Early Greek philosophy

by John Burnet

CONTENTS

	PAGES
Introduction	[1-35]
CHAPTER I
The Milesian School	[37-84]
CHAPTER II
Science and Religion	[85-142]
CHAPTER III
Herakleitos of Ephesos	[143-191]
CHAPTER IV
Parmenides of Elea	[192-226]
CHAPTER V
Empedokles of Akragas	[227-289]
CHAPTER VI
Anaxagoras of Klazomenai	[290-318]
CHAPTER VII
The Pythagoreans	[319-356]
CHAPTER VIII
The Younger Eleatics	[357-379]
CHAPTER IX
Leukippos of Miletos	[380-404]
CHAPTER X
Eclecticism and Reaction	[405-418]
APPENDIX
The Sources	[419-426]
INDEX	[427-433]

ABBREVIATIONS

Arch.	Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie. Berlin, 1888-1908.
Beare.	Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition, by John I. Beare. Oxford, 1906.
Diels Dox.	Doxographi graeci. Hermannus Diels. Berlin, 1879.
Diels Vors.	Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, von Hermann Diels, Zweite Auflage, Erster Band. Berlin, 1906.
Gomperz.	Greek Thinkers, by Theodor Gomperz, Authorised (English) Edition, vol. i. London, 1901.
Jacoby.	Apollodors Chronik, von Felix Jacoby (Philol. Unters. Heft xvi.). Berlin, 1902.
R. P.	Historia Philosophiae Graecae, H. Ritter et L. Preller. Editio octava, quam curavit Eduardus Wellmann. Gotha, 1898.
Zeller.	Die Philosophie der Griechen, dargestellt von Dr. Eduard Zeller. Erster Theil, Fünfte Auflage. Leipzig, 1892.

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY

INTRODUCTION

The cosmological character of early Greek philosophy.

I. It was not till the primitive view of the world and the customary rules of life had broken down, that the Greeks, began to feel the needs which philosophies of nature and of conduct seek to satisfy. Nor were those needs felt all at once. The traditional maxims of conduct were not seriously questioned till the old view of nature had passed away; and, for this reason, the earliest philosophers busied themselves mainly with speculations about the world around them. In due season, Logic was called into being to meet a fresh want. The pursuit of cosmological inquiry beyond a certain point inevitably brought to light a wide divergence between science and common sense, which was itself a problem that demanded solution, and moreover constrained philosophers to study the means of defending their paradoxes against the prejudices of the unscientific many. Later still, the prevailing interest in logical matters raised the question of the origin and validity of knowledge; while, about the same time, the breakdown of traditional morality gave rise to Ethics. The period which precedes the rise of Logic and Ethics has thus a distinctive character of its own, and may fitly be treated apart.[^[1]]

The primitive view of the world.

II. Even in the earliest times of which we have any record, the primitive view of the world is fast passing away. We are left to gather what manner of thing it was from the stray glimpses we get of it here and there in the older literature, to which it forms a sort of sombre background, and from the many strange myths and stranger rites that lived on, as if to bear witness of it to later times, not only in out-of-the-way parts of Hellas, but even in the “mysteries” of the more cultivated states. So far as we can see, it must have been essentially a thing of shreds and patches, ready to fall in pieces as soon as stirred by the fresh breeze of a larger experience and a more fearless curiosity. The only explanation of the world it could offer was a wild tale of the origin of things. Such a story as that of Ouranos, Gaia, and Kronos belongs plainly, as Mr. Lang has shown in Custom and Myth, to the same level of thought as the Maori tale of Papa and Rangi; while in its details the Greek myth is, if anything, the more savage of the two.