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Arguments of the Philosophers
The Presocratic Philosophers
The Presocratics were the founding fathers of the Western philosophical tradition, and the first masters of rational thought. This volume provides a comprehensive and precise exposition of their arguments, and offers a rigorous assessment of their contribution to philosophical thought.
728 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
28 people are currently reading
432 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Barnes
157 books39 followersJonathan Barnes, FBA (born 26 December 1942 in Wenlock, Shropshire) is an English scholar of ancient philosophy.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
See also Jonathan Barnes or Jonathan Barnes
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
See also Jonathan Barnes or Jonathan Barnes
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 6, 2020
Much ink has been spilt over the colorful potpourri of thinkers we call the Presocratics, a diverse and intellectually combative collection of 6th- and 5th-century BC Greeks who laid the foundations of a rational and rationalistic approach to life, the universe, and everything. Although many have written much about them, Barnes has done something which seems fairly unique. Rather than contribute yet another historical autopsy of the philosophers or engage in close-quarters analytic combat over their fragments, Barnes attempts to surface the (often unexpressed) hypotheses and propositions underlying their arguments. He helpfully translates their elliptical and lacunose writings into the language of modern logicians, providing a vantage point from which to weigh the formal validity or invalidity of their thought. Barnes probably shouldn’t be faulted if his writing gets dense at times, since the marriage of fragmentary ancient philosophy and modern logical discipline is sure to produce recherché offspring. If nothing else, the sugar of a classically dry British wit helps the medicine go down; and a dedicated logophile with ready access to a dictionary is sure to absorb a few tasty lexical tidbits from an author who’s never afraid to deploy an impressive and rich vocabulary.
June 26, 2025
Overly pedantic at some points and one might wonder if Barnes is being sincere when he suggests that some arguments which seem fallacious would be considered so by those who present them. Generally, a good read
November 17, 2010
I'm reading this in part for the ancient philosophy exam our department administers as a qualifier.
In particular, I appreciate how Barnes engages the "pre-socratics" as more than just an antiquarian with a taste for outre minutiae. His focus is primarily on the arguments one can squeeze from even the weirder claims of the presocratics (e.g., magnets have souls, everything is water, the earth rests on a giant cosmic lake, etc...).
It's doing a great job of encouraging me to read the presocratics as thinkers and not just gibbering mystics.
In particular, I appreciate how Barnes engages the "pre-socratics" as more than just an antiquarian with a taste for outre minutiae. His focus is primarily on the arguments one can squeeze from even the weirder claims of the presocratics (e.g., magnets have souls, everything is water, the earth rests on a giant cosmic lake, etc...).
It's doing a great job of encouraging me to read the presocratics as thinkers and not just gibbering mystics.
June 10, 2022
Denna var intressant att läsa om. Det är en ganska fri och välskriven sammanfattning av försokratiska filosofer, vagt tematiskt organiserad. Det som är dess stora fördel, är att boken omformulerar de antika tänkarna i modern terminologi. Effekten är att de problem de beskriver blir tydligare.
May 28, 2013
A lucid explication of the various Presocratics (Anaximander, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Zeno, etc) and their importance in hewing the path that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle would follow, expand, and improve upon.
I have one quibble, though, and it occurs at the beginning of the book with this quote:
"Logic is a Greek discovery. The laws of thought were first observed in ancient Greece..."
The concept of logic was already evident in the Nasadiya Sukta of the Rigveda , and Medhatithi Gautama was teaching the anviksiki in the mid-6th century BCE. Ancient India was aware of logic and its study well before Aristotle, and at the very latest, contemporaneously with the Presocratics.
I have one quibble, though, and it occurs at the beginning of the book with this quote:
"Logic is a Greek discovery. The laws of thought were first observed in ancient Greece..."
The concept of logic was already evident in the Nasadiya Sukta of the Rigveda , and Medhatithi Gautama was teaching the anviksiki in the mid-6th century BCE. Ancient India was aware of logic and its study well before Aristotle, and at the very latest, contemporaneously with the Presocratics.
June 13, 2014
Excellent book. It shows the growth of the mind of man. Before the Greeks, there was little effort shown to contemplate the universe in a non-mythological manner. These men thought. Reading this work was very entertaining. Jonathan Barnes is a renowned teacher of Philosophy and a gifted writer who enables anyone with a modicum of intelligence to understand these gifted men.
March 18, 2023
I feel as if I have been reading this book forever, but I excuse myself as it is a massive chunk of a book and hardly a light read. I have owned it for years, and dipped into it when I was doing my undergraduate philosophy degree. Not long ago I was reading some Popper, and he made a number of complimentary remarks about certain presocratic philosophers that encouraged me to go back and read this.
Now, I am pretty confident this book is going to be of minority interest. Philosophy books generally are, but ones about philosophers from thousands of years ago? I doubt that many readers will be taking it up. I have a reasonable grounding in philosophy, but this is the only book I've ever read on the presocratics (that is Greek philosophers who came before Socrates so we are talking 400 BCE or earlier). I also have no capabilities in Greek, let alone ancient Greek. Given this I have no comparison for how good or reliable Barnes's views are. So take this as the views of someone on reading this book and purely this book. If you are an expert in presocratic philosophy you may well disagree.
The presocratics vary from reasonably well known names such as Heraclitus (famous for "you can't step into the same river twice), or Democritus and Leucippus (the atomists) through to some fairly obscure thinkers.
I need to say what Barnes doesn't do first. Barnes does not set out to give a full linguistic exposition of presocratic thought. And given we are talking about small fragments of ancient Greek, this is often the focus for academics. He does though say enough to show quite how hard translation and interpretation based on those few fragments is. Much emphasis on this work over the years has simply been trying to translated and string together various fragments to work out what they said without analysing it. I am in awe of people who have done this! He does not set out either to give historical or a history of ideas context to their works - but again he says enough to give some appreciation of this.
What he does is try to extract the arguments that the philosophers made. We mostly think of them as people who came out with what sound like really bizarre statements - such as everything is water, change is not possible, or oddly modern sounding claims like everything is made up of unchangeable atoms bumping around into each other. But if you take these statements as stand alone statements you will never appreciate the presocratics. For they did not just make these claims, they built arguments for them. Some of these arguments are good, some bad - but they are arguments which differentiates them from many ancient thinkers who just seem to make claims without rational argument to back them. It is these arguments that Barnes identifies from the often peculiar, poetic, and down right difficult to interpret language. In the history of ideas the step from simply making claims to developing rational arguments for those claims is incredibly important.
I suspect few people sit down to read this end to end. I have, but over several weeks dipping in and out whilst reading a myriad of other things. I really enjoyed it, enlivened by Barnes's often mischievous and very English wit which he litters his writing with.
Now, I am pretty confident this book is going to be of minority interest. Philosophy books generally are, but ones about philosophers from thousands of years ago? I doubt that many readers will be taking it up. I have a reasonable grounding in philosophy, but this is the only book I've ever read on the presocratics (that is Greek philosophers who came before Socrates so we are talking 400 BCE or earlier). I also have no capabilities in Greek, let alone ancient Greek. Given this I have no comparison for how good or reliable Barnes's views are. So take this as the views of someone on reading this book and purely this book. If you are an expert in presocratic philosophy you may well disagree.
The presocratics vary from reasonably well known names such as Heraclitus (famous for "you can't step into the same river twice), or Democritus and Leucippus (the atomists) through to some fairly obscure thinkers.
I need to say what Barnes doesn't do first. Barnes does not set out to give a full linguistic exposition of presocratic thought. And given we are talking about small fragments of ancient Greek, this is often the focus for academics. He does though say enough to show quite how hard translation and interpretation based on those few fragments is. Much emphasis on this work over the years has simply been trying to translated and string together various fragments to work out what they said without analysing it. I am in awe of people who have done this! He does not set out either to give historical or a history of ideas context to their works - but again he says enough to give some appreciation of this.
What he does is try to extract the arguments that the philosophers made. We mostly think of them as people who came out with what sound like really bizarre statements - such as everything is water, change is not possible, or oddly modern sounding claims like everything is made up of unchangeable atoms bumping around into each other. But if you take these statements as stand alone statements you will never appreciate the presocratics. For they did not just make these claims, they built arguments for them. Some of these arguments are good, some bad - but they are arguments which differentiates them from many ancient thinkers who just seem to make claims without rational argument to back them. It is these arguments that Barnes identifies from the often peculiar, poetic, and down right difficult to interpret language. In the history of ideas the step from simply making claims to developing rational arguments for those claims is incredibly important.
I suspect few people sit down to read this end to end. I have, but over several weeks dipping in and out whilst reading a myriad of other things. I really enjoyed it, enlivened by Barnes's often mischievous and very English wit which he litters his writing with.
June 22, 2024
Medio vueltero Jonathan!! Pero está muy completo y fácil de leer. Me gustó mucho!!
September 16, 2021
Barnes can be entertaining in small bursts, and the amount of time he's spent looking through secondary sources is admirable, but he really grates after some time.
He comes across as an Analytic-style Teufelsdrockh, constantly losing the forest for the trees and always ready to show off his arcane vocabulary.
He also constantly nits the arguments of those he is studying (I'm not sure why someone would write a 600pg book on writers one so often belittles and looks down on), mangling their arguments into lines of symbolic logic (as though translating from one language into another (fabricated) one will clear up any difficulties) and pulling quotes from the Allmighty Locke to pwn them.
It's okay, but I'd rather read a much more caring book on this subject.
He comes across as an Analytic-style Teufelsdrockh, constantly losing the forest for the trees and always ready to show off his arcane vocabulary.
He also constantly nits the arguments of those he is studying (I'm not sure why someone would write a 600pg book on writers one so often belittles and looks down on), mangling their arguments into lines of symbolic logic (as though translating from one language into another (fabricated) one will clear up any difficulties) and pulling quotes from the Allmighty Locke to pwn them.
It's okay, but I'd rather read a much more caring book on this subject.
July 23, 2018
Barnes thinks analytic philosophy was invented five centuries before Christianity. (Bonus: his writing is sparkly purple and ridden with undue metaphors. Be ready to sigh.)
June 9, 2021
Unnecessarily in-depth analysis of quite shallow thinkers, that leaves the reader banging their head only to find out 90% of the conclusions are, well, fucking wrong.
Quite great, however, for evolving your analytical thinking and reaching the Logos.
Quite great, however, for evolving your analytical thinking and reaching the Logos.
abandoned
October 23, 2025unreadable techno-filfth. no i dont have a 512mb lossless ram, im sorry.
December 31, 2013
Great. Very rigorous, the style is engaging, plunges very deep into philosophical issues when it's possible. Ends on a rather tough topic, Zeno's paradoxes, and his account is great. Demonstrates that there was definitely a vibrant tradition preceding Plato and I look forward to the second volume and its treatment of the atomists and sophists
January 29, 2014
Solid account of the post-Eleatics
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews