Early Greek Thought: Before the Dawn (Continuum Studies In Ancient Philosophy)

216 Pages·2011·0.52 MB·English

by  James Luchte

Early Greek Thought
Continuum Studies in Ancient Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Continuum Studies in Ancient Philosophy is a major monograph series from
Continuum. The series features fi rst-class scholarly research monographs
across the fi eld of Ancient Philosophy. Each work makes a major
contribution to the fi eld of philosophical research.
Aristotle and Rational Discovery, Russell Winslow
Aristotle’s Ethics, Hope May
Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Jeremy Kirby
Aristotle’s Theory of Knowledge, Thomas Kiefer
Becoming God, Patrick Lee Miller
The Enduring Signifi cance of Parmenides, Raymond Tallis
Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought, M. Andrew Holowchak
The Ideas of Socrates, Matthew S Linck
Parmenides and To Eon, Lisa Atwood Wilkinson
Pythagoras and the Doctrine of Transmigration, James Luchte
Parmenides, Plato and Mortal Philosophy, Vishwa Adluri
Plato, Metaphysics and the Forms, Francis A. Grabowski III
Plato’s Stepping Stones, Michael Cormack
Pleasure in Aristotle’s Ethics, Michael Weinman
The Socratic Method, Rebecca Bensen Cain
Stoic Ethics, William O. Stephens
Stoic Virtues, Christoph Jedan
Technē in Aristotle’s Ethics, Tom Angier
Early Greek Thought
Before the Dawn
James Luchte
Continuum International Publishing Group
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© James Luchte 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 144114661X
9781441146618
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Luchte, James.
Early Greek thought : before the dawn / James Luchte.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4411-4661-8
ISBN-10: 1-4411-4661-X
1. Pre-Socratic philosophers. I. Title.
B187.5.L83 2011
182--dc22
2011002465
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain
For my Students
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Contents
Prologue: Before the Dawn ix
Acknowledgements xv
Dating: A ‘Rough Sketch’ xvi
Part 1: Meta-Philosophy of Early Greek Thought
Chapter 1: The Motif of the Dawn, or on Gossip 3
Chapter 2: The Dance of Being: Contexts of Emergence and
Mytho–Poetic Horizons 24
Chapter 3: ‘War is the Mother of all things’: Nietzsche and
the Birth of Philosophy 63
Chapter 4: Aletheia and Being – Heidegger contra Nietzsche 79
Chapter 5: Philosophy as Tragedy (and Comedy) – A Note
on Post-structuralism 95
Part 2: Tragic Thought
Chapter 6: The Question of the First: Thales and
Anaximander 109
Chapter 7: Recoiling from the Abyss: Anaximenes and
Xenophanes 121
Chapter 8: ‘All is Flux’ – Heraclitus of Epheus (535–475 BC) 127
Chapter 9: The Eternal Recurrence of the Soul:
Pythagoras of Samos 134
viii Contents
Chapter 10: Tragic Differing – Parmenides of Elea
(Early Fifth Century) 142
Chapter 11: Love, Strife and Mind – Empedocles and
Anaxagoras 153
Chapter 12: The Divine Beauty of Chaos – Democritus of
Thrace (460–370 BC) 163
Chapter 13: Plato in the Shadow of the Sublime 169
Epilogue: Poetics and the Matheme – On Badiou’s Lacan 174
Notes 180
References and Further Reading 186
Index 193
Prologue: Before the Dawn
We must call into question a longstanding mythology, and its ceaseless repe-
tition, that is tragically alive in both the Analytic and Continental trad-
itions – that the ‘Pre-Socratics had the grandiose audacity to break with all
traditional forms of knowledge’ (Alain Badiou, in his essay, ‘Lacan and the
Pre- Socratics’1, on Jacques Lacan, and himself – and, a plethora of the same).
We must also seek to call into question the contention that poetics is inferior
to mathematics, and thus, to ‘science’. We must attempt to think differently,
amid a responsive engagement with early Greek thought, so as to retrieve
the originary impetus for philosophical thought.
Each of the repetitive variants of this unacknowledged mythology must be
dismantled in an attempt to not only retrieve an ‘indigenous’ interpretation
of archaic Greek thought – but also, to expose the deceptively mythological
character of contemporary meta-narratives of the ‘origins’ of ‘Western’,
‘Occidental’ philosophy. Early Greek Thought: Before the Dawn will set forth an
interpretation of the major Hesperian thinkers, before Socrates and Plato –
the so-called, ‘pre-socratics’ or ‘pre-platonic’ philosophers. Practicing a
hermeneutical methodos and style, inspired by early German Romanticism,
Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, we will excavate the context of
emergence of early tragic thought through a genealogical exploration of the
mytho–poetic horizons of the archaic world, in relation to which, as Plato
testifi es, the ‘Greeks’ were merely ‘children’. This approach will be
contrasted with those who have, in both the analytic and continental
‘traditions’, merely repeated anachronistic ideologies of so-called ‘pre-
socratic philosophy’, either from the valuations of Plato, Aristotle, and their
progeny, or the Modernist reductions to a materialist physics, or,
contemporary scientism and mathematicism.
We will seek to disclose ‘philosophy in the tragic age’, as a creative
‘affi rmation’ of a ‘contestation’ of mytho–poetic narratives and ‘ways of
being’. Not only will our ‘meditation’ draw upon the ‘exceptions’ – the
usual suspects – of the Continental tradition, such as the early German
Romantics, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Georges Bataille, Jan Patôcka, David
Krell and the post-structuralists, but will also explicitly engage the prevailing