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Does philosophy have a first question, one that is either directly or implicitly answered by every philosopher, one that is the foundation stone of all that philosopher's thinking?

Philosophy's First Question

Foreword: Historically the first question in philosophy was: "Is there something that underlies the ever-changing appearances of things, something that does not change (which is the essence or cause of reality)? And is that something one thing or many?" This was the question asked by the earliest philosophers, the Milesians (of Greek Ionia), of whom Thales of Miletus who flourished in the 7th century B.C. was the first, long before the days of the Sophists and Socrates, although their method for answering that question was the same, namely, by the natural light of reason alone.

But the subject of this page is not the Pre-Socratic question in metaphysics of being versus only appearing to be, but instead the subject of this page is the logic of our language. Because there is a question in philosophy that is logically prior to the historical first question -- or indeed of any other question in philosophy -- namely, How is language with meaning distinguished from language without meaning when discussing philosophical questions?

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The First Question for Philosophy

Note: Plato identifies the correct order of Socratic cross-questioning in Republic 339a-b, namely to ask first about a proposition's meaning before asking about its truth. (Related to this is Wittgenstein's "new method in philosophy" of setting aside the question of the truth or falsity of a proposition to look instead at the proposition's meaning.)

All philosophy is a critique of language. (TLP 4.0031

What does it mean? One possibility, that the foundation of philosophy -- the first question on which everything else rests -- is how the philosopher distinguishes sense (language with meaning) from nonsense. Because how a philosopher makes -- or does not make -- that distinction determines whether his philosophy's foundation is bedrock or sand.

On Sand

"... or does not make." How do philosophers distinguish between a proposition with meaning and a mere undefined combination of words? -- Many philosophers don't, because they presume that the distinction between sense and nonsense in the language they use is already clear to them, and that they can talk about "the things the words stand for" without bothering about the words themselves. For example, G.E. Moore's criticism of the young Bertrand Russell: "too confident of insufficient explanations as to meaning of words", and the Cambridge logician W.E. Johnson: "If I say that a proposition has meaning for me, no one has the right to say it is nonsense."

Well, but whatever in our thinking is not subjected to criticism by ourselves or our companions in discussion is not philosophical thinking. That is the standard Socrates set for philosophy: "If anyone knows anything, he can explain what he knows to others", and his explanation must be such that it can be put to the test in cross-questioning to see it if is true or, false. And the Socratic standard applies also to the question of language meaning -- because a proposition may be nonsense rather than true or false. And if we don't question how to distinguish sense from nonsense in the language we use for thinking in philosophy, if we make no demand for an explicit and objective distinction between sense and nonsense (contra W.E. Johnson's view that "... no one has the right to say it is meaningless"), then what is the worth of our thinking in philosophy? because it is not simply a question of "How do you know?" because prior to that question is question "What do you mean?"

On Bedrock

The meaning of 'meaning' Wittgenstein chose for his thinking in philosophy makes an objective distinction between sense and nonsense.

Philosophy's only tool is Language

Language meaning is "the cardinal problem of philosophy" (Wittgenstein's letter to Russell) and not something else. Because in philosophy we can do nothing without using language, which is our only tool for reasoning in philosophy. Philosophy is discourse of reason.

Query: what is the starting place of the philosophy of Epictetus?

One possible answer is "to know the condition of one's own mind" (Discourses i, 26). Now is the question of sense and nonsense logically prior to "knowing the condition of your own mind"? But what would we mean by 'prior' here?

The Socratic form of Epictetus' words is (when taken together with the principle "by the natural light of reason alone" of Thales) the starting place of philosophy, namely "to distinguish what you know from what you only think you know but do not" (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1) (Know thyself). But to distinguish what you know from what you don't know, you must first set a criterion -- i.e. select a definition for what you are going to count as 'knowing' versus 'not knowing' (as e.g. Socrates did: being able to explain what you know to others, an explanation that can stand up against being refuted in discussion).

But whichever criterion we set, we will have to use language to set. And that is what the word 'prior' means here: the question of sense and nonsense is logically prior to any other question in philosophy. "But how will we know whether our language is sense or nonsense before we set a criterion for knowing whether it is or not?"

We might reply this way, that we did not invent the language we speak; we acquired it from the community we grew up in. And that language contains words like 'know' and 'meaning', but that the concepts 'know' and 'meaning' are more or less ill-defined in meaning and varied in their use in the language -- and therefore our first task is to make clear how we are going to use those words in philosophy. This was what was done by both Socrates ('know') and later Wittgenstein ('meaning'): This is what we want these words, these tools, of our language to mean in philosophy. (There are many meanings of the word 'meaning' and many meanings of the word 'know': philosophers select which are useful to them for their philosophical thinking). Philosophy -- or rather the logic branch of philosophy -- is concept clarification.

Select -- or don't select --. And those philosophers who don't select, who take language for granted ("I am concerned with the reality the words name, not with mere words"), or who treat words as if they had essential meanings that do not need to be made clear to "educated speakers of the language" (Russell contra "philosophy without tears"), and who consequently do not disambiguate the language they use, create work which is also unclear in meaning.

When Wittgenstein wrote, "I must begin with the distinction between sense and nonsense", that distinction was already there in the language, but the line between the two was not sharply drawn. "The philosopher's work consists of concept revision", Kierkegaard wrote in his journals. And that was what Wittgenstein undertook.

The ill-definedness (and the feeling of being surrounded by vagueness and confusion and the idle metaphors that often are the cause of it) is the first challenge we must face if we are to set our thinking in philosophy on a firm rather than an unstable foundation.

According to Wittgenstein, philosophy's questions are already there nested in the language, waiting for us when we reach the age of reason. But on the other hand, there is a relationship between language and reality, even if it is not so easy to say what that relationship is, and I do not think that philosophy's eternal questions are entirely a mere expression of conceptual confusion rather than questions at all.

Wittgenstein and Ethics (Exclusion of Philosophy's Third Part)

Note: this continues the discussion of whether the third of philosophy's three parts, namely the subject of Ethics, which Socrates first made part of Philosophy (Diog. L. i, 14), is still, despite Wittgenstein, indeed philosophy or not, because Wittgenstein seemed to imply that philosophical ethics is a counterfeit use of reason, because the foundation of ethics, namely "absolute value", can neither be explained nor reasoned to (it is not rational), that whereas instrumental value can be reasoned to and therefore disputed, ultimate value cannot be.

Even if, as Socrates held, "moral virtue is knowledge" (but Aristotle did not) is, as indeed it is, no more than one way of looking at things, that doesn't make it unphilosophical -- because in its first or final step all philosophy is a way of looking at things. Again it may be, as indeed it is, that the account I give of "Know thyself" is no more than one way of looking at things, that doesn't make it an unphilosophical treatment of ethics. Why? Because it is, as all philosophy is, thoroughgoingly rational: it is reflection guided by and in the context of the light of natural reason and public experience alone.

There is always a choice to be made in philosophy

Wittgenstein wrote in 1947 --

A philosopher says: "Look at things this way!" [But that is not to say that people will look at things that way. [I.e. it is a matter of choice, of choosing to look at things a particular philosopher's way.]] (CV p. 61)

And if that is true, which I think it is, then to say that "These are no more than ways of looking at things" is not to say that they are not philosophy. For what is Wittgenstein's work in philosophy, his selection of the meaning of 'meaning' he chose, the particular definition of 'sense' and 'nonsense' that he chose, the particular meaning of the word 'meaning' that he chose -- is, as well as the two examples from ethics above, no more than one way of looking at things, and nevertheless he does call his work philosophy.

I once said that a proposition is a picture of reality. This might introduce a very useful way of looking at it, but it is nothing else than saying, I want to look at it as a picture. (Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-35 (1979, repr. 1982), ed. Ambrose, p. 108)

And so if Wittgenstein says that ethics is not philosophy, is all he can be saying that he does not want to look at ethics rationally? that his way of looking at ethics is Kantian, rather than Socratic. [Socratic ethics concisely, and Kant's ethics likewise.]

How does a philosopher "clear up thought"?

I conceive of philosophy as an activity of clearing up thought. (Ambrose op cit., p. 225. cf. TLP 4.112 (tr. Ogden): "The object[-ive] of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts ... A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations."

There are many ways to clear up thought, one is to invent categories, a system of classification, which is what Wittgenstein's particular distinction between sense and nonsense is.

What did Wittgenstein mean here by the form of expression 'I conceive of philosophy as'? Does he mean: "This is how I want to look at philosophy" or maybe "This is what I want from philosophy" -- is it the statement of a project in philosophy? Or, oppositely, is it a "real definition" of philosophy, an hypothesis about the essential nature of philosophy, stating the limits of what philosophy is capable of doing or being? Sometimes it appears to be a project in philosophy, but at other times a real definition ("The essential thing ..."). [Conceiving of philosophy, having philosophical views about philosophy.]

"Philosophy treats mental discomforts" (Wittgenstein)

My 'philosophy' points out mistakes in language

My method throughout is to point out mistakes in language. I am going to use the word 'philosophy' for the activity of pointing out such mistakes.

A comparison or continuous development

Why do I wish to call our present activity philosophy, when we also call Plato's activity philosophy? Perhaps because of a certain analogy between them, or perhaps because of the continuous development of the subject.

"A new activity"

Or the new activity may take the place of the old because it removes mental discomforts the old was supposed to. (Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-35, p. 27-28)

Is that all "philosophical perplexity" amounts to, a mere discomfort of the intellect (cf. PI § 255)? Is that true likewise of curiosity?

And is that what the old philosophy was intended to do -- to "remove mental discomfort"? Well, but after all can't we point to Plato's Theaetetus 155c-d where he says that philosophy has its origin in perplexity ("Philosophy begins in wonder")? However, Plato's intent was certainly not to set the mind at rest, but to set the mind seeking the wisdom [philosophical knowledge or insight] that it did not have (Wittgenstein: there is no wisdom to be had from philosophy).

What did Wittgenstein mean by 'thinking'?

But was that really Wittgenstein's view, that there is no "wisdom" to be had from philosophy? What was the meaning of Wittgenstein's last words to Drury, that "Whatever becomes of you, don't stop thinking" (Recollections p. 170) -- what did Wittgenstein mean by the word 'thinking' in his exhortation to Drury? Certainly not blah, blah, blah. He meant what we normally call "philosophical thinking", namely a discussion (with oneself alone or with one's companions) of some aspect of Philosophy's Three Parts (or of the "Philosophy of X") that bases itself on standards of meaning and truth. He did not mean "pointing out mistakes in language", as important as that is, or merely "removing mental discomfort" -- but trying to understand our life and its elements (e.g. the nature of religion, which Wittgenstein and Drury had been discussing when Wittgenstein said those words to Drury) as best one may.

Query: death in philosophy.

When you stop questioning, when you stop seeking to understand, when you stop thinking. It is like stopping to rest in the snow: you fall asleep and you die (CV p. 35).

Between Socrates and Wittgenstein

Socrates' aim in philosophy was to replace ignorance with knowledge ("wisdom") of how man should live his life (Plato, Apology 37e-38a, and "Know thyself" in Xenophon), something which has nothing to do with "removing mental discomfort"; for although someone may well be troubled ("perplexed") by the problem of how he should live, the only solution to that problem is for Socrates is to discover how he should live. And that is the solution of a problem, not its dissolution, i.e. not its dismissal as not being a problem at all. The "old activity" for Socrates is as in the Stoics' third part, namely ethics, or in Plato words "no small matter, but how to live".

Between Plato and Wittgenstein

The difference between Plato and Wittgenstein: "For a blunder, that's too big" (LC p. 61-62) -- i.e. Wittgenstein does not go beyond ("continuous development") Plato; he just takes philosophy in a different direction from Plato. But can Wittgenstein's "the new activity" -- take the place of the old? Well, "pointing out mistakes in language" (clarifying logic of our language) is not going to teach anyone how to live our life; but on the other hand, it will affect how a man lives if it prevents him from taking false paths due to language muddles (i.e. illusions created by our failure to understand the logic of our language), which is important, but it is not the solution to Socrates' problem of how man should live his life.

From G.E. Moore's lecture notes

... he said about the difference between 'philosophy' in the sense in which what he was doing might be called 'philosophy' ... and what has traditionally been called 'philosophy' ... that what he was doing was a "new subject", not merely a stage in a "continuous development" ... the case of calling what he was doing 'philosophy', saying that it was not the same kind of thing as Plato or Berkeley had done, but that we may feel that what he was doing "takes the place" of what Plato and Berkeley did, although it is really a different thing (PP iii, p. 322, 305)

But can that "new subject" take the place of the "old subject?" Not unless its relationship to the old subject were akin to the relationship between natural science and alchemy, which I don't think it is, except perhaps in this: that natural science cannot "turn base metals into gold" either.

A new or an old activity?

Was Wittgenstein's "new subject", namely to point out mistakes in language a "new activity" for philosophy? Of course Plato did not think that philosophy amounted to no more than language muddles that needed to be cleared up (although Plato did dissolve one such muddle in his Sophist 257b-c). But Socratic logic, as Socrates' used the word 'logic' --i.e. to mean 'the study of the meaning of words of our language' -- is not "really a different thing" from what Wittgenstein was doing, not wherever Socrates dealt with questions of logic of language: one way a thesis is refuted in Socratic dialog is, not by showing it is self-contradicting, but by showing that its meaning is unclear or nonsense.

[About Wittgenstein, philosophy and religion. I have long thought that Wittgenstein's world-picture belonged to religion, which is a world-picture that is very different from philosophy's world-picture, and because of this he felt no need for the "old" philosophy. But maybe I am mistaken. "... a very singular man", Russell said of him, and that means: not one easy to understand; and one, I say, from whom men have taken very strange lessons, which I cannot help but think that they are mistaken in taking.]

Is the history of philosophy the history of the advancement and replacement of one philosopher's work by the work of his philosophical heirs?

Isaac Newton's physics replaced Aristotle's, only to be replaced by Einstein's, which was then replaced by Quantum Mechanics. Some things were retained -- i.e. the subject matter of physics has not changed -- but foundations were revised (and new data extended or revised older theories), such that few if any physicists would now call themselves Newtonians.

But did Plato advance and replace Socrates, Aristotle advance and replace Plato, Descartes advance and replace Aristotle, Kant advance and replace Descartes, Wittgenstein advance and replace Kant?

And so it does not work that way in philosophy. Plato e.g. did not advance and replace Socrates' work but instead took Socrates' principle of definition, namely that the meaning of a common name is the common nature it names, in a direction Socrates had not intended it to go (otherwise Socrates would have taken it there himself). There are "schools of thought", as e.g. the "New Way of Ideas" Descartes introduced, but did Leibniz advance and replace Descartes' philosophy, or did he take its fundamental principle, namely that "the direct object of perception is an idea in the mind", elsewhere than where Descartes did; and the same can be asked about Bishop Berkeley, Fichte and Kant. There is continuity between those philosophers in that they share the fundamental principle of "ideas", but from there the "development" was characterized by discontinuity rather than continuity, divergent rather than close-hauled.

In philosophy there are similarities and dissimilarities between the works of philosophers. But no philosopher's work replaces the work of another philosopher (Why?), although fashions in thinking change.

Query: what does it mean to be a slave in Epictetus' view?

According to a fragment attributed to him as well as a remark, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus' view of slavery is I think two-fold: (1) "You shun slavery -- Beware of enslaving others!" (the physical condition of slavery), which is an instance of the Golden Rule of "Do unto others ...", and (2) "If a man is where he does not want to be, then he is imprisoned there by his own attitude which is not in accord with the will of God (Nature)" (the state of mind of slavery).

From Socrates to Epictetus. Is there more continuity there -- e.g. the question of "how to live our life" (ethics) is the most important question for each -- or more "discontinuity" (i.e. disconnectedness) -- e.g. Stoicism's world-picture is not Socrates' world-picture: Socrates does not know what the relationship between the gods and nature is, much less if one is living wrongly if one's life is at odds with the course of the natural world, as Stoic pantheism holds?

"Philosophical Views"

Question: is it correct to speak of a philosopher's "views"? Yes and No.

Yes, because 'view' also means 'viewpoint'? A viewpoint (the axioms that make up the frame around the picture) is something that each philosopher must choose (e.g. Wittgenstein chose to look at philosophy from the viewpoint of sense (language with meaning) and nonsense; for him it was axiomatic that this distinction exists).

No, because the word 'views' makes it appear as if philosophy were a mere collection of opinions. But philosophical views are not that way -- because once a way of looking at things = frame of reference = point of view = viewpoint has been chosen, then the philosopher's views are not arbitrary: they are subject to refutation in Socratic dialectic (dialog or discussion between companions of the question-and-answer form) -- they must stand the tests of clarity and truth or falsity.

In other words, we have to make clear what we mean by the ambiguous word 'view'. In philosophy there is always distinction between "a point of view" (the selection of which is a matter of choice) and "a refutable proposition made within a given point of view" (wherein it may be true, false or nonsense).

Pre-Socratic philosophy: The problem of sources

First, I myself am not an historian. Second, Aristotle, who wrote the first history of philosophy (but this was a philosophical history, criticizing his predecessors' thought), lived some two hundred years after Thales (and Diogenes Laertius about seven hundred), and we don't know what texts, if any, Aristotle worked from. We now have only fragments of pre-Socratic texts. The first volume [1962] of W.K.C. Guthrie's A History of Greek Philosophy devotes twenty-seven pages to Thales (iii, B); near the beginning of this volume Guthrie has a "Note on the Sources" (p. xiii-xix).

The following remarks are about how we choose to see the pre-Socratics, about their importance for us. But as to how they themselves saw their way of thinking and what the meaning of their propositions was, I don't think anyone knows.

The pre-Socratics [attempted "to discover the ultimate cause or causes of the world". As] Aristotle observes, [they] were concerned with the material cause ... that which remains permanent beneath the constant changes ... (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume I (1946), XLVII, 2)

The first philosopher was the Ionian Greek Thales, born in Miletus circa 636 B.C.

Query: what was the first question raised by the ancient philosopher that led to the foundation of philosophy?

I don't think it was the question itself that was important -- because others had asked and answered questions by inventing myths for explanations -- but that what was important was Thales' new method, i.e. his new standard for answering questions, namely by the natural light of reason alone. That new standard is half the foundation of all philosophy (The other half is the Socratic method for testing claims to know).

Query: philosophy begins with a question.

Did Thales ask a question? What question might he have asked? Thales sees that he is surrounded by things that are in flux, the weather, the sea, life, things like this maybe, and he asks: "Things appear to be ever-changing, but is there something about them that does not change?" When the early Wittgenstein asked: "What is philosophy? An enquiry into the essence of the world (das Wesen der Welt)?" that was akin to pre-Socratic thinking.

There have been many imaginative conjectures about why Thales answered that the "unchanging something" or essence of the world is water, e.g. the three states of water (solid, liquid, gas: ice, water, steam): Water changes in appearance [only] while remaining essentially water.

[That there are three states of matter belongs to a classification scheme, whether natural man's or natural science's, not as it were to matter itself, or does it?]

But no one knows why water was chosen by Thales as the universal essence [unchanging nature] of things. And about the why of that choice, the conjecture of Aristotle, who lived 200 years after Thales, is very different ("There is moisture in all things") from the one I have suggested here.

Is water itself the essence of - or only the model of the essence of reality?

But the thesis that the essence of all things is water seems to have an absurd consequence, because according to that thesis, if asked what the essence of Thales himself is, Thales would have to answer that the essence of Thales is water.

If someone said the essence of the moon is green cheese, we would not take them seriously. Why do we take Thales seriously?

As one counter-possibility, Thales was pointing to water only as the model of reality: not that everything is water, but that like water all things change in appearance [state] without changing in essence. The question is whether Thales thought that the answer to the world's essence was "one or many": one essence of all things or many essences but all following one model.

When Heraclitus said that reality is in constant flux, constantly moving from fire being kindled to fire being extinguished, did he mean that fire is the essence of reality (that all reality is really fire) -- or did he mean that in reality all things shared the pattern of fire? Heraclitus said, "You cannot step into the same river twice" (Plato, Cratylus 401d-402a), not "You cannot step into the same fire twice". Which suggests that "fire" is a metaphor: reality is like fire in this respect, that all things are in constant change, not that reality essentially [the unchanging constant of all things] is fire.

What is important, I'd say, to the history of philosophy (history of thought, or philosophical thought) is that Thales' theory is the beginning of Greek physics, i.e. attempt to explain the natural world in purely natural terms (in contrast to the myths and private revelations that preceded it). "By the natural light of reason, looking at public experience, alone."

Three stages of Water

Query: what was the first philosophical query?

"Is any man wiser than Socrates?" Because it needn't be assumed that Thales was responding to a query (e.g. that he was asked or asked himself the question: If there is, then what is the reality that lies behind the changes we observe in nature? And answering that it is water, possibly because, and no more than possibly because, he observes water changing states: vapor (water becoming steam), liquid (steam condensing into liquid), solid (liquid freezing) -- because often philosophy begins with an assertion or apparent insight, rather than a query. The first philosophical query we know of is Chaerephon's to the Delphic oracle. When the Sophists asked whether morality comes from nature or mere convention, were they asking or telling, however?

Are the Greek myths explanations of natural phenomena, or fairy-tales?

On the other hand, were the myths intended to be serious (the "what really happened" of Thucydides 2.48.3), in contrast to fairy tale-like, explanations of natural phenomena? When Ovid tells the story of Arachne, the girl Athena changed into a spider because the girl had the same skill in weaving as the goddess herself, is that story intended as an explanation of why the spider is able to weave so fine a web?

The spider's web-making is certainly a natural phenomenon incomprehensible to man, godlike in its skill (Wittgenstein uses the metaphor "as if we had to repair a torn spider's web with our fingers"(PI § 106)), but the myth seems to be more an expression of wonder than an explanation. (Arachne's story is told in Edith Hamilton's Mythology (1942), vi, 2)

"This spring exists because Poseidon struck the earth with his trident." It seems that could be an explanation for a child or for someone who thinks as Plato's Euthyphro does, but were the ancient Greeks any more or less credulous than we are? No more but also no less -- if it is credulity because there are in our own day very intelligent (far more so than Euthyphro) human beings who believe the earth is only a few thousand years old and that faithful Abraham once walked among men.

Now from her couch where she lay ...

the goddess

Dawn, rosy-fingered, arose to bring light to the gods and to

mortals.  (Iliad, quoted in Hamilton, Mythology vi, 2)

The rosy-fingered Goddess of the Dawn spreading herself out over the wine-dark sea -- is that picture intended as a explanation of the natural phenomenon of the return of daylight in the mornings? Or wouldn't presuming that be to misunderstand what is happening here (as a savage misunderstands the proceedings of civilized men, and vice versa). Cf. Wittgenstein's remark about religion: "for a blunder, that's too big" -- i.e. to see it as a mistake is to misunderstand it, for a fairy-tale or myth is not intended to be history as "what really happened": it is neither our -- nor the ancient Greeks' -- normal method for explaining natural phenomena.

Earthquakes and Poseidon

On the other hand. In Thessaly Herodotus was shown a river gorge which the Thessalians told him was not originally there but was made later by Poseidon. And Herodotus writes that those who believe that Poseidon is the cause of earthquakes were quite right to attribute its creation to Poseidon, because to Herodotus it was clear that the valley was created by an earthquake. (History 7.129)

So then for those who believe that Poseidon causes earthquakes, is this an example of Bonhoeffer's "God as a working-hypothesis", i.e. that when there is a natural phenomenon that man cannot explain he assigns it a supernatural cause, namely God? Then in this case maybe Poseidon is intended as an explanation. It is, however, a supernatural-godly explanation, and so Poseidon is not an explanation that belongs to Milesian metaphysics but to mythology.

Nonetheless, why shouldn't that myth provide someone with a satisfying world-picture -- and isn't that what an explanations is intended to do? And recall, too, that primitive man does not believe in natural causes but in acts of spirits (whether of malevolent nature spirits or human sorcery) as the explanation of events such as illness and death.

Are the myths all of a kind? Some stories seem told only to amuse (as Ovid's), others for gentle moral instruction (as Aesop's fables), some as epic history (as Homer's Iliad), but other stories belong to religion: e.g. the story of Demeter and Persephone. Demeter was worshipped in temples, and the story of her grief at the loss of her daughter Persephone for half the year to the god of the dead far beneath the earth, was to the Greeks as touching and vital as the story of Mary in the Gospels is to Christians. And maybe those who worshipped Demeter and Persephone saw the story of Persephone as the explanation of a natural phenomenon, of "what really happens", namely to be the explanation of the end of life in the Autumn and the return of life in the Spring.

From the point of view of the natural explanation of phenomena (philosophy, physics), the story is in the realm of fantasy, but it isn't only from the point of view of natural explanations of natural phenomena that mankind looks at existence, our life, reality. It isn't uncharacteristic of religious belief that it can be seen as fantasy, if anyone so desires to look at it that way: there is both enough light and enough darkness (Pascal).

Thales, the origin of the world, "There are gods in all things", the Egyptian pyramids, and the Seven Wise Men of Greece

"First came the Chasm; and then broad-breasted Earth ..." (Theogony, c. line 116, tr. M.L. West). (The original meaning of the Greek word 'chaos' is 'chasm', not 'disorder' but simply 'abyss', the translator's note says) -- but a chasm is simply a hole -- and a hole has to be a hole in something (not in nothing: "a hole in nothing" is nothing) (Obviously these are grammatical remarks). You can't say "In the beginning there was a hole, and the hole was in nothing" or "In the beginning there was the Nothing" (as if the word 'nothing' were the name of some thing), presuming that 'first came' = 'in the beginning'. And so we can't say that the ancient myth of reality's origin is thoroughgoingly rational (cf. Plato, Phaedrus 229c) because 'rational' ≠ 'contradictory in sense' (Indeed in Socratic philosophy showing that a thesis is self-contradictory is one method of refuting it, but another is by showing that it is an undefined combination of words (i.e. nonsense)). And that is another difference with Thales.

Thales thought water to have "life and motion within itself" (Hammond, A History of Greece 3e [1986], ii, 7, p. 174), which may be the meaning of Thales' words "There are gods in all things" (although it may also allude [Diog. L. i, 24] to the magnet's attraction of iron and the drawing power ("cling") of static electricity of amber (electron) when heated).

The height of the Egyptian pyramids

While traveling in Egypt, Thales used the sun and geometric proportion to measure the height of a pyramid, I think by setting a stick in the sand and comparing the length of the shadow it cast with the length of the shadow cast by the pyramid, but the measuring may have been based on the right-angled isosceles triangle (Diog. L. i, 27; cf. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy I, iii, b, 4)

And many other stories are told about Thales, e.g. Plato tells the story of the maidservant's laughing when star-gazing Thales falls into a pit (Theaetetus 173e-174b), but these stories may be like those about Pythagoras (attributing all great discoveries to "himself said it"), mostly legend. Thales was one of the "Seven Wise Men of Greece", and as such he is often named as the source of the Delphic exhortation "Know thyself".

Herodotus of Halicarnassus

As to Herodotus the historian and his relationship to philosophy, a question is whether Herodotus would ever have accepted as the cause of a natural phenomenon the supernatural act of a god. Does that possibility have a place in his world-picture? ("I am obligated to report the beliefs of others; I am not obligated to share them" [cf. History 7.152].) Herodotus was, like Thales, from a city in Ionia, namely Halicarnassus, on the coast of Persia, although Halicarnassus was a Dorian, rather than Ionian. Miletus, the city of Thales and also of Hecataeus the historian, was to its north and to its south was the island of Rhodes. He was born about a hundred years after the time of Thales (who flourished 585 B.C.) and died about twenty-six years before the death of Socrates.

[Aside. It was at Miletus, during his third apostolic journey, that Paul called together the elders of the church of Ephesus (Acts 20.15, 17) and reminded them of "the words the Lord Jesus himself had spoken, that It is more blessed to give than to receive" (ibid. 20.35).]

What is important for philosophy about the Milesians

For philosophy, I think, what is important is that Thales and the Milesian philosophers looked for natural causes for phenomena rather than suprasensible -- "supernatural" or "not perceptible to the senses" or faith that "what is visible has its origin in what is not visible" -- causes. That contrasts to causal explanation by imaginative myth or by religious revelation as e.g. the Eleusinian Mysteries.

The Milesian thinking is akin to Socrates' way of responding to the Delphic exhortation "Know thyself" -- but only akin, because it relies on the natural light of reason alone, whereas Socrates' thinking is as well empirical, i.e. it tests propositions both by the light of reason and by the light of public -- i.e. verifiable -- experience.

[More about metaphysics and theism and physics.]

Does all Philosophy Begin with a Question?

We might say that "when we wonder" (Plato, Theaetetus 155c-d) -- i.e. when we are puzzled by something -- our perplexity is really a question we are wanting to ask, even if we are unable to formulate a question; and even if we deny that we want to ask a question, it's simply that we are unaware of wanting to ask a question.

But to claim that asking a question is what anyone who "wonders" really wants to do, is to conform one's thinking to a particular preconception or picture (namely that all philosophy begins with a question). And to a mind open to other conceptions it may be that philosophy begins in various ways, has various sources as e.g. "mistakes in language" or "feelings of being surrounded by vagueness and confusion" or "astonishment that anything exists" or "moral outrage", none of which asks a question.

Wittgenstein pointed out that any proposition, e.g. 'It is raining', may be given the form of a question, as e.g. 'Is it raining? Yes!' as well as 'Is it raining? No!' (PI § 22) But that possibility does not mean that propositions are really questions.

The riddle of which came first -- the question or the assertion? Was Thales seeking an explanation or did his observations suggest an insight to him into something he had never sought to explain. "Things change, but I now see what it is that changes, namely reality is absolute water changing its form (appearance) only; its essence remains unchanged while its form changes back and forth again and again." Did Thales ask himself a question, or was it only the philosophers who followed Thales that asked, as if in answer to a question Thales had raised, "What is the essence of the world -- is it water or something else?"

Query: the originator of philosophical thinking.

Whoever first used the method of seeking an explanation for natural phenomena ("When things change, what changes -- their appearances or their essence? for can a thing's essence change without that thing ceasing to be what it is?") by the natural light of reason alone, as Thales did, and sought that explanation, not for any practical purpose (e.g. farming or building), but simply to understand what is ultimately real. Metaphysics, which was the pre-Socratic branch of philosophy, is not a "practical science", i.e. not something to be put to use, unlike logic and ethics which are.

Metaphysics in contrast to Natural Science

Query: did philosophy develop from science?

The pre-Socratic metaphysicians were not scientists. Their theories were metaphysical pictures that can only be tested by reason, not by experience, because they are theories about ultimate or absolute reality -- i.e. a reality that is not knowable by sense perception but can only be reasoned to by the intellect (e.g. no one has ever seen absolute water (the essence of water), only states of water). That there is an imperceptible reality behind the perceptible world is an axiom of metaphysics, just as it is an axiom of natural science that there is no such reality, but that all reality is perceptible to the senses.

The various branches of knowledge ("sciences") developed from aspects of philosophy (when 'philosophy' meant 'all education of the intellect, in contrast to physical training)', as did experimental science and clinical psychology, but what is now called 'philosophy' has remained unchanged, Wittgenstein notwithstanding, since Socrates introduced definition (and induction, Aristotle says) and the subject of ethics ("how to live our life") to philosophy.

Socrates set a standard for knowing something in philosophy, namely being able to explain what one knows to others, and a method for testing that explanation for clarity and truth and falsity, namely cross-questioning propositions to see if they are self-contradicting. Socrates own investigations set aside metaphysics ("questions of what is ultimately real"), but other philosophers, especially Plato, did not.

Metaphysics is speculative natural reasoning about the reality beyond man's apparent ability to perceive and as such has no other home but philosophy. (As an example, Plato's allegory of the cave.) It was the creation of the pre-Socratics.

The Two Foundations of Philosophy

To the standard Thales had set philosophy, namely "to seek to know and understand by the natural light of reason alone", Socrates added the Socratic standard for testing whether a proposition is nonsense or true or false ("If if a man knows anything, he can explain what he knows to others in words that his companions can cross-question to agree to or refute"). Socrates did not discard Thales' standard. Together those two standards are the foundation of all philosophy. (To those two, I myself would add Wittgenstein's definition of 'meaning', which completes the work of making philosophy objective. So that philosophy has three foundations, in my view. Of course, there is a possible fourth, namely the subjects or principal parts of philosophy, namely metaphysics, logic, and ethics.)

Was philosophy discovered or invented?

Query: who created philosophy?

What I wrote above seems to say that Thales the Milesian created philosophy: the birth of seeking natural explanations by the natural light of reason alone for the origin, cause, or essence of the world itself or of particular phenomena.

Is the word 'create' a synonym for 'give birth to'?

Should we say that Thales invented (created) -- or that he discovered philosophy, as if to say that the possibility had always been there -- but was it there before Thales' concept-formation (conception)? How? There is not even a logical possibility -- prior to concept-formation (because logically possible DEF.= described, and the conception is the description). And as to real possibility, there is no real possibility that is not also a logical possibility. To say that philosophy was discovered would be to say that a real possibility must exist whether that possibility has been conceived or not, i.e. whether it is logically possible or not. [Cf. laws of physics versus laws of nature.]

Query: who is the first man to find the word "philosophy"?

If it is (presuming that it can be true or false) true that ex nihilo nihil ("Out of nothing comes nothing") --

(And how would we know that it was true: is it a question of fact or of a way of looking at things (founded on the Axiom of Perceptibility, the axiom that nothing has its origin in what it is impossible to perceive because there is nothing that is impossible to perceive)? Does it belong to the sea itself or to the mesh (size and shape of holes) of the net we lower into the sea? (cf. TLP 6.35: the laws of physics belong to the net, not to what the net is laid over.) Does it belong to the eyeglasses or to what is seen through the eyeglasses? to the picture or to the picture frame? (PI §§ 103, 114))

-- could we say that everything that is invented is "really" just found, even the idea behind the word 'philosopher' ("lover of wisdom") -- that it was human modesty found the word 'philosopher', just as it was human boastfulness that found the word 'sophist' ("wise man")? (Human nature would, in this particular case, be "the something out of which something comes".)

Query: who raised the philosophical question?

This again is the question: Was philosophy discovered or invented? Was the question "raised" as if it were a question about something that was perceptibly already there, as something you bumped your nose or stubbed your toe against, or was the question created -- i.e. Where did the idea that there is an unchanging, underlying reality come from -- from an enforced reality itself or from Thales' imagination? Did Thales conceptualize something that was already there, or was his concept born of a phenomenon imagined independently of direct experience? An analogy was made: Change was observed, but unchangingness was only observed relatively (some things underwent change much more slowly than others). Where did the ideal ("absolute unchangingness") come from? [Percepts, concepts and language.]

Is philosophy Continuous, or Discontinuous in its development?

Philosophy is characterized both by resemblances and disresemblances, by similarities and dissimilarities, by continuous and non-continuous "development".

Bruckner's music is characterized by blocks of sound rather than by a continuous flow of sound. And a philosopher may think naturally in blocks of thought ("remarks" in Wittgenstein, Pascal, Lichtenberg). Nonetheless Brucker's music often flows; it is not always transitionless.

Did philosophy develop or did it spring fully developed from the mind of man, as Athena from the mind of Zeus? for when Thales sought to know (1) by the natural light of reason alone, setting aside godly and magical myths, but instead seeking only natural explanations for natural phenomena, (2) and without any other limits than that, was there any further for philosophy to develop? Is that not what philosophy then was and now is? In contrast, natural science is defined by the further limits it imposes, as e.g. by verification by public experience ... although Socratic philosophy sets that limit too, as does Wittgenstein's later work, whereas metaphysics does not, its subject being not what is perceptible to the senses (experience) but instead the hidden (imperceptible) reality that is speculated to be knowable by reason alone. And so as stated above, Thales' standard for philosophy is only half of philosophy, the other half being the Socratic method (standard) for testing truth and falsity.

Philosophy does not develop as natural science does

There are still Aristotelians, Cartesians, Kantians, and there always will be. Why is this? Because natural science is not only a way of looking at things, a classification system as it were -- it is not only criticism and concept revision (as philosophy is) -- but natural science also discovers new facts (very often) by means of new instruments (as e.g. the telescope and microscope, whereas philosophy has, and will only ever have, one instrument, namely language) which it must incorporate into its present theories or use to revise its theories or create new theories. In contrast, of the three branches of philosophy: (1) Logic of language looks at the facts only in so far as these affect "meaning = use in the language", and (2) Metaphysics takes into consideration only very general facts of nature which it then tries to see beyond, and (3) as to Ethics, would any newly discovered fact affect it -- aren't good and evil the same today as they were in the beginning when Socrates introduced the subject Ethics to philosophy (Diog. L. i, 14)?

Metaphysics and Theism and Physics

The presumed works of God as a model of explanation for the existence or occurrence of natural phenomena, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's dying "God as a working-hypothesis" (dying, I think, because it is since the Enlightenment seen as superstition).

The God of Natural Theology is patently not the God of religion (Theism), but a speculative construct, as the Clockmaker God of Deism.

Which God is the God of "God as a working-hypothesis?" If we say, The Laws of Nature are "the will of God", which God are we talking about? It seems that only if we are talking about providential or miraculous events that we are talking about the God of theism because even if there is a natural explanation for an event, it can still be seen as providential -- i.e. providence is in the eyeglasses of the beholder, not in the event itself.

But I think Bonhoeffer makes no distinction between the God of religion and the God of Nature, although and I think his idea of "God as a working-hypothesis" concerns only the God of Nature.

The Catholic Christian and Reform Churches also do not make this distinction, whereas Albert Schweitzer sharply does, and does not even use the concept 'God of Nature' except in the context of taking about the God of religion, and in the metaphysical sense -- not at all. Contrast this with Thomas Aquinas' five ways of knowing that God exists, all of which are metaphysical.

The Sophists and Natural Philosophy (not natural science, or was it?)

... the subversive moral and political doctrines of the Sophists were the natural outcome of the atheistical trend of natural philosophy, and they [the Sophists] made great use of its conclusions. (Guthrie, The Greeks and their Gods, xii, 1, "Plato and Aristotle")

The form of expression "the atheism of natural philosophy" may seem justified with respect to Bonhoeffer's "God as a working-hypothesis", i.e. to the rejection of myths about the gods as the explanation for phenomena that man is otherwise unable to explain.

But that form of expression misleads in so far as the word 'atheism' suggests 'anti-theism', i.e. anti- "the gods are mindful of us" (Memorabilia i, 1, 19) -- because Thales' model of explanation by the natural light of reason alone does not seek to explain things that are natural phenomena (i.e. objects of sense perception) by citing supernatural phenomena (which is what God, the gods are). Thales' metaphysics, as I have described it, is speculation about the natural reality hidden behind natural phenomena.

Religion in contrast to Metaphysics

The rejection of God as the explanation of natural phenomena ("God as a working-hypothesis") does not answer every question about reality -- e.g. about the hereafter, and good and evil, and other of the eternal questions, because those questions are of a different kind: they are not questions about natural phenomena (e.g. the death of the body is a natural phenomenon, but the disposition of the soul at death is not; likewise man's customs are natural phenomena, but the good or evil of those customs is not).

[Ceyx, a king in Thessaly: "Various matters had happened to disturb him and he wished to consult the oracle, man's refuge in trouble" (Hamilton, Mythology (1942), ii, 2). And this is a variation of the rejection of "God as a working-hypothesis", of that model of explanation, namely of God who knows the meaning of things, human affairs, or the future and if asked will reveal it to man. We do not seek signs from heaven, revelations from the oracles of gods; we have no soothsayers, no augers. So this is another large area where "God as a working-hypothesis" has passed into disuse, desuetude.]

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