Aither is a double-blind peer review, Open Access online academic journal. It is indexed at ERIH+ and Scopus. It is published by the Faculty of Arts of the Palacký University in Olomouc in cooperation with the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It comes out twice a year. Every second issue is international and contains foreign-language articles (mainly in English, but also in German and French). The journal is registered under the number ISSN 1803-7860.

Aither 15/2016:46-71 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2016.003

Aristotle on Thales's Conception of Origin

Radim Kočandrle
Fakulta filozofická Západočeské univerzity v Plzni

Aristotle's influential conception of the four causes may have tendentiously skewed our view of his predecessors, but even so, we might be able to discern in it the outlines of the original Presocratic conceptions. We could thus see the emphasis on 'origins' as, among other things, the archaic thinkers' focus on the origin and maintenance of life. These are, after all, the reasons which Aristotle himself lists in connection with Thales's conception of origin in the first book of his Metaphysics, where he discusses the connection between moisture, warmth, and life. Interest in these factors is characteristic for archaic philosophy. We can, meanwhile, assume that Aristotle's claim that Thales believed water to be the origin may be due to the Milesian's link to an ancient tradition where water indeed played an important role. Of decisive importance may have been a report, included as part of cosmology - one of the areas Thales was especially interested in - that the Earth rests on water.

Published: March 30, 2016  Show citation

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Kočandrle, R. (2016). Aristotle on Thales's Conception of Origin. Aither, 8(15), 46-71. doi: 10.5507/aither.2016.003
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