Heraclitus by Johannes Moreelse

© Darrell Arnold Ph.D.– (Reprinted with Permission)
https://darrellarnold.com/2018/09/18/presocratics/

More than anything, Heraclitus is known as the philosopher of flux. As is famously attributed to him: “One cannot step in the same river twice” (D 91). Or as he similarly notes elsewhere: “As they step into the same rivers, other and still other waters flow upon them.” Continue reading The Presocratics – Heraclitus →

Thales of Miletus “the first philosoher”

© Darrell Arnold Ph.D.– (Reprinted with Permission)
https://darrellarnold.com/2018/09/18/presocratics/

The very first of the Greek thinkers — the Ionians — lived in Asia Minor, in present-day Turkey. They were speculative natural philosophers. Thales, who Aristotle considered the first philosopher, speculated that the various distinct objects of the world all had the same substratum. Underneath the appearance of division in the world, there was a basic material unity: Continue reading The Presocratics – The Ionians →

  The School of Athens fresco by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael

© Darrell Arnold Ph.D.– (Reprinted with Permission)
https://darrellarnold.com/2018/09/18/presocratics/

The earliest Greek philosophers are typically known as “Presocratic” philosophers. Yet this designation as “Presocratic” first was explicitly used in the 18th century as historians of philosophy attempted to re-catalog the discipline’s past. Continue reading The Presocratics →