The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy Read online

  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

  Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

  Cambridge University Press

  The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

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

  www.cambridge.org

  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

  Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this book and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

  CONTENTS

  Contributors

  Preface

  Source abbreviations

  Lives and writings of the early Greek philosophers

  Chronology

  Map

  1 The scope of early Greek philosophy

  A. A. LONG

  2 Sources

  JAAP MANSFELD

  3 The beginnings of cosmology

  KEIMPE ALGRA

  4 The Pythagorean tradition

  CARL A. HUFFMAN

  5 Heraclitus

  EDWARD HUSSEY

  6 Parmenides and Melissus

  DAVID SEDLEY

  7 Zeno

  RICHARD D. MCKIRAHAN JR.

  8 Empedocles and Anaxagoras: Responses to Parmenides

  DANIEL W. GRAHAM

  9 The atomists

  C. C. W. TAYLOR

  10 Rational theology

  SARAH BROADIE

  11 Early interest in knowledge

  J. H. LESHER

  12 Soul, sensation, and thought

  ANDRÉ LAKS

  13 Culpability, responsibility, cause: Philosophy, historiography, and medicine in the fifth century

  MARIO VEGETTI

  14 Rhetoric and relativism: Protagoras and Gorgias

  PAUL WOODRUFF

  15 Protagoras and Antiphon: Sophistic debates on justice

  FERNANDA DECLEVA CAIZZI

  16 The poetics of early Greek philosophy

  GLENN W. MOST

  Bibliography

  Index of passages

  Index of names and subjects

  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 Aristotle’s Physics (1982).

  FERNANDA DECLEVA CAIZZI is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the Università 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 Aristotle’s Two Systems (1987), Aristotle’s 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 III–IV (1983), and of other publications on early Greek philosophy and on Aristotle.

  ANDRÉ LAKS is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Charles de Gaulle-Lille 3 University, France. He is the author of Diogène d’Apollonie (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: Aristotle’s 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 Pindar’s 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).r />
  DAVID SEDLEY is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Christ’s 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), L’etica 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 (1995), and the translator of many Platonic dialogues and of Euripides’ Bacchae.

  PREFACE

  This book seeks to provide a fresh and wide-ranging survey of early Greek philosophy, covering the thinkers often called Presocratics. Chapters are divided between studies of individual thinkers or movements, including the sophists, and studies of topics to which they collectively contributed. No knowledge of Greek is assumed, and the book includes extensive translations of primary texts, which are the authors’ own, unless otherwise indicated. There is a detailed bibliography, organized in accordance with each of the main chapters, and references in footnotes to scholarly literature and to other details are mainly designed to assist the general reader rather than to engage in fine-tuning. Abbreviations of references to ancient authors and their works are explained at the beginning. Also included at the beginning are a map, showing the philosophers’ native and adopted cities, a time-line of their (usually) approximate dates, and an alphabetical survey of their lives and writings.

  For those who are approaching early Greek philosophy for the first time, a few words of advice on using this book may be helpful. In Chapter 1, I offer an overview of the field that Chapters 3–16 explore in detail. Because the evidence is so fragmentary and often transmitted by second- or third-hand summaries, rather than giving the thinkers’ own words, a general familiarity with the later Greek (and occasionally Roman) authors who are our sources is indispensable. Those new to the subject are therefore strongly advised to read Chapter 2, Jaap Mansfeld’s study of the sources, before proceeding with any of the subsequent studies, and his chapter is the place to go for guidance on ancient references in the main text and footnotes. The rest of the book is designed to be readable in sequence, but each chapter is self-contained and makes no presuppositions about the order in which it should be read. Those whose first interest is in the sophists could turn immediately to Chapters 14 and 15. The topic chapters are equally approachable in any order, but readers unfamiliar with the philosophers discussed in Chapters 3-9 may prefer to read these chronologically organized studies of individuals and movements before embarking on most of the topic chapters. However, the final chapter, Glenn Most’s study of “poetics,” though it deals with a topic, covers ground that is highly relevant to the book as a whole; it may be read both as a conclusion and also as a complement to my introductory chapter.

  The contributors to this book were given a completely free hand, within the limits of space, to present their subject as they saw fit. They were asked neither to be orthodox (as if orthodoxy could obtain in this or any other history) nor to strive for originality, but to be genuinely companionable. Nothing, of course, can substitute for any serious student’s unmediated encounter with the primary texts, but this book, we hope, will guide its users to issues of central interest without either over-simplification or a barrage of scholarly clutter. We shall be pleased if our readers find many of the ideas presented here difficult: early Greek philosophy would not be studied so intensively if it were easy, and the more one studies it the harder it gets. We shall be disappointed if our expositions are found difficult, and if excitement at the material does not grow in proportion to the difficulties experienced in thinking about it. If you find yourself debating with Heraclitus or Parmenides or Zeno, or with what our authors say about these and other matters, that is just as it should be. There will never be a final or even a wholly comprehensive interpretation of early Greek philosophy, and within this book (as I have sometimes indicated) different assessments of many major issues can be found. It is always possible to approach the material from fresh perspectives, and from time to time what we thought we knew is jolted by remarkable discoveries, such as the Derveni papyrus and most recently by a papyrus containing new lines of Empedocles.1

  Fresh scholarly work on early Greek philosophy is constantly appearing.2 The bibliography of this book, large though it is, has had to be quite selective, and it includes items that are too recent to have been thoroughly assessed and assimilated. These include Peter Kingsley’s challenging work on Empedocles and the Pythagorean tradition [105], which advances very new ideas connecting early Greek philosophy to magic, and traces their transmission into Egypt, Islam, and medieval mysticism and alchemy. While this Companion was in its final stages, Patricia Curd’s substantial book, The Legacy of Parmenides [290], appeared, and also a further book by Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom (Inverness, California, 1999), which reinterprets Parmenides in the light of inscriptions discovered at Velia in southern Italy.3 Studies such as these encourage us to expect that early Greek philosophy will be as effective at stimulating thought and reinterpretation in the next century as it has been during the past hundred years.

  This book has been longer in the making than I anticipated when I accepted the invitation from Terry Moore, the series editor for Cambridge University Press, to be its editor. To him and to all my contributors I offer thanks for their patience and admirable cooperation. I am especially grateful to Keimpe Algra, the author of Chapter 3, who undertook this work at short notice after an earlier contributor was unable to proceed. The modern study of early Greek philosophy has long been an attractively international undertaking. I am particularly pleased that the book’s authors comprise five nationalities and are affiliated with universities from six countries.

  Throughout the editorial process, I have been ably assisted by James Ker, graduate student in Classics at Berkeley. He has been an invaluable help to me in drafting the bibliography and other supporting material, in formatting the chapters, and in chasing up references. Apart from all this, I have benefited from his enthusiasm, his fertile suggestions, and his readiness to put himself in the position of someone using the book. I am also very grateful to Andrew Wilson of TechBooks, Fairfax, Virginia for his careful and courteous management of the typographical process.

  My own study of early Greek philosophy began at University College London under David Furley’s splendid guidance. Looking back at that time forty years later, I see that Heraclitus, Parmenides and the other early Greek philosophers were the main reason I fell in love with ancient philosophy and with philosophy in general. This book will achieve its purpose if it encourages others to experience such an attraction.

  A. A. Long

  Berkeley, January 1999

  1 For the Derveni papyrus, see Most in this volume p. 341, and Laks and Most [537]. Publication of the new Empedocles material by Martin and Primavesi [380] is imminent.

  2 For a helpful survey of recent scholarly trends, see Mourelatos [155] xxi–xxvii.

  3 For details of these inscriptions, see Coxon [270] 39-40.

  SOURCE ABBREVIATIONS

  Fragments are cited from the collection of Diels/Kranz [1]; for example, “DK 28 B6.4-7” refers to lines 4–7 of fragment B6 of Parmenides, whose author-number in DK is 28. (On the A-/B-distinction, see Mansfeld pp. 24–5.)

  For modern works cited with a numb
er in square brackets (e.g., “Barnes [14]”), a full reference is given in the Bibliography. A list of journal abbreviations is provided on p. 364.

  Adv. Col. Plutarch, Against Colotes (Adversus Colotem)

  Ane. med. [Hippocrates], On ancient medicine

  APo Aristotle, Posterior Analytics

  Ap. Plato, Apology

  Cat. Aristotle, Categories

  Crat. Plato, Cratylus

  De an. Aristotle, On the soul (De anima)

  DK Diels/Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker [1]

  D.L. Diogenes Laertius

  FHSG Fortenbaugh/Huby/Sharples/Gutas, Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and Influence [37]

  GA Aristotle, Generation of animals

  GC Aristotle, On coming to be and passing away (De generatione et corruptione)

  Gorg. Plato, Gorgias

  Il. Homer, Iliad

  In phys., In Parm. etc. Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, etc.

  KRS Kirk/Raven/Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers [4]

  LSJ Liddell, H. G., and Scott, R. A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. H. S. Jones, 9th ed. with suppl. (Oxford, 1968)

  M. Sextus Empricus, Against the professors (Adversus mathematicos)

  Metaph. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Theophrastus, Metaphysics

  Meteor. Aristotle, Meteorology

  Mem. Xenophon, Memorabilia

  MXG [Aristotle], On Melissus, Xenophanes, Gorgias

  Nat. hom. [Hippocrates], On the nature of man (De natura hominis)

  NE Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics

  Od. Homer, Odyssey

  Parm. Plato, Parmenides

  PH Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Pyrrhoneae hypotyposes)

  Phys. Aristotle, Physics; Eudemus, Physics

  Prot. Plato, Protagoras

  Ref. Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies

  Rep. Plato, Republic

  Rhet. Aristotle, Rhetoric

  SE Aristotle, Sophistical refutations (Sophistici elenchi)