Ionians and italics: antagonism in the beginning of greek philosophy

Abstract

The subject of this article is the antagonism among two philosophical “schools” developed from opposites principles: the ionian and italic “schools”. The former developed since Thales, passing through Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus... wich philosophy is called materialist. The second, from Parmenides, Zenon... till mainly Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, wich is called idealist. The proposal is a scheme rereading of this history and a minimun questioning of its consequences. Since the Antiquity it can be seeing that the philosophers used to reconize the existence of that antagonism and wittingly used to battle among themselves, and as the history tells, the victorious were the idealists. It is not a exaustiv study about each one of those philosophers but only a few, those that I consider the most exemplary in the beggining of the greek phillosphy. It is considered yet how this antagonism has been negligected by the manuals of philosophy history. As the only way to show it is through the texts and testimonials themselves of the philosopheres thinking, the lector will find with greater emphasis an analysis of the atomism development by Leucippus from Anaximenes philosophy, in the opposite way of the usual assertion according to wich atomism has been arised from Parmenides doctrine of the Being.