3. The Italian Philosophers

Now that we have considered the Ionian philosophers, we need to turn our attention to the other major class of pre-Socratics, the Italian philosophers. These were also Greek thinkers, but lived in Italy because of earlier migrations of Greeks in the ancient world.

While the Ionians tended to rely on sensory experience as the basis for knowledge, the Italians focused instead on pure reason. This reliance on reason alone led them to some rather strange ideas, for example, that there cannot be space or motion or change!

Even though their views were somewhat surprising, the contribution of the Italian pre-Socratics were quite important to later thought, especially in Plato's philosophy. We need to give them our attention, therefore, and that is the purpose of this lesson.