Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 35 No. 3, 2015.
Original scientific paper
Thales’ Vitalism
Željko Kaluđerović
orcid.org/0000-0002-6572-4160
; University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Philosophy, Novi Sad, Serbia
Abstract
The paper analyses Thales’ concept of soul, primarily based on Aristotle’s main insights and by consulting relevant doxographical accounts. The study has shown that the Stagirite classified the Milesian physicist, while taking into account his alleged view that the stone has a soul in it because it moves iron, in the category of thinkers who believed that soul is the cause of motion. The author, then, concludes that the view that soul is intermingled in the whole is related to the famous phrase attributed to Thales according to which “all things are full of gods”. If we connect these formulations with statements about the lodestone and amber, then we arrive to a possible conclusion that, according to the Milesian, all things are ensouled, i.e. alive, both organic and inorganic parts of the cosmos. Finally, if these are authentic Thales’s views, then he is “the founder of (…) philosophy”, because he talks about the unity of the entire reality, and because in this way the unity of wholeness is vitalistically established.
Keywords
Thales; lodestone; amber; soul; cause of motion; “all things are full of gods”; whole; vitalism
Hrčak ID:
158782
URI
Publication date:
2.12.2015.
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