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The Materialists

General Notes

General Notes

General Notes

Anaximenes

Fragments from Anaximenes

Protagoras

Pythagoras

WHO WERE THE PRE-SOCRATIC GREEK PHILOSOPHERS?

Presocratic philosophy was born in the Greek cities of Ionia at the end of the 7th century BCE The foundation of the Ionian school in Miletos is the starting-point of the presocratic thought, namely the first philosophical thought in the Ancient Greek world. The Presocratics combined ancient Greek mythology with rational thinking and sought all the forces which compose nature. The natural presocratic philosophers explored the chief cause of the creation of the world, as well as all those forces on which the universe and humanity itself are founded. Presocratic philosophers lived and taught in Asia Minor, in Thrace, in Sicily and in South Italy.  The native city of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes was Miletos, that of Heraclitus was Ephesos. Samos was the birthplace of Pythagoras and Melissos, and Abdera that of Democritos. Finally, Empedocles was born in Sicily, and Zenon and Parmenides in Elea. The presocratic philosophers spread with their thought, the wings of civilization and philosophy. All the concepts and sciences, which have been rapidly developing up to this day, are the spiritual issue of those philosophers. The concept of substance, the concept of infinity, the concepts of power,numbers, motion, Being, Atom and space-time are creations of this philosophical thought. Socrates grew up in the atmosphere of the Presocratic philosophers and exploided the knowledge and wisdom. His education was based on the Presocratic philosophy and his figure changed the world. Socrates gave philosophy for the first time an anthropocentric, or human-centered, character.  The absence of this element in previous thought is the main reason why the adjective 'Presocratic' is attributed to the philosophers before Socrates. Socrates' moral philosophy sends the light of philosophy even further to Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus. Thus, although the extend of the Presocratic philosophy was initially, its subsequent influence of the whole Greek and western civilization was enormous. The leap from the religious fear to the free and clean spirit has been the most important in the history of science and there is no precedent in any other civilization. People of today are familiarized with the scientific thought. However, at that time the fact that mythology and poetry gave birth to philosophy is very difficult to explain, thus researches face it with admiration. " In all history, nothing is so surpassing or so difficult to account for as the sudden rise of the civilization in Greece. Much of what makes civilization had already existed of thousand of years in Egypt and in Mesopotamia, and had spread thence to neighboring countries. But certain elements had been lacking until the Greeks supplied them. What they achieved in art and literature is familiar to everybody, but what they did in the purely intellectual realm is even more exceptional." (Bertrand Russel, History of the western philosophy)
 

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