Volume 1 of the Tübingen Lectures by Wolfgang Schadewaldt from 1950-1972 addresses early Greek philosophy before its transformation through Socrates. Starting from the beginnings of Greek thought, the image of the cosmos and humanity in Homer, the speculation about the origin of the world and world order in Hesiod's didactic poetry, and the elegiac poetry of Solon, which developed politically-philosophical legal ideas emerging from a new society, Schadewaldt demonstrates in the first part of the lecture the preformation of philosophy in the Greek language, its grammar, and its structure. This is followed by an analysis of the origins and meanings of philosophical terms that were influential up to Plato and Aristotle and are still used in contemporary thought. The two main parts of the lecture concern the preserved fragments of the pre-Socratic philosophers as well as the indirect testimonies.