Aristotele 'storico della filosofia' e le istanze eliminativiste della filosofia presocratica

· Aristotle, ‘Historian of Philosophy’ and the Eliminativist Instances in Pre-Socratic Philosophy
· My paper is concerned with the question whether there is or not an eliminativist trend in
Presocratic philosophy of Nature. But its more limited aim is that of considering Aristotle’s critical
doxography concerning Presocratic philosophy of Nature and assessing whether – and to what
extent – he envisages in these philosophical perspectives an implicit or explicit commitment to
the inexistence of worldly ‘things’, namely, to the inexistence of anything other than the Principle
(in the case of Monist models) or the Principles (in the case of Pluralist models). By taking into
critical account some relevant passages from the loci classici of Aristotle’s ‘history of Presocratic
philosophy’ (especially the first book of Metaphysics, the first book of Physics, and the first book of
De generatione et corruptione), I will show that Aristotle attributes to both Monists (such as Thales,
Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus and others) and Pluralists (such as Empedocles, Anaxagoras,
Democritus and others) an eliminativist commitment, either explicit or implicit, such that
the Underlying Nature they posit ultimately tends to be conceived by them as the only existent
Entity at all. Although, some other Aristotelian passages show that Presocratics are oscillating (and
Aristotle is on its own oscillating in reconstructing their ‘deep thoughts’) about whether the ‘Manifest
World’ has an objective existence, or it turns out to be ‘absorbed’ by the Principle/Principles
with respect to its reality. Of course, Aristotle’s doxography is often ‘theory-laden’ and dependent
on his own categories and philosophical aims, but his tendentially eliminativist interpretation of
the main Presocratic philosophers of Nature is a useful preliminary entry into the more general
question, concerning the hypothesis of an eliminativist trend in Presocratic philosophy as such.