The Ionian or Milesian Philosophers

The three known Ionian or Milesian philosophers – Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes – are the earliest thinkers in this Greek period. They all belong to Milesian School in Miletus, and they were the first to take stride in providing unfamiliar answers to the primary question about the basic stuff of the world. It is unfamiliar answers considering that the influence of religion at that time prevails.

In reading some books on these three philosophers pre-Socratic philosophers, one may discover that the authors quote different historians of the field to put forward a wholesome presentation as towhat makes them worthy to be called ‘philosophers’ including how their thoughts were shaped and other attributes about their achievements. That’s the first thing I will do before presentingthose simple ideas whichare indisputably theirs.

A. Thales

He is known in the ancient period as the first Greek philosopher who tries to formulate an answer to his basic question about the basic stuff of the world (urstoff). Herodotus claims that Thales had predicted a solar eclipse, while Laertius Diogenes also claims that Thales once fell into a well because of star gazing. And lastly Aristotle, one of the great thinkers of the west, attributes to Thales two things, which are his main ideas.

First, Thales answers water as the basic stuff of all things. And second, he conceived that there lies a soul in the magnet, for the reason that magnet has the capacity to move iron.

B. Anaximander

Our source on Anaximander is Theoprastus. Here are the accounts of Theoprastus regarding Anaximander.

First, Anaximander constructed a map for the sailors. Second, his answer on the basic stuff of the world is the indeterminate. What does it mean by it? This indeterminate is to be describing as a never ending movement which consists of different elements, including water of Thales, consuming each other in forming the world. It is a substance without limits, or in Greek it is called ‘to apeiron,’ and this is the material cause.

In such a movement, the interpretation of the concept of justice and injustice is found here. When one element encroach another element, this is an instance called injustice. And the only means for that element to pay its debt is by letting itself be encroached by other elements.

C. Anaximenes

A little fraction is left from Anaximenes’ work where we could draw his ideas.

According to that fraction, he abandons the idea of ‘to apeiron’ or substance without limits, and assigns a determinate element as the basic stuff of the world. It is somehow a backward movement rather than advancing as what Anaximander did.

And what is his answer to the ‘urstoff?’ It is air. Air is the principle of life, and without it we will die. It is air that holds all things together like our soul and the world.

How did he explain further about his air, which is considered as invisible? It is only through the notion of condensation and rarefaction. Air becomes fire through rarefaction and solid like stone by condensation.

Other things attributed to him were his idea of the earth as flat that floats on air like a leaf, and the existence of rainbow as due to the sun’s ray falling on the thick cloud. Since the ray could not penetrate the thick cloud, it produces rainbow on the other side of the cloud.

A little note on Theoprastus

Theoprastus was mentioned under the subjects Anaximander and Anaximenes. He knows the age gap of these three philosophers as he says that Anaximenes is younger than Anaximander, and Anaximander is younger than Thales because of the word ‘associate.’ Anaximenes is an associate of Anaximander, and Anaximander is an associate too of Thales. Thus Thales is the eldest of them all, and Anaximenes is the youngest.

The Urstoff

What makes later generation of thinkers in the ancient Greeks, after Homer and Hesiod, philosophers? These men revolutionize the conventional mentality of the culture at that time, establishing solid arguments from their rational reflections of the world in broadest term. And the quest for answers to the question of urstoff has taken its toll.

The question about urstoff starts from man’s day-to-day observation of reality. The basic form of this is the fact of change, from existence to decay, young to old, life and death. If reality happens that way, there must be a point of origin of all things as they speculate. And this point of origin is somehow permanent, where the emanation of all things coming forth.

The point of origin is at the same time the point of unity. This is the idea of One and the Many made popular by Norris Clarke as the title of his existential metaphysics book. The philosophical questions that led to the discovery of urstoff is this: What is the basic stuff of everything? Does it imply the materiality of all things?

To question about the essence of the urstoff is not the preoccupation of the early thinkers. There was no dichotomy yet in their mind between what is of spirit and of matter. And when Thales answers that it is water,  Anaximenes air, and Heraclitus fire as the ultimate element, they posited a material unity.

Their basic stuffs are very elementary, but it has to be thought of as extraordinary, at least during their times, when their civilization was characterized as living under the domination of the divine, where the answers to all human queries were coming from the supernatural beings – of gods and goddesses. It is extraordinary because they provide human answers as a product of their sense of awe and wonder.

Source: Copleston, Frederick, S.J. A History of Philosophy. Vol. 1 Greece and Rome