Studies in Presocratic Philosophy: Volume 2: The Eleatics and Pluralists
R. E. Allen (Editor), David J. Furley (Editor)
The Eleatic school of ancient Greek philosophy, flourishing in southern Italy in the 5th century BC, revolutionized Western thought like none before them. Parmenides and Zeno used pure reason to shake commonsense belief in the plurality of things and even in the reality of motion, forcing later thinkers such as Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the atomists to develop innovative theories of reality in response. Before the towering intellects of Plato and Aristotle bore down all their predecessors, these represented the zenith of Greek speculation about the nature of reality and man’s place in it, a speculation increasingly naturalistic, materialistic, rationalistic, and even atheistic.
The essays in this volume assume a deep and technical prior knowledge of the subject, much deeper and more technical than I have. I gleaned significant understanding of specific points in each essay; but this is certainly not a resource intended to yield a rounded or general understanding of the philosophers discussed as much as it is a resource written by specialists, for specialists, to address specific points of academic dispute.
Authors: David J. Furley, R. E. Allen, Hermann Fränkel, G. E. L. Owen, A. A. Long, Gregory Vlastos, F. Solmsen, F. M. Cornford, Colin Strang
Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Greek Philosophy