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The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts

by: G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven,
en

0521091691  9780521091695 

By G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven,

ALTERNATE ISBN:

 

The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts
By G. S. Kirk,&nbspJ. E. Raven,&nbspM. Schofield, 


Book Description:

Beginning with a long and extensively rewritten introduction surveying the predecessors of the Presocratics, this book traces the intellectual revolution initiated by Thales in the sixth century B.C. to its culmination in the metaphysics of Parmenides and the complex physical theories of Anaxagoras and the Atomists in the fifth century it is based on a selection of some six hundred texts, in Greek and a close English translation which in this edition is given more prominence. These provide the basis for a detailed critical study of the principal individual thinkers of the time. Besides serving as an essential text for undergraduate and graduate courses in Greek philosophy and in the history of science, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers with interests in philosophy, theology, the history of ideas and of the ancient world, and indeed to anyone who wants an authoritative account of the Presocratics.

 


Date: 2007-04-14   Rating: 3
Review:

Throwing Light on the Landscape of the Orthodox

The orthodox position regarding the early Greek philosophers might be thought of as a view which likes to see Ancient Greece as a self-contained clearly demarcated autochthonous entity, and the Greeks as more or less like us in meaning by 'philosophy' what our orthodox professors such as Kirk and Raven mean by the term.

Over this orthodox landscape the American scholar Thomas McEvilley has arrived like a thunderbolt of Indra with a burst of brilliant light that enables us to see clearly for the first time things that without him we might never have seen.

As a classicist who is competent, not only in Greek and Latin but also in Sanskrit and several other languages, and who is conversant, not merely with the history and primary texts of an isolated and clearly demarcated 'Greece' (which never existed except in the minds of the orthodox), but with the larger Indian-Mesopotamian-Egyptian-Greek complex, he has devoted thirty years research to bringing before us a massive and comprehensive account of the philosophies that burgeoned and grew within that complex.

It was a complex in which an enormous amount of movement took place with innumerable people of various sorts engaged in travel by both land and sea - statesmen, ambassadors, emissaries, couriers, merchants, bankers, financial agents, healers, soldiers, sailors, scholars, students, priests, missionaries, religious mendicants, holy men, wonder workers, tourists, sightseers, etc.

It was also one in which people still retained their natural curiosity about others, their ways of life and beliefs, and would have been eager to listen to the wise and informed no matter what region of the earth they hailed from. This open-mindedness, naturally enough, led to a great deal of cross-fertilization of ideas which McEvilley, a man who happily is similarly open-minded, sets out before us in detail. What he shows us is that, while it is undoubtedly true that Indian thinkers learned certain things from the Greeks, it is equally true that the Greeks learned some very important things from the Indians.

By all means read Kirk and Raven (but NOT Schofield's corrupted version of them) and Guthrie and Barnes and the rest of the tribe of the Orthodox, but be aware that - imprisoned as they are in the cave of wishful thinking with its ceaseless and seductive whisper - autochthonous ... autochthonous ... autochthonous - they are giving you only an incomplete and distorted picture of what ancient Greek thought was really about. For the bigger and truer picture you will most assuredly need McEvilley's truly magisterial study, a study which throws a dazzling and brilliant light over what has hitherto been the somewhat dim and distorted landscape of the orthodox.

Details of his study are as follows:

Thomas McEvilley, 'The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies.' New York: Allworth Press, 2002. ISBN 1581152035. Hardback, 731 pp. Illustrated with b/w plates, maps, and with a detailed bibliography and index.



Date: 2007-03-14   Rating: 5
Review:

Aristotle should have read this!

I purchased this book out of curiosity. I haven't been a student for longer than I'd like to admit, but this book welcomed me home like I'd never left academia. The writing is superb. The analyses and time lines are expertly done. And, there is more than enough appropriate authorial humor. Edith Hamilton would have recommended this work of art.



Date: 2006-11-09   Rating: 5
Review:

The most excellent anthology of early Greek thought

No, this is NOT the definitive collection of 'pre-Socratic' philosophical fragments. The definitive collection is to be found in the Diels-Kranz edition of the Fragments of the Presocratics (Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker). However, what Kirk, Raven and Schofield achieve in this 2nd edition is an excellent anthology of the main pickings of that collection, with lots of illuminating commentary for those fragments that are singular or less than fragments and comparatively less commentary for those fragments that are more complete, thus helping to understand vocabulary and the philosophical thought in the context of ancient Greek times.

From Anaximander's mysterious 'limitlessness' to Democritus and Leucippus's atoms, these are thoughts about the nature of existence that children innocently ask and adults would do well to reconsider-- they are great mind-exercisers, and make one appreciate not only modern scientific knowledge but the process through which it has advanced since the day Thales suggested that 'water' was the universal principle of (material) existence.

I have yet to compare it to the 1st edition (1957); this 2nd edition (1983) supposedly takes into account the views of analytic philosophers in their studies of Presocratics like Pythagoras, Parmenides and Zeno, and does not look into the mystical link between ancient Greek religion and philosophy the way the 1st edition supposedly did (according to another book reviewer here).

F.M. Cornford's FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY gives a nice treatment to the mystical link between ancient Greek superstition/religion and philosophy. This is probably a good contrast to have to analytic philosophy's ignoring of that link. Another useful book is Walter Burkert's GREEK RELIGION, but my favorite is Werner Jaeger's THE THEOLOGY OF THE EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS.

As Immanuel Kant declared in his famous essay, "SAPERE AUDE! Dare to know!"



Date: 2005-11-30   Rating: 5
Review:

On my third copy...

Still the definitive introduction to the Pre-Socratics. It works for the (enthusiastic) general reader as much as it does for the committed classicist, thanks to remarkably clear translations (and glosses) for the generalist and an excellently edited selection of the original texts, helped by one of the more readable fonts used for the Greek text (the typographers of this book deserve special praise). However, while the authors editors and typographers may be hugely impressive, the binders must be criticised for a volume that falls apart when read repeatedly. That's the only reason I'm on my third copy.



Date: 2005-06-28   Rating: 5
Review:

First Edition, My first professional Philosophy book

'The Presocratic Philosophers' edited by G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven is, on a personal level, dear to me as it is the very first book I bought when I began studying philosophy as my major in college. This trade paperback cost but $3.95. For the philosophical amateurs who may have stumbled over this review while plowing through my cookbook reviews, the most dramatic aspect of this book is how little we actually have of what these great men who invented philosophy actually wrote. For the very first figure, Thales of Melitis (a town on the Asia Minor coast), we have practically nothing except second hand reports from Diogenes Laertius, Herodotus, Plutarch, and others. Also for amateurs is the great introductory essay on the difference between mythical cosmology and the beginnings of philosophy.

If you happen to have a strong amateur interest in the history of ideas and can pick up an inexpensive early edition (I have one from 1962), I recommend you give this a look.

For serious professionals, the most important aspect of this original text is the very scholarly presentation of the fragments in the original Greek with excellent translations and commentary on the sources.