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Presocratics |
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| History of Western philosophy |
| Pre-Socratic · Ancient Medieval · Renaissance 17th · 18th · 19th · 20th century Postmodern · Contemporary |
| See also |
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 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 is sometimes 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 we have 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. Many of them asked:
Others concentrated on defining problems and paradoxes that became the basis for later mathematical, scientific and philosophic study. Of course, the cosmologies proposed by the early Greek philosophers have been updated by views based on modern science. Later philosophers rejected many of the answers they provided, but continued to place importance on their questions.
The traditional cursus of pre-socratic philosophers and movements (there are minor variations) is shown below:
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.
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