What are the origins of Philosophy? The first thinkers

We review the main thinkers of the origins of philosophy as we understand it today.

Western philosophy has a long history and tradition. Its beginnings are often attributed to the Greek thinkers, who have had a major impact on our way of interpreting the world. In fact, it is largely for this reason that Hellenic culture is known as "the cradle of Western civilization".

In this article we will take a general overview of the origins of the origins of philosophy, beginning with the pre-Socratics, Socrates, SocratesSocrates, Plato and Aristotle.

The origins of Western philosophy

Western philosophy was born in Miletus, Ionia, which was a Greek colony located in Asia. Among other things, Miletus was a cosmopolitan city where people with different religious beliefs lived together and there was a great cultural diversity. In other words, there were people with many different perspectives and beliefs.

Likewise, it was in Miletus it was in Miletus that for the first time religious myths were questioned in a major way and the first legislations were devised. and the first legislations were devised, which eventually led people to move away from magical or supernatural thinking.

At this time, leisure (free time) was devoted precisely to developing this thinking based on the natural, the existent and the concrete. In fact, from this (from the word "leisure", in Greek), the word "school" arose, although its current meaning is quite distant from that of "free time".

Thales of Miletus is considered the first philosopher of the West, since he was the first to explain the phenomena of the world on the basis of explanations of nature, and no longer through pure mythology.. However, philosophy continued to be a task with an important component of speculation, since science as we know it did not yet exist, and on the other hand, the transmission of culture was fundamentally oral.

The philosophers who were formed in the same period as Thales of Miletus are known as the pre-Socratics. After them, with the arrival of Socrates, there was a very important change in the Western worldview, so it is considered a new stage in the history of philosophy (the Socratics). Finally, it is the disciples of Socrates who close the first stage of ancient philosophy.

1. The pre-Socratics

The pre-Socratics understood and analyzed the origins of the universe through magical-religious stories and myths. At this time, nature was not the terrain of the material that is at the disposal of human activity, as if they were two separate elements.

On the contrary, nature is closer to the idea of power or energy, intrinsic to the human being himself.. There was no such radical dissociation between nature and culture, just as there was no such dissociation between body and mind. For the same reason, knowledge of nature was not given by quantitative and rational explanations, but by an understanding closer to aesthetics, ethics or ontology.

The pre-Socratics are mostly natives of Asia Minor, with which, much of their thought converges with Eastern philosophies.. In fact, because of the history of mobilization from one territory to another, largely mediated by disputes and wars, the Ionian cities had a great relationship with the East. Part of this relationship resulted, for example, in the development of writing, calculus and astronomy.

Socrates

The history of the origins of philosophy is mainly divided before and after Socrates. This is because with Socrates, magical-religious explanations were finally abandoned and rational answers to the phenomena of the world were sought. rational answers to the phenomena of the world. From myth we moved on to logos (reason or the word), which is positioned as the basis for creating knowledge, up to the present day.

This knowledge is acquired through questions, because they are what allow rational discussion, and to ask those questions it is necessary to have doubts about everything that happens around us. That is, to remain alert, curious and a little skeptical about the phenomena of the world.

What changes from his philosophy is the way of understanding justice, love, virtue (similar to the "soul"), ethics and morality, and the knowledge of the self.. For Socrates, virtue and knowledge are strongly connected, as are ignorance and vice.

The written records we have about Socrates were not written directly by him, but by his best-known disciples: Plato and later Aristotle.

3. Plato

Plato's real name was Aristocles, he was a descendant of an aristocratic family and was a relative of the last king of Athens. But, when the oligarchy condemned Socrates, he soon created affinity with the idea of democracy. However, it was the Athenian democrats themselves who brought about Socrates' condemnation, and he was once again disappointed.

Between these and other experiences, Plato developed a theory of the state based on life and the political affairs of the polis (the city). (the city). After leaving Athens for a long time, he returns and founds in the gardens of Academos, the first university in the world, which received the name of Academy.

For Plato, knowledge is not only attained through reason, but through affection, or rather love (of wisdom). He established a series of myths that illustrate how abstract ideas are mixed with the dimension of the concrete.

His texts are written in the form of dialoguesSome of the most famous are Phaedrus (on love and beauty), Phaedo (on the immortality of the soul), the Banquet, the Gorgias and perhaps the most representative: the Republic, where he sets out a series of social utopias that continue to be discussed to this day.

4. Aristotle

Aristotle is Plato's most popular disciple in the history of philosophy. He founded his own school, which was dedicated to Apollo Lycius, so it was called the Lyceum. Aristotle thought that the elements of reality were singular and were the things themselves. He developed the idea of "substance" and divided it into three types: the sensible and perishable substance, the sensible and external substance and the immovable substance.

Aristotle's philosophy is considered a realistic philosophy, inasmuch as, unlike Plato who developed "ideas", Aristotle wanted to see things in themselves, as dynamic, individual and concrete entities.. For him, the essence of an object is the object itself.

According to this philosopher, all living beings have a soul, which is the power of life, of body. But souls are not the same for everyone, so there are different types of powers. For example, there is a nourishing soul, a motive soul or a sensitive soul.

Likewise, according to Aristotle, the difference between human beings and the other living beings is the active intellectIt is immortal and it is the one that defines us as rational beings.

The works we have inherited from Aristotle talk about Logic, Physics, Ethics and Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics and Metaphysics. The first of these is Categories, and among the last are Rhetorical Art and Poetics.

Bibliographical references:

• Brun, J. (2002). The pre-Socratics. Cruz Publications: Mexico.
• Unboxing Philosophy. (2015). Origins of philosophy [Video] Retrieved May 23. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flOJubw6SG0.
• Xirau, R. (2000). Introduction to philosophy. UNAM: Mexico.