The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists
Robin Waterfield (ed.)
Oxford University Press (2000)
| Abstract | Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wonder, and the first Western philosophers developed theories of the world which express simultaneously their sense of wonder and their intuition that the world should be comprehensible. But their enterprise was by no means limited to this proto-scientific task. Through, for instance, Heraclitus' enigmatic sayings, the poetry of Parmenides and Empedocles, and Zeno's paradoxes, the Western world was introduced to metaphysics, rationalist theology, ethics, and logic, by thinkers who often seem to be mystics or shamans as much as philosophers or scientists in the modern mould. And out of the Sophists' reflections on human beings and their place in the world arose and interest in language, and in political, moral, and social philosophy. This volume contains a translation of all the most important fragments of the Presocratics and Sophists, and of the most informative testimonia from ancient sources, supplemented by lucid commentary. | |||||||||
| Keywords | Pre-Socratic philosophers Sophists (Greek philosophy | |||||||||
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| Buy the book | Amazon page | |||||||||
| Call number | B187.5.F57 2000 | |||||||||
| ISBN(s) | 019953909X | |||||||||
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Similar books and articles Plato (1996/2009). Protagoras. Oxford University Press.
Karl R. Popper (1998/2002). The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Pre-Socratic Enlightenment. Routledge.
G. S. Kirk (1983). The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts. Cambridge University Press.
Jacqueline de Romilly (1992). The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens. Oxford University Press.
Marina McCoy (2008). Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists. Cambridge University Press.
Daniel W. Graham (ed.) (2010). The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics. Cambridge University Press.
Håkan Tell (2010). Plato's Counterfeit Sophists. Distributed by Harvard University Press.
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