Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
We must thus remark that the character of the two sides into which
these philosophies divide, the philosophy of Asia Minor in the east
and that of Grecian Italy in the west, partakes of the character of
the geographical distinction. On the Asia Minor side, and also in
the islands, we find Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus,
Leucippus, Democritus, Anaxagoras, and Diogenes from Crete. On the
other side are the inhabitants of Italy: Pythagoras from Samos, who
lived in Italy, however; Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles;
and several of the Sophists also lived in Italy. Anaxagoras was the
first to come to Athens, and thus his science takes a middle place
between both extremes, and Athens was made its centre. The geographical
distinction makes its appearance in the manifestation of Thought,
in the fact that, with the Orientals a sensuous, material side is
dominant, and in the west, Thought, on the contrary, prevails, because
it is constituted into the principle in the form of thought. Those
philosophers who turned to the east knew the absolute in a real
determination of nature, while towards Italy there is the ideal
determination of the absolute. These explanations will be sufficient
for us here; but Empedocles, whom we find in Sicily, is somewhat of
a natural philosopher, while Gorgias, the Sicilian sophist, remains
faithful to the ideal side.
We now have to consider further:—1, The Ionians, viz. Thales,
Anaximander, Anaximenes; 2, Pythagoras and his followers; 3, the
Eleatics, viz. Xenophanes, Parmenides, &c.; 4, Heraclitus; 5,
Empedocles, Leucippus and Democritus; 6, Anaxagoras. We have to trace
and point out the progression of this philosophy also. The first and
altogether abstract determinations are found with Thales and the
other Ionians; they grasped the universal in the form of a natural
determination, as water and air. Progression must thus take place by
leaving behind the merely natural determination; and we find that this
is so with the Pythagoreans. They say that number is the substance or
the essence of things; number is not sensuous, nor is it pure thought,
but it is a non-sensuous object of sense. It was with the Eleatics
that pure thought appeared, and that its forcible liberation from the
sensuous form and the form of number came to pass; and thus from them
proceeds the dialectic movement of thought, which negates the definite
particular in order to show that it is not the many but only the one
that is true. Heraclitus declares the Absolute to be this very process,
which, according to the Eleatics, was still subjective; he arrived at
objective consciousness, since in it the Absolute is that which moves
or changes. Empedocles, Leucippus, and Democritus, on the contrary,
rather go to the opposite extreme, to the simple, material, stationary
principle, to the substratum which underlies the process; and thus this
last, as being movement, is distinguished from it. With Anaxagoras it