Presocratics

James Warren

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317493365
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The earliest phase of philosophy in Europe saw the beginnings of cosmology and rational theology, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethical and political theory. It saw the development of a wide range of radical and challenging ideas: from Thales' claim that magnets have souls and Parmenides' account that there is only one unchanging existent to the development of an atomist theory of the physical world. This general account of the Presocratics introduces the major Greek philosophical thinkers from the sixth to the middle of the fifth century BC. It explores how we might go about reconstructing their views and understanding the motivation and context for their work as well as highlighting the ongoing philosophical interest of their often surprising claims. Separate chapters are devoted to each of the major Presocratic thinkers, including Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Leucippus and Democritus, and an introductory chapter sets the scene by describing their intellectual world and the tradition through which their philosophy has been transmitted and interpreted. With a useful chronology and guide to further reading, the book is an ideal introduction for the student and general reader.

ONE
Introduction: reading Presocratic philosophy

Our primary interest in what follows will be in thinking about early Greek philosophers' views on such topics as the nature and origins of the world, our knowledge of it and how we should act within it. We shall also be interested in thinking about the arguments they offered for these conclusions. But there are some crucial questions and difficulties to be addressed before we can begin, since they bear on the nature of our evidence for early Greek philosophy and the nature of the context in which the early Greek philosophers lived and worked. These factors shaped first the production and then, in turn, the transmission of the philosophy we shall go on to consider, and therefore deserve to be given serious attention.

What is “Presocratic” philosophy’? What does this book include and what does it leave out?

The term "Presocratic" is a modern classification not found in the ancient sources themselves and, although it is still commonly used, some scholars have argued that it ought to be allowed to fall into disuse.¹ Not only is it chronologically inaccurate, since some of those philosophers usually classified as "Presocratic" were contemporaries of Socrates and others, notably Democritus, probably outlived him, but it is potentially misleading in other ways. A full account of all Greek thought in the period up to the death of Socrates in 399 BCE would include a far wider cast of characters than do standard accounts of Presocratic philosophy It would include not only the Greek cosmologists, but also doctors, poets such as Hesiod, political thinkers such as Solon and Thucydides, teachers of rhetoric and other intellectuals of many different interests, few of whom would conventionally be referred to as "Presocratics". There is no reason to think that a global account of Greek thought to the end of the fifth century BCE could not be written, but it would be a daunting task and I shall not attempt it here. One reason for this refusal is that there are Greek sources who have left us a relatively clear and plausible account of what they took to be the development and history of Greek philosophy. In following their lead, we might indeed produce just one selective history among many possible others, but it would at least have the virtue of following what classical and later ancient writers took to be a plausible and enlightening account. We should note first, therefore, that the Greeks themselves are responsible to a large degree for the production of an account of their own intellectual development and also, it must be emphasized, for the selection of a certain group of thinkers and a certain set of speculations that they chose to single out as "philosophy" rather than, say, "history" or "medicine" (see Nightingale 1995). Of course, we ought also to be aware of the presence of other thinkers and sources of influence outside the cast of characters in the standard modern collection of evidence about Presocratic philosophy, H. Diels and W. Kranz's Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (usually referred to as DK, first edition by Diels in 1903). However, although they did not refer to anyone as a "Presocratic", ancient writers nevertheless often identify a specific phase in the development of Greek philosophy before Socrates and give a narrative account of its development, characterizing it as driven by some shared general concerns, principally concerns in "natural philosophy": the study of the nature, origin and processes of the natural world. While it would be foolish to follow this ancient historical account slavishly and without critical distance, it would equally be foolish to discount it, either as an informative description of how some ancient philosophers saw their own philosophical heritage or as a plausible - if partial - account of a genuine historical reality.

A further characteristic of these ancient accounts is that they tend to identify phases within the development of philosophy before Socrates, often pointing to Parmenides as an important break in the tradition and the inauguration of a new phase of "post-Parmenidean" cosmologies. In brief, this story of Presocratic philosophy begins with Thales and the other Milesians, who are principally interested in the question of what is the original material principle out of which all things in the universe are made or from which all things originate. (This is sometimes referred to as the arkhē: the Greek word for "beginning", which can describe a temporal beginning but also a first principle or cause.) Each Milesian offers a different candidate and goes on to offer a description of how the universe and the workings of the natural world can be explained in these terms. Next, a new movement is inaugurated by Parmenides and the "Eleatic philosophers" Zeno and Melissus, perhaps also inspired by Xenophanes. They are radical monists, claiming that only one thing exists, and also produce arguments that deny the possibility of plurality, coming-to-be and passing-away or change. After the Eleatics come various pluralists - Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus - who accept certain Eleatic strictures such as a ban on any absolute coming-to-be but nevertheless seek to explain the processes of the natural world in terms of the interactions between a set of fundamental existents. They return, in other words, to the Milesian project of natural philosophy but with a more sophisticated metaphysical view generated in reaction to Parmenides and his followers.

This is a very influential story, particularly because it derives to a large extent from the work of the two greatest ancient philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. They both saw that it was important to engage with the work of their philosophical predecessors and, although there were earlier moves to produce accounts of the works or collections of the views of early philosophers, it is the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition that is to a large extent responsible for the view we have inherited of the early period of Greek philosophy (see Mansfeld 1986).²

Plato's presentation and reception of early philosophy is complicated further by his choosing to compose philosophical works in the form of dialogues, often set during the lifetime of his own philosophical inspiration, Socrates, and often involving as characters some of the important intellectuals of the time.³ It is unlikely, for example, that we should ascribe the views of the character "Parmenides" in the dialogue of that name to the real historical Parmenides. Even so, it is hard to imagine that these characters are meant to bear no relation to the historical people concerned, and it is undeniable that Plato's depiction of his predecessors played an important role in creating a history of Greek philosophy and in emphasizing the role of face-to-face discussion, argument and disagreement in its development.⁴ Aristotle's treatises offer a more systematic and less dramatic treatment of his predecessors but always in the service of the promotion of his own preferred view. Sometimes he chooses to present these earlier thoughts as partial or mistaken attempts to grasp the full account that he himself provides, so his discussions of his predecessors often come early in his treatises, setting the scene for the explanations to come. See, for example, Physics 1.2-9, Metaphysics A 3-10, De anima 1.2-5. These texts are of critical importance to our understanding of early Greek philosophy for a number of reasons. They are important sources of information about the theories themselves. Further, Aristotle's insistence on the usefulness of gathering together previous views about a given philosophical question was an important stimulus for the production of "doxographic" texts: ancient works that record different philosophers' views on a given question and that are another important source of information. This work was begun by Aristotle's successor as head of the Lyceum, Theophrastus. Also, in later antiquity a number of lengthy commentaries on Aristotle's works were produced. When those commentators - writers such as Simplicius and Philoponus - came to comment on the sections of Aristotle's works that deal with early Greek philosophy, they often tried to elucidate Aristotle's point by including quotations and discussion of those early philosophers. Often, these commentators' works are our principal sources of these fragments and texts. So whatever view we take of Aristotle's reliability as a reporter of early Greek philosophy, his importance to the survival of our evidence is beyond question.⁵

The role played in the transmission of early Greek philosophy by Aristotelian sources, and indeed other sources that are themselves interested in promoting their own philosophical view, has an important consequence. Since accounts such as these, and other writers influenced by such accounts, are themselves often the most important sources of our information about the earlier events they relate and explain, we can fall into the danger of a self-justifying explanatory circle. Our evidence fits the story we are offered fairly neatly, but this is of course because that same evidence has been chosen precisely to do so. Xenophanes, as we shall see, was considered by some later writers to have been a precursor of later sophisticated forms of scepticism. Certainly, later sceptics such as Sextus were fond of citing parts of Xenophanes' work that seem to cast doubt on our chances of achieving clear and sure understanding. What we know about Xenophanes, therefore, is likely to fit with this picture precisely because much of our evidence for Xenophanes is provided by people trying to paint a certain picture of their own philosophical history.

This ancient history of ancient philosophy might well capture some of the processes involved in the complicated story of philosophical thought before Plato. However, although I shall follow the general outline of its course, there are some important weaknesses in its narrative that need to be addressed. First, in emphasizing certain trends in physics and metaphysics, this history misses out or underplays some other important elements to be found in many of these early philosophers, such as the various discussions of questions of what we would call ethics, epistemology and theology. The early Greek philosophers were undoubtedly concerned with ethical and epistemological questions, as was Socrates, and Socrates himself, at least as portrayed by Plato and Xenophon, is not averse to sometimes turning his thoughts to questions of natural philosophy Even so, Socrates is generally - and perhaps rightly - seen as representing a major change in philosophical concerns.⁶

We face the demanding task of having to deal with two histories: the history of how early Greek philosophy came to be viewed as it was by the philosophers of the classical period and later; and, if we can, the history of early Greek philosophy itself. In what follows, I have tried to assemble an account of early Greek philosophy that retains some of the ancient idea of a narrative of influence between one philosopher and another. I have, for the most part, restricted my interest to writers and thinkers who would be conventionally termed "Presocratic", without any particular commitment to the importance of that term besides its traditional convenience. My interest extends beyond questions of physics and cosmology into what, in the face of often very limited evidence, we might say about their related epistemological, theological and - to a lesser extent - ethical interests, in part because these are areas of enquiry that are captured now by the notoriously difficult to define practice of "philosophy".⁷ Medicine, history, political theory and the like were no doubt also being explored and discussed at this time, sometimes by these very same "philosophers", but I shall leave it to others to give an account of those developments. I have also chosen not to extend my story to include the group of thinkers often referred to as "Sophists", such as Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Prodicus and the like.⁸ Their interests are primarily political and ethical, and they often focus on questions of persuasion, rhetoric, justice and power. Although there are clear continuities between their thoughts and some of the philosophers I shall consider - Democritus, for example - they can also be seen as marking a new and distinct philosophical moment, and the most illuminating context in which to place them is among the familiar discussions of Athens in the classical period: its historians, playwrights and poets, and, most notable of all, Socrates himself.⁹

How do we know about early Greek philosophy?

There are a number of further difficulties to be faced by anyone attempting to offer a history of early Greek philosophy and also by anyone who is not so interested in the history of philosophy as such, but nevertheless wants to find reliable sources of information about the ideas and arguments of early Greek philosophers. First, we have to contend with the usual absence of sources and barriers of language and culture that plague any investigation of an ancient society. Often, the translation and interpretation of the remains of these early Greek philosophers is extremely contentious, not only for the reasons that make any translation from ancient Greek difficult, but also because with so little surviving of many of these thinkers it is often difficult to test a particular understanding of a term or phrase by comparison with other instances or uses by the same author. Further, philosophy at this period has not developed a set of shared and commonly understood technical terminology for certain concepts or ideas. The translations I offer here are my own, but readers should be warned that when it comes to the interpretation and translation of Presocratic philosophy there is very little that is not subject to doubt and debate.

Secondly, much of early Greek history can be accessed only through the histories created by successive generations of Greek writers.¹⁰ The same goes for the early history of Greek philosophy We have no complete works by these early philosophers, and most of what we do have of their works is in the form either of "fragments" - quotations in later ancient writers and other surviving small sections of what we take to be the original works - or else "reports" or "testimonia" - secondhand information from later writers who sometimes had access to much more of the original text than we have. In DK this distinction is marked by labelling testimonia as "A" sources and fragments (printed in larger type) as "B" sources.¹¹ Each philosopher is given a number according to a rough chronological order. Historians are familiar with working with a distinction between "primary" and "secondary" evidence in constructing interpretations of the past and these two categories are closely analogous to the "fragment-testimony" distinction. There are some important complications, however, for the historian of Greek philosophy. Most importantly, it is not always clear what is a fragment and what is a report. Ancient authors were not always entirely clear or scrupulous about marking what is a quotation and what is not and, furthermore, were not entirely averse to altering the wording of an early philosopher even when they intended to "quote" him. Further, even those pieces of information we are happy to accept as fragments have already been chosen and excerpted from a larger work by an intervening source. This is an essential point to keep in mind whenever reading and thinking about these texts, but it is all too easy to forget about when using collections of fragments or reports in modern textbooks and editions.¹²

For example, DK 21 A 33 is a report about Xenophanes from the Christian Hippolytus of Rome's late-second-early-third-century CE work, The Refutation of all Histories (Ref. 1.14,1). It is a claim about Xenophanes' view on the possibility of knowledge "Xenophanes first declared the incomprehensibility of all things, by saying ..." (B34, 3.4). The reference at the end shows that at this point Hippolytus supported his claim with a brief quotation from Xenophanes' poetry, lines 3 and 4 of fragment DK 21 B34: "For even if someone should particularly happen to say what has occurred, all the same he would not himself know it. But opinion covers all." What weight should we give to this report? There is certainly some anachronism in play since the term Hippolytus uses that is translated here as "incomprehensibility" is akatalēpsia, a technical term in the epistemological theory of the Stoics, which was developed more than two hundred years after Xenophanes' time. We might therefore be concerned that Hippolytus has failed to be sensitive to the possibility that Xenophanes' concerns may not have mapped neatly onto this later set of ideas. What about the quotation? It is certainly a genuine piece of Xenophanes' poetry, but in this case we can compare Hippolytus with another source, the second-century CE sceptic Sextus Empiricus, who chooses to give us the two preceding lines as well. Sextus quotes the four-line snippet (which forms DK 21 B34) three times in his Against the Professors (M) at 7.49, 7.110 and 8.326.

And as far as what is clear, no man has seen nor will there be any man who knows about the gods and what I say about all things. For even if someone should particularly happen to say what has occurred, all the same he would not himself know it. But opinion covers all.

Immediately, we might wonder if the preceding lines limit the scope of what Hippolytus took to be a statement about our most general inability to reach the truth, since Xenophanes seems to be talking about theological questions and the topics covered in his work. And once we have become worried about Hippolytus' selective quotation, it is hard not to become concerned that Sextus too may be playing the same sort of game. What were the next two lines of Xenophanes' poem? Sextus himself notes that there were two competing interpretations of what Xenophanes means, both using these four lines as evidence. Some people took him to say that no one has any sure access to truth, while others took him to be recommending that we make do with a certain kind of understanding, here called "opinion", and give up on a more certain or more accurate sort. We might like to think that ancient writers could be useful guides to the thought of these early philosophers, but it is clear that they were often just as divided in their interpretations as modern scholars. And we are in the unfortunate position of often relying on authors such as Hippolytus and Sextus not only for reports about these philosophers, but also for the transmissions of the texts themselves. Great care needs to be taken, therefore, in assessing our evidence and we...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Sources and abbreviations
• Chronology
• Map of the ancient Mediterranean
• 1 Introduction: reading Presocratic philosophy
• 2 Ionian beginnings
• 3 Xenophanes
• 4 The oracles of Heraclitus
• 5 Parmenides
• 6 Reactions to Parmenides
• 7 Anaxagoras
• 8 Empedocles
• 9 Democritus and Leucippus
• 10 Epilogue
• Guide to further reading
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of passages
• Index