Problem rozumienia przyczyny u presokratyków. Przejście od αρχη do αιτια

The primary ideal of philosophical investigations was focused on seeking for causes which existed in the world of nature. First attempts were concentrated on discovering a basic constructive element (proto-element), which also was to be the primitive principle (ajrchv) of life and transformations in the world. That current was represented by such philosophers as Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras or Diogenes of Apollonia, who endeavored to describe the reality and its intrinsic processes in a broader causal context. They emphasized mate-rial and dynamic causes for originating things and keeping them in existence – causes which transcended a homogeneous principle. The variety of phenomena in the world demanded to seek for causes of different kinds, and became a sig-nificant step for understanding the reality in a strictly philosophical way. With having distinguished functions of causes, mentioned thinkers gave a solid foun-dation for understanding cause as aijtiva in later philosophy (of Plato and Aris-totle). According to first philosophers, however, the existence and function of causes remained completely dependent on the material component of the reality, which proved that pre-Socratic philosophy was entirely dominated by the physi-cal view of the world.