Journal of the History of Philosophy

Book Reviews A History of Greek Philosophy. Volume I: The Earlier Presocratics and The Pythagoreans . By W. K. C. Guthrie. (New York: Cambridge University Press, ----. Pp. xv + 538. $10.00). Professor Guthrie, Master of Downing College and Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge, has surprised no one by the excellence of this admirable first in his projected series of five volumes devoted to a study of ancient Greek philosophy. There has been no such ambitiously comprehensive work available in English since the translation (by L. Magnus and G. G. Berry) of Theodor Gomperz' four-volume work: Greek Thinkers: ,4 History of Ancient Philosophy appeared between 1901-1912. And in terms of the pleasures of reading as well as of learning, this first volume of Professor Guthrie's study promises a completed work on ancient Greck thought which will be most likely preferred not only by the scholar and specialist for whom it is primarily intended, but generally by students of classics and philosophy as well. For the clarity and crispness of style, the modest but searching care in presentation and the drawing on the latest researches and evidence, all of which have informed Professor Guthrie's earlier writings, are well represented in this volume, in which there is a full-scale treatment of the earlier Presocratics: the Milesians, Pythagoras, Alcmaeon, Xenophanes, and Heraclitus. A second volume will complete this most promising study of the Presocratics, allowing the remaining three volumes of the series to the later development of Greek philosophy. A prefatory comment (pp. ix-x) makes evident Professor Guthrie's own estimate of what is needed to make such a work of genuine value: I am weU aware of the magnitude of the task.... Far from being a pioneer study, this history deals with a subject of which almost every detail has been minutely worked over many times. What is needed . . . is a comprehensive and systematic account which will so far as possible do justice to the opposing views of reputable scholars, mediate between them, and give the most reasonable conclusions in a clear and readable form. The qualities called for are . . . clearheadedness , sober sense, good judgment and perseverence. While the author explicitly states that the qualities of originality and brilliance are os somewhat lesser value for the task than those mentioned above, the reviewer finds at least the former, originality, understood as a sympathetic reading of materials leading to an insightful and penetrating appreciation of the cultural documents, amply represented . As for brilliance, that more elusive quality, whose presence is infinitely more difficult to measure, it is perhaps less important or significant to render judgment on this score now than in future. Again Guthrie (p. ix-x): Yet to throw light on the Greek mind calls in addition for gifts of imagination, sympathy and insight .... entering into the thoughts of men moulded by a civilization distant in time and place . . . who wrote and spoke in a different language. For some of them, though we may call them philosophers, not only reason but also poetry, myth and divine revelation were paths to truth. Their interpreter must be a scholar with an ear for the subtleties and overtones of the Greek language, capable of comparing a philosopher's use of it with that of the writers of nonphilosophical poetry and prose. Where modern techniques of philosophical criticism will aid elucidation, he should ideally be equipped to invoke them also, while remaining immune from any tendency to anachronism. [85] 86 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Assuredly a laudable statement of a goal, more often observed in the breech by recent commentators on historical documents in philosophy, albeit a goal which Professor Guthrie does not pretend to have achieved. He has, however, shown in this volume both a devotion to that ideal and how conscientiously he has tried to fall less short of that ideal than a good many others. In sum, it is well enough known that our information about the Presocratic philosophers is made up of brief extracts or quotation from their own works, mention, and discussion of Presocratic thought in the Platonic Dialogues and in the Aristotelian treatises ; finally, there is a good deal of information found in the Hellenistic...