Abstract

The article proposes viewing the origins of Greek philosophy through the prism of two motifs, Logos and Eros. While seemingly mutually exclusive yet fundamentally complementary, these elements constitute the inner nature of the cosmos. Both had previously manifested themselves in the ‘philosophical’ thought (albeit expressed in mythological terms) of the great Greek poets, Homer and Hesiod. The birth of Greek philosophy is linked to what might be termed (with some approximation) the demythologisation and, simultaneously, the rationalisation of the Greek view of the natural world and the gods. They did not eradicate the divine from the consciousness of the Greeks or from philosophy. ‘Divinity’ remained within it – although in various forms, ranging from divinity understood immanently as an element of the world’s inner nature to divinity conceived as its transcendent creator – but always as the ultimate source of the ‘rational’ (‘logical’) laws governing its life. The two afore mentioned motifs, Logos and Eros, will also find their place here.