Did Any of the Romantics Read the Presocratics

The Presocratic Philosophers

[ ]

R. Waterfield, The First Philosophers (Oxford: Oxford University Printing, 2000).

1. "And then much of our information about the Presocratic philosophers and the Sophists is fragmentary or otherwise obscure..." Preface, Folio ix.

2. "There is a great deal of secondary ancient textile, particularly about the Presocratics, whose importance was generally recognized in ancient times." ibid.

3. "A few scholars are perhaps over-pessimistic about our chances of recovering the thought of the Presocratics and Sophists. In some cases we have plenty genuine fragments to test the validity of the secondary testimonia; in some cases the textile surrounding shorter fragments tin cast light on the original context. Withal, there is an immense amount of discussion among modern scholars about what each of these thinkers really idea. Naturally, scholars prefer to rely as much every bit possible on the actual fragments themselves, but in the instance of none of these beginning Western philosophers are there ever quite enough of these for united states of america to exist able to see the whole pic. In addition, a lot of the fragments are devilishly obscure.

"However, we may in many cases have a greater proportion of the original work than we might at first imagine. It is likely that the Presocratics' and Sophists' books were not long, but were written in a condensed form, because they were meant to be read out loud to an audience and and so expanded by discussion afterwards, as much as they were intended as documents for posterity. This helps to explain the frequent dogmatism of their pronouncements, and also, given that much of what these early on thinkers were saying was open to interpretation, this must brand our judgement of the distortions of Aristotle and Theophrastus less harsh." ibid.

four. "In the last stanza of 'The Gods of Greece' by Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), the poet laments the passing of the one-time gods. The verse form perfectly sums up a particular attitude––a Romantic mental attitude––that at some point mythos was replaced by logos, the desouled Word." Introduction, Folio xi.

v. "The Greek word logos covers a wide range of meanings. In curt, it covers a nest of what we might call logical and rational faculties and activities. What Schiller meant, and so, was that at some signal in history our emotional and intuitive side lost out to such 'de-souled' activities." ibid.

6. "Schiller'due south view is also commonly reflected, though not as an occasion for Romantic mourning, in the standard histories of philosophy. The fact that both Romantics and academics are proverb the same thing constitutes a fascinating case where a truce has apparently been declared in what Plato described as 'the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy' (Republic 607b). Time and once again, in both abstruse bookish tomes and more popular histories, we read how a revolution took identify in the ancient Greek world, and how its first manifestations arose at the beginning of the sixth century bce. The thinkers associated with this revolution are known collectively as the Presocratic philosophers––'Presocratic' because they preceded Socrates in thought, even if the last of them are his contemporaries in fourth dimension––and they are said to accept invented philosophy and scientific discipline for the Western world." Introduction, Page xii

7. "The work of none of the Presocratics or the Sophists remains in its entirety. We accept to rely on fragments preserved in later writers and reports about their thought. Some of these reports were written past thinkers with their own agendas, who were implicitly or explicitly unsympathetic or even hostile to the Presocratics; others are the barest summaries of complex views, which often reveal a high degree of incomprehension. Unfortunately, baloney was the name of the game. While we owe an incalculable debt to Aristotle, his pupil Theophrastus, and their successors for preserving discussions of the Presocratics, it has now been established beyond the shadow of a doubt that they viewed their predecessors almost entirely through the lenses of their own philosophies." Introduction, Folio xiii

8. "It is articulate that the degree of baloney is extreme. We cannot have confidence that our ancient secondary sources have placed the ideas of their Presocratic predecessors within the right context in any single case. Of course, they might have done in a few cases, but we simply cannot be certain. And sometimes the possibility of baloney is plain to run into." Introduction, Page xvi

9. "The idea that these thinkers collectively brought something new into the earth, a scientific or proto-scientific attitude, a reliance on logos, is too simple and broad a picture. It is in fact rather naïve to lump all the Presocratics together as if they were somehow identical, although information technology has been a tendency in the history of philosophy from Aristotle onwards. Nevertheless, it is clear that not all the people standardly classified equally Presocratic philosophers fit comfortably into the Aristotelian mould. They range from shamans like Empedocles, through mystics like Pythagoras and prophets like Heraclitus, to metaphysicians such as Parmenides, philosophers such as Anaxagoras, and proto-scientists like the Milesians and Atomists. To describe Empedocles as a 'shaman' or Heraclitus every bit a 'prophet' is not to say that they could not make valuable contributions towards scientific or philosophical argue; but it is to say that their emphases and experiences are not those of a consummate scientist or philosopher. But despite the variety of interests the Presocratics brandish, there is something common to them all.

"Starting with the broad film, we should enquire what is meant by the claim that they invented philosophy and/or scientific discipline. (Strictly, 1 should distinguish between those like the Milesians who brought something scientific into the globe, and those like Parmenides or perhaps Heraclitus who reflected upon their predecessors' scientific work and were therefore philosophers.) We need start an example of the kind of cosmological work they were doing. Anaximenes of Miletus is typical of the earliest Milesian phase of Presocratic thought, and is adequately easy to summarize without undue distortion.

"Anaximenes said that the prime matter of the universe was air, and that this could be condensed or rarefied into the diverse components of the universe. When rarefied it becomes hot and fiery and forms not simply fire itself, only besides the peppery heavenly bodies; when condensed it becomes cold and can be seen every bit water and ultimately earth. These iv elements class the concentric layers of the universe. Air is and always was in motion, and it was presumably this motion which in some way initiated the process of condensation and rarefaction. Of course, having thought up the twin processes of condensation and rarefaction, Anaximenes might just as well have said that water or one of the other elements was the prime constituent of things, but he chose air considering it is plainly all-pervading and can appear to exist indefinite, and because we exhale it in and it causes life in u.s.a.. Our soul is air. The earth and all the heavenly bodies are apartment, he said, and float gently on the air like leaves." Introduction, Page xvii

ten. "So, were Anaximenes and his peers scientists? What does it have to be a scientist? In a higher place all, in today's terms, it takes scientific reasoning––that is, adherence to the scientific method. Paraphrasing Aristotle, whose formulation of the scientific method is as good as any, and better than most, we can depict this every bit a method of both consecration and deduction (or of resolution and composition, as the medieval schoolmen used to call them). The scientist (unless he is a follower of Karl Popper) starts with observation of an event; by a process of consecration he reaches explanatory principles; from these principles, facts about the event in question and nigh related phenomena are then to be deduced. Of course, it is not that uncomplicated: it takes a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between observation and theory, refining and correcting both observations and hypotheses. Merely in this manner the scientist has progressed from uncomprehending ascertainment of an effect to understanding why the consequence is as information technology is. From observation of the pretty spectrum of colours displayed on the wall, he has progressed to understanding that lite is in fact equanimous of rays with different refractive backdrop.

"In other words, scientific reasoning is a combination of forming testable hypotheses to account for observed phenomena (this may take imagination and model-making too equally logic), and of testing and re-testing these hypotheses by experimentation and logic. The resulting hypothesis should explain the observed phenomena in as unproblematic a way equally possible, should permit one to predict the behaviour of related phenomena, and should cohere with the body of accustomed scientific theories and doctrines. Throughout, everything should be quantifiable, measurable, and testable as far as is possible within the limitations of the engineering science currently bachelor.

"There is admittedly no indication that the Presocratics were scientists in this sense. In that location is picayune sign that they undertook experimentation at all; the hypotheses they came up with well-nigh the world's formation and constitution were not testable past scientific ways; where observation and theory clashed, they invariably preferred theory to ascertainment. They were, in short, dogmatists, not experimental scientists. Of form, it is not entirely fair to criticize the Presocratics for lack of experimentation; after all, a great bargain of what interested them was non capable of empirical testing in their twenty-four hour period; but that in itself helps to prove that they should not be described as scientists in the modern sense of the word." Introduction, Folio xviii

11. "What evidence do scholars have for their view that the Presocratics, or some of them, were scientists? Here nosotros come to what nosotros may phone call 'scientific attitudes', as distinct from scientific reasoning or method. A short list of scientific attitudes would consist of the following:

» The optimistic assumption that the world and its components are comprehensible; this is what Einstein was getting at when he said, 'God may exist subtle, but he is not malicious.'

» The assumption that the human rational mind is the right tool for understanding the world.

» Adherence to a item set of approaches to problem-solving; this involves, for case, analysing bug into their component parts and so dealing separately with starting with unproblematic problems before tackling more circuitous ones.

» Tempered curiosity: although curiosity well-nigh the world is essential for the scientist, it must not exist allowed to lead the investigator into hasty hypotheses or extravagant leaps of the imagination, nor be governed by prejudice in any form.

» A beloved of and facility with abstract concepts.

"This is where the Presocratics fit in. Some or all of them display at to the lowest degree some of these attitudes. It would, of course, exist unreasonable to wait them to be fully fledged scientists in the modern sense of the word but peradventure their adherence to––even invention of––at least some of these scientific attitudes is enough to justify our calling them at least proto-scientists. They tend to autumn at the hurdle of tempered curiosity––that is, they tend to blitz into what modern scientists would undoubtedly telephone call wild and fifty-fifty visionary speculation––but they were the outset to make and explore the consequences of the supposition which is admittedly crucial to the evolution of scientific discipline, that the homo rational mind is the correct tool for understanding the world. They were reductionists––that is, they formed general hypotheses in an attempt to explicate as many things as possible by ways of as few hypotheses every bit possible––and in their theorizing they relied on natural phenomena similar air, rather than supernatural phenomena like the traditional Greek gods and goddesses. However, this broad picture must immediately exist qualified past the reminder that the Presocratics (some more than others) retained a potent streak of what can only be called mystical thought.

"Given the current opposition between reason and irrationality, information technology is 1 of the ironies of history that science adult out of partly irrational roots. The kind of cosmology and cosmogony that the Ionians (the iii Milesians and Xenophanes) were led to construct with the help of their scientific attitudes then came to exist criticized by Parmenides and (if some scholars are right) past Heraclitus, earlier being reinstated ingeniously past the 'Neo-Ionians' who followed the Eleatics. But in all its phases Presocratic thought was holistic: it was an attempt to give a systematic account of the whole known universe and all its major features." Introduction, Page twenty

Select Bibliography from Waterfield's Text [ ]

Texts

[1] H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3 vols., ed. Westward. Kranz, 6th edn. (Zurich: Weidmann, 1951–2).

[two] Thou. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and One thousand. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

[3] M. Untersteiner, Sofisti: Testimonianze e frammenti, 4 vols. (Florence: Nuova Italia, 1961–2).

[4] M. R. Wright, The Presocratics (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1985).

Translations

[5] J. Barnes, Early on Greek Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987).

[vi] P. K. Curd and R. D. McKirahan, A Presocratics Reader (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996).

[7] M. Gagarin and P. Woodruff (eds.), Early Greek Political Idea from Homer to the Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge Academy Press, 1995).

[8] R. K. Sprague (ed.), The Older Sophists (Columbia: Academy of S Carolina Press, 1972).

[ix] P. Wheelwright, The Presocratics (New York: Macmillan, 1966).

General Histories of Early on Greek Philosophy

[x] W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. i: The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962); vol. ii: The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); vol. three: The Sophists and Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Printing, 1969).

[11] T. H. Irwin, Classical Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

[12] R. D. McKirahan, Philosophy before Socrates (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994).

[13] J. G. Robinson, An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968).

[xiv] C. C. W. Taylor (ed.), Routledge History of Philosophy, vol. i: From the Offset to Plato (London: Routledge, 1997).

General Books on the Presocratics

[15] J. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979; single paperback vol., 1982).

[xvi] P. K. Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

[17] D. J. Furley, The Greek Cosmologists, vol. i: The Formation of the Atomic Theory and Its Earliest Critics (Cambridge: Cambridge Academy Press, 1987).

[18] East. Hussey, The Presocratics (London: Duckworth, 1972).

[19] A. A. Long (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Printing, 1999).

[20] One thousand. C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Washington: Middle for Hellenic Studies, 1971).

Collections of Articles

[21] J. P. Anton and Grand. L. Kustas (eds.), Essays in Aboriginal Greek Philosophy (Albany: Country University of New York Printing, 1971).

[22] J. P. Anton and A. Preus (eds.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, vol. ii (Albany: State Academy of New York Printing, 1983).

[23] K. J. Boudouris (ed.), The Sophistic Move (Athens: Athenian Library of Philosophy, 1982).

[24] –––– (ed.), Ionian Philosophy (Athens: International Center for Greek Philosophy and Culture, 1989).

[25] D. J. Furley, Cosmic Bug (Cambridge: Cambridge University Printing, 1989).

[26] D. J. Furley and R. Due east. Allen (eds.), Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, ii vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970, 1975).

[27] G. B. Kerferd (ed.), The Sophists and their Legacy (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1981).

[28] E. N. Lee et al. (eds.), Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos (Assen: Van Gorcum 1973 = Phronesis, suppl. vol. 1).

[29] J. Mansfeld, Studies in the Historiography of Greek Philosophy (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1990).

[30] A. P. D. Mourelatos (ed.), The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Doubleday, 1974).

[31] Thou. Robb (ed.), Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy (La Salle, Ill.: Monist Library of Philosophy, 1983).

[32] R. A. Shiner and J. King-Farlow (eds.), New Essays on Plato and the Presocratics (Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Guelph), suppl. vol. 2, 1976).

[33] Yard. Vlastos, Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy, vol. i: The Presocratics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

Greek Religion and Myths

[34] W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985).

[35] P. East. Easterling and J. V. Muir (eds.), Greek Organized religion and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Printing, 1985).

[36] Chiliad. Southward. Kirk, Myth: Its Significant and Functions in Aboriginal and Other Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge Academy Printing, 1970).

[37] –––– The Nature of Greek Myths (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974).

[38] M. P. Nilsson, A History of Greek Religion, second edn. (London: Oxford University Press, 1949).

[39] R. C. T. Parker, 'Greek Religion', in J. Boardman et al. (eds.), The Oxford History of the Classical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 254–74.

[40] Due south. Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Printing, 1999).

The Predecessors of the Presocratics

[41] F. M. Cornford, Principium Sapientiae: A Report of the Origins of Greek Philosophical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952).

[42] A. Finkelberg, 'On the Unity of Orphic and Milesian Thought', Harvard Theological Review, 79 (1986), 321–35.

[43] H. Frankfort et al., Earlier Philosophy: The Intellectual Risk of Ancient Human (Chicago: University of Chicago Printing, 1946).

[44] A. Laks and 1000. W. Most (eds.), Studies on the Derveni Papyrus (Oxford: Oxford Academy Printing, 1997).

[45] R. D. McKirahan, 'Speculations on the Origins of Ionian Scientific and Philosophical Thought', in [24], 241–seven.

[46] O. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, 2nd edn. (Providence, RI: Dark-brown University Press, 1957).

[47] R. B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Listen, the Soul, the World, Fourth dimension, and Fate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951).

[48] H. Southward. Schibli, Pherekydes of Syros (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

[49] B. Snell, The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature (1953; New York: Dover, 1982).

[50] K. C. Stokes, 'Hesiodic and Milesian Cosmogonies', Phronesis, 7 (1962), 1–37, and 8 (1963), 1–34.

[51] One thousand. L. West, 'Three Presocratic Cosmogonies', Classical Quarterly, 13 (1963), 154–76.

[52] –––– The Orphic Poems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).

[53] –––– 'Ab Ovo: Orpheus, Sanchuniathon and the Origins of the Ionian Globe Model', Classical Quarterly, 44 (1994), 289–307.

Concept Studies of the Presocratics

[54] H. C. Baldry, 'Embryological Analogies in Pre-Socratic Cosmogony', Classical Quarterly, 26 (1932), 27–34.

[55] J. Barnes, 'Aphorism and Statement', in [31], 91–109.

[56] H. Cherniss, 'The Characteristics and Effects of Presocratic Philosophy', in [26], i. 1–28 (start pub. Journal of the History of Ideas, 12 (1951) ).

[57] F. M. Cornford, 'Innumerable Worlds in Presocratic Philosophy', Classical Quarterly, 28 (1934), 1–16.

[58] J. Ferguson, 'The Opposites', Apeiron, 3.1 (1969), 1–17.

[59] K. von Fritz, 'Nous, Noein, and their Derivatives in Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Excluding Anaxagoras)', in [xxx], 23–85 (kickoff pub. Classical Philology, twoscore (1945) and 41 (1946) ).

[lx] E. Hussey, 'The Beginnings of Epistemology: From Homer to Philolaus', in South. Everson (ed.), Companions to Aboriginal Thought, vol. i: Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), xi–38.

[61] Due west. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (London: Oxford University Printing, 1947).

[62] J. H. Lesher, 'The Emergence of Philosophical Involvement in Cognition', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 12 (1994), one–34.

[63] G. East. R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy: Two Types of Argumentation in Early on Greek Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966).

[64] S. Makin, Indifference Arguments (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993).

[65] A. P. D. Mourelatos, 'The Real, Appearances, and Human Error in Early Greek Philosophy', Review of Metaphysics, 19 (1965), 346–65.

[66] –––– 'Pre-Socratic Origins of the Principle That There are No Origins from Nothing', Journal of Philosophy, 78 (1981), 649–65.

[67] –––– 'Quality, Structure, and Emergence in Afterward Presocratic Philosophy', Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, ii (1986), 127–94.

[68] G. M. Stratton, Theophrastus and the Greek Physiological Psychology before Aristotle (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1917).

[69] W. J. Verdenius, 'Notes on the Presocratics', Mnemosyne, 3 (1947), 271–89, and iv (1948), 8–14.

[70] G. Vlastos, 'Equality and Justice in Early Greek Cosmogonies', in [26], i. 56–91, and in [33], 57–88 (first pub. Classical Philology 42 (1947) ).

[71] –––– 'Theology and Philosophy in Early Greek Thought', in [26], i. 92–129, and in [33], iii–31 (commencement pub. Philosophical Quarterly, 2 (1952) ).

[72] K. L. West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (London: Oxford Academy Printing, 1971).

[73] One thousand. R. Wright, 'Presocratic Minds', in C. Gill (ed.), The Person and the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 207–25.

Discussion of Sources

[74] H. Cherniss, Aristotle'south Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Printing, 1935).

[75] Westward. 1000. C. Guthrie, 'Aristotle equally Historian', in [26], i. 239–54 (first pub. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 77 (1957) ).

[76] P. Kingsley, 'Empedocles and his Interpreters: The Four Element Doxography', Phronesis, 39 (1994), 235–54.

[77] A. A. Long, 'Theophrastus' De Sensibus on Plato', in 1000. A. Algra et al. (eds.), Polyhistor: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ancient Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 345–62.

[78] S. Makin, 'How Can We Find Out What Ancient Philosophers Said?', Phronesis, 33 (1988), 121–32.

[79] J. B. McDiarmid, 'Theophrastus on the Presocratic Causes', in [26], i. 178–238 (first pub. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 61 (1953) ).

[eighty] C. Osborne, Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics (London: Duckworth, 1987).

Presocratic Science

[81] F. M. Cornford, 'Was the Ionian Philosophy Scientific?', in [26], i. 29–41 (first pub. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 62 (1942) ).

[82] D. R. Dicks, Early on Greek Astronomy to Aristotle (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970).

[83] –––– 'Solstices, Equinoxes and the Presocratics', Journal of Hellenic Studies, 86 (1966), 26–40.

[84] C. H. Kahn, 'On Early Greek Astronomy', Journal of Hellenic Studies, 90 (1970), 99–116.

[85] G. S. Kirk, 'Sense and Common-Sense in the Development of Greek Philosophy', Periodical of Hellenic Studies, 81 (1961), 105–17.

[86] Grand. E. R. Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (London: Chatto & Windus, 1970).

[87] –––– Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Origin and Development of Greek Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

[88] –––– Methods and Problems in Greek Scientific discipline: Selected Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

[89] D. O'Brien, 'The Relation of Anaxagoras and Empedocles', Journal of Hellenic Studies, 88 (1968), 93–113.

[xc] –––– 'Derived Light and Eclipses in the Fifth Century', Periodical of Hellenic Studies, 88 (1968), 114–27.

[91] S. Sambursky, The Physical Globe of the Greeks (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956).

[92] B. L. van der Waerden, Scientific discipline Awakening (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1975).

[93] M. R. Wright, Cosmology in Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1995).

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