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.