Long - The Cambridge Companion To Early Greek Philosophy

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Each volume of this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and nonspecialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker.

The Western tradition of philosophy began in Greece with a cluster of thinkers often called the Presocratics whose influence has been incalculable. They include the early Ionian cosmologists, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, the Eleatics (Parmenides, Melissus, and Zeno), Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the atomists and the sophists. All these thinkers are discussed in this volume both as individuals and collectively in chapters on rational theology, epistemology, psychology, rhetoric and relativism, justice, and poetics. A chapter on causality extends the focus to include historians and medical writers.

Assuming no knowledge of Greek or prior knowledge of the subject, this volume will provide new readers with the most convenient and accessible guide to early Greek philosophy available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of early Greek thought.

A. A. Long is Professor of Classics and Irving Stone Professor of Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Cambridge Companion to

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Edited by

A. A. Long
University of California, Berkeley

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521441223

Cambridge University Press 1999

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1999
Reprinted 2000 (twice), 2002, 2003, 2005

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

ISBN-13 978-0-521-44122-3 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-44122-6 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-44667-9 paperback
ISBN-I0 0-521-44667-8 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2005

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CONTRIBUTORS

KEIMPE ALGRA is Associate Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Utrecht and managing editor of the journal Phronesis. He is the author of Concepts of Space in Greek Thought (1995) and coeditor of The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (1999).

SARAH BROADIE is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. Her main publications include Ethics with Aristotle (1991) and (as Sarah Waterlow) Nature, Change and Agency in Aristotles Physics (1982).

FERNANDA DECLEVA CAIZZI is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the Universit degli Studi of Milan and an editor of the Corpus dei Papiri Filosofici. She is the author of Antisthenis Fragmenta (1965), Antiphontis Tetralogiae (1970), Pirrone Testimonianze (1981), Plato Euthydemus (1996), and of articles on philosophical papyri and on the sophistic and sceptical traditions.

DANIEL W. GRAHAM is Professor of Philosophy at Brigham Young University, Utah. He is the author of Aristotles Two Systems (1987), Aristotles Physics Book VIII (1995), and of numerous articles on ancient philosophy.

CARL A. HUFFMAN is Professor of Classics at DePauw University, Indiana, and the author of Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Pre-socratic (1993). He is currently working on an edition of the fragments of Archytas of Tarentum.

EDWARD HUSSEY is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is the author of The Presocratics (1972), Aristotle: Physics IIIIV (1983), and of other publications on early Greek philosophy and on Aristotle.

ANDR LAKS is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Charles de Gaulle-Lille 3 University, France. He is the author of Diogne dApollonie (1983), and of articles on early Greek philosophy. With Glenn W. Most, he has edited Theophrastus Metaphysics (1993) and Studies on the Derveni Papyrus (1997).

J. H. LESHER is Professor of Philosophy and Classics at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Xenophanes of Colophon (1992), The Greek Philosophers (1998), and of numerous studies of ancient Greek theories of knowledge.

A. A. LONG is Professor of Classics and Irving Stone Professor of Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Language and Thought in Sophocles (1968), Hellenistic Philosophy (1974, 1986), The Hellenistic Philosophers (with David Sedley, 1987), Stoic Studies (1996), and of articles on early and later Greek philosophy.

RICHARD D. MCKIRAHAN JR. is E. C. Norton Professor of Classics and Philosophy at Pomona College, California. He is the author of Philosophy before Socrates (1994) and Principles and Proofs: Aristotles Theory of Demonstrative Science (1992).

JAAP MANSFELD is Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the University of Utrecht and has published numerous books and papers on ancient philosophy.

GLENN W. MOST is Professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Heidelberg and Professor of Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Measures of Praise: Structure and Function in Pindars Second Pythian and Seventh Nemean Odes (1985), Collecting Fragments Fragmente sammeln (1997), and of numerous studies of ancient and modern philosophy and poetry. He has edited (with A. Laks) Theophrastus Metaphysics (1993) and (with A. Laks) Studies on the Derveni Papyrus (1997).

DAVID SEDLEY is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Christs College. He is the coauthor of The Hellenistic Philosophers with A. A. Long (1987), and the author of Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (1998).

C. C. W. TAYLOR is Reader in Philosophy at Oxford University and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. He is the author of Plato, Protagoras (1976, 1991), The Greeks on Pleasure (with J. C. B. Gosling, 1982), Socrates (Past Masters, 1998), and of numerous articles in the history of philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of mind.

MARIO VEGETTI is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Pavia. He is the author of Il coltello e lo stilo (1996), Tra Edipo e Euclide (1983), Letica degli antichi (1989), and of numerous works on the history of ancient medicine, science, and philosophy.

PAUL WOODRUFF is Professor of Philosophy and Thompson Professor of Humanities in the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Thucydides on Justice, Power and Human Nature (1993), editor with M. Gagarin of Early Greek Thought from Homer to the Sophists