Early Historical Awareness in Greek Philosophical Thought Before Socrates

Abstract

 In spite of the variety in  their contents and methods of addressing  different topics , the nature of managing events through poetic drama in the poems of Homer and Hesiod  indicates that the Greek poets were fully acquainted with and aware of the historical events (their causes , triggers , goals and purports ).  

        Homer was aware of history when he immersed existence in the cycles of time, and when he talked about the cycles of history, the eternal return, and divine providence as much as  Hesiod did when he referred  to many signs of awareness of history and  elaborated on  the origin of the gods and their ancestral lineages  , which for him represented the beginning of creation on earth,( i.e. the beginning of history). By the same token , the latter`s notion  of the five generations represented the stages of the development of history over time. In a similar vein ,  their ideas about the logical sequence of historical events expressed their awareness of the significance and goals of history .          

       Homer, Hesiod, and the philosophers who followed them showed the cognitive aspect of human life in all its forms, although their thinking was mediating  reality and imagination as  that sort of  thinking was expressing the first perceptions of logical  and philosophical thinking, rather it was the cornerstone of it. This was clear to all those philosophers or scholars   who followed  them in time   who managed to lay the scholarly  foundations of  thinking and build philosophical and historical trends that are still well established to this day.                                                                                              

        In the  poems and writings of these poets and philosophers , many terms expressing  the meaning and wisdom of history are mentioned , and they were well-aware of that, a matter which  confirms  the importance of history to them. Thus,  they addressed such topics as  : time, coincidence  ,the ancient, the eternal, cycles of time, timelessness, divine time , events, destiny, the  infinite, blindness, purpose, night and day, the limit of light and darkness, the future, the present,  the place (the sphere of influence between the gods), the earthly world, the world of the dead, divine providence , and other auxiliary  factors   influencing  the movement of history. Additionally,  Homer used the past events of history to raise morale  in times of war, that is, he used the wisdom of past history to support the present .                                                                               

      Ancient man realized the importance of the historical events which constitute part of his life on earth, and their role in determining his destiny and future. Just as Homer and Hesiod realized the necessity of history, likewise  natural philosophers who made their sense of existence a path to their sense of history,   harnessed their knowledge of existence to comprehend the events of history.                                                                                                                     

       Natural philosophers have linked human life to nature as it forms  the cradle of man and his incubator and without which there will be  no existence at all . Hence ,  many philosophers endeavored  to find out the reasons that can  lead to understand   this relationship and figure out  its causes and goals. They also concluded that man is subject to the dialectic of birth and annihilation in history, and because human history is subject to the cycles of time , human life is , therefore , part of the cycles of existence which are  subject to the historical cycles.                                                                                                                     

               Philosophers have viewed  history as the legacy of the civilizational past representing the scholarly  and philosophical aspects, and that the research into material existence is part of the research into  history. And since history is part of material existence, therefore it is  part of history as it is the   factor that drives the  events of history, and natural existence can crystalize  only in history, as it represents the time, place and the substance of history.