Philosophy › Before Socrates & the first sages
The Presocratic philosophers
c. 585–400 BC· School or movement· Reality, mind & God
Mostly agreedGood evidence; some details uncertain.
Greek thinkers before Socrates who first tried to explain nature by reason instead of myths about the gods.
See it on the Philosophy map →The idea
Starting in Miletus, on the coast of today's Turkey, around 585 BC, they asked what the world is made of and why it changes. Answers ranged widely: water (Thales), the boundless (Anaximander), air (Anaximenes), number (Pythagoras), flux (Heraclitus), unchanging Being (Parmenides), atoms (Democritus). The method mattered more than the answers: propose a natural explanation, then let rivals attack it. Main objection, from Socrates: they studied the heavens and ignored how to live.
Why it matters
They started the habit of rational argument about nature, the common ancestor of Western philosophy and science.
Where it comes from
Almost no complete works survive. We rely on 'fragments', quotations in later writers such as Aristotle, Simplicius and Diogenes Laertius, collected by Hermann Diels in 1903.
Still debated
We read them secondhand, often through critics, so accuracy is uncertain. Even the label is debated: several were Socrates' contemporaries.
Inside this (6)
Connections (2)
▸Thales of Miletus began the tradition of The Presocratic philosophersMostly agreed
The connection
Thales was the first Greek on record to explain the world by one natural substance instead of gods. Fellow Milesians Anaximander and Anaximenes rejected his answer and offered their own, starting the chain of proposal and criticism that defines the Presocratic tradition.
When and how
Miletus, a rich Greek trading city in Ionia (western Turkey), around 585 BC, followed by Anaximander (c. 610–546 BC) and Anaximenes (c. 586–526 BC).
How sure are we?
Aristotle names Thales the founder of this kind of philosophy in Metaphysics Book 1; later summarizers repeat the line of teacher and successor.
Debates and open questions
Whether Thales truly started it or simply became the conventional first name is unknowable; Babylonian and Egyptian learning likely influenced the Milesians.
▸The Presocratic philosophers first posed What is ultimately real?Mostly agreed
The connection
The Presocratics turned a mythic question, where the world came from, into a philosophical one: what is it made of, and how can it change? Over two centuries they tested answers against each other, from water to atoms, building the field later called metaphysics.
When and how
Greek cities of Ionia and southern Italy, about 585–400 BC.
How sure are we?
Aristotle's survey of his predecessors and fragments preserved by later writers show the debate developing step by step.
Debates and open questions
'First posed' is Greek-centered: the Upanishads asked a similar question in India in the same centuries, apparently independently.