Pre-Socratic philosophy

The Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers were active before Socrates. The popular usage of the term comes from Hermann Diels' work Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (The Fragments of the Pre-Socratics, 1903).^[1]

Most of what we know about the pre-Socractic philosophers come from quotations by later philosophers and historians. While most of them produced significant texts, none of the texts have survived in complete form.

The standard reference works in English are:

• Gompertz, Theodor 1901. The Greek thinkers: a history of ancient philosophy. Volume 1: the beginnings. London: Murray.
• Guthrie W.K. 1962. A history of Greek philosophy. Volume 1: The earlier presocratics and the Pythagoreans. Cambridge University Press.

The fundamental idea which motivated most of the presocratics (as they are called) is naturalism. This is the idea that questions about life and the world can be answered without using myths, and that "the natural world is the whole of reality".^[2]

With the Greeks we see rational thought and scientific reasoning appear.^[3]

1. ↑ The term "Pre-Sokratic", however, had been in use as early as George Grote's Plato and the other companions of Sokrates (1865).
2. ↑ Jenkins I. 1942, in Runes D.D. The dictionary of philosophy. New York:Philosophical Library, p205.
3. ↑ Guthrie W.K. 1962. A history of Greek philosophy. Volume 1: The earlier presocratics and the Pythagoreans. Cambridge University Press, p1.