Thoughts on Thales

We always go back to Thales in our narratives of the history of philosophy; and indeed, if we get off on the right foot understanding him, we are much less likely to be led astray as we proceed. When he says that everything is water, I would argue that this cannot be a reductionist principle, because he also says that all things are full of Gods. Moreover, his mathematizing trajectory does not coexist comfortably with his watery reduction unless the point of the latter is simply to express the possibility of a smooth space—I always think of Virilio in this respect, who had this one interesting idea—essentially, the space of geometrical diagrammatization, amidst and among the diversity of beings and of ways of being, just as the Nūn imposes *cyclically* a state of non-differentiation until the diversity of things reaffirms itself through Atum, Shu and Tefnut, and their children.