The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)
Language: English
Pages: 460
ISBN: 0521446678
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Western tradition of philosophy began in Greece with a cluster of thinkers often called the Presocratics, whose influence has been incalculable. All these thinkers are discussed in this volume both as individuals and collectively in chapters on rational theology, epistemology, psychology, rhetoric and relativism, justice, and poetics. Assuming no knowledge of Greek or prior knowledge of the subject, this volume provides new readers with the most convenient and accessible guide to early Greek philosophy available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of early Greek thought.
and Earth, who play their roles just shortly after the first beginnings from primeval Chaos, behave in an anthropomorphic fashion: they make love and beget offspring. As a story (mythos) this may be attractive, but it is only an explanation of sorts. Why precisely god A comes to love god B remains as obscure as are the ways of love in the world of mortals. Readers or listeners may accept these elements of the story as true, but in an important sense they do not really understand what happens.
[180]. 14 On Hippias as Aristotle7s source, see Snell [183] and Mansfeld [29]. 15 Cf. Metaph. I. 4 985a! 1-15 on Anaxagoras and Empedocles. Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 64 EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY 16 Cf. Mansfeld [32] 143. 17 Cf. Babut [164] 22. On this new conception of divinity, see Broadie in this volume pp. 205-7. It is possible (i.e., it might be inferred from Aristotle, Phys. III.4 2O3b7) that Anaximander claimed that the apeiron in fact "steers"
preserve some early material, the identification of what is early often proceeds without criteria other than what is commensurate with a particular scholar's conception of the greatness of Pythagoras.9 This modified Neopythagorean approach to Pythagoras has now been undercut by Walter Burkert's precise analysis of the later tradition. 10 He distinguishes two primary traditions about Pythagoreanism in the fourth century B.C. One is represented by Aristotle,the other began among Plato's successors
thing is composed, the regress is blocked; these are the ones out of which our many is made. But Zeno shows that there is no good reason for stopping the division. Anything extended in space can be divided into parts that are themselves extended in space, so we can in principle never finish the division. He concludes that each of the many things is so large that it has an unlimited number of parts - without committing himself to a view on the question of whether anything with an unlimited number
root per- (through, beyond, forward), so that it means "unable to be got through," or "what cannot be traversed from end to end." Zeno contrasts apeiron with peperasmenon, "limited" (B3): In Aristotle these words have the meanings "infinite" and "finite." Aristotle worked out a theory of the infinite in some technical detail and mobilized this theory against Zeno, but the fifth century was innocent of such technical meanings. In that age, something that was apeiron was "inexhaustible," "vast,"