Where does the necessity lie for the philosophers to inquire history?
Is there such a "thing" as history? If it does, then,
"What is history anyway?"
What kind of meaning does history have for us to do philosophy?
Is there one single history of humankind or are there as many histories as the "historians" who "tell" the "stories that reveals facts themselves happened in the past"?
Is a Universal History of the enitre humankind possible? Or can there be only as many histories of people as there are races and/or nations?
Are there real events in the past called "historical events" which are indeed accessible to us as knowledge?
Or are we simply capable of making mere happy guesses about them rather than have any knowledge of a historical event?
Is the history nothing but a narration of a historian by means of his creative imagination?

Let us answer first of all the question of why we have needs to inquire the history of philosophy. Before we study the History of Greek Philosophy, we may have to investigate and possibly answer those basic questions in philosophy of history. However, on the other hand, we are not able to make inquiries into those questions without our actually doing historical research by ourselves. In other words, we truly attain an understanding of the Philosophy of History by making an inquiry into the history of philosophy. Here we are involved in a apparent vicious circle. In a sense, this may be what Hegel wanted to contend when he wrote the philosophy of history.
Often we talk about history as if it were a series of events that happened in the past. Needless to say, it is of cardinal importance to ascertain the date of an "historical" event and truthfully describe it, as we can infer with certainty how it must have happened and what were causes for the event and what kind of effects it left in the succeeding period. Needless to say, this alone, of course, does not constitute history as a scientific discipline. But, then, what distinguishes one past event as historical from the other non-historical event, both of which did happen in the past? For mere events that happened in the past do not qualify as historical events. The fact that Socrates, for instance, got up until 8.30 am on July 3, 543 B.C. could be a real event which happened, but in itself it does not belong to history. as the event indeed is a portion of the past reality, and yet it is not "important" enough to be viewed as "historical". Then, what would constitute this "historical importance?"
For example, following the tradition, we start the History of Greek Philosophy with Thales from Miletus. Why do we have to begin with Thales? Before we argue about the legitimacy of this convention, we have to comprehend why and how this traditional convention was established.
It has been the tradition in Western philosophy that we begin the history of Western philosophy with Thales of Miletus, in Ionia in Asia Minor, probably because, besides Thales' being called one of the Seven Wise men (Sophistai), Aristotle considered Thales as the founder of Greek philosophy and started the historical account of Greek philosophy with Thales in his Metaphysics. We are well aware that Thales was born in Miletus and was called one of the Seven Wisest Men (ha sophistai) in ancient Greece together with Solon, who, founding the Athenian Constitution, probably deserves the name of the greatest Athenian politician besides Pericles, and others. We know also that Thales excelled in mathematics and astronomy, and predicted a total solar eclipse which was visible in Asia Minor.
Needless to say, before Thales, there must have been others who predicted many solar eclipses and they likely lived in Persia (Asia Minor, Egypt and the other Middle East). However, according to the documents preserved in Western Civilization, no one mentioned nor remembered who predicted a solar eclipse prior to Thales. Or very likely we may have lost the record of such names when the then greatest library in Alexandria was destroyed, or even we have not discovered a tablet about it in the Ancient Babylonian Culture.
Fortunately Aristotle's Metaphysics has survived, thanks to the Arabic Aristotelian scholars of the Middle Ages, and from the other historical documents together with the current astronomical knowledge, we are able to logically conclude that Thales did indeed predict a solar eclipse which occurred in Asia Minor near Miletus.
It must be called to your attention that, although we shall elaborate on it more, when we later discussed how to ascertain the date of the solar eclipse supposedly predicted by Thales, the fact of his prediction itself was of no historical importance. This bears a significance as long as Thales is considered the Father of the History of Western Philosophy in order to establish the date of his life and activities.
Then we must ask ourselves what makes Thales the father of the History of Greek Philosophy?
To be sure, Aristotle stated it. But there must be some good reasons for his calling Thales the Father of Greek Philosophy. Thales was supposed to be the first to inquire into the principle of all beings in nature and among the natural substances such as the Greek four traditional elements (water, fire, earth and air).
First of all, Thales was supposed to be the first human-being (at least in the West) who did pursue knowledge for its own sake, and not for its usefulness for something else such as for making money or for winning a fight or battle or for obtaining fame, although according to his anecdote, Thales was well aware that he could make money with his wisdom. Why it is so important to pursue the intrinsic knowledge is to be more fully discussed. Thales did search knowledge solely for the sake of the pure joy of pursuit of knowledge of its own.
For Aristotle, this is understood naturalistically in that Thales as well as all humans are born with the capacity and tendency to pursue knowledge. Needless to say, however, this does not have to be naturalistically justified. Thales did search knowledge solely for the sake of the pure joy of pursuit of knowledge of its own. For Aristotle, this is understood naturalistically in that Thales as well as all humans are born with the capacity and tendency to pursue knowledge. Needless to say, this does not have to be naturalistically justified.
Secondly, Thales was supposed to be the first human who "wondered" why being exists and nonbeing does not.
Thirdly, Thales searched the principle (hé arché) of all beings, which is to be distinguished from the (temporal) origin (hé arché) of all beings (the universe - ho kosmos). This principle from which all beings come into existence and to which all beings perish is beyond time, thus the change in all things is now understood as the perpetual cycle between the principle and all things.
As a questioning search, philosophy has been characterized as the inquiry into knowledge for its own sake. Aristotle defined this also as the essential characteristic of philosophy. (The theology of Middle Ages made philosophy ancilla theologiae=the-maid-for-theology, philosophy was the mother of all sciences and still is. This must be also elaborated later in an appropriate context.) And since then, we have followed Aristotle's way of construing what constitutes philosophy.
Is this somewhat arbitrary? Probably "yes" in the sense that Aristotle accidentally formulated the basic notion of what philosophy should be. However, some one else who might come after him could have conceived of philosophy otherwise, but no one did until 15th Century in Europe. Despite the absence of the awareness of his philosophy for almost two thousand years in the Western world, meantime the Arabs had been fascinated with Aristotle's philosophy and copied his works, translated them into Arabic, studied them, and wrote commentaries on them.
On the other hand, it is not arbitrary, because all of the post-Aristotelian scholars decided to believe that Aristotle legitimately chose and correctly made Thales the Father of the History of Greek Philosophy, and in consequence, we have never raised a doubt about it, nor seriously questioned it nor denied it, but rather gladly accepted the Aristotelian characterization of the nature of philosophy and of science in general.
Thus, between Thales and Aristotle, all "historical phenomena" which cannot be "squeezed" into the above characteristics of philosophy have not been considered as parts of the History of Greek Philosophy for a long time. Later we shall have an opportunity to focus our attention on this question and thematically deal with it such a way that we will attempt to reinterpret the history of Greek Philosophy, which will differ greatly from the traditional history of Greek Philosophy.

The Characteristics of Our Approach to History of Philosophy

History is not a mere enumerative narration and description of a series of events that are supposed to have happened. Nor it is a product of our free imagination about the things of the past either. Unlike the majority of past historians, we defy the narrow conception of history as it has been predominantly construed as political history. The division of historical period is thus in general not determined by means of the alteration of the political leadership, for example. For each domain of historical reality has its own rhythm of development and its own value and principle of the division of the periods Needless to say, there are exceptions to this general rule. For example, through Alexander the Great, the Hellenic Greek culture came to its end and the Hellenistic, new cultures began, as the basis of the former, the polis (h polis‹the city state‹), was destroyed by his campain.).
Instead of the division of period according to Political History, we must search for other criterion for this task of the historian. Is there any universal criterion which "determines" (covers) the entire history of a certain cutlure including such phases as its history of fine arts, that of music, that of decorative arts, that of architecture? Approach without preconceived ideas to historical "facts" themself iss not only possible, but must be there. It is a principle by means of which we can talk about birth, adolecence, peak, deline. We must be able to discern qualitative variety and variations througfh a certain period. If it is posible to do so, then it must also possible to distinguish one "style" from a new "styple" which descriptively reveal the end of one period and the beginning of the next.
There must always be a theme, a value or significance or a style (e.g., in the case of the history of arts , of music, of architecture,or of fashion). Or if you want to, it may be called a logic, as Hegel preferred. What is important is not an event or an affair in isolation, but a development and alteration of a certain theme or value. A history must be, for instance, the history of a certain period, in which a particular theme or value was born, grew, attained its peak and decayed. Of course, this process of development of a certain period should not be strictly modeled after the pattern of a biological organism and its life. However, whenever we attempt to observe, there is the movement with alteration of a certain theme or significance or style in a historical sequence. History must not describe an event in isolation, but should be able to delineate a temporal change in the theme in a given period, whether it may be a very slow process or an abrupt occasion. The historical reality is also in a given temporal and spatial horizon and finds itself, so we assume, in continuity. Even if there seems to exist an abrupt discontinuity from a preceding period to the next, that abrupt change itself is in a relationship with many variables.
In the History of Greek Philosophy, too, we pursue a theme of the period, follow the development of questioning itself and try to comprehend, for example, why Aristotle exerted himself to philosophize the way he did in terms of the question, of the method and approach, of the dominant themes of his inquiry and of his philosophical answers to the questions Aristotle passionately raised for himself. It is not a book in isolation, not his "realism" in isolation, not his epistemology in solution, but Aristotle is an organic whole in the context of the historical reality with its perspective which he was alive and philosophized in.

The Division of the Periods in the History of Greek Philosophy
and The Philosophical Development in the Classical Period.

According to our tradition, we call the period of approximately 1000 years from 600 B.C. to 600 A.D. the Classical Period of the History of Western Philosophy. The specific date with which we begin our Greek History of Philosophy is the date Thales is supposed to have predicted the total solar eclipse which took place in Asia Minor at the midst of the battle between Media and Lydia, i.e., May 28, 585 B.C. This is the only date which we could rigorously ascertain about Thales. The basic features characterizing the Greek Philosophy in terms of the methods, of the attitude, the questions, and answers and the use of Hellenistic Greek as the language seems to have persisted until 529 A.D. when the Roman Emperor, Justinianus, forbade teaching philosophy at Academy in Athens, so Damascius and Simplicius and the other five philosophers are supposed to have fled to Persia, where they did not stay very long.
Needless to say, philosophy, love of wisdom, will never die out simply by legal order. Nevertheless, in the so-called Western world (which, due to the Eurocentrism, excludes the World of Arabic Civilizations) the political situations were such that the West Roman Empire was destroyed in 476 A.D. and that culturally the West went into the so-called "Dark Ages." This requires a little elaboration, but in this context we merely state that the basic characteristics of philosophical inquiry seem to have been greatly altered around this period of time in the Western World. We merely mention that the philosophical research flourished in the Arabic cultural sphere, where the Classical Traditions were well inherited and preserved as well as developed further for a long period of time and gave birth to an original, new philosophico-religious tradition of its own.
This classical period between 585 B.C. and 529 A.D. is further subdivided into two portions by the year of Aristotle's death in 322 B.C.
Why is Aristotle's death so important? Roughly around that period, the Greek Civilization experienced an abrupt metamorphosis in its nature. As we know Aristotle tutored the young prince of Macedonia called Alexander and while Aristotle was the teacher and Alexander the Great was his student, they were contemporaries. We also are well aware that Alexander the Great changed the socio-cultural basis of the Greek civilization almost totally by unifying Greece, conquering the "world." In other words, his political activities affected the Way of Life, not to mention the worldview, of all Greeks including philosophy, religion, theatre, literature, fine arts and music, etc.
Prior to Alexander the Great's establishment of the empire, every Greek's way of life and his/her outlook on life was identified with that of her/his polis (city state) and his/her being and meaning of life was found in the identity of and rooted in that of her/his own polis.
The polis is the Greek name for a city state, which was the unit and basis of the sociopolitical as well as cultural and religious life in any of the Ancient civilizations whether it was middle East or Far East. To be human at that time, therefore, meant no more and no less than to be a citizen of that city state.
The Greeks used to call themselves either mortal humans (hoi anthropoi thnétoi) or free humans (hoi anthropoi eleutheroi). While being mortal is in distinction from the immortality of the Divine Beings and were constantly made aware of the finitude of their being, and being free means to be a citizen in opposition to being a slave (an exception will be a guest to the city state or an honorary citizen like the most prominent sophist, Protagoras in Athens).
To the Hellenic Greeks, thus, freedom had a very positive, was immediately felt quality. Since the polis, the city state, must have been so small that one should have an overview of the entire territory from the top of its acropolis, the fortress, every citizen knew every other citizen since his/her ancestors of many generations. In those Ancient Greek city states, political affairs, religious matters, and military duties and responsibilities, to the citizen of the polis, were not separate or were things to be kept separate, but they were one and the same. The activities involving them were both the privilege and responsibility for being a citizen, namely synonymous with a free human.
For example, for Aristotle or the earlier Greek philosophers, ethics is not an independent philosophical discipline like today to inquire into how a human as an individual ought to act and develop one's desirable character. On the contrary, ethics was considered a branch of politics and it was the discipline to study the personal characters suitable to be a citizen of the polis.
Therefore, when Aristotle said that the human is a political animal (to zón politikon), he meant that for us to be human above all we ought to be a citizen of a given polis.
Contrary to this Hellenic period of the classic Greek civilization, the Hellenistic period came after that as a consequence of Alexander the Great's Panhellenization. The old Greek culture now spread all over the world and people accepted the Greek culture as the highest so that they were eager to imitate it.
The Greek language became the international language like today's English. Of course, in its process, the classical Greek deteriorated into the so-called Hellenistic Greek through simplification in many aspects. Thus, New Testament was written in this Hellenistic Greek. A foreigner was able to converse with each other in this Hellenistic Greek in the domain of the Mediterranean.
The Greek arts, the Greek theatre, Greek philosophy were accepted all over as something to admire, something to learn, something to recreate, etc. In this way the diversification and popularization of the classic Greek arts and culture took place. This popularized phase of the cutlure is distinctly different from the primordial, pure stage of the culture. Phideus' scultures are distinctly different from e.g., Raocon.
Even the so-called Graeco-Roman Age was politically controlled by the Romans and yet culturally, the Roman civilization may also be viewed as an extension of Hellenism. Indeed, even Caesar and Cleopatra sspoke love in the Hellenistic Greek. This was the international, most civilized language of the time in the Mediterranean World.
Thus, the History of the Ancient Western Philosophy may be divided as followed:

1. 585 B.C.-322 B.C. The Classic Period
a. Ionian Philosophies
(Thales, Anaximander, Anaximes)
b. Ionian-Italian Migrant Philosophies
(Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Heracleitus)
c. Italian Philosophies
(Parmenides, Zeno, Melissus)
d. Revival of the Natural Philosophies
(Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus-Democritus)
e. Athenian Philosophies
(The Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle)

2. 322 B.C.-529 A.D. The Period of Hellenism
a. Philosophies of Hellenism till 146 B.C.
b. Graeco-Roman Philosophies till 529 A.D.

The Etymological Exploration of Historia

In the common English usage, history means
1) a story of the things past,
2) a humanistic discipline inquiring into the things in the past and attempting to describe them as accurately as possible.
The word "history" originated from the Greek transitive verb historein and this primarily meant 1) to "learn by inquiry", i.e., inquisitive learning. Although this meaning of history has been totally forgotten, it may be necessary to remind ourselves of this primary meaning of the term in order to pursue our historical study here.
Secondly, "history" meant not merely just 2) to "narrate", but to "narrate what we learned by inquiry."
Thirdly, "history" meant 3) to "narrate" a storyt or an epic tale.
Fourthly, 4) to "narrate the events of the past" or "the historical events."
As obvious from the above, history is indeed an inquisitive pursuit of knowledge and not a kind of narration of the Homeric epic or the Hesiodic theogonia, which are retelling of what had been transmitted as "myth."
If indeed history presupposes such a philosophical attitude of "questioning search", it intends to learn the historical fact by inquiry and then to describe it in the context of a historical development in such a way that its significance shall be revealed and its meaning to us will be properly disclosed.
German has a linguistic distinction to characterize these two phases of a historical study. The fact that happened and its scientific ascertainment of its facticity is called die Geschichte, while its descriptive aspect is called die Historie, following the Greek tradition.
Let us see how this inquisitive learning in philosophy of the past will be pursued by means of a concrete example. Our first question is:
How can we ascertain such a historical event as a philosopher's life and his thought, particularly in the case where we do not possess the so called "historical record", i.e., the written data?
To increase and expand our knowledge what we normally do is to logically infer from what is known already that which is to be yet known, i.e., the unknown. There are manly different methods of inference using different rules and operations. Deduction and induction (an empirical generalization) are two representatives of such.
The propositions about the known, i.e, about what is already known (as being true), is called the premiss(es), whereas the proposition of the unknown, i.e., of what is yet to be known or proven to be true, is called the conclusion. The process of inference (which is not psychological, but purely logical) is called an argument in logic. And an argument is said to be valid, unless the true premiss(es) implies(y) the false conclusion. Needless to say, one of the most important tasks of logic is to investigate and establish the method of ascertaining the validity of an argument.
Today, it is rather easy to find out my birth date and place for example, while it may not be so easy to do so, say, even for Socrates. Thus for the History of Greek Philosophy, it is very important to identify even one possible date about the philosophers we deal with, particularly about those philosophers who are called the pre-Socratic philosophers. Because we are very much interested in finding out how certain thought of a philosopher may influence some other philosophers, it is essential to ascertain at least the relative dates among those philosophers.
As an example the following process of the historical investigation will illuminate how historians of Greek Philosophy arrived at the date of Thales, i.e., 585 B.C.
Herodotus mentioned in his Historia, Book 1, 74,

Suddenly a total solar eclipse took place in the midst of the battle between Lydia and Media. Thales of Miletus had predicted that that solar eclipse would occur at that time and at that place.

...it was the fourth year during the 48th panathénaia (the Greek year which refers to the four year period between the Olympic Games).