The emergence of rationalism: the transformation from mythical cosmology to natural cosmology. People in the pre-philosophical era have been asking about the origin of the world, and so has the myth and creationism in ancient Greece. Homer's epic and hesiod's divine spectrum, which have been handed down to this day, fully express this world view. Those who succumb to the forces of nature, because they can't resist the oppression of nature,
It was their exploration that led to the birth of philosophy, a miracle in the field of thinking. This is also a great victory of rational thinking over perceptual speculation. They began to boldly question the creationism of the gods and tried to get rid of the mythical cosmic thinking mode. Strive to seek the composition, essence and laws of the universe and nature. Thales firmly said that "water is the source of all things", which undoubtedly made a rational judgment to break the myth monopoly thinking and move towards naturalism. Because this judgment not only abandons the perceptual myth, but also contains an abstract basic category of philosophy-primitive (initial foundation). More importantly, it puts forward a brand-new epistemological order different from the past: the world is a unified whole composed of countless concrete things, and this whole world is infinitely diverse, and the foundation and foothold of this infinitely diverse unity is water. Water is the origin and cause of everything in the world. This judgment is a summary and generalization of all people's specific observation and sensory experience of nature in the past, and makes a series of abstractions and generalizations. Therefore, this rational judgment also shows the unity of human thinking and reveals the universality of things. This is also the fundamental feature of rational thinking.
In Nietzsche's view, the thinking characteristics of naturalists can be summarized as: "Try to listen to the echoes of world symphonies in your heart and then express them in the form of concepts." Since Thales, the banner of rationalism has been held high by naturalists. Both anaximander's "Infinite Body" and Anak Jimenez's "Qi" are advancing along the rational path of naturalism on the origin of the world. The three generations of sages of Miletus devoted themselves to exploring the source of all things from sensible material elements such as water, air or "infinite body" without any stipulation. Therefore, the first philosophical category "origin (origin)" in the history of western philosophy is put forward. The rational development of philosophy not only made a great breakthrough in theory, but also obtained the scientific product of rationality from anaximander: the world's first map and timer.
However, Thales and his disciples, as well as the Ionian school to which they belong, still have emotional God's distractions in their hearts during the rational thinking process of exploring the origin of the world and the origin of all things, and have not completely drawn a line with God's will. For example, when Thales studied the behavior of magnets, he still stubbornly declared that "magnets have souls." What he means is that magnets have the ability to move other objects without being moved by any objects, which is the characteristic of objects with souls. The idea of animism still exists and haunts Thales' thoughts. Hegel said critically: "The water of speculation is built in a spiritual way. There is no reality as a feeling revealed. As a result, there is a debate about whether water is the universality of feeling or the universality of concept. " As a universal philosophical category to explain the origin of everything and the world, "water" should be separated from specific individual things and raised to a highly abstract level to grasp the whole world, thus being speculative, universal and transcendent. However, the "water" we saw in Thales still has its "certainty or form" anyway, and there is still no sense of individuality, because "the concept of water still floats in our minds". Thus, "water is the contradiction between the universal concept and its existence" appeared. This contradiction was not well answered in the early stage of philosophy, even in the face of Heraclitus' rational logos law, it was not satisfactorily solved.
When parmenides, the founder of the Elijah School, replaced xenophanes's "God" with the abstract philosophical category of "existence", it marked the development of ancient Greek philosophy, from naturalism to existence or essence. Lenin commented that "the opposition between thinking and phenomenon or sensibility was discovered". In previous natural philosophy, parmenides put forward three basic categories of philosophy, namely existence and non-existence, thoughts and feelings, truth and opinions, which became the new research center of philosophy. In parmenides's view, thoughts and feelings are not equal or completely opposite, but thoughts and existence are the same. So looking at existence by feeling, existence is right and wrong; Thinking about non-existence with thoughts is false; Anyone who definitely exists can't go to the road of truth without existence, because it relies on sound reason to judge and infer through thinking, thus obtaining the truth about existence. Based on this ontological point of view, parmenides divided philosophy into two categories: "One is the philosophy about opinions, and the other is the philosophy about truth." Opinion philosophy is an epistemological order to seek the origin of all things from perceptual concrete things. Of course, parmenides thinks that the knowledge gained by this order and way is untrue. Philosophy of truth is a philosophy of thinking about "being" with rational thinking. The knowledge provided in this way is true and certain, so it also exists. The most fundamental feature of the theory of "ontology" is to pursue the certainty of knowledge and resolutely oppose the uncertainty of perceptual things. Elijah School is a rationalist school in ancient Greek philosophy. When Anaxagoras, who was contemporary with parmenides, expounded the primitive problems of the world with his granular material structure, his understanding of reason went further. According to Anaxagoras's seed theory, since existence cannot be produced by non-existence, there are various things in each complex, that is, the seeds containing everything move under the action of reason, so that some seeds combine and some seeds separate, and everything in the world moves and changes in the separation and combination of seeds. Reason has become the cause of the movement and change of things in Anaxagoras, but "it is not a spiritual entity that arranges the world from the outside". Democritus inherited this atomistic theory. He believes that perceptual knowledge can only understand the phenomenon of things, and only knowledge born of truth (rational knowledge) can understand the essence of things, thus determining the position of reason in epistemology. The existence and non-existence, truth and opinions, thoughts and feelings of Elijah School have become the important links of democritus's atomism and Plato's idealism, and have been transformed and developed. Elijah School ended, but philosophy made great strides.