Waterfield - The first philosophers: the presocratics and sophists

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

THE FIRST PHILOSOPHERS

THE PRESOCRATICS were philosophers and scientists who lived and worked in various cities throughout the ancient Greek world, from southern Italy and Sicily to the coast of the Black Sea, from the beginning of the sixth century BCE to the time of Socrates in the late fifth century. Among a number of lesser names, some fifteen major thinkers stand out in this period. Though their work survives only in fragments and in reports from later writers, who were often unsympathetic, as well as far removed in time, enough remains for us to be able to effect a reconstruction with some degree of plausibility, and thus to see that they formed the foundations of Western scientific and philosophical thought. Most of them wrote in prose, and indeed they were among the first prose writers in the West, helping to develop the genre; but some kept to the traditional didactic medium of verse.

THE SOPHISTS were itinerant teachers and writers, dating chiefly from the fifth century BCE. Though they lectured and taught throughout the Greek world, they achieved the most recognition in Athens, which at the time was the centre of culture in Greece. Very little of their original prose survives, and we are largely dependent upon the reports of others, who were often hostile to their enterprise, and upon reflections of their work in contemporary historians, dramatists, and orators. As well as initiating a revolution in education, by offering what was effectively the first Western attempt at higher education, they also made important strides in social, ethical, and political philosophy, and we can now see that the pejorative use of the term Sophist, which stems from Plato and Aristotle, is rarely deserved.

ROBIN WATERFIELD was born in 1952. After graduating from Manchester University, he went on to research ancient Greek philosophy at Kings College, Cambridge. He has been a university lecturer (at Newcastle upon Tyne and St Andrews), and an editor and publisher. Currently, however, he is a self-employed writer, whose books range from philosophy to childrens fiction. He has previously translated, for Oxford Worlds Classics, Platos Republic, Symposium, and Gorgias, Aristotles Physics, Herodotus Histories, and Plutarchs Greek Lives and Roman Lives.

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OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

The Presocratics and Sophists

Translated with commentary by
ROBIN WATERFIELD

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So much of our information about the Presocratic philosophers and the Sophists is fragmentary or otherwise obscure that the temptation was to write a book in which the amount of commentary outweighed the amount of translated material. I have resisted this temptation. After a short introduction, each thinker has been allowed to speak as much as possible for himself, or, failing that, at least to be heard, however faintly at times, through the work of ancient commentators. There is a great deal of secondary ancient material, especially about the Presocratics, whose importance was generally recognized in ancient times. It is therefore well beyond the scope of a book such as this to hope for completeness. Rather, my policy has been to translate the majority of the actual fragments themselves, and a small proportion of the ancient testimonia, concentrating on those passages which are both important and relatively clear in their own right (so as to continue to let the thinkers speak for themselves as much as possible), and which seem to me to be relatively faithful to the original thinker or at least to make it plain that they are distorting him, and how they are doing so.

A few scholars are perhaps over-pessimistic about our chances of recovering the thought of the Presocratics and Sophists. In some cases we have enough genuine fragments to test the validity of the secondary testimonia; in some cases the material surrounding shorter fragments can cast light on the original context. Nevertheless, there is an immense amount of discussion among modern scholars about what each of these thinkers really thought. Naturally, scholars prefer to rely as much as possible on the actual fragments themselves, but in the case of none of these first Western philosophers are there ever quite enough of these for us to be able to see the whole picture. But that is the necessary policy of this book, and in order to keep to it I have appended longer bibliographies than a volume like this might usually warrant. In the case of the Presocratics and Sophists reference to modern works is indispensable, since many readers will want further guidance. However, let me urge readers to start studying these thinkers simply by thinking for themselves about what any of them might have been meaning. For all the scholarly work that has gone into the area, there is little consensus: your own ideas, based firmly on the available evidence as presented in this book, are as good a way into the thought of the first philosophers as those of the most eminent of academic scholars.