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Philosophy Before Socrates Philosophy Before Socrates AN INTRODUCTION WITH TEXTS AND COMMENTARY SECOND EDITION Richard D. McKirahan Philosophy Before Socrates Second Edition hhac-mckirahan-00fm.inddac-mckirahan-00fm.indd i 11/3/11/3/11 110:360:36 AAMM hhac-mckirahan-00fm.inddac-mckirahan-00fm.indd iiii 11/3/11/3/11 110:360:36 AAMM Philosophy Before Socrates An Introduction with Texts and Commentary Second Edition Richard D. McKirahan Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge mckirahan_tp-rev.indd 1 1/10/11 10:46:54 AM Copyright © 2010 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 For further information, please address Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937 www.hackettpublishing.com Interior design by Dan Kirklin Composition by Scribe, Inc. (www.scribenet.com) Printed at Sheridan Books, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McKirahan, Richard D. Philosophy before Socrates : an introduction with texts and commentary / Richard D. McKirahan—2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes. ISBN 978-1-60384-182-5 (pbk.)—ISBN 978-1-60384-183-2 (cloth) 1. Pre-Socratic philosophers. I. Title. B187.5.M35 2010 182—dc22 2009040711 Adobe PDF ebook ISBN: 978-1-60384-602-8 for Voula again, as always hhac-mckirahan-00fm.inddac-mckirahan-00fm.indd v 11/3/11/3/11 110:360:36 AAMM hhac-mckirahan-00fm.inddac-mckirahan-00fm.indd vvii 11/3/11/3/11 110:360:36 AAMM Contents Preface to the First Edition ix Acknowledgments to the First Edition xi Preface to the Second Edition xii Acknowledgments to the Second Edition xiv Maps xv Abbreviations xviii 1. The Sources of Early Greek Philosophy 1 2. Hesiod and the Beginnings of Greek Philosophy and Science 7 3. Miletus in the Sixth Century: The Cultural Setting for the Beginnings of Philosophy 18 4. Thales of Miletus 21 5. Anaximander of Miletus 32 6. Anaximenes of Miletus 48 7. Xenophanes of Colophon 58 8. The Early Ionian Achievement 70 9. Pythagoras of Samos and the Pythagoreans 79 10. Heraclitus of Ephesus 112 11. Parmenides of Elea 145 12. Zeno of Elea 174 13. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae 193 14. Empedocles of Acragas 230 15. Melissus of Samos 293 16. Fifth-Century Atomism: Leucippus and Democritus 303 17. Diogenes of Apollonia 343 18. Philolaus of Croton 352 19. Early Greek Moral Thought and the Fifth-Century Sophists 365 20. The Nomos–Phusis Debate 405 vii hhac-mckirahan-00fm.inddac-mckirahan-00fm.indd vviiii 11/3/11/3/11 110:360:36 AAMM viii Philosophy Before Socrates Appendix: Some Contemporary Texts 427 Introduction 427 The Nature of Man 431 Ancient Medicine 439 The Art 453 The Derveni Papyrus 460 Bibliography 469 Concordance with Diels-Kranz 477 Index of Passages Translated 481 Subject Index 486 hhac-mckirahan-00fm.inddac-mckirahan-00fm.indd vviiiiii 11/3/11/3/11 110:360:36 AAMM Preface to the First Edition Greek philosophy had been fl ourishing for over a century when Socrates was born (469 BCE). Socrates’ thought, as well as that of all later Greek philoso- phers, was strongly infl uenced by the work of the early pioneers in the fi eld, both the philosopher-scientists known as “Presocratics” and the fi fth-century Soph- ists. The theories, arguments, and concepts of the early Greek philosophers are also important and interesting in their own right. And yet this seminal period of philosophical and scientifi c activity is much less familiar than the work of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This state of affairs is partly, perhaps principally, due to the nature of the evidence about thinkers before the time of Plato and Aristotle. In contrast with these two great philosophers, many of whose works survive in entirety, not a single work of any of the “Presocratic” philosophers has been preserved from antiquity to the present, and we have only a few short writings of the Sophists. We are confronted instead with a variety of quotations and paraphrases of their words, summaries of their theories, biographical information (much of it fabri- cated), in some cases adaptations and extensions of their views, and also parodies and criticisms. These materials come from a wide range of authors who write with different purposes and biases, and whose reliability and philosophical and historical acumen vary enormously. These circumstances have led some scholars to despair of the possibility of reaching the truth about the early philosophers. The present book, however, is founded on the belief that it is possible to sift through the information and develop interpretations which, though incomplete and not demonstrably cor- rect, have a high degree of internal coherence, mutually reinforce one another, have some historical plausibility, and may be approximations to the original ideas and intentions of the thinkers in question. Four features of this book deserve comment and explanation. First, since much of the fascination in dealing with early Greek philosophy comes from working out one’s own interpretations of the evidence, I have made it a principle to present most, and in many cases all, of the fragments of the philosophers dis- cussed, as well as other important evidence on their thought. Except in the few cases that are noted, the translations are my own. I have aimed to provide trans- lations that are as literal as possible, given the differences between Greek and English. Readers are thus in a position to formulate their own understanding of the early philosophers and to form their own judgments of the interpretations I have put forward. Second, since our knowledge of these philosophers is largely based on source materials other than their own writings, and since these materials are of unequal value, I have made a point of identifying the source of each passage and (in Chapter 1) ix hhac-mckirahan-00fm.inddac-mckirahan-00fm.indd iixx 11/3/11/3/11 110:360:36 AAMM x Philosophy Before Socrates of discussing the principal sources and commenting on their strengths and weak- nesses. In this way readers can assess the value of the evidence and decide for themselves how to weigh it and how confi dently to base an interpretation on it. Third, during the period covered in this book, knowledge had not yet been divided into the separate categories of philosophy, science, and their subfi elds. Most of the Presocratic “philosophers” treated topics which we fi nd more scientifi c than philosophical, and none of them drew clear lines between his philosophical and his scientifi c oeuvre. In fact, the earliest Presocratics focused mainly on issues that we assign to the fi elds of cosmology, meteorology, biology, and matter theory. Thus, in order to be faithful to the thought of the sixth- and fi fth-century philosophers, “philosophy before Socrates” must include scientifi c issues as well; to omit topics we consider unphilosophical would be to amputate vital portions of their thought without which the remainder would make little sense. Accordingly, I have devoted rather more space to scientifi c topics than is usual in books of this sort, though in many cases much of the interest the scien- tifi c ideas have for us lies in the level of philosophical sophistication on which they are founded. Fourth, the thinkers treated in this book lived in, and to some extent were the products of, particular times and places. Where possible and appropriate I have said something about their lives and their cultural environment; for these circumstances had important effects on the early Greek philosophers, just as the ideas of these men had important effects on Greek civilization. hhac-mckirahan-00fm.inddac-mckirahan-00fm.indd x 11/3/11/3/11 110:360:36 AAMM Acknowledgments to the First Edition My interest in early Greek philosophy and science began with graduate semi- nars on the Presocratics given at Harvard by the late G. E. L. Own, and my work owes a deep debt to his inspiring teaching and writings, even though I have come to disagree with some of his interpretations. John Murdoch’s courses on ancient and medieval science which I attended at the same time were models of clear exposition and of history of science at its best. A National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar—“The Exact Sciences in Antiquity”—taught at Yale by Asger Aaboe opened my eyes to pre-Greek mathematics and astronomy and gave me a wider scientifi c context in which to situate Greek science. My education in the interpretation of texts in ancient philosophy has been advanced by attending for the past twenty years the meetings of the West Coast Aristotelian Society led by Julius Moravcsik and, for almost as long, the meetings of the South- ern California Readers of Ancient Philosophy. I have benefi ted greatly from the revolutionary work on Greek science done by G. E. R. Lloyd, who has set for me an example of what is possible in this fi eld. I should like to thank him for his friendship and support, which have meant a great deal to me. I offer my thanks to Professors A. A. Long, John Malcolm, Henry Mendell, Michael Wedin, and Mary Whitlock Blundell for their helpful comments on drafts of the book and for their encouragement. In addition, I am grateful to the students in my courses at Pomona College for their willingness to use the manuscript in lieu of a textbook and for their many valuable suggestions. Finally, I am deeply indebted to Paul Coppock for his generous editorial assistance and to Patricia Curd, who commented on more than one version of the manuscript as I was revising it for publication, and whose suggestions in many cases prompted signifi cant alterations and, I believe, improvements.
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