Book Description

"This dissertation presents a new account of Thales based on the idea that Achelois -- a deity equated with water in the ancient Greek world and found in Miletos during Thales' life -- was the most important cultic deity influencing the thinker, profoundly shaping his philosophical worldview. In doing so, it also weighs in on the metaphysical and epistemological dichotomy that seemingly underlies all academia -- the antithesis of the methodological postulate of Marxian dialectical materialism vis-́a-vis the Platonic idea of fundamentally real transcendental forms. Unbeknownst to many philosophers, there are various Neo-Marxian scholars that position the origin of coinage as the pivotal technological development giving rise to impersonal 'metaphysical cosmology,' suggesting that the value of money was more-or-less projected back onto the cosmos in the form of 'ideal substances.' While the arguments are incredibly sophisticated and persuasive, their conclusions (either stated or implied) are rather difficult to swallow: the self is merely an illusion, abstract ideas of an ultimate source of value, like God or the Good, are totally delusional (as is the soul), and essentially everything is reducible to mankind's enslavement to commodities and the notion of our own objectified labor (the true source of all value, according to Marx). Not only is this a dangerous belief that many philosophers (consciously or unconsciously) have adopted, since essentially any action could be 'justified,' it is also demonstrably false, since it rests on a thorough misunderstanding of Thales and misconception of philosophy as such. My work rectifies that misunderstanding. In an important sense, it is an attempt at redefining philosophy as a 'love of wisdom,' which I argue was accurate even in its Presocratic setting, and it uses the influence of Acheloios on Thales to do so . . . " -- Abstract.