Philosphers Views

Thales of Miletus is considered the `first philosopher' of the west and his practicality I find him compelling. In his time, if one wished for one's crops to grow (even though irrigation had been brought to Greece from Mesopotamia) one would pray to the gods for rain. Thales offered an alternative idea: you want your crops watered, you dig a trench from a stream to the crops and you got it. How this man could see beyond the belief system of his time and suggest human beings could as easily do what they begged the gods to do for them I find fascinating.

Heraclitus, however, is my own personal favorite with his line, "Life Is Flux" by which he meant that Life IS Change - `change' is exactly what makes up the very essence of Life. So if you say `no' to change, you say `no' to Life itself. This isn't the same thing as saying changes one goes through are just a part of life; it's saying those changes, for good or for bad, its life. As we go through life things change and us as humans have a great tendency to cling to what they know, even when we know things must change and the most important thing Heraclitus said was that this `clinging' can only cause us pain because it is the very nature of life to change, and I find that very compelling, and true.

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who was long after Heraclitus, developed the idea and put it this way: Life is like a cart rolling down a road and we are a dog tied to that cart. We can go screaming and yelping and kicking or we can trot along beside it willingly but, either way, we're going down that road.

The Pre-Socratics are really all quite compelling. They have made up some great philosophies that we today can see are true. A lot of people are not taught about the philosophers or are mislead on their ideas, but if we give them a chance, we will like them, and understand all their different views.