Early Greek Philosophy, Volume II: Beginnings and Early Ionian Thinkers, Part 1

388 Pages·2016·10.852 MB·English

by  Laks, André, Most, Glenn W. (eds.)

LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY
EARLY GREEK
PHILOSOPHY
BEGINNINGS AND EARLY
IONIAN THINKERS
PART 1
Edited and Translated by
ANDRÉ LAKS
GLENN W. MOST

CONTENTS
PRELIMINARIES
1. Doxography and Successions 3
BACKGROUND
2. Cosmological Speculations 56
3. Reflections on Gods and Men 85
EARLY IONIAN THINKERS, PART 1
4. Pherecydes 155
5. Thales 206
6. Anaximander 271
7. Anaximenes 331

PRELIMINARIES

1. ANCIENT WAYS OF
ORGANIZING AND
PRESENTING EARLY GREEK
THOUGHT:DOXOGRAPHY AND
SUCCESSIONS [DOX.]
In this preliminary chapter, we present a series of texts
intended to clarify the way in which the summaries of
doctrine and the doxographic manuals, to which we owe a
large part of our information on the doctrines of the ar­
chaic philosophers, were produced during the course of
the history of Greek philosophy and how some of them
have been reconstructed by modem philologists. Although
doxographical literature goes back to pre-Aristotelian
sources, notably the sophist Hippias and Plato, the system­
atic investigation of the 'opinions' (doxai) of predecessors
arises with Aristotle and Theophrastus, who are the ulti­
mate source-beyond the compressions, transformations,
and additions that accumulated in the course of time---of
a handbook of which the most ancient version probably
dates to the third century BC and which scholars custom­
arily refer to as the manual of Aetius. TI 7 illustrates how
a version of that manual is hypothetically reconstructed on
the basis of the various ancient authors who made use of
it, Tl8 the way in which the summaries scattered through-
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