Preamble to the Pre-Socratics

The pre-Socratics are a collection of philosophers that came quite literally before Socrates. This is a period of history from around 635BC to around 440BC, although quite a number of the later pre-Socratics were actually contemporaries of Socrates himself. After Socrates' death, and with the rising of Plato and Aristotle, philosophy took a fundamentally different course. These early philosophers are of great interest to me because they represent some of the earliest serious thinkers that we have records of.

On Sources

Given the age of the thinkers, it should come as no surprise that the majority of their works are lost. The question immediately arises how we know anything about them. The primary sources that are still present are some fragments that have been preserved by Simplicus and others. As secondary sources, many other writers like Plato, Aristotle, and Diogenes Laertius provided critique and commentary.

I have not directly referenced the pre-Socratics when discussing their work. It would feel wrong to when the work does not exist, is incomplete, the title is not known and so on. Instead, I have referenced Philosophy Before Socrates by Richard D McKirahan and The Presocratic Philosophers by Jonathan Barnes which contain most of the preserved fragments between them. McKirahan is easier to understand for the general reader, so I suggest starting with him if you do wish to learn more about these thinkers. Barnes presents an extremely dense and detailed account, and is probably the most thorough and comprehensive account of the pre-Socratics we have. As for other modern academic sources, I have also used History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russel and History of Philosophy by A. C. Grayling. Grayling really seems to be rewriting Russel here, but he does offer different interpretations and commentary on the thinkers.

Here I must also thank the Perseus Digital Library, who have wonderfully digitised and indexed ancient Greek and Roman texts. The ability to search not only titles but also the text for words was of indispensable importance. In this way, I was able to find many places across the ages where some small reference was made to the thinkers in question.

On Order

The order in which to present the thinkers is troublesome. The issue broadly is that the thinkers are grouped into schools of thought, but these schools may extend for 200 years. This means that some members of the school might be influenced by a thinker from a different school. For example, Philolaus was a member of the Pythagorean school who was influenced by Democritus. This presents me with a dilemma. Do I present the material in groups of the schools, or do I go chronologically. While going chronologically would eliminate any confusion that arises from cross-pollination of the schools, I elected in the end to introduce the pre-Socratics grouped into their respective schools. I think this gives a much better flavour of what they are about, especially since there is often not much variation of thought within a given school.

On Socrates

While this is a series on the pre-Socratics, I have elected to include Socrates. I originally wrote the article on Socrates not in relation to this series, but will add it to the end as I think a summary of Socrates is a good way to round off the study of the pre-Socratics. After reading about the earlier philosophers you will immediately understand why Socrates is the break point; it is not some mistake, convention, arbitrary choice or accident of history – there is a real, genuine difference before and after his influence.

Preamble - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Socrates