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"Philosophy" is a word invented by the ancient Greeks, most likely by Pythagoras in the late sixth century BCE. Before the time of Pythagoras, there was a lively tradition, shared with other literate cultures around the Mediterranean, of collections of "wisdom" literature ("Sophia"). In Greece, lists were made of outstanding contributors to such collections, that is, of "wise" people, or sophoi. The story goes that when Leon of Phlius asked Pythagoras what he was, he replied, "a philosophos," a lover of or seeker for wisdom. To the extent that an ancient Greek invented the word "philosophy" is an ancient Greek invention, and we can trace the history of those who called themselves, or were called by others in their culture, philosophoi. Certainly the ancient Greeks recognized that many of their ideas and practices came from other neighboring cultures--Egypt, Persia, and Babylon, for example--and we can discern parallels between their ideas and practices and some contemporary with them that they knew nothing about--Taoism and Confucianism for example. Thus, for us "ancient Greek philosophy" is a part of a much larger history--a history of human thought about the most fundamental and intractable questions that people attempt to resolve.

The ancient Greeks learned to write, using characters borrowed from the Phoenicians, about 750 BCE. The Homeric epics, passed down orally for centuries, were written down probably before 700 BCE; Hesiod, author of the poems "Birth of the Gods" and "Works and Days," was working shortly after 700. We have fragments or individual short poems of perhaps a dozen poets who wrote over the next 150 years or so--people like Sappho and Alcaeus, who wrote around 600 BCE. In that group, we note especially Solon, who established many legal traditions of Athens.

The "Presocratic" period of ancient Greek philosophy is marked by speculation about the natural world, fueled by dissatisfaction with traditional mythological explanations. These speculations moved very quickly to attempts to understand "being" and "becoming," how anything whatever "is" and how existence and change are related. The continuation of these speculations shapes the entire history of ancient Greek philosophy. . .

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