Most Famous Pre-Socratic Philosophers

Pre-Socratic philosophy denotes the work of Greek thinkers before and contemporary with Socrates, roughly the sixth and fifth centuries BC. The Pre-Socratics were the first Western thinkers to seek natural rather than mythological explanations of the cosmos, asking what underlies the apparent diversity of the world and what principles govern change. Major figures include Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Democritus. Their works survive only in fragments and in quotations preserved by later authors. Their inquiries founded Western philosophy and natural science as recognisable disciplines.

Philosophers in this tradition

Democritus c. 460 BC – c. 370 BC · Greek
Democritus of Abdera was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of the fifth and early fourth centuries BC, regarded with his teacher Leucippus as a co-founder of the atomist traditio...
Heraclitus c. 535 BC – c. 475 BC · Greek
Heraclitus of Ephesus was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC, known in antiquity as the Obscure for the difficulty of his sayings. H...
Pythagoras 570 BC – 495 BC · Greek
Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher and mathematician born on the island of Samos around 570 BC. He founded a religious and philosophical brotherhood at Croton in southern Italy,...
Parmenides c. 515 BC – c. 460 BC · Greek
Parmenides of Elea was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC, the founder of the Eleatic school and one of the most influential thinker...
Xenophanes 570 BC – 475 BC · Greek
Xenophanes of Colophon was a Greek philosopher and poet who traveled widely after leaving Ionia and lived to a great age. He produced the earliest sustained critique of anthropo...
Anaxagoras c. 500 BC – c. 428 BC · Greek
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was an ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher of the 5th century BC, born in Ionia and active for many years in Athens, where he was a friend and report...
Anaximander 610 BC – 546 BC · Greek
Anaximander was a Greek philosopher of Miletus, a pupil and successor of Thales, born around 610 BC. He is the first known thinker to have written a work of natural philosophy i...
Anaximenes 585 BC – 528 BC · Greek
Anaximenes of Miletus was a Greek philosopher and the third of the Milesian school, after Thales and Anaximander. Born around 585 BC, he held that air is the underlying principl...
Empedocles c. 490 BC – c. 430 BC · Greek
Empedocles of Acragas was an ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher of the 5th century BC, born in the Greek city of Acragas in Sicily. His doctrine of the four elements, earth,...
Thales of Miletus c. 624 BC – c. 546 BC · Greek
Thales of Miletus was an ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher of the 7th and 6th centuries BC, traditionally regarded as the first philosopher of the Western tradition and a f...
Zeno of Elea 490 BC – 430 BC · Greek
Zeno of Elea was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Parmenides. He defended his teacher's claim that reality is one and unchanging by constructing a series of paradoxes intended...