Warren - Presocratics

As a new Classics student in Cambridge, the first ever philosophy lecture I attended was on the Presocratics, I had no intention at that time of studying philosophy seriously and I remember being confused by the idea that studying philosophy involved thinking about people who thought the world was made of water. But something about that lecture - given by Malcolm Schofield - must have made me come back for more.

There are a number of good books on early Greek philosophy and I have learned a lot from them. My hope is that, in a crowded field, this book manages to convey what I take to be the variety and importance of the philosophy at that time, together with an impression of how to go about thin king more deeply about these philosophers, both in terms of how to approach them in a philosophical way but also in terms of how to approach and handle the surviving, often frustrating, conflicting, and meagre, evidence. If I leave a number of interpretative issues open, that should stand as an invitation to further enquiry as well as an indication of the difficulty of drawing unquestionable conclusions about many of these philosophers. (I hope that I might be forgiven, therefore, for the often lengthy strings of further references in the notes. I thought it important to point readers in the direction of the various competing interpretations should they want to pursue a given topic.) There are, of course, many things I would have wanted to explore in greater detail. Nevertheless, I hope that readers might be encouraged by what I have included to go and think more about what I have not had space to discuss.

One of the irritations of working on these early philosophers is that it becomes necessary to deal with a variety of different numberings of the various fragments and testimonia as different editors and translators impose their own orderings. I have therefore decided to give references to the Diels-Kranz edition wherever possible with the thought that, although Diels-Kranz do not provide translations into English, all good later editions and translations either use their numbering or include at least a concordance to Diels-Kranz so the appropriate text can be found without too much difficulty.

Thanks are due, as ever, to my students for telling me when I was not making much sense and to my colleagues for showing me how to think and write about ancient philosophy Drafts of various chapters or of the whole book were read and commented on by Jenny Bryan, Eric James, Sara Owen, Kelli Rudolph and the anonymous readers for the publisher; my thanks to them all. Special thanks also to Jason Lucas for the map on p. xv. Most of the work for this book was completed during sabbatical leave for the Michaelmas term 2005 and the Lent term 2006; warm thanks to my faculty and college colleagues who covered various duties for me. Thanks also to Steven Gerrard, who suggested that I should write this book as part of Acumen's Ancient Philosophies series and kept faith with the project as it progressed.

This book is dedicated to two people who ask lots of questions. I hope they never stop.

JIW
Cambridge, December 2006