Berkeley Undergraduate Journal of Classics

The Presocratic philosophers of the 6^th and 5^th centuries B.C. have traditionally been interpreted simply as the prologue to the beginning of Western science and philosophy. The secondary literature produced by many 20^th and 21^st century philosophers insists that the primary accomplishment of the Presocratic movement was the decisive rejection of the mythic cosmos of Homer and Hesiod in favor of independent rational inquiry. This paper seeks to contest this interpretation, by drawing attention to the Hesiodic elements in Presocratic philosophy and theology. Far from banishing the divine from the cosmsos, the fragments and testimonia of the Milesians, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, the Pythagorean movement, and Empedocles evidence a desire to radicalize the traditional Hesiodic attributes of divinity: eternity, sovereignty, and justice. However in doing so, the Presocratics entangled themselves in the divine-human aporia that continues to structure Western theological discourse: the problem of making the divine conception humanly accessible without making it merely human. In attempting to elevate and dignify the divine realm—criticizing the poetic tradition that seemed to make the gods merely human—the Presocratics made the divine appear inhuman. This eventually produced the violent popular opposition that led to the destruction of the Pythagorean communities of southern Italy and the prosecution of Anaxagoras and Socrates for impiety.