Philosophy begins: Why Thales?
The standard claim is that philosophy begins with Thales.
When I teach this to my students, it’s a hard sell, for here are the founding texts in philosophy — ascribed to Thales by Aristotle:
“The first principle and basic nature of all things is water.”
and
“All things are full of gods.”
You can imagine how impressed my students are.
Clearly, some interpretation is necessary. Why do historians of philosophy get worked up over these lines?
To see their significance, let’s set a context by going back up to the worldview of the awesomely great Homer. I’ll do this context-setting in the next post in this sequence, and the meantime will give us a chance to brush up on The Iliad, which I want to use as our pre-philosophy-worldview contrast object.
Focus on this question: Why did Hector die?
