The Beginnings of Philosophy in Greece / / Maria Michela Sassi.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DTL Humanities 2020
• VerfasserIn: Sassi, Maria Michela,
• MitwirkendeR: Asuni, Michele,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2018]; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (232 p.) :; 1 table. 1 map.

A celebrated study of the origins of ancient Greek philosophy, now in English for the first timeHow can we talk about the beginnings of philosophy today? How can we avoid the conventional opposition of mythology and the dawn of reason and instead explore the multiple styles of thought that emerged between them? In this acclaimed book, available in English for the first time, Maria Michela Sassi reconstructs the intellectual world of the early Greek "Presocratics" to provide a richer understanding of the roots of what used to be called "the Greek miracle."The beginnings of the long process leading to philosophy were characterized by intellectual diversity and geographic polycentrism. In the sixth and fifth centuries BC, between the Asian shores of Ionia and the Greek city-states of southern Italy, thinkers started to reflect on the cosmic order, elaborate doctrines on the soul, write in solemn Homeric meter, or, later, abandon poetry for an assertive prose. And yet the Presocratics whether the Milesian natural thinkers, the rhapsode Xenophanes, the mathematician and "shaman" Pythagoras, the naturalist and seer Empedocles, the oracular Heraclitus, or the inspired Parmenides all shared an approach to critical thinking that, by questioning traditional viewpoints, revolutionized knowledge.A unique study that explores the full range of early Greek thinkers in the context of their worlds, the book also features a new introduction to the English edition in which the author discusses the latest scholarship on the subject.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- A note on this edition -- Introduction -- Chronological chart -- Chapter One. Thales, father of philosophy? -- Chapter Two. Philosophy in the Cosmogonies -- Chapter Three. Writing Experiments -- Chapter Four. Adventures of the Soul -- Chapter Five. Voices of Authority -- Bibliography -- Index