Presocratic

See also: pre-Socratic

English

Alternative forms

• Pre-Socratic
• pre-Socratic

Etymology

From pre- +‎ Socratic.

Noun

Presocratic (plural Presocratics)

1. Any Ancient Greek philosopher who preceded or was roughly contemporaneous with Socrates and whose methods and views were influenced neither directly nor indirectly by Socrates or his primary student, Plato.
   • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 128:

     The Great Mother is no simple notion from primitive religion, but an idea in a complex mythology that became demythologized and secularized by the Presocratics, but not changed.

Adjective

Presocratic

1. of, or characteristic of, such a philosopher (or these philosophers) as a whole.