by A. A. Long
Aristotle has an implicit concept of early Greek philosophy, but it is more pre-Platonic than pre-Socratic.16 Subsequent authors of philosophical “successions” and lives, writing in Hellenistic times, tended to draw a line under Socrates in order to present everything that came after him as a series of Socratic schools specializing in ethics.17 Yet, Socrates himself could also be presented as the last link in a succession that began with Anaximander.18 For us these classifications are mainly of antiquarian interest, but they help to show that the boundaries of this history, though they need to be drawn, are inevitably imprecise and partly subjective.
The point is not simply methodological. It also affects what we take as the beginning of early Greek philosophy, and how we interpret its subsequent history. I say history rather than development, because the concept of development, which controls Zeller’s Hegelian treatment of Greek philosophy, has also been too dominant.19 Its biological connotations tend to prejudge the superiority of what comes later to what precedes, and while there undoubtedly are developments in the sense that Democritus’ atomism is a response to and (in our modern eyes) a clear advance on all preceding theories concerning the foundations of physical reality, Heraclitus and Parmenides, for instance, deserve scrutiny and provoke thought entirely for their own sake, however we assess them in relation to subsequent philosophy.
As regards the beginning, this book follows the convention, authorized by Aristotle, of making Thales of Miletus the pioneer, and no individual claimant with a better title will ever be suggested. Yet Aristotle, to his credit, observes that “one could suspect” that the epic poet Hesiod has adumbrated his own idea of an “efficient cause” (Metaph. I.4 984b23). In certain contexts, Aristotle is quite prepared to find philosophical thoughts in figures prior to Thales. And was Thales or Anaximander the first Ionian philosopher? Diogenes Laertius, writing around A.D. 200, classifies Thales as one of the seven wise men (sophoi), but he also makes him the teacher of Anaximander, whom he credits with originating Ionian philosophy (1.13).
Then there is the intriguing but obscure figure of Pherecydes, the first, according to some very late reports, to teach the immortality of the soul.20 Suspicion about this is natural when one reads that Pherecydes was the teacher of Pythagoras (D. L. ibid.), and Pherecydes too is pushed back by Diogenes into the ranks of “wise men” prior to philosophy. The question of whether to include Hesiod and Pherecydes in the history of early Greek philosophy is usually answered either negatively or by treating them as “forerunners.”21 One justification for that procedure will emphasize the difference between the mythological cosmogonies of Hesiod and Pherecydes and the early Ionian cosmologists’ reference to observable regularities that do not depend upon the arbitrary will of divinities. The point is well taken, but it will hardly stand as a defining characteristic of early Greek philosophy in general. Neither Parmenides nor Empedocles (nor Plato, for that matter) disavows all use of mythology, and theology is an important element in the thinking of Xenophanes and Heraclitus (see Chapters 10 and 16).
If Thales or Pythagoras or Xenophanes had been isolated figures, to whom their contemporaries and the next generation made no significant and explicit responses, there would be little reason for treating them as the beginnings of philosophy as distinct from the continuation of “wisdom” already represented by the likes of Hesiod and Pherecydes. What particularly distinguishes the former group from the latter is a pair of very significant facts. First, Thales, whether or not he “taught” Anaximander, was plainly perceived as influencing the more ambitious cosmologies of his fellow Milesians, Anaximander and Anaximenes. He left some kind of intellectual legacy which could be drawn upon, improved, and criticized. Second, by around 500 B.C. Heraclitus forcefully differentiates his own thought from the “polymathy” of both Hesiod and three others – Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus (DK 22 B40).
This quartet of names is most revealing. Heraclitus couples the revered poet Hesiod with three recent contenders for “wisdom.” To Pythagoras and Xenophanes he adds the Milesian geographer and chronicler Hecataeus. We could ask for no better evidence than this for a participant’s perspective on Greek philosophy in its formative stage. Heraclitus seeks to distance himself both from ancient authorities (Hesiod) and from a group of near contemporary figures. We should assume that he chose this constellation quite deliberately. Three of them stand for new, would-be authorities, representatives of an enterprise in which he too is engaged, but which he will execute far more effectively. Significantly, however, Heraclitus is so close to the beginnings of the tradition he will help to shape that he attacks Hesiod in the same sentence that pillories Xenophanes, Pythagoras, and Hecataeus.
Competition over wisdom and skill had long been endemic in Greek culture. Poets as well as athletes vied with and were expected to vie with one another. What is new in Heraclitus (and we see it also in Xenophanes) is the subject for competition. Xenophanes, according to the better construal of an ambiguous sentence, describes himself as talking about “all things” (DK 21 B34),22 and Heraclitus, right at the beginning of his book, claims that all things happen in accordance with the account (logos) that he gives (DK 22 B1). Within the same context, Heraclitus describes himself as “distinguishing each thing according to its nature” (physis). The “inquiry into nature” is an apt description of early Greek philosophy; it was Aristotle’s expression, as we have seen, and there is no doubt that some early Greek philosophers, whether or not they used the word, pioneered such connotations of nature as objectivity, the way things are, the basic structure of things, reality as distinct from appearance or convention. Still, to say all this is to jump ahead somewhat. More authentic for grasping what Xenophanes and Heraclitus took themselves to be undertaking may be the formulation, “giving an account of all things.”
GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF ALL THINGS
We should take this expression in a quasi-technical way. The project is not to talk about or explain literally everything, but rather to give a universalist account, to show what the “all” or the universe is like, to take everything – the world as a whole – as the subject of inquiry.23 We can now see why Heraclitus chose the four members of his dismissed quartet: Xenophanes probably professed a discussion of all things; Hecataeus of Miletus had made a map of the earth, and he also wrote a work tracing families back to their mythological origins; Hesiod’s Theogony is universalist in its aim to include the main features of the visible world and also numerous “abstract” things such as love, strife, friendship, and deceit, within the scheme of divine progenitors and their offspring. As for Pythagoras, even if he did not initiate the mathematics and the musical models of the world, associated with his name, we can presume he was widely regarded as the author of a quite general account of things, especially how human beings, by virtue of their souls, are situated.
It is significant that Heraclitus does not include Thales, Anaximander, or Anaximenes in his hit-list. If his point had been simply to attack all other universalists, these Milesian cosmologists could have been prime candidates. What saved them from from criticism here, we may guess, is the focus of their accounts on the world’s underlying unity, the proposition that Heraclitus himself proclaims to be the essence of wisdom – “All things are one” (DK 22 B1). Hesiod and the younger trio, by contrast, are taken to have obscured this central truth by contaminating their universalist pretensions with a multiplicity of data (polymathy).24
By viewing early Greek philosophy as a project of accounting for and systematizing all things, we get a formulation that incorporates the main figures discussed in this book, and that does justice to their fluidity and variety without collapsing into vagueness. The term “nature” (physis), in spite of its generality, inclines us to regard something more restrictive, the physical world and in particular its beginning (because physis primarily means “origin” or “growth”), as their single focus. This works pretty well in the case of the Milesian cosmologists, for whom our patchy evidence is largely filtered v
ia the Aristotelian tradition. It is less effective for delineating the early Greek philosophers whose own words we are in a position to read, especially if it inclines us to to see them as detached observers and theorists of nature, who do not include the mind and human subject within the scope of their inquiries.25 Yet, right at the beginning of our period at Miletus, we find Anaximander investigating the origin of living beings and the “evolution” of humans.26 In the next generation, Anaximenes used the human soul as a microcosmic model for the way “divine” air encompasses the world.27 Even at Miletus, then, “cosmology” was broadly conceived. When we come to thinkers who are better attested, their universalism and interest in human experience are strikingly evident. This book documents numerous familiar instances, but others, less well known, are highly relevant here.
Anaxagoras studied Homer’s ethical content, and his cosmology was used as the basis for giving an allegorical account of the Iliad.28 Democritus, of whose voluminous writings we possess pathetically little, anticipates Aristotle in the vast scope of his interests. They included ethics (see Chapter 9), mathematics, music, anthropology, and literary theory, especially on Homer. Both Gorgias and Hippias, according to Plato, were prepared to talk on any subject, and Plato describes Hippias’ claim to teach astronomy, mathematics, and philology, to the last of which both Prodicus and Protagoras made salient contributions.29 As a defining mark of early Greek philosophy’s scope, “accounting for all things” can accommodate the so-called sophists within the tradition. Doubtless Gorgias and Protagoras had nothing to say about objective nature, but that can be explained by their sceptical or relativistic views on truth (see Chapter 14). They certainly were prepared to talk about “all (the) things” they deemed relevant to human utility and understanding, as befits Protagoras’ famous slogan: “Man is the measure of all things.”
This is not to say that little has changed between the interests and methods of the earliest of the early Greek philosophers and those of the latest. Nor is it to question the sophists’ innovativeness in their role as paid educators. By the later years of the fifth century, “wisdom” (sophia), the common denominator of the words philosophy and sophist, has acquired a more “professional” connotation than it had at the time of Thales – a connotation of acknowledged expertise in understanding and teaching the general conditions of the world and human experience. This cultural development would not have been possible without the startlingly bold presumption, evident from the Milesians onward, that attempts to account for all things, as distinct from relying on trust and tradition, are humanly possible and desirable. Even Aristophanes supports this interpretation of the scope of early Greek philosophy; for while we may choose to call his parodic Socrates a combination of “natural” scientist and sophist, the character in the comedy itself is a unity.
To sum up. From about 550–500 B.C. in Ionia – at Miletus (the city of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes), Samos (the birthplace of Pythagoras), Colophon (Xenophanes’ native city), and Ephesus (the home of Heraclitus) – what will become a quite new intellectual tradition is in the making. The persons in question are highly individualistic. Pythagoras migrates to Croton in southern Italy, and forms a religious community there; Xenophanes includes Italian cities in his travels, and composes in various verse forms; Anaximander writes a book in the new medium of prose; and Heraclitus expresses himself in highly obscure and epigrammatic sentences. There is no conformity, as yet, about what it is to philosophize, no conception of philosophy as such. However, the youngest of these figures, Heraclitus, is already insistent that he has an account of “all things” that is uniquely correct and vastly better than what the others have to offer.
Long before, Hesiod had presented his Theogony in a poetic competition, and he too could have called it an account, or at least a story, about “all things.” What is it, apart from Heraclitus’ distance from traditional mythology and epic discursiveness, that sets him radically apart from Hesiod? Among many points that could be adduced, five are of prime importance. First, Heraclitus is quite explicit about the kind of account he intends to give: it is to be an account that “explains” and “distinguishes” each thing. Trading on the multiple meanings of the word logos (discourse, account, reckoning, measure), he comes as close as the current resources of his language allow, to saying that he will give a “rational” and systematic account of all things. Second, his pronouncements, in spite of their obscurity, show his concern to make his account coherent with our cognitive faculties, both empirically and conceptually. He makes it possible to conduct an argument with him. Third, he formulates this account in a way calculated to “awaken” people from their individual delusions about how all things happen. He has a transformative, one might almost say “salvational,” objective. Fourth, he intends not only to tell truths but also to tell them in such a way that those who listen will be required to think and investigate for themselves. He is a teacher who wishes to provoke the minds of his audience. Fifth, as Xenophanes had already done, Heraclitus sets himself apart from merely ethnocentric conventions and received wisdom, but he also adopts a critical distance from Xenophanes and everyone else.
Giving an account of all things that is (1) explanatory and systematic, (2) coherent and argumentative, (3) transformative, (4) educationally provocative, and (5) critical and unconventional – with such a formulation we can encompass the general project of early Greek philosophy without anachronism and with respect for its diversities of emphasis, method, and specific content. Like any generalization, it is too broad to incorporate every particularity; this book, for instance, scarcely deals with the meteorological speculations of some early Greek thinkers. Still, the generalization is apt for those thinkers whose own words are well attested, especially Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles; it fits what we know of Democritus, and to quite an extent, it also fits the sophists. There is nothing original about my first, second, and fifth features, but the third and fourth require some amplification.
Karl Popper wrote of the Presocratics’ “simple straightforward rationality.“30 His enthusiasm for these thinkers is beguiling, but they actually become far more interesting when we acknowledge that their rationality was neither simple nor straightforward. A prominent French scholar has recently proposed that the entire Graeco-Roman tradition of philosophy should be construed, first and foremost, as practical and “spiritual” in its goals, advocating philosophy as a way of life.31 This characterization will strike many people as appropriate only to some later ancient philosophies, but it has the great merit of asking us not to impute modernist conceptions of philosophy’s complete disinterestedness or “pure” inquiry to classical antiquity. Notice, for instance, how Euripides, a tragedian deeply versed in the intellectual ferment of his era, makes the chorus in one of his lost plays comment on the blessings of “inquiry”:32
Blessed is he who has learned how to engage in inquiry,
with no impulse to harm his countrymen or to pursue
wrongful actions, but perceives the order of immortal and ageless
nature, how it is structured.
In these lines we hear early Greek philosophy praised in contemporary words that capture its holistic ambition, scientific, speculative, ethical, and awe-inspiring.
The leading figures clearly take falsehood to be grievously damaging to those in error, hence the strident tones with which Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles berate their unenlightened audience. Not only Pythagoras but also these thinkers have objectives that can be called transformative, and much of Plato’s animus against Protagoras stems from his belief that the latter’s claims to be able to teach good management of one’s own and one’s city’s affairs cannot stand their ground against Socratic scrutiny. Plato did not invent the notion that a true account of all things will have a beneficial effect on the lives of those willing to attend to it; he inherited this idea from his philosophical predecessors.
Directly related to this is the feature of bein
g educationally provocative. That hallmark of Socrates can also be traced further back. Although Plato persuades us to draw a radical distinction between Socratic discourse and the rhetoric of sophists, Plato’s Socrates, like Plato himself, is also a master rhetorician, as any effective educator must be. Truth, in order to be recognized, needs persuasive expression, but if people are also to be encouraged to discover truths for themselves, they need precisely the provocation in which Heraclitus and Parmenides engaged and which Protagoras as well as Socrates probably engaged in too.
These points reinforce the misdirections that the Presocratic label can induce. To quite a large extent, Plato’s Socrates fits the characterization of early Greek philosophy I have offered, and Plato himself fits it even better.33 In his earliest writings, Plato primarily focused on the ethical questions and methodology he took to be Socrates’ distinctive legacy, but as his thinking developed, he concentrated increasingly on Heraclitus, Protagoras, the Pythagoreans, and the Eleatics, outlining his own cosmology only in the Timaeus, one of his latest works. Like Aristotle, we should sometimes draw a line before Socrates or before Plato, but for some purposes we need to extend the earliest phase to include even Plato himself.