Pre-Socratic philosophy
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Search complete. 70 mentions across 38 episodes found for "Pre-Socratic philosophy".
Sep 15, 2026
Xavier BonillaHOST
I think Aristotle is probably one of my favorites, definitely of the ancients.
Xavier BonillaHOST
I like the pre-Socratics.
Xavier BonillaHOST
They're pretty cool.
Xavier BonillaHOST
I mean, Heraclitus is really great.
Robin WaterfieldGUEST
But that's me being optimistic.
Robin WaterfieldGUEST
I mean, I mean, if you were to read scholarship on the Presocratics, you would find such widely diverging interpretations that one would be tempted to answer, one can know very little for sure, because what so-and-so says is such-and-such a scholar says is different from what another scholar says, and so
MasoudHOST
on and
Robin WaterfieldGUEST
so forth.
David StoneHOST
The reason I'm gonna be talking about capitalism is because it...
David StoneHOST
I see in its development a kind of consistent thread which goes all the way back to the pre-Socratics.
David StoneHOST
How dare I? It sounds just so arrogant that you could make such a broad statement, but I can see in the rise of capital a historical trajectory that goes back to Parmenides and Heraclitus, uh, which I will come onto shortly.
David StoneHOST
But I want to start with Thomas Hobbes and Leviathan, um, 1651.
Christopher FynskGUEST
I thought that with this material I had quite enough for a book.
Christopher FynskGUEST
Earlier work devoted to Herlinin's reading of Aristotle's Poetics had already alerted me to the way the term schema and pre-Socratic thought was virtually synonymous with Routmos or Rousmos in its Ionian form.
Christopher FynskGUEST
I knew that Heidegger could not be insensitive to this link in foregrounding a notion of schematism in thinking primordial temporality.
Christopher FynskGUEST
And I was intrigued by the way Heidegger displaced this notion in his thinking on art four or five years later with his development of what he would term the Rift Design or the Aufriss.
Christopher FynskGUEST
And to what exactly does Heidegger point when he says that the proper place for addressing this question is indicated when he takes up the question of language near the end of his essay on art? My answer, to state this quite abruptly, would be that he is pointing to the question of the use of the human as this unfolds in language.
Christopher FynskGUEST
I will return to this after dwelling a bit longer with the topic of rhythm as it appears particularly in the origin of the work of art.
Christopher FynskGUEST
I have already indicated that I believe Heidegger was quite attentive to the link between schema and rousmos and pre-Socratic thought.
Christopher FynskGUEST
Heidegger would have been aware of this through his reading of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
David StoneHOST
For now, I'm just tracing this trajectory.
David StoneHOST
Within the pre-Socratic and the post-Socratic, the Aristotle and then Plato, Socrates, you get this dualism.
David StoneHOST
It's not hard, fast dualism.
David StoneHOST
It's not like a camp over there that believes in reason and the other one over there believes in intuition or idealism.
6 MINS LATER
David StoneHOST
So that's it.
David StoneHOST
This is a short one, but I'm calling it Ramble On.
David StoneHOST
It's a ramble because each part of this, the pre-Socratics, the Protestant reformist revolution, the Enlightenment, the rise of mercantile and then private capitalism, the impact of that on patriarchy, on racism and on class, how that was carried forward into the 20th century, the rejection of Marx by postmodernism, the rise of the critical theory in the Frankfurt School, which for the first time started to address power as a product of a very complicated analysis of capital.
David StoneHOST
How will that come together to account for, in some way account for, and possibly lay out the terrain for a robust opposition to the rise of the far right? I speak even as it was announced yesterday on the 12th of September, 2026.
Thomas777GUEST
But Sorrell wasn't a class warrior, and, like, we'll get into that.
Thomas777GUEST
You know, like, Sorrell's, his kind of, he was, you know, like Nietzsche did before he viewed the straw viewed culture is like peaking early, you know, like the pre-Socratic era era.
Thomas777GUEST
you know, like the pre-Peloponnesian war era of Doric Athens.
Thomas777GUEST
That's what Sorrell, that's what Sorrell thought was like the zenith of like human culture and political organization.
9 MINS LATER
Thomas777GUEST
Or, you know, Frederick II's Prussia is so great.
Thomas777GUEST
What he was saying was that things went wrong when men like Socrates became powerful in ancient Athens.
Thomas777GUEST
His ideal was the pre-Socratic Peloponnesus.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
So the socialist right, when they're coming to power, are they – is there a rebellion against establishment liberalism or is there a rebellion against what is growing communism at the time?
ThomasGUEST
But Sorrell wasn't a class warrior, and, like, we'll get into that.
ThomasGUEST
You know, like, Sorrell's, his kind of, he was, you know, like Nietzsche did before he viewed, Sorrell viewed culture as like peaking early, you know, like the pre-Socratic era, you know, like the pre-Peloponnesian war era of Doric Athens.
ThomasGUEST
That's what Sorrell, that's what Sorrell thought was like the zenith of like human culture and political organization.
ThomasGUEST
Like it wasn't some guy who was saying like, Oh, we just got to give.
38 MINS LATER
ThomasGUEST
Some of this...
ThomasGUEST
Sorrel was definitely in direct dialogue with the Maestro.
ThomasGUEST
But some of this, again, is found in the kind of pre-Socratic hero epics.
ThomasGUEST
Sorrel saw the Socratic...
Pamela NagamiNARRATOR
Aristotle, after the Ottoman manner, says Bacon, thought he could not reign secure without putting all his brethren to death.
Pamela NagamiNARRATOR
But to this fratricidal mania we owe much of our knowledge of pre-Socratic thought.
Pamela NagamiNARRATOR
for reasons already given aristotle's astronomy represents very little advance upon his predecessors he rejects the view of pythagoras sixth century b c that the sun is the centre of our system he prefers to give that honour to the earth but the little treatise on meteorology is full of brilliant observations and even its speculations strike illuminating fire this is a cyclic world says our philosopher the sun for ever evaporates the sea dries up rivers and springs and transforms at last the boundless ocean into the barest rock while conversely the uplifted moisture gathered into clouds falls and renews the rivers and the seas everywhere change goes on imperceptibly but effectively
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Eric HutchinsonGUEST
Um, so there are these areas of, of overlap as, as you mentioned.
Eric HutchinsonGUEST
Um, so the idea of, of, of, um, of the sort of capital L Logos that orders and structures the cosmos, which is found, um, already in Heraclitus before, uh, before the Stoics, and Heraclitus is a, is a really important, um, pre-Socratic, each, uh- And we only have fragments of Heraclitus that's very provocative, suggestive fragments of Heraclitus that survive, but he's, uh, he's a very important sort of background figure to, to, um, the Stoics.
Eric HutchinsonGUEST
And the, the logos, which in Heraclitus seems to be something common that everyone can in, in principle participate in, we find that in, uh, we find that in the Stoics, and each person has a logos, a, a re- a rational faculty that is a kind of s- divine spark or a way of, of, of participating in, uh, in the divine, um, that again, yes, has a definite parallel in the opening of, of John's gospel, the true light that enlightens everyone come, you know, is, is...
Eric HutchinsonGUEST
That, that's the logos.
12 MINS LATER
Nadya WilliamsHOST
If you were an ancient philosopher, who would you be?
Eric HutchinsonGUEST
I've-- So I, I thought about this 'cause you sent me this question beforehand, and I was think- been thinking like, "Oh, wow, what am I gonna say to this?" Um, and I don't really know.
Eric HutchinsonGUEST
I don't have a great answer to this question, but I've been really fascinated for a long time, um, by, uh, by the pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes.
Eric HutchinsonGUEST
Um, so that's who I'm gonna go with.
Anya LeonardHOST
Yes, I think I like to refer back again to my beloved natural philosophers.
Anya LeonardHOST
I don't like saying pre-Socratic because I feel like that denotes them unfairly to just as a footnote to Socrates, but indeed they were, you know, very instrumental.
Anya LeonardHOST
But back to Heraclitus with regards to logos.
Anya LeonardHOST
I mean, that's the order of the world.
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