Western Civ. 1-15: Pre-Socratics and the West

    As students of western civilization, we are bound to study the concepts most important to our civilization. The core ideas of the west can be traced back over the centuries through the medieval period, to Rome, Greece, and beyond. But what truly came to define the west was made in Greece. Western civilization is characterized by reason, Science, and Philosophy. The first men to seriously consider those questions were known as the Pre-Socratics. The Pre-Socratics were philosophers who lived in the golden age of Greek civilization, before the time of the great Socrates. These thinkers began to emerge around 600 BC, the first being Thales of Milelsia. Their influence spread outwards, particularly in colonies like Ionia, and down through the ages. Little of the original work of these philosophers survives, but much is preserved in the writing of those they influenced.  philosophers sought Natural explanations for the concepts of God, man, natural laws, causation, and time. This essay will explore the influence of the men who prepared the way for the future of western thought.

(Thales of Milea)

    The legacy of the pre-Socratics can be divided into two eras, the ancient and the modern. In antiquity, they contributed principles to both the Socrato-Ciceronian tradition and Platonic-Aristotelian traditions. The naturalistic philosophers of that era influenced a young Socrates to inquire about nature, and that love for knowledge led him to become critical of materialism and more focused on human affairs. In Metaphysics Aristotle criticizes the pre-socratics for not identifying a final cause, and for the absurdity of various ideas. In later times various schools of thought developed around Pre-Socratic philosophers including Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Democritician atomism, and Xenophanes. 

    The Modern Era is made distinct from antiquity here with the rekindling of western philosophy at the end of the 15th century. Modern philosophers identified the central western ideas of freedom, democracy, individual autonomy, and rationalism in the Pre-Socratics and used their axioms to create their own ideas. Francis Bacon was the first notable user of their ideas, having criticized their deductive reasoning he created the first concept of an inductive scientific method. The western traditions of the atom, geometry, and democracy all originate from this era. Existentialists and rationalists such as Nietzsche and Heidegger were highly influenced by the materialist rationalism of their predecessors. Nietzsche even preferred them to the later Socratic and Aristotelian traditions. 

    With such a broad influence over our civilization, it is important to distill the importance of the Pre-socratics for lay students such as ourselves. At first, their influence has been critical to the development of western philosophy. Nobody in the west has not been influenced by Plato or Aristotle, who themselves existed in the time of highest praise for the presocratics. Every democrat, every scientist, every rationalist, and materialist has known in some form or another the work of these men. They were responsible for the ideas of Democracy, science, rationalism, naturalism, metaphysics, materialism, progress in time, causation, and God. Their ideas marked the birth of the western intellectual tradition which has been, and may remain, the most profound in human history. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Socratic_philosophy#Reception_and_legacy