Historia filozofii starożytnej. Tom 1. Od początków do Sokratesa

Storia della filosofia / Reale-Antiseri #1

by Giovanni Reale, Edward Iwo Zielinski (Translator)

Beginning with the origins of Western philosophy, the profound creation of the Hellenic genius, Reale presents an appreciation of the Naturalists, the Sophists, Socrates, and the Minor Socratics.

Special attention is paid to the Eleatics because their problems decisively mark Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy.

Interpretation of the Sophists benefits from the recent reevaluation of their thought. Socrates himself would be inconceivable without the Sophists since he is one of them.

Socrates is given major prominence. Plato, Aristotle, and all of Hellenistic philosophy are deeply impregnated with his words and spirit.

The teachings of the Minor Socratics are interpreted as one-sided reductions of the pluralistic values of Socratic thought and as anticipations of some issues that explode later in the Hellenistic Age.

There are two appendices. The first concerns Orphism and contains a series of documents indispensable for the comprehension of some aspects of pre-Socratic and Platonic thought. The second explains the key to understanding the message of the Greeks―the message of “theorein”.

Genres: Philosophy, History

500 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Reale was born in Candia Lomellina, Pavia. He attended the Gymnasium and the Liceo classico of Casale Monferrato, and was then educated at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, where he graduated. He later continued his studies in Marburg an der Lahn and Munich.
After a period of teaching in high schools, he won a professorship at the University of Parma, where he taught courses in moral philosophy and the history of philosophy. He then returned to the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, where he was professor of the history of ancient philosophy for many years, and where he also founded the Centro di Ricerche di Metafisica. In 2005 he moved to teach at the new faculty of philosophy at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan.

Reviews

[s. ostrowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

thats the real arché

[Aljoša Toplak · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find this rather poorly argumented ... What, am I supposed to simply believe the author that greece is the one and only birthplace of philosophical thinking? I would prefer arguments instead of his rants.

Also, the point of his 2000 page long dip into ancient philosophy is to show that philosophers used to disperse myths and so we should also disperse modern scientism? What an oddly liminting goal ...

And finally, for a book promising to not merely explain what ancient philosophers were saying but also why they were saying it, it does dissapoint quite a lot when it does indeed say close to nothing about the why.

But it does explain ancient philosophies well enough, maybe I just should've skipped the preface. Funnily enough, I've read G. Reale's whole 5-book collection back in 2016 as a philosophy freshman -- and remembered it to be way better than it seems to me now.

[Sophiophilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my opinion, this is the best textbook (or one of the best) covering the period from the beginnings of Greek philosophy to Socrates. It strikes a good balance between source texts (in this case, fragments of source texts) and the author's descriptions. Overall, I enjoyed reading it. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about the next volume...

[Antonio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un testo semplicemente bellissimo