The focus of this course concentrates on the so called Pre-Socratic philosophy which includes the historical time period from the 7th to 4th centuries before Christ. During these ages fascinating philosophers such as Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus and Democritus were living. Their natural astonishment is related to the manifold facets of the planet. Mostly, we don’t know certain matters about their biographies but these first thinkers presented the development of the early Greek philosophy, which has provided cosmological and rational models of explaining human nature. In the content of Pre-Socratic philosophies new social-political and technological changes of the Greek polis happened and further efficient structures and values of the state – particularly Solon’s seisachtheia as a reform project regarding the relief of burdens – were introduced. Some of the radical transformations from the age of despotic barbarity to the first steps of civilization in human thought and practice took place between the poles of formulating concepts of a natural philosophy and metaphysical approaches as the basic directions which reappeared as such during later philosophical epochs.
