THALES OF MILETUS

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⊕ Aristotle's discussion of Thales is part of a longer discussion in which he goes through the thought of previous thinkers who have "approached the investigation of reality and philosophized about truth" to discover whether there is a cause he does not know or, if not, to gain confidence they are the four he has described (Metaphysics I.983a).


"For five years, there was war between the Lydians and the Medes. Each won many victories over the other, and once they fought a battle by night. They were still warring with equal success, when it happened, at an encounter which occurred in the sixth year, that during the battle the day was suddenly turned to night. Thales of Miletus had foretold this loss of daylight to the Ionians, fixing it within the year [585 BCE] in which the change did indeed happen" (Herodotus, Histories I.74).



"[Thales] seems by some accounts to have been the first to study astronomy, the first to predict eclipses of the sun and to fix the solstices; so Eudemus [4th century BCE, student of Aristotle] in his History of Astronomy. It was this which gained for him the admiration of Xenophanes and Herodotus and the notice of Heraclitus and Democritus" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers I.23). Aristotle says that Thales was the "originator" of a kind of "philosophy."

"[T]he earliest philosophers conceived only of material principles as underlying all things. ... All are not agreed, however, as to the number and character of these principles. Thales, the originator of this sort of philosophy (φιλοσοφίας), says that it is water..." (Metaphysics I.3.983b).

In itself, however, this does not entail that Thales was a philosopher.

We need to see what Aristotle means and whether there is reason to think he is right.

What Aristotle says about Thales

To understand what Aristotle means, it is necessary to consider the history of the Greek words that transliterate roughly as "philosophy" and "philosopher" and how Aristotle uses them.

(Transliteration does not preserve meaning. It maps characters from one language to another.)

The word φιλοσοφίας is the genitive singular form of the noun φιλοσοφία. This noun ⊕ is a compound word constructed from the adjective φίλος ("is dearly loved") and noun σοφία ("wisdom"). This adjective and noun respectively transliterate as philos and sophia, and the noun φιλοσοφία transliterates as philosophia.

Thales probably did not call himself a φιλόσοφος. Instances of the adjective φιλόσοφος and noun φιλοσοφία are rare in the surviving Greek literature until about the time of Plato in the 4th century BCE. ⊕

Heraclitus (late 6th, early 5th century BCE) may have used a form of φιλόσοφος. "For according to Heraclitus, men who love wisdom (φιλοσόφους) must be investigators into very many things" (Clement of Alexandria (2nd to 3rd century CE), Stromata 5.140.6 (DK 22 B 35).

There is a form of φιλοσοφία in a text in the Hippocratic corpus from the late 5th century BCE. "Some doctors and sophists say that it is impossible for anyone to know medicine who does not know what a human being is. ... But what they are talking about belongs to philosophy (φιλοσοφίην), like Empedocles and others who have written about nature—what a human is from the beginning, how he came about at first and from what things he is compounded" (On Ancient Medicine 20).

Translators, though, translate φιλοσοφίας as "philosophy" in the Metaphysics passage ⊕ because the extension of this word as Aristotle uses it in this passage overlaps with the extension of the English word.

(In the philosophy of language, it is common to distinguish the "extensions" and "intensions" of words. The intension is the concept. The extension is the set of things that fall under the concept.)

The Athenians Love Knowledge

The use of φιλόσοφος and its cognates changed over time.

Someone could be said to be "wise" (σοφός) if he had mastered a practical skill that gave him an ability to see what to do in situations in which others would typically be confused and go wrong.

Over time this use was extended. The adjective also came to be said of someone who has a practical skill and is interested in and pursues answers to questions related to the more intellectual aspects of the skill.

⊕
Pericles delivered the speech in which (according to Thucydides) these words occur at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) as a part of a public funeral for the war dead. He

Herodotus (5th century BCE) seems to use a participle form of the verb φιλοσοφέω in the same way as Pericles. He has the barbarian Croeseus converse with Solon [Athenian politician, 7th to 6th century BCE]: "My Athenian guest, we have heard a lot about you because of your wisdom and of your wanderings, how as one who loves learning [or "loves wisdom" (φιλοσοφέων)] you have traveled much of the world for the sake of seeing it, so now I desire to ask you who is the most fortunate man you have seen" (Histories I.30). Croeseus does not mean that Solon is a philosopher. Rather, he is impressed that Solon is interested in seeing the world for no immediate practical reason. Solon is not traveling the world as as a merchant or an ambassador but because he interested in having a deeper understanding of the various peoples and their ways.

In the Protagoras, Socrates makes fun of what passed as φιλοσοφία about ethical matters in Solon and the ancients. He characterizes what they called σοφία as isolated, hard to understand traditional sayings.

"[Y]ou can tell that what I say is true and that the Spartans have the best education in the love of wisdom and reason (φιλοσοφίαν καὶ λόγους) by this: if you choose to consort with the meanest of Spartans, at first you will find him making a poor show in the conversation; but soon, at some point or other in the discussion, he gets home with a notable remark, short and compressed—a deadly shot that makes his interlocutor seem like a helpless child. Hence this very truth has been observed by certain persons both in our day and in former times—that the Spartan cult is much more the pursuit of wisdom than of athletics (φιλοσοφεῖν ἢ φιλογυμναστεῖν); for they know that a man's ability to utter such remarks is to be ascribed to his perfect education. Such men were Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of Mytilene, Bias of Priene, Solon of our city, Cleobulus of Lindus, Myson of Chen, and, last of the traditional seven sages, Chilon of Sparta. All these were enthusiasts, lovers and disciples of the Spartan culture; and you can recognize that character in their wisdom (σοφίαν) by the short, memorable sayings that fell from each of them they assembled together and dedicated these as the first-fruits of their lore to Apollo in his Delphic temple, inscribing there those maxims which are on every tongue—'Know thyself' and 'Nothing overmuch.'" To what intent do I say this? To show how the ancient love of wisdom (φιλοσοφίας) had this style of laconic brevity..." (Protagoras 342d).

For the seven the Athenians honored with the title σοφὸς, see Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers I.1. Pericles (5th century BCE) describes the Athenians as wise in this way.

"For we [Athenians] are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we love knowledge (φιλοσοφοῦμεν) without loss of manliness" (Thucydides (5th century BCE), History of the Peloponnesian War II.40).

(φιλοσοφοῦμεν is a first person plural form of the verb φιλοσοφέω, "I love knowledge.")

Pericles does not say that the Athenians are philosophers. Rather, he says that they are interested in questions born in practical matters but that are more theoretical than practical. They pursue answers to these questions for the sake of knowing the answers, but their interest in knowing the answers to these questions does not harm them because it does not make them unable to take appropriate action in the practical situations they encounter.

Aristotle's Interpretation of Thales

When Aristotle says that Thales is a "philosopher," he is not saying what Pericles says about the Athenians. He has something much more specific in mind. He thinks that Thales is trying to identify the "starting-points" (ἀρχαὶ) for existence. Aristotle does not think Thales succeeded, but he thinks that this is what Thales and his fellow the inquirers were trying to do and hence that they were engaged in what we now call metaphysics.

⊕ Aristotle's interpretation of Thales is logically possible, but it seems more likely that Thales's thinking was too indeterminate for Aristotle's interpretation to be true. In Thales's thinking about water and its relation to other things, he is thinking about something most people did not think about. So he pursued answers to certain question in the way Pericles says the Athenians do, but it is questionable whether Thales really thought of himself as trying to identify the "starting-points" for existence and thus as engaging in what we now call metaphysics.

Perseus Digital Library

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon

σοφός, adjective, sophos, "wise"
τέχνη, technē, noun, "art"
φιλοσοφέω, verb, philosopheō, "love knowledge"
φιλοσοφία, philosophia, noun, "love of wisdom"
φιλόσοφος, philosophos, adjective, "lover of wisdom"
φύσις, physis, noun, "nature"