The term ["Presocratics"] was coined to highlight a fundamental change in
philosophical inquiries between the philosophers who lived
before Socrates, who were interested in the structure of
nature and cosmos (i.e., the universe, with the
implication that the universe had order to it), and
Socrates and his successors, who were mostly interested in
ethics and politics. The term comes with drawbacks, as
several of the pre-Socratics were highly interested in
ethics and how to live the best life.
But Plato (Socrates) is the first we have almost a complete “works” of.
The earlier entries on the Stanford Plato site read less PC to me.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060830025131/http://plato.stan...
https://web.archive.org/web/20060830033815/http://plato.stan...
Civilizations apart, or course.
Well, the common stance before him would remain
"Investigate".
Already Thales is attributed the "Know thyself" (so we start from the beginning); then one may think of Heraclitus (e.g. "Evil witnesses are eyes and ears for men, if they have souls that do not understand their language"). And of course, Pythagoras - the studies "on good and evil" are reported by Aristotle.