The Emergence of a Discipline. Pre-Socratic Philosophy

Abstract

We usually speak of “Pre-Socratic schools” without questioning the
implications of such an expression. Indeed, the idea that the first Greek
philosophers were organized in schools was at the heart of an argument
developed in 1887 by H. Diels, the founder of modern Pre-Socratic
studies. The present article starts off from this argument, to demonstrate
the presuppositions that partly reflect those of the modern academic institution, but partly also those of Aristotelian historiography. At
the same time, this approach to the beginnings of Greek philosophy
– an approach that sought a de-Aristotelism and de-schooling of that
philosophy – was largely inspired by anthropological and pragmatic
approaches. And even though it was practiced by historians of ancient
philosophy, the approach is not adequate to account for the intellectual
processes that led to the emergence of a discipline like Greek philosophy,
an intellectual development whose novelty can be considered as
a particularly interesting, even paradigmatic case, of disciplinary
innovation.