Presocratics: Ancient Antecedents

The term "Presocratic" is a modern creation. The earliest attestation discovered so far is found in a manual of the universal history of philosophy published in 1788 by J.-A. Eberhard (the addressee of a famous letter by Kant): one section is entitled "Presocratic Philosophy" ("vorsokratische Philosophie"). But the idea that there is a major caesura between Socrates and what preceded him goes back to Antiquity. In order to understand the modern debates that have developed around the Presocratics, it is indispensable to go back to these ancient Presocratics, whom by convention I propose to designate "pre-Socratics" (in lowercase, and with a hyphen), in order to distinguish them from the "Presocratics," the historiographical category to whose creation they contributed but under which they cannot be entirely subsumed. Even if undeniable similarities make the ancient "pre-Socratics" the natural ancestors of our modern Presocratics, the differences between the two groups are in fact not less significant, in particular with regard to the stakes involved in both of them.

Antiquity knew of two ways to conceive of the dividing line between what preceded Socrates and what followed him: either Socrates abandoned a philosophy of nature for the sake of a philosophy of man (this is the perspective that I shall call Socratic-Ciceronian, which also includes Xenophon), or he passed from a philosophy of things to a philosophy of the concept (this is the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition). Although a bridge was constructed between these two traditions, notably by Plato in the Phaedo (a text that is both complex and decisive for the posterity of the Presocratics), they diverge not only in their tenor but also, and even more, in their effects: while the former only thematizes a certain rupture, the latter by contrast brings to light the thread of a deeper continuity beyond it. This dissymmetry, which can be, and indeed has been, specified in different ways, is essential for understanding the modern fate of the Presocratics. It is worth examining precisely its presuppositions and its consequences.

At its origin, the Socratic-Ciceronian tradition is closely connected with Socrates's trial (399 BCE), in which, in order to respond to the accusation of impiety with which (among other things) he was charged, he needed to distinguish himself from an enterprise that had been known at least since the 430s under the name of "inquiry into nature" (peri phuseôs historia).

The Phaedo strongly suggests that the phrase "inquiry into nature" was still perceived as a technical expression at the dramatic date of the conversation it portrays (which is supposed to have occurred on the very day of Socrates's death), and we cannot exclude the possibility that this was still the case at the date of the composition of the dialogue, about fifteen years later. For the Socrates of the Phaedo says that when he was young he "was incredibly eager for the kind of wisdom that is called the inquiry into nature," which he expected would give him the knowledge of "the causes of each thing, why each thing comes into being and why it perishes and why it exists." The specification "that is called" points to the novelty of the expression, if not to that of the enterprise itself.

In fact, none of the surviving texts that refer to such an "inquiry into nature" is older than the last third of the fifth century BCE. It is also around this time — and evidently not by chance — that the title "On Nature" comes into circulation, and that it is applied, in certain cases anachronistically, to older works that fell (or were thought to fall) within this genre.

In chapter 20 of the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine (which also happens to present the first-known occurrence of the abstract term philosophia), its author, a medical writer who advocates traditional methods, distances himself from writings "on nature" that he judges to be too speculative because of the presuppositions (or "hypotheses") they are led to adopt, and contrasts them with medical inquiry as the sole legitimate source of knowledge about the nature of man:

But what they are talking about belongs to philosophy, like Empedocles or others who have written about nature: what a human being is from the beginning, how he first appeared and out of what things he is constituted. But as for me, I think that whatever has been said or written by some expert [sophistês] or doctor about nature belongs less to the art of medicine than to that of painting, and I think that there is no other source than medicine for having some clear knowledge about nature. ... I say that this field of inquiry [tautên tên historiên] knows exactly what a human being is, through what causes he comes about, and everything else.

The second passage is a fragment of Euripides that scholars tend to attribute to a lost tragedy, Antiope, which is known to have contained a debate, famous in Antiquity, between the two brothers Amphion and Zethus regarding the utility and the value of music, and by extension that of intellectual studies:

[Chorus:] Happy the man who, having attained
The knowledge deriving from inquiry [tês historias ... mathêsin],
Aspires neither to trouble for his fellow citizens
Nor to unjust deeds,
But observes immortal nature's
Unaging order, where it was formed,
In what way, and how.
Never to men like this does the practice of shameful actions come near.

The third passage comes from an anonymous dialectical set of arguments known under the title of Dissoi Logoi (Pairs of arguments):

I think that it belongs to the same man and to the same art to be able to discuss briefly, to know the truth of things, to judge a legal case correctly, to be able to make speeches to the people, to know the arts of speeches, and to teach about the nature of all things, both their present condition and their origins.

On the basis of these three texts, which echo the passage from the Phaedo and each other, we can see that "the inquiry into nature" involved two principal characteristics. On the one hand, it is directed toward a totality (it bears upon "all things" or upon "the whole"). On the other hand, it adopts a resolutely genetic perspective (it explains the existing condition of things by tracing the history of its development from the origins).

One can identify fairly well the stages that, after a process of rapid crystallization, ended up transforming the authors of treatises on "the nature of all things" into "natural philosophers," those thinkers whom Aristotle called simply "naturalists" (phusikoi). In a passage of the Memorabilia that echoes the one in the Phaedo, Xenophon still has recourse to a comprehensive expression when, in the...