Theogony. He says the following,
Tell me these things, Olympian Muses,
From the beginning, and tell which of them came first.
In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss,
But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being,
Her broad bosom the ever-firm foundation of all,
And Tartaros, dim in the underground depths,
And Eros, loveliest of all the Immortals. (Theogony, 114–120)
Let’s notice a couple of things of that passage. First, as I already mentioned it, it
begins with an invocation of Muses. Once again, Hesiod himself doesn’t take
responsibility for what he was going to say. His source is outside of him. It’s in the
power of inspiration. Second, let’s look at some details of this very beginning story. In
the beginning, there was only chaos. That’s a Greek word, and of course, we have that
exact word now in English. However, what the word means today, in English, is quite
different from what is means in Greek. In English, chaos means a disordered state of
parts. There are many many things and they are chaotic. If I took this room, and
jumbled off the books, the tables and pictures, you look at the room and say, it’s a
chaos. That’s not what the word means in Greek. It means, your translator is trying to
help you with this. It also means the abyss, it means the gap in between two other
things. It means, finally, and I think, interestingly, something like nothingness. In the
beginning, there was chaos, there was nothing. From that chaos came earth, says
Hesiod, but notice, he hasn’t explained why. He hasn’t explained how. For no reason
whatsoever, earth just pops into being. Along with earth comes Tartaros, the other
underworld. And in addition to Tartaros, comes Eros. Eros, literally translated, means,
sexual desire. At the very beginning of things, was Eros, the reason fro that and if you
read further in the Theogony, you see that, what Hesiod really was telling was
genealogy, a family tree of the Greek gods, indeed of the whole world. In other words,
for Hesiod, the word comes into being by sexual reproduction, and therefore, Eros,
which is the principle of the sexual reproduction, is the energy of sexual reproduction,
is there right in the beginning. So, to summarize, in the beginning there was nothing
and then there was something. There was earth, there was Tartaros, and there was
Eros. What I’d like to suggest to you is that this story in a very deep way, in a
beautiful way, makes little sense. It makes little sense because the very notion of
something coming from nothing makes little sense. How could something come from
nothing? Why would something some from nothing? This is precisely where Hesiod
is silent. For reasons that he is either unwilling or unable to tell us, there was earth,
perhaps, think about it, in one additional way, the very notion of chaos, and here I’m
referring in the Greek sense, namely as nothingness, or the abyss. The very notion of
chaos is itself unintelligible. We can’t really think nothing. Surprisingly, this is going
to be a theme in some of the philosophers we are going to encounter in the next
lectures, the very notion of nothingness. And from the philosophers’ perspective, we
will see that nothingness is impossible to think of. You might say in this way. The
nothingness is the illegal concept. It makes no sense. How can you think of nothing?
In fact, you might want to experiment this at home. Actually, try to think of nothing
and I suspect you’ll find it can’t be done. Nonetheless, this is where Hesiod locates
the very origin of all the reality. It’s in nothingness. So I think now we have two ways
of thinking about what I’m calling irrationality of Hesiod’s poem. And these two ways
are very beautifully related to one another. The first, was I just mentioned, is in the
story itself, namely, the beginning of nothingness, the chaos. I suggested to you that is
unintelligible. It really doesn’t make sense to think of something coming from nothing.
The second is in the very invocation of the Muse. When Hesiod invokes the Muse, he
says it is as if he’s meeting the outset. What is about to say, he can’t explain. So I’m
suggesting to you is that if you examine both the content of his story and the way he
tells the story, the form of the story and the content of the story, they actually fit
together nicely. The form of the story is muthos, a myth. And for the Greeks, that
meant the invocation to the Muse. The content of the story is, in the beginning, there
was chaos, and then, for no reasons whatsoever, the earth, so both the form and the
contents seem to be expressing the same message and the message is that human
beings seem to be incapable on their own of figuring out the nature of reality. And
that’s why Hesiod tells a myth. Please don’t misunderstand. I’m calling this muthos
irrational but in no way am I offering that as a criticism. There’s a tremendous sense
of intelligence and coherence in Hesiod’s Theogony. It fits together very beautifully,
especially if you approached it the way I’m suggesting, namely as a poem which
expresses the fact that maybe human beings just can’t figure out the world we live in.
With that in mind, I think we are now prepared to actually begin the history of
western philosophy of Thales. Once again, we gave his date as 585 and please again
remember that’s approximate. He comes from Miletus. Miletus is a town on the west
coast of Turkey, or what is Turkey today. It was a part that had been colonized by
Greeks in previous centuries. It was a Greek speaking region, even though it’s not in
what we now call Greece proper. According to Aristotle, and most subsequent
historians of philosophy, Thales was the first natural philosopher. He was the first
thinker in the west to give what the Greeks called the “logos”, nature. The word
nature in Greek is “phusos”. So we might now say that Thales was the first
physiologist. If you think of the physiologist, it means one who gives logos as nature.
What is a logos, a logos is a rational explanation. The word logos as in the word
physiology is present in many many suffix in many of the English words. Biology
literally means a logos of life. The word psychology means the logos of the soul, or
the mind. Thales is called the first philosopher precisely because he is the first, again,
according to Aristotle, he is the first to give logos of nature. What sort of logos, what
does this mean? Let me turn to the text itself and give you a little taste of it. I am now
quoting from Aristotle, who says the following, “of those who first pursued
philosophy, the majority believed that the only principles of all things are principles in
the forms of matter. For that out of which all existing things are composed and that
out of which they originally come into being, that into which they finally perish, the
substance persisting, but changing in all of its attributes. This statement states it’s the
principles that are. However, not all agree about the number and form of such
principle, but Thales, the founder of philosophy, declares it to be water. That’s a
mouthful. Let me try to unpack it a little bit. The first and most important word to
notice in this passage is the word that’s translated in English as “principle”. Thales
believed, along with earlier Greek philosopher that the “principle” of all things is
material, is in the form of matter. What does the word principle mean? The Greek
word here is wonderful and extremely important. The word is arche. This word can be
translated as principle, as origin, as beginning, as source. It also can mean ruler. So
perhaps what is means is the beginning which then rules over everything that follows.
We have reminiscence of this word in the word archaic, archaeology, referring to the
very old things. The arche then, is the beginning, not just in the sense of time, but the
beginning, in the sense of the fundamental origin of everything else. According to
Aristotle, all of the pre-Socratics believed that there was arche and that the arche was
in the form of water. So now we can boil down Thales’ position into one sentence,
“the arche is water”. We go a little bit further in Aristotle to give you more feel for
what sort of thinker Thales was, because Aristotle speculates as to how Thales
could’ve come up with this idea. That the origin of all things is water. Aristotle says
the following, maybe Thales got the idea from seeing that nourishment of all things is
moist, and the hot itself comes to be from the moist. And that water is the principle of
moist things. In other words, what I think Aristotle is suggesting here is that Thales is
what today we call empirical thinker, an empirical thinker is one who use sense
experience in order to get information or knowledge about the world. An empirical
thinker uses his eyes, his ears in order to understand the world. According to Aristotle,
Thales made some primitive observations. He observed that all living things required
water. He lived in a very dry place, and I think in that environment the essential
qualities of water were appreciated very deeply from the perspective of the shore line
Miletus. As Thales looked out into the sea, it would certainly look, to Thales, the earth
itself was sitting on water. From all of these observations, Aristotle suggests Thales
derived a conclusion. And the conclusion was that the Arche, the principle, the origin
was water. Let’s pause now and try to compare this with Hesiod. For Hesiod, and he
doesn’t use the word, but I think he thinks the thought. For Hesiod, the arche is chaos.
It’s nothingness. The origin of all things is found in what is unintelligible, namely,
nothingness. That’s why when earth comes to be from chaos, there’s no explanation,
because, the arche itself is unintelligible. It’s water, it’s ordinary substance, a
substance that is fully intelligible as something we can all recognize, we can observe.
As Thales cut open a seed, cut open a plant, cut open an animal, seeing the water
inside the living things. Now we can understand why Thales required no muse, and
this is an essential characteristic of philosophical thinking. Thales needed no Muse.
Thales believed on his own, using only his reasoning capacity, using his senses, using
his mind. He was able to plum the depth of reality itself and then he was able to
explain it. Now it’s very easy, of course, to discuss Thales’ position as primitive, as
childish, even we all know, we are so sophisticated, that water is not the origin of all
reality. Water is not the arche, that’s perfectly obvious to us. But I would argue, the
year 585 and Thales’ position which was articulated then is utterly revolutionary and
its impact can be overestimated. Thales was the first thinker to boldly declare that
reality itself could be conceived. Let me offer a set of terms that will be very
important in this course and indeed are very important throughout the history of
philosophy. I’m going to put the same point I’ve just made in slightly different terms.
And I’ll return to Aristotle, whose language as you first heard is not very easy to
figure out. Aristotle said this about Thales. For that of which existing things are
composed and that out of which the originally coming into being and that into which
they finally perish, that is the substance that endures, that is the arche, for Thales, that
is water. The most helpful terms I come up with you, here to offer you, will be two.
The words “being” and “becoming” Let me talk about becoming first. These are basic
philosophical terms. The word becoming refers to the process coming into being and
going out of being, coming into being and perishing. Becoming is a category. It labels
a chunk of reality. That chunk of reality which goes through the process I just
described. By contrast, the word being refers to that which endures, something which
is in the world of around, in the category of becoming into being and goes out of
being. But being itself remains. It remains the same. Equipped with these two words
we can once again formulate Thales’ position, For Thales, the being or the arche is
water. Water endures. Water goes though many transformations but water itself always
endures. When a living being is born, it is born from water and when that living being
dies, it returns to water. The process is very ???. You might think of being as in the
middle and becoming circling around it, going out of being, going into being. This is
true not only of just living things, but according to Thales, but of all things. Being is
the ultimate reality. We can, once again, transpose back to Hesiod. I think, for Hesiod,
the poet, the mythmaker, the story teller, being is unintelligible, we have no way of
conceptualizing it. Being is chaos. Again, I’m using words Hesiod himself doesn’t use
but I’m doing so in order to really underline the enormous contribution Thales is
making in the year 585. I mentioned to you in the first lecture that when we study
Greek philosophy, we are not simply studying the past. It’s extremely important to
have a sense of the historical influence of the Greeks on subsequent developments in
western thought, indeed. However, when we study Greek philosophy, we can also do
so with an eye not simply to historical influence but to the living quality of these ideas.
And I would suggest to you that right at the beginning, in the confrontation, I’m
tempted to say, debate, I don’t think that captures the difference between Thales and
Hesiod. Right at the beginning, with this confrontation, this emergence of philosophy,
from poetry in distinction to poetry what we really have are two fundamental ways of
looking at what it means to be a human being. Can a human being use their intellect,
the mind to understand something about their experience, their world, or is the world
somehow separated from us, distant from us, or does it remain distant? Hesiod would
clearly answer yes. The world must always be distant, and this is why, I, Hesiod, the
poet, the maker of myths, I need a Muse. Thales, by contrast, has enormous
confidence, and he boldly declares, not only can I understand this or that about the
world, but I can understand the underline structure of the world itself, the arche. This
debate, this confrontation, is with us today. I think it’s perhaps in all of us. It’s the
battle that Plato 200 years later would describe as the old battle between philosophy
and poetry. The poet expresses the view that Hesiod himself is expressing, namely,
this view that add it core, perhaps, human life is unintelligible and therefore, we tell
stories, and therefore, we hope for inspiration. And therefore, we can’t claim
responsibility for articulating the world on our own. The philosopher, by contrast, and
Thales here is that first philosopher, is able to confront the world and see it at its core,
or so he believes. I’d offer you one last set of terms to think about Thales and the
difference between philosophy and poetry. These two terms are the one and the many.
Thales is a great believer that underneath the enormous variety, the multiplicity, the
diversity of the world, there is unity. The unity is found in the arche, in the principle
of water itself. The many can be unified by the one. And the one, in his case, is the
water, a completely intelligible, ordinary substance. One last time, a contrast with
Hesiod. For Hesiod, there is no one underneath the many. Instead, there is only chaos
and the abyss. Once again, we know of course that Thales was wrong in any objective
or scientific sense, but he sets in motion a train of thought that will continue until this
very day. And what we’ll see next in the next lecture is the first consequence of
Thales’ beginning. He will not be allowed to go uncriticized. He will be criticized by
his next generation of thinkers. But his basic framework that he invents, or he
discovers, the framework of arche as being and everything else has become
framework which insist one that underlies the many, is one which will retained by the
subsequent thinkers in Greek philosophy and indeed in all of western philosophy.