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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 182
EAN num: 9780521274555
ISBN number: 0521274559
Label: Cambridge University Press
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 520
Printing Date: February 24, 1984
Publishing house: Cambridge University Press
Sale Popularity Level: 80361
Studio: Cambridge University Press
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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.
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Rated by buyers 
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Because of eurydike's review, I did a little looking around and, indeed, what eurydike states seems to be the case. Based on this review (Thanks, eurydike)), I purchased the First Edition. eurydike is absolutely correct. To knowingly remove precious, important fragments is heinous and inexcusable. I very first got this text in the early seventies when I took the class as an elective..... The professor made us work excrutiatingly through (the I Ching method previously referred to in another review) the fragments, and a Greek 101/102/201/202 textbook was required. It was one of the most satisfying classes I have ever taken. Mr. Domino is also correct. This text isn't really for the non major or one without the time requirements to go from scratch. I was in college, had the time and didn't know any better. I don't know where to get the best of both worlds. Perhaps eurydike has an answer for a text that would contain the complete fragments (just absolutely essential, I cannot overstate this) and an honest interpretation. Interpretation is another area that presents the sorts of issues that eurydike refers to. Poor translation lead to poor understanding and mis-guided ideas. Certain carefully crafted and phrased (mis) interpretations (might) support certain academic agendas. I have not read the books eurydike refers to, particularly whether one book contains all of the fragments, the veracity of the interpretations or their timelines.......
Rated by buyers 
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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 very 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 number 1581152035. Hardback, 731 pp. Illustrated with b/w plates, maps, and with a detailed bibliography and index.
Rated by buyers 
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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.
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No, this is NOT the definitive collection of 'pre-Socratic' philosophical fragments. The definitive collection is, alas, still in the original Greek, 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 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). Hence, its incompleteness relative to the Greek compilation in Diels-Kranz's "Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker."
The best supplementary readings to this anthology, for the light they shine on mystical-spiritual currents in pre-Socratic thought, are:
1- F.M. Cornford's "From Religion to Philosophy (1912)" and "Principium Sapientiae- The Origins of Greek Philosophical Thought (1952)." Cornford's perspective was that the rational thought of the pre-Socratics belonged on a continuum with the mythico-religious mentality of the wider Greek world. That perspective was inspired by the syncretic Classics/Anthropology studies of his colleague Jane Ellen Harrison, author of "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903)," "Themis (1912)," and "Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1921)." I was referred to Cornford as I read the last chapter of Jean-Pierre Vernant's "Myth and Thought Among the Greeks (1965)."
2- Werner Jaeger's "The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (1947)." Jaeger's work points toward the theological spirit of much of the pre-Socratics' speculations.
3- E.R. Dodds's "The Greeks and the Irrational (1951)." Dodds makes one understand that behind that famed speculative rationality lay a spiritual process in which the Greek mentality began its questing as a natural development from propitiatory cultural practices, such as shamanism, and their perceived effectiveness through force of habit.
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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.
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