Fifty Major Philosophers

Kathryn Plant, Diane Collinson, Kathryn Plant, Diane Collinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781134281299
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

A comprehensive update of the best-selling first edition, this revitalized new text presents readers with a series of clear, well-written entries focusing on fifty of the most influential philosophers from the last two thousand years.

Chosen to present the traditional mainstream of European philosophy, the text also provides a critical survey that meets the needs of readers seeking a broad basic understanding as well as a foundation for further philosophical enquiry.

Encompassing a wide range of ancient, medieval and modern philosophers, features of the second edition include:

• new entries on Dewey, Collingwood, Popper, Quine, Merleau-Ponty, Ayer and Rawls
• a thorough revision of existing entries
• a complete update of the further reading section
• an expanded glossary
• the addition of an alphabetical table of contents and an index for ease of use.

Authoritative and highly readable, this book is a vital reference tool for all those wishing to improve their understanding of some of the world's most fascinating intellectual figures.

FIFTY MAJOR PHILOSOPHERS

Second Edition

THALES OF MILETUS (c. 624–546 BCE)

Western philosophy had its origins in the sixth century BCE at Miletus on the Ionian seaboard of Asia Minor. Ionia was the meeting place of East and West; it was also the land of Homer. The first Milesian philosophers, Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, were open not only to oriental influences and the Homeric tradition but also to the mathematics of Egypt and Babylon and to the ideas and information that flowed along the trade routes passing through Ionia.

What we know of Thales has come to us through the reports of others, for nothing of his own writing has survived. He seems to have been characteristically Greek in that he was extremely capable in a number of ways. He probably travelled to Egypt to learn astronomy and geometry, as well as numerous practical skills to do with the measuring and management of land and water. According to Herodotus, Thales’ mastery of astronomy enabled him to predict an eclipse of the sun that occurred in 585 BCE, and his knowledge of geometry enabled him to navigate ships and to measure pyramids by reference to the shadows they cast at certain times of day. Herodotus also tells a story of how Thales overcame the problem of getting an army across an unbridged river by diverting the flow of water to run behind the army’s encampment until the channel in front of it was shallow enough to be forded.

Thales was also politically astute and is reported to have advised the Ionians to set up a single deliberative chamber at Teos in the middle of Ionia and to regard the other cities as demes or lesser townships. In the history of mathematics he features as the originator of geometrical proof. According to Proclus,¹ he produced a number of propositions which, although not presented in correct logical sequence, were nevertheless related to each other in the deductive reasoning process that came to be required for geometrical proof.

But it was not these wide-ranging achievements that earned Thales the title of philosopher. Rather, it was his attempt to provide a rational description and explanation of the world. This rational project significantly distinguishes his thought from earlier accounts, which were largely based on mythology. He asked the question: What is the source of all things? The answer he gave was: water. He maintained, according to those who wrote about him,² that everything comes into being from water and that the Earth floats on water like a log. Aristotle discusses Thales’ view in his Metaphysics. He points out that Thales does not seem to consider that the water on which the Earth rests must itself rest on something and he suggests that Thales arrives at the supposition that water is the primary substance through observing that everything is nourished by moisture and that seeds and sperm are moist.

We have to remember that Thales’ ideas, as well as those of the other Milesians, may have been shaped by the outlook and understanding of those who reported them. Aristotle, for example, at three hundred years remove, could have known about Thales only indirectly and may not have received an entirely accurate account of his views. Thales, it has been pointed out, would have subscribed to the then popular conception of the world and its surrounding water as stretching downwards limitlessly so that for him there would have been no troublesome question such as that raised by Aristotle about its ultimate support.

That the Earth rested on water was an Egyptian belief as well as part of the Homeric tradition, and it would be a small move from thinking of it as the support of all things to thinking of it as the source of all things. But the details of Thales’ thoughts about the relationship of water to everything else are unknown and Aristotle may, to some extent, have made his own inferences from Thales’ broad conception. What is significant is that Thales apparently substantiated his cosmogony, that is, his theory of the universe, by observation of the natural world rather than by reference to mythology and proverbs.

Thales’ second major claim about the nature of the universe was that ‘all things are full of gods’. Again, the exact meaning of his words is not entirely clear, but he is widely taken to have meant that some kind of vital force permeates the world; that all things are in some sense besouled or partake of a common and unifying vitality. Whether he propounded a relationship between water and the ‘gods in all things’ is not known, but it would be difficult to deny a relationship of some sort between them, given his fundamental premiss that water is the source of everything.

Thales’ view of the nature of the world may seem at first to be more like a theory in the natural sciences than philosophy. In the nineteenth century, its philosophical content and importance were explained with superb lucidity by Friedrich Nietzsche:

Greek Philosophy seems to begin with a preposterous fancy, with the proposition that water is the origin and mother-womb of all things. Is it really necessary to stop there and become serious? Yes, and for three reasons: Firstly, because the proposition does enunciate something about the origin of things; secondly, because it does so without figure and fable; thirdly and lastly, because in it is contained, although only in the chrysalis state, the idea—Everything is one. The first-mentioned reason leaves Thales still in the company of religious and superstitious people; the second, however, takes him out of this company and shows him to us as a natural philosopher; but by virtue of the third, Thales becomes the first Greek philosopher.³

Two other Greek philosophers, Anaximander (c. 610–546 BCE) and Anaximenes (c. 585–528 BCE), form with Thales the trio of thinkers traditionally known as ‘the Milesians’. Anaximander was described by Theophrastus as Thales’ successor and pupil, and he is reported as being, like his teacher, brilliantly versatile and capable. He maintained that the original world-forming stuff is apeiron, a substance that has no boundary, limit, or definition, and that surrounds everything and is the source of everything. He held that things are constantly in interactive motion and that a balance or state of justice between them is thereby maintained. One abstruse fragment of Anaximander’s writing is to be found in an account of his thought given by Simplicius, a philosopher of the sixth century BCE:

And the source of coming-to-be for existing things is that into which destruction, too, happens, ‘according to necessity: for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of Time’, as he describes it in these rather poetical terms.

The third Milesian, Anaximenes, was said by Diogenes to have been a pupil of Anaximander. Anaximenes specified that the basic principle of things was air, that it was infinite, and that other material substances were derived from air by processes of rarefaction and densification. There is one extant sentence of his writing: ‘As our soul, being air, holds us together and controls us, so does wind [or breath] and air enclose the whole world.’ He taught that the Earth was flat and rode upon air and that rain is produced when the air thickens and is compressed. Aetius reports him as saying that the sun ‘is flat like a leaf’ and that all the heavenly bodies are fiery but have earthly bodies among them. What is significant in all this, and what Anaximenes has in common with Thales and Anaximander, is that he endeavours to provide natural explanations for phenomena: his theories are derived from common-sense observations of the world.

For Western philosophy, the Milesians mark the advent of scientific and rational thought. But the transition from myth to reason, the shift from explanations that invoked strange powers to explanations derived from a perception of a natural order and regularities, was not sudden. Rational reflection and recognition of how the natural world functions came piecemeal and very slowly. Thales and his two fellow Milesians were scientists in that they sought to rely on their observations in order to give an account of how things are in the world. But they were also philosophers, because their main concern was to say not just what the world is, but how it came to exist at all. They wanted to describe phenomena, and also to discover their ultimate source.

See also: Aristotle, Pythagoras.

Notes

1 Proclus took his information from a History of Geometry written by Eudemus, who attributed several theorems to Thales, maintaining that he must have em...

Table of contents

• ALSO AVAILABLE FROM ROUTLEDGE
• CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF CONTENTS
• ALPHABETICAL LIST OF CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• FIFTY MAJOR PHILOSOPHERS
• GLOSSARY
• INDEX