Anima Mundi: Nature and Philosophy in Ancient Greece

This chapter presents pre-Socratic, Socratic, Platonic and Aristotelian views and approaches to nature. Their concerns, from the basic elements of life, through to the placement of humans on Earth and in the Cosmos. In these early days, philosophy gradually shifted from the philosophy of nature of the pre-Socratics through to the more humanistic approach of Socrates and his followers. Plato, however, attempted to combine both approaches. For him, the universe had a soul – anima mundi – the source of all individual souls, including that of the Earth. Thus, values and notions present in Ancient Greece related to nature and the planet Earth as wholeness echo some of the present-day discourse on the need of human reintegration into nature. Dialectic – an important methodological tool that would change as humanity moved into Modernity – shifted from a conversational process from which ‘truth’ would emerge to a dispute where some would win and others would lose. Despite all the richness of the thinking of those times regarding the relationships and the place of humans in nature, evidences of deforestation and pollution in Ancient Greece indicate that contradictions between human discourse and practice are as old as those days.