Thales and the Origin of Western Philosophy

In this video, I explore the philosophy of Thales, a philosopher whom many believe to have inaugurated the Western philosophical tradition. Most contemporary accounts of Thales portray him as cutting ties to Greece's mythological past and instead adopting a thoroughly naturalistic and empirical approach to reality, an approach that is said to characterize the whole of Western philosophy. In this video, I contend that this naturalistic picture of Thales is misguided and substantially outstrips our available historical evidence. First, I show how this interpretation requires a naïve appropriation of Aristotle's assertions concerning Thales. When we look at Aristotle's account in context, we can see that he isn't so much trying to articulate an objective historical account of previous philosophers as he is trying to set forth a whigish history of philosophy that culminates in his own metaphysics. Second, I demonstrate that contemporary interpreters also ignore Aristotle's observations that Thales account parallels the mythological accounts of Homer and Hesiod. Third, I show that the contemporary view ignores the animistic implications of Thales claim that "all things are full of gods" and I argue against a Spinozistic interpretation of Thales' assertion. Fourth, I show that even the standard anecdotal stories about Thales life are more ambiguous than the naturalistic interpretation would have us believe. And finally, I argue that Goethe offers a better myth of Thales than the current naturalistic myth by examining the Classical Walpurgis Night scene in Faust Part 2.

A corresponding essay can be found here:
https://premieretat.com/beyond-naturalism-demythologizing-thales/

The images used in this video are in the public domain.