Journal of the History of Philosophy

Book Reviews An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy: The Chief Fragments and Ancient Testimony, with Connecting Commentary. By John Mansley Robinson. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968. Pp. x+342. $4.25. Paper.) This is a book that fills a long-standing need and does it well. In the past, the teacher of a survey course in the history of ancient philosophy who wished to cover the pre-Socratics more fully than is done in one of the several anthologies of Greek philosophy had awkward options. The most up-to-date and authoritative of the textbooks , G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven's The Presocratic Philosophers, is too forbidding for a course at the sophomore-junior level. John Burnet's classic, Early Greek Philosophy , still unsurpassed in the quality of translation, puts one-sided emphasis on the scientific character of early Greek philosophy. Besides, neither Kirk-Raven nor Burner cover the Sophists (Burnet not even Democritus). Kathleen Freeman's Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (a translation of the B sections in Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker) has the virtue that it gives the student a forceful and graphic impression of the scantiness of actual fragments; but the student is likely to feel more bewildered than challenged. As for the anthologies devoted specifically to the preSocratic .s, Milton C. Nahm's Selections from Early Greek Philosophy is badly dated, and PhiLip Wheelwright's The Presocratics takes excessive liberties with translation. Robinson's book now affords an excellent choice. The selection of primary source materials for the whole sequence from Ionians to Sophists is adequate to generous. Beyond this, Robinson has included about fifty passages--from Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, the historians, the tragic poets, Aristophanes, and the Hippocratic writings--that are interesting for their philosophic content or as suggestive paraI1eis. Robinson's translations of the fragments are, on the whole, precise and sensitive (I mention below some lapses that I have noticed). His introductory and connecting comments are lucid, wellinformed , and discreeL The book starts with a twenty-page chapter on Hesiod in which equal attention is given to the Theogony and to Works and Days. Robinson does not let go of the moral-anthropological strain when he turns to the early philosophers. In the case of the atomists he devotes hill chapters to "Macrocosm" and "Microcosm," respectively. He concludes with fifty pages, under the section heading '~I'he Unseating of Zeus," on the three-sided confrontation of Sophistic, traditional, and Socratic values in the late fifth century. The choice of texts and the explanations offered in this section bring out forcefully the truth of Robinson's epitomizing observation: "Plato saw further. He saw that in an important sense the teaching of the sophists was merely an expression of conventional morality itself.... In the teaching of the sophist the prudential morality of Hesiod has come home to roost" (p. 275). Cosmology and epistemology are, of course, the major themes of the book; but the chapters on Hesiod, Democritean ethics, and the Sophists could also be read profitably in courses in Greek ethics, classical civilization, or as background in a course on Plato. The usefulness of the book as a textbook is enhanced by a substantial yet wisely selective, "Bibliographical Essay," a "Note on the Sources," an index, maps, and [459] 460 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY illustrative figures and diagrams. The editing and design are very good. All ancient texts are printed as prose extracts, and the fragments are given additional prominence by being printed in boldface. References have been assembled at the end of the book, but Robinson has consistently shown good judgment in mentioning the source in his text in cases where this information would be specially relevant. An aid the book unfortunately does not have (it would be wise to supply this in future editions) is a concordance of Robinson's numbering of the fragments against the more familiar numbering of Diels-Kranz. The teacher (or the student who finds a reference in another book) must now thumb through the book or check through a whole reference section to spot a fragment or testimonium he knows by its B or A number in DielsKranz . I have two more critical...