What is the significance of ancient Greece in Western civilization?  Often, we look at ancient Greece and see a culture far different than anything we see in any form of modern civilization.  However, ancient Greece had a lot of significance in building the  modern world we live in.  This was the first culture to really pursue human reason.   human reason is the one feature that sets humans apart from all of the other creatures. This development of human reason, and the first individuals to apply this human reason, shaped western civilization. There are few brief accounts that modern day scholars have been able to decipher, and from that, we can see that these were real people with real values.

Why is pre-Socratic philosophy significant?  The pre-Socratic philosophers lived in the 6th century B.C., and they were the first recorded philosophers to use their human reason ask questions about life’s existence.  Many of their philosophies are far-fetched, and hard to process.  Their “wacky” answers were not what made them significant, it is the fact that they asked the questions in the first place that is significant.  They were the first group of people to challenge the process and existence of life.  Each one of these individuals had their own theory.  It is really impressive, these people had nothing to base their reason on, and they used human reason to dig deeper and try to learn more.  While they were mostly incorrect in their philosophy, they devoted their lives to finding out what really happened, and without any confirmed facts, that is remarkable.