Miletus School of Philosophy and its main representatives

Formation of the philosophy of ancient Greece took place in the sixth to fifth centuries before Christ. It is during this period that the "wise men" appear who try to rationally explain what the ancient myths told about. It is believed that the development of this process is due to the fact that the commercial and industrial part of the population, which began to struggle for power with the landowning aristocracy and move to a democratic government, worked out its own worldview. At the root of this "naive-spontaneous" thinking was the so-called Miletus school of philosophy.

Traditionally, the founder of this direction is Thales. He lived at the end of the seventh-first half of the sixth century BC. Thales believed that all things have a single beginning. To them he called water. And it's not just a liquid or a substance. On the one hand, water for the philosopher is the environment on which our world "holds", that is, the Earth. On the other hand, it is reasonable, "God's." The whole world from the point of view of the founder of the direction, which later became known as the Miletus School of Philosophy, is filled with souls. The latter are almost equal to the deities and are infused into the bodies to become the source of their intellectual development. The water of Thales also plays a huge role in epistemology. Since everything can be reduced to a single beginning, it is also the basis of all knowledge. And this is facilitated by a wise search and the right choice.

What other representatives of the Miletus School of Philosophy were there? We know Anaximander, who studied with Thales. The name of his work is known, which bears the name "On Nature". That is why the thinkers of ancient Greece, following in his footsteps, began to be defined as natural philosophers. Anaximander was the first to draw the conclusion that at the heart of all things there can not be any concrete substance, but something all-encompassing, infinite, eternally moving. He called this category "apeiron." The Miletus school of philosophy in the person of Anaximander even put forward the idea that man could appear on earth as a result of evolution. True, he talks about it very naively. The philosopher believed that the first person originated in the womb of a huge fish, where he grew up. And then he went outside and began to exist independently, continuing his family.

The Miletus school of philosophy was most interested in the origin and basis of being and life, that is, ontology. The pupil of the creator of the "apeiron" Anaximen again returned to the specification of the single beginning of everything. He thought it was air. After all, he is the most indefinite and faceless of all four elements known to us. To some extent, this thinker followed his teacher, because he defined the air as "apyeros" -oneless. And already its properties are what Anaximander saw, that is eternity, constant movement and all-pervading action. Thus, "apeiron" is the quality of air, and not a separate substance. Recounting Thales, Anaximenus saw in his original source the source of not only matter, but also souls. The latter have even more "air" qualities - they are not as mundane as the bodies, and therefore can create and create a new and great. So, this is the whole Miletus school of philosophy. Briefly outlined its main provisions. However, on these three of its representatives does not end the school's history. Its main, fundamental provisions were developed by the philosopher from another city of Asia Minor, Ephesus. This is the famous Heraclitus. He summarized all the ideas of the Milesians about the original and introduced into scientific discourse the term that we use so far. This is the Logos. He represents the deepest foundation of being and the goal of all knowledge. Heraclitus believes that although all people are reasonable, the higher understanding of the "logos" is not given to everyone. This principle maintains everything in being, but its material embodiment is fire. It flares up and then fades, and therefore everything in the world is transitory. It never repeats itself, but it is always changeable. Everything consists of contradictions that not only fight, but also support each other. The human soul is also born from a special fire, and its logos is unique - it is capable of self-development. The Logos is also the source of laws that people create, because it seeks to maintain order everywhere.