The Milesians: Thales PDF
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The Milesians: Thales Traditio Praesocratica Zeugnisse frühgriechischer Philosophie und ihres Fortlebens Textual evidence on early Greek philosophy and its continuation Volume 1 The Milesians: Thales Edited by Georg Wöhrle Translation and additional material by Richard McKirahan With collaboration of Ahmed Alwishah With an introduction by Georg Wöhrle and Gotthard Strohmaier ISBN 978-3-11-031510-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-031525-7 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-038199-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boson Typesetting: Dörlemann-Satz GmbH & Co. KG, Lemförde Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ∞ Printed on acid-free paper. Printed in Germany. www.degruyter.com Preface The purpose of this volume is to present all the known testimonia on Thales in the original languages (Greek, Latin, Arabic and Persian) with a facing English translation. The collection of testimonia is that of Georg Wöhrle (TP 1, 2009) supplemented by 23 additional testimonia that have emerged since then. The new testimonia (Th 40a, Th 40b, Th 65a, Th 482a, Th 508a, Th 512a, Th 520a, Th 520b, Th 520c, Th 526a, Th 529a, Th 529b, Th 557a, Th 557b, Th 557c, Th 563a, Th 563b, Th 564a, Th 564b, Th 569a, Th 569b, Th 569c and Th 569d) are integrated into Prof. Wöhrle’s collection in chro- nological order. I have translated the original text (not Prof. Wöhrle’s trans- lation). Where my understanding of the text differs from Prof. Wöhrle’s, I print his translation in a footnote. Primarily responsible for the translation of the Arabic material is my colleague Ahmed Alwishah of Pitzer College, who labored mightily with me to find renderings that are faithful to the Arabic and that make sense in the context of the reception tra dition of Tha- les. My colleague Arash Khazeni of Pomona College played a similar role in translating the Persian fragment. The Introduction by Prof. Wöhrle and Prof. Strohmaier was translated by Merryl Rebello on behalf of De Gruyter and reviewed by the original authors and by myself. The present volume also incorporates some other changes from the 2009 volume. Texts and translations now have indications of line numbers (which are reflected in the indexes as well). The indexes are fuller. The headings for some of the similia are different. Indications of the contents of many of the testimonia are given above the translation. There are some minor changes on p.23 of Prof. Wöhrle’s Introduction to reflect the new material included in the current volume. I have also made numerous small changes for purposes of consistency. I want to express my sincere thanks to De Gruyter for inviting me to con- tribute to the Traditio Praesocratica series in this way. Also to Pomona Col- lege for its generous support during the time I was engaged on this project. In addition I wish to record my debts of gratitude to Professor Wöhrle for his assistance on points of translation and his many useful suggestions VI Preface throughout the process of editing this volume, to Elvira Basel for her help in translating German, to Prof. Sabine Vogt, Dr. Serena Pirrotta and Johanna Wange of De Gruyter for their wonderful collaboration during the entire period of work on this project, and most of all to my family, Voula Tsouna and Eleni McKirahan for their patience and understanding. Richard McKirahan Athens, July 2014 Contents Introduction (by Georg Wöhrle and Gotthard Strohmaier) . . . 1 Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Appendix/End material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545 Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547 Textual Editions of the Greek and Latin Authors . . . . . . 549 Textual Editions of the Arabic and Persian Authors . . . . . 571 Literature on Greek and Latin Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 Literature on Arabic and Persian Authors . . . . . . . . . . 581 Concordance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587 Catalogue on Testimonia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589 Alphabetical Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611 Subject index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617 Index of Names, Places and Peoples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621 Greek – English Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643 Latin – English Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661 Persian – English Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 673 Arabic – English Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 675 English – Greek/Latin Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683 English – Persian Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 701 English – Arabic Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703 Introduction* 1. General remarks (Georg Wöhrle) More than is the case for any other era in the history of European philo- sophy, our information about the Presocratics1 is subject to interpretation, and thus to the changing interests of those who have transmitted the texts. Most if not all of the texts have come down to us indirectly, and – as is the case with the “Thales” testimonies presented in this volume – are initially based on the kind of hearsay which even someone as early as Aristotle had to rely upon. First of all, modern scholarship was, of course, interested in getting as close as possible to the original thoughts of these protagonists of ancient Greek wisdom. The greater amount of a text’s original wording survives, the more successful such an endeavour can be. In some cases, we can even get a rough idea of the contents and meaning of a particular book, poem or collection. However, and as a matter of course, even the trans- mission of verbatim quotes has to face the same problems that attend any other textual tradition that extends over a period of hundreds or thousands of years, ranging from mechanical errors occurring during the process of transcription and extending to contradictory interpretations due to the con- texts in which the texts are reported. In order to advance to the authentic core of the ancient text by separating original passages from others that have been – whether by mistake, through misunderstanding or even as a result of deliberate forgery – added to the text, philology has undertaken the effort to trace the history of the textual tradition and reveal its filiation. Even so, and justified as these attempts at reconstruction may be, they cannot transcend the horizon of their own age. They themselves are products of their own time and of the methodology prevalent during that era. Especially now that the certainty of the ‘author’ has been abandoned in favour of understanding * Introduction translated by Merryl Rebello 1 On the origin of the term “Vorsokratiker” (Presocratics), Eduard Zeller’s role in establishing it, and its problematic nature, see the introductory remarks of Gemelli Marciano in her new edition of the Presocratics, Düsseldorf 2007, 373–85. 2 Introduction texts as complex and coherent conjunctions of signs whose reference struc- ture is more or less open, it is time to shift the focus from re-reconstruction to the genesis of construction, i.e. to trace the process of reception – in cases where the textual remains allow us to do so. In facing this task, one should at least attempt to identify the immediate contexts in which this reception was framed. The new edition at hand is based on a fundamentally different approach from the ‘old’ Diels/Kranz edition. In his preface to the first edition of 1903, Hermann Diels acknowledged that an arbitrary selection of fragments inevitably results in inhibiting and patronising both teachers and students, which is why he sought to provide as complete a collection of fragments as possible, while at the same time he included relevant biographical and do- xographical material. Nonetheless, the available material was subjected to a process of rigorous selection, since it was Diels’ objective to “trace the deve- lopment of Greek thought in statu nascendi [Diels’ emphasis] by reference to original documents” (ibid.). Consequently, he says the following with regard to the second edition (1906): “Selecting the material took me more time and effort than if I had sent the entirety of my material to the printer. However, I believe that I have provided a service not only to beginners by limiting the texts to the relevant and original ones [my emphasis]. It was my intention to only carry the wheat into the barn while leaving the chaff outside, even at the risk of leaving some good grain behind here and there.” Let it be understood that it is not my purpose to criticise Diels’ procedure. His merits are not in question, and I assume he was familiar with most of the material in the present volume (except perhaps for the Syro-Arabic materi- als) – that were the ‘chaff’ in his metaphor. He was a child of his times, as we are children of our times, as well. By making this reconstructive selection, Diels set the standard against which, ultimately, thinkers like Thales, Ana- ximander, Anaximenes and others were to be measured. Occasionally, a new fragment has been added which may have modified this standard slightly, but whenever someone speaks of or writes about a Presocratic author, they still usually have in mind the image of the author as it was sketched out by Hermann Diels. Thus, the objective of the present work is not – once again – to present a collection which may offer some ‘new’ elements or others, but which ulti- mately aims at reconstructing authentic thoughts and works. Rather than that, this edition – in accordance with the title of this new series: Traditio Praesocratica – seeks to document the history of (the adaptive) reception as
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