Guides: PHL 210: Faith and Philosophy: Pre-Socratics

Pre-Socratics

Print books
Ebooks

The Dream of Reason: a history of western philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance by Anthony Gottlieb
Publication Date: 2000
From the pre-Socratic philosophers such as Empedocles, whose account of the cosmos seems "a mixture of the physics of Stephen Hawking and the romantic novels of Barbara Cartland," through the celebrated days of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, up to Renaissance visionaries like Erasmus and Bacon, "philosophy" emerges here as a phenomenon unconfined by any one discipline.
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Ethics by Christopher Bobonich (Editor)
Publication Date: 2017
A rich and invaluable guide to the themes and movements which characterised the discipline from the Pre-Socratics to the Neo-Platonists. Several chapters are dedicated to the central figures of Plato and Aristotle, and others explore the ethical thought of the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Skeptics, and Plotinus. Further chapters examine important themes that cut across these schools, including virtue and happiness, friendship, elitism, impartiality, and the relationship between ancient eudaimonism and modern morality.
The Presocratic Philosophers by M. Schofield; Geoffrey S. Kirk; John E. Raven
Publication Date: 1983
This book traces the intellectual revolution initiated by Thales in the sixth century BC to its culmination in the metaphysics of Parmenides and the complex physical theories of Anaxagoras and the Atomists in the fifth century it is based on a selection of some six hundred texts, in Greek and a close English translation which in this edition is given more prominence.
The Presocratic Philosophers by Jonathan Barnes
Publication Date: 1982
The Presocratics were the founding fathers of the Western philosophical tradition, and the first masters of rational thought. This volume provides a comprehensive and precise exposition of their arguments, and offers a rigorous assessment of their contribution to philosophical thought. Demonstrates the continuing importance of the founding fathers of the Western philosophical tradition - all the main thinkers from Thales to the Sophists.

Presocratic Philosophy: a very short introduction by Catherine Osborne
Publication Date: 2004
Here Osborne invites her readers to dip their toes into the fragmentary remains of thinkers from Thales to Pythagoras, Heraclitus to Protagoras, and to try to reconstruct the moves that they were making, to support stories that Western philosophers and historians of philosophy like to tell about their past. This book covers the invention of western philosophy: introducing to us the first thinkers to explore ideas about the nature of reality, time, and the origin of the universe.
First Philosophers: the presocratics and sophists by Robin Waterfield
Publication Date: 2000
These first philosophers paved the way for the work of Plato and Aristotle - and hence for the whole of Western thought. This is a unique and invaluable collection of the works of the Presocratics and the Sophists. Waterfield brings together the works of these early thinkers with brilliant new translation and exceptional commentary. This is the ideal anthology for the student of this increasingly appreciated field of classical philosophy. - ;The first philosophers paved the way for the work of Plato and Aristotle - and hence for the whole of Western thought.
Plotinus and the Presocratics : a philosophical study of presocratic influences in Plotinus' Enneads by Giannis Stamatellos
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Filling the void in the current scholarship, Giannis Stamatellos provides the first book-length study of the Presocratic influences in Plotinus Enneads. Widely regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus (204 270 AD) assimilated eight centuries of Greek thought into his work. In this book Stamatellos focuses on eminent Presocratic thinkers who are significant in Plotinus thought, including Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the early Pythagoreans, and the early Atomists.