ABSTRACT
Philosophy emerged in the sixth century BC in Miletus, a Greek colony in Asia Minor, with three figures, Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, who were interested in two main questions-‘what is the world made of?’ and ‘how did the world originate?’. These three Milesians were not the first to ask, and answer, such questions; and today, discussion of them is the work of scientists as much as philosophers. None the less, these three Milesians are correctly regarded as the first philosophers, and in this chapter, I want to ask why this should be so. I shall argue that asking philosophical questions is part of the human condition, and that philosophical questioning arises naturally in the context of everyday life. But what marks out a philosopher is not, or is not simply, the questions that he asks, but the nature of his response to those questions. So I shall ask what it is about the thought of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes that makes their response to these questions a philosophical response.
