The First Philosophers by Robin Waterfield

This volume contains a translation of all the most important fragments of the Presocratics and Sophists, and of the most informative testimonia from ancient sources, supplemented by lucid commentary.

And out of the Sophists' reflections on human beings and their place in the world arose and interest in language, and in political, moral, and social philosophy. Through, for instance, Heraclitus' enigmatic sayings, the poetry of Parmenides and Empedocles, and Zeno's paradoxes, the Western world was introduced to metaphysics, rationalist theology, ethics, and logic, by thinkers who often seem to be mystics or shamans as much as philosophers or scientists in the modern mould. This anthology, edited by the Greek scholar Robin Waterfield, consists of a series of extracts, with commentary, from the work of a number of Greek thinkers. But their enterprise was by no means limited to this proto-scientific task. The first ever biography of the founder of Western philosophy Considered by many to be the most important philosopher ever, Plato was born into a well-to-do family in wartime Athens at the end of the fifth century BCE. The first philosophers paved the way for the work of Plato and Aristotle - and hence. Waterfields’ The First Philosophers offers the reader a view of both the reason and the ridiculous in each thinker, ranging from Thales at 580 BC to Critias et al around 410 BC. Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wonder, and the first Western philosophers developed theories of the world which express simultaneously their sense of wonder and their intuition that the world should be comprehensible. The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists by Robin Waterfield.

The First Philosophers by Robin Waterfield