Early Greek Philosophy

by Jonathan Barnes (Translator)

This anthology presents the early sages of Western philosophy and science who paved the way for Plato and Aristotle and their successors. Democritus's atomic theory of matter, Zeno's dazzling "proofs" that motion is impossible, Pythagorean insights into mathematics, Heraclitus's haunting and enigmatic epigrams-all form part of a revolution in human thought that relied on reasoning, forged the first scientific vocabulary, and laid the foundations of Western philosophy. Jonathan Barnes has painstakingly brought together the surviving Presocratic fragments in their original contexts, utilizing the latest research and a newly discovered major papyrus of Empedocles.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Classics, History, Ancient, Greece, Science

333 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Jonathan 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

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The early Greek philosophers, thinkers like Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles, Leucippus, are foundational for the Western intellectual tradition. I couldn’t imagine a better introductory book then this one on the subject. Below are a few quotes from Jonathan Barnes’s excellent 40 page introduction along with my brief comments:

“First and most simply, the Presocratics invented the very idea of science and philosophy. They hit upon that special way of looking at the world which is the scientific and rational way. They saw the world as something ordered and intelligible, its history following an explicable course and its different parts arranged in a comprehensible system. The world was not a random collection of bits, its history was not an arbitrary jumble of events.” ---------- This is central to their spirit of inquiry, an approach compatible with a modern physicist or chemist.

“Nor was the world a series of events determined by the will or the caprice of the gods. The Presocratics were not atheists: they allowed the god into their brave new world, and some of them attempted to produce an improved and rationalized theology in place of the anthropomorphic divinities of the Olympian pantheon. But their theology had little to do with religion, and they removed most of the traditional functions of the gods. Their thunder was no longer the growling of a minatory Zeus.” ----------- Again, the Presocratics have kindred spirits in the science departments at modern universities.

Jonathan Barnes goes on to write how the Presocratics explained the world in ways that were systematic and economical, that is, these early philosophers wanted to “explain as much as possible in terms of as little as possible.” Some of their key concepts were order (kosmos), nature (phusis), origins (arche) , and reason (logos). --------- These Greek words are supercharged with meaning. I use one English word for simplicity sake. How supercharged? The author does a fine job elaborating.

The actual words of the Presocratics have come down to us as fragments. Here are several of my favorites:

Xenophanes
“But if cows and horses or lions had hands and drew with their hands or made the things men make, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, cows like cows, and each would make their bodies similar in shape to their own.”

Heraclitus
“The uncomprehending, when they hear, are like the deaf. To them applies the saying: though present they are absent.”

Democritus
“To a wise man the whole earth is accessible; for the country of a great soul is the whole world.”

“The desire for more destroys what is present – like Aesop’s dog.”

“One should tell the truth, not speak at length.”

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a 5 star from me for an introductory and accessible book of the presocratics. I was drawn to this book because of Democritus who made me interested in the presocratics. They are the first batch of natural scientists(physikoi) around the fifth century. What makes them interesting is firstly, they were not a collective group living in major greek cities but individuals lived at the borders who were exposed to different cultures thanks to their proximity to trade routes. As a result, it is very evident in their thinking that they saw different ways of living, loving and thinking than mainstream Greek ones.

Secondly, although they are perceived as the predecessors of the ‘first proper western philosophers’ like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, they are actually closer to scientists than philosophers. For example, Democritus, the student of Leucippus, is the father of atomism who suggested that everything is made of atoms.

Thirdly, I particularly adore their poetic style of writing instead of the direct Aristotelian prose as it makes the learning process much more enjoyable for me as a reader. Considering prose is the newer literary form, it is understandable that poetry comes more naturally as a form of expression to them in the fifth century. Also, poetry would be a more fitted form to convey their thoughts since some of those philosophies are better represented by aphoristic metaphors.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the influence of the great Greek philosophers and the fifth century Greek mindsets and lifestyles.

[Drew Canole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of this work is Pre-socratic and is only known through quotations as none of the original work still exists. But the work was read and quoted by a lot of Roman thinkers. Aristotle is also a main source. A few of the passages are pretty short.

This book features the writings of numerous Greek philosophers.

Thales (624-546) The first philosopher! First to suggest that the world is made of a single underlying substance. In this case water. He was perhaps the first person to predict a solar eclipse. "Neither any god nor any man made, but it (the world) was always and is and will be, fire ever-living"
Anaximander (610-546) Created an early map of the world. Claimed nature is ruled by laws.
Anaximenes (586-525) Taught by Thales. The first Flat-Earther! The world is a trapezoid and floats in the air.
Pythagoras (570-495) Perhaps the most famous of the bunch because of his school and the theorem named after him. Every soul is immortal and at death enters a new body. Planets move according to mathematical equations. Much said about him is in question, but its claimed he was also a vegetarian.
Alcmaeon (Alive around 500-450) Sensory organs are connected to the brain. Identified the brain as the seat of understanding. The soul is immortal.
Xenophanes (late 6th and early 5th century) Critiqued anthropomorphism in religion and influenced a move to monotheism. There is a changless, motionless, and eternal One.
Heraclitus (535-475) Really cool obscure poetic lines. One of the more fascinating of the bunch. He theorized that change is the fundamental principle of the universe operated by a continual process of opposites turning into each other.
Parmenides (active early 5th century) metaphysical monist. Challenged the early cosmological theories. Eleastic philosophy.
Melissus (5th century) supported Eleastic philosophy. Reality is ungenerated, indestructible, indivisible, changeless, and motionless. and unlimited in all directions (and therefor must be one)
Zeno (495-430BC) Famous for his paradoxes and perhaps inventor of the dialectic.
Empedocles (490-430) Lived in Sicily. Suggested the world works by a combination of love and strife so that the four elements of water, earth, fire, air are constantly coming together and apart. "And these never cease their continual change... to the extent they come into being and have no lasting life; but insofar as they never cease their continual change"
"Fifth-century Pythagoreanism"
Hippasus (530-450BC) Credited with the discovery of irrational numbers.
Philolaus (470-385BC) Pythagorean tradition. Earth is not the center of the universe, the sun is.
Ion of Chios
Hippo
Anaxagoras (500-428) Parts of the universe are in a process of serparation and mixture controlled by an intelligence. "Mind is something infinite and self-controlling, and it has been mixed with no thing but is alone itself by itself"
Leucippus
Democritus
Diogenes of Apollonia

[David Sarkies · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Beginnings of Science
19 June 2019

Well, I should point out that this is not your typical book on the Pre-Socratic philosophers. If you want something that explains their philosophies in simple English, the best book that I have read is The Dream of Reason. I emphasie read because I understand that Sophie’s World is even better, but I haven’t managed to get my hands on that book to date (probably because I don’t think of looking for it when I wonder into a bookstore, and I rarely, if ever, buy books online).

So, as I mentioned, this isn’t your typical book on Ancient Greek Philosophy namely because what it does is it provides us with the sources of these philosophers. I should also point out that the philosophers that we are dealing with are known as the Pre-Socratics, namely because they were the ones who originally developed Greek philosophy (even though some of them were contemporaries of Socrates). These were the people whom Socrates was familiar with and would have used to develop the philosophies through whom Plato has since made him famous.

There is one huge problem though – none of them are extant. Basically we do not have a single book written by any of them – not one. In fact if we consider the term ‘fragment’ to mean scraps of paper upon which parts of their philosophies were written then we don’t have any of them either, and even if we did, well, it isn’t as if they like signed their name to every single scrap of paper that surfaced – even if we do have some of these scraps, actually identifying the writer is nigh impossible.

No, when we talk about fragments, we are basically talking about quotes that later philosophers have used, and that we have managed to glean these from other works. Mind you, these are Ancient Greeks we are talking about (and Romans), which means that they don’t follow the rules that we follow when it comes to quoting sources, such as putting a little ‘1’ after the quote, and then providing the details at the bottom of the page, or in an appendix at the end. Hell, that is even if they tell us who actually said it, if the writer of Hebrews is anything to go by: someone, somewhere said …

So, what this book happens to be is a collection of supposed sayings recorded by latter writers about the philosophies of the early Greeks. Mind you, they happened to have access to these works, but of course many of them weren’t preserved, you know, all that thing with the church destroying works of pagan philosophers.

Their writings though can be divided into two areas – natural philosophy and moral philosophy. These days philosophy is sort of moral philosophy, but not quite because we also question the nature of existence and all that. However, natural philosophy has become what we know as science (which is probably why some scientists who get their doctorates have what is known as a ‘Doctor of Philosophy’). Mind you, this wasn’t the last time that the church clamped down on what they considered ‘pagan philosophy’, if the modern church’s reaction to science is anything to go by (though to give them credit, there are quite a number of Christians who are attempting to dispel this myth that religion and science don’t mix).

In a way it does make me wonder how the church could have distinguished these philosophers, though of course we have Hippolytus who wrote a book called The Refutation of All Heresies in which he basically seeks to destroy every single one of the pagan philosophers, despite the fact that many of them had rejected the idea that thunderstorms come about because Zeus is angry, or that Poseidon stirs up the seas because the sailors forgot to offer him sacrifices before the voyage. In fact a number of them didn’t believe in the gods, such as Anaxagoras, who was exiled from Athens because of this belief.

That doesn’t mean that these philosophers didn’t come up with stupid ideas, such as Xeno’s idea that nothing movies. The concept is purely mathematical, and honestly doesn’t work in practice. The idea is that if you wish to move to a point in space, to get there you need to move half that distance, and half that distance again, and again, and mathematically speaking, because you are forever reducing your distance by half, then you will never get there.

On the other hand, you have people like Democritus, who came up with the idea that since since evolved into the atomic theory, through which we now have the ability to completely wipe out all civilisation on the planet (that is if we don’t do it by pressing a button in CERN and causing to entire universe to disappear in a puff of logic). The other interesting ideas that seem to have come down is the concept that matter is neither created nor destroyed, it only changes form – this is something that we were taught in high school physics, and was something that has been explored by the Greeks way back then.

Yeah, this is not a simply book to read, simply because it is basically a collection of fragments as they appear in the works of other authors, through which we attempt to glean what these philosophers were exploring, and the ideas that they had come out with that in many cases have shaped the modern world, with Parmenides, Democritus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras being the most important.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 2 out of 5]

The major problem with “Early Greek Philosophy”, is that the author and translator, Jonathon Barnes does not seem to have understood very well what the accomplishments of the Pre-Socratic philosophers were. He sees them purely as precursors who did some groundwork for Plato and Aristotle who were the founders of Western Philosophy. Barnes demonstrates no understanding of the great accomplishments of the Pre-Socratics in the areas of mathematics and geometry. He essentially ignores the work of the Atomists and does not see that they anticipated the problems that the scientists who elaborated modern Atomic theory would grapple with.
Barnes argues that that the Pre-Socratics did three things. First, they explained the universe internal terms based on the workings of the constituent parts not the outside agency of deities and supernatural entities. Second, they were systematic in that they would use the same terms and methods to explain the creation of the world, earthquakes, diseases, thunder and human reproduction. Third, they were economical in that they consistently sought to make the least number of assumptions possible.
In fact, what the Pre-Socratics did was to propose that our physical world had unity and was governed by a consistent set of laws. Beginning with what is now an unsuccessful model of matter being composed of four elements(i.e. Earth, Air, Fire and Water), the Pre-Socrates moved on to propose various atomic theories. Today these Pre-Socratic models look primitive as they did not include any sub-atomic particles (protons, electrons, quirks, quarks, etc.) However, they did acknowledge thatthey needed a theory to explain why the aggregates composed of atoms did not disaggregate. They also recognized that particles behaved as waves anticipating Maxwell's electromagnetic theory first publicly announced in 1864.
Barnes also gives a distorted picture of the Pre-Socratics by implying that were rationalists who rejected the superstitious belief in Gods. Rather they felt that matter was directed by a single intellect and thus they could be seen as proto-monotheists. Certainly they were closer to being Deists rather than simple atheists.
I do not think that Barnes book is well worth avoiding. Unfortunately, the one book that I know to be better (i.e. Jean-Paul Dumont's "Les écoles pre-socratiques") is not available in English.

[Benjamin Curry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful read that forced me to think more deeply on a range of philosophical questions.

The primary concern of the pre-Socratic philosophers is essentially to explain Nature, hence they were called the physikoi (if I've spelt that correctly). There's a clear dialectical movement in the phases of its development: from the naive materialism of the Ionian philosophers, through the brilliant challenge of the idealist schools of the Eleatics and some Pythagoreans, to the attempts to restore the old Ionian view on a higher level by Empedocles, Leucippus and Democritus, and Anaxagoras.

I would say, for Marxists, its a tremendously enriching work and easy to read that I'd recommend reading after having established a certain grasp of dialectical materialism and after having read Alan Woods' History of Philosophy.

[Xavier Patiño · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find philosophy fascinating. Following a string of thoughts that began in someone’s mind and watching it formulate into a structured system is remarkable. The ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes allows you to gain a different perspective, and if you allow it, this different view can open up many new questions; and thus the seeking of knowledge and wisdom continues, enriching both life and mind.

I have read Great Dialogues of Plato by W.H.D. Rouse and I thought it was fantastic. It was my first jump into the actual texts of Plato, the most famous of philosophers. I will confess that a lot of it was difficult to follow and it surely requires multiple readings to fully grasp Socrates’ prowess in dissecting an argument. Regardless of feeling vexed throughout the endeavor, I loved it and wanted more.

In my philosophical quest I began to hear about some of the early Greek thinkers, the “Pre-Socratics” as they call them. This appellation is an unfortunate one since many of them may have been contemporaries of Plato/Socrates and it may also have influenced their thought. I plan at some point to read Aristotle and more Plato, but I thought to myself why not begin with the works of the earliest philosophers?

Jonathan Barnes begins the book with an informative introduction on how this work was put together. Many sources were used to compile the text, like Aristotle, Diogenes Laertius and Simplicius for example. He warns that because the source texts don’t survive, we must rely on sources who lived hundreds of years after those they are commentating on. Their words and thoughts come to us in fragments thanks to the ravages of time.

Early thought centered on the study of cosmogony, how the universe and everything came to be. The four elements of water, air, fire and earth were the ‘principle’ or what the Greeks called ‘arche’ of all creation. Thales of Miletus thought everything originated in water and that the earth itself floated on an endless sea. His student Anaximander thought different; the arche was not water but rather an infinite and boundless ‘thing’. The rotation of this ‘thing’ produced the opposites – hot and cold, wet and dry etc. Thales thought the sun and moon were hollow rings filled with fire, and the light we see came from open vents allowing light through. An eclipse occurred when those vents closed and then reopened.

Biology was also a topic of discussion. Going back to Thales, he believed humans were born from fish and then eventually began to live on land. His reason for this was that when humans are born, we are vulnerable and helpless, and there was no way we could’ve survived without being eaten by predators. We were safer in the water apparently! There was also an element of reincarnation, an interesting thought that was also developed by Siddhartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha. One wonders if Eastern thought mingled with Western thought at some point through the trade routes.
According to Pythagoras, there was an ‘eternal recurrence’ in which beings died and then were reborn as human or as an animal. Events too went through an endless loop of frequency. Heraclitus the Obscure as he came to be known was famous for saying that everything was in always in flux, that we can never step into the same river twice.

Democritus was my favorite philosopher out of the bunch. He is primarily known for his Atomic Theory, that everything is made up of microscopic, infinitesimal objects that move in a void. They come in different sizes, and this accounts for the different shapes of things. He didn’t trust in the senses; reality was atoms and the void. Color, hot, cold, wet, dry, sweet, bitter – these are conventions invented by us. As he is quoted saying, ”In reality we know nothing – for truth is in the depths.”

He also has many bits of ethical wisdom attributed to him as well. I would compare him to Confucius, the Great Teacher from the Far East. My favorite quotes are as follows:

”Fortunate is he who is content with moderate goods, unfortunate he who is discontent with many.”

and

“You must recognize that human life is frail and brief and confounded by many plagues and incapacities; then you will care for moderate possessions and your misery will be measured by necessity.”

There’s so much more to touch upon here that it would take me pages to get through it all. Overall, I found the book to be an excellent primer into Greek thought. Many of these guys were wrong in their theories but that isn’t the point. The enjoyment comes from seeing the evolution of thought, of reason and logic in figuring out how the world worked, how everything came to be and why things are the way they are. Highly recommend it!

[Erick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite a great introduction to the earliest strains of Greek philosophy. One has to keep in mind that these are fragments of larger works and that it is somewhat conjectural as to how some of these fragments fit together in the works from which they were culled and quoted by other (often later) writers. The source reliance on Laertius and Simplicius is rather pronounced as well.
There are certainly common themes that run through the writers treated here. You have, of course, the early philosophers' thoughts on the nature of the cosmos and the primacy of the elements, i.e. earth, air (and/or ether), fire and water. Often one writer positing the primacy of one of these elements over the others. Obviously, "elements" here simply means basic cosmic constituents and does not denote the elements that make up the periodic table -except maybe in a more loose sense. Also common is the speculation on pre-creation states, often likened to a chaos and/or a void where all qualities and substances existed in a non-distinctive unintelligible conglomeration. Rather interesting is the debates on dichotomies that often show up here: infinitude/finitude, limitedness/unlimitedness, uniformity/multiformity, unity/multiplicity, changeableness/unchangeableness, intelligibleness/unintelligibleness etc. Dichotomies are posited and discussed for qualities as well: dryness/moistness, lightness/darkness, bitterness/sweetness, hardness/softness, coldness/hotness etc. There are also some more idiosyncratic notions that crop up with the Pythagoreans and the Atomists. Of course, the preeminence of mind (nous/logos) is often posited and discussed as well.
I had already taken note of Heraclitus and Anaxagoras prior to reading this from previous research; and, once again, these writers' ideas I find rather fascinating. I would also add Empedocles to that list as well after reading this. I must say that I unapologetically read the first chapters of Genesis in a way that is reminiscent of Anaxagoras' thought. Reading the creation account in Genesis in the banal and trivializing literalist fashion that fundamentalists do has always seemed rather silly to me.
This was a great work to get me in the mood to start rereading Plato again. I do recommend it as an introduction to Greek philosophy in general. One should also keep in mind the provisos I listed above though.

[Michael Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like I'm not really expert enough to rate this book. Obviously, one can't really downgrade the content (this book sucked because Heraclitus was WRONG when he said that the world was made of fire). I found that my reaction to it was the same as my reaction to most non-historical ancient texts; some of it was brilliant, some of it was a fascinating look at where our ideas came from, but most of it was deadly boring. The only thing you can really comment on then, is translation, selection of texts, and explanatory notes, none of which I know enough about to really criticize, so I am going to assume that Jonathan Barnes did an excellent job with all of it. I will say that I thought his italicized explanations were lucid and the translation flowed well.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

The problem with philosophical fragments is that even when they contain interesting suggestions, the reasoning is generally unavailable.

[Lone Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What can be said and be thought of must be; for it can be, and nothing cannot." - Parmenides

I've always admired Plato, Aristotle and many other great thinkers for what their thoughts and philosophy contribute and lay the foundation of human knowledge and philosophy for the modern world. But obviously, they build their thoughts and philosophy from the Pre-Socratics Thinkers: Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Zeno, Parmenides, Empedocles and etc. As Aristotle saw it, the Presocratics form a coherent group of thought: it was they who began philosophy, they who prepared the way for Plato and for the philosophical Schools of the following generations.

I personally think this is by far the best anthology to introduce the early Sages of Western philosophy. These Greeks were the cornerstone of the scientific inquiry in western Europe. These are the Pre-Socratic philosophers or so-called Natural Philosopher which regarded primarily as "physicists". Ethical and logical matters did indeed exercise some of them, but their primary concerns were physics. Presocratics as the first investigators of matters which became the special objects of astronomy, physics, chemistry, zoology, botany, psychology and so on, all these we might just count as 'science' in the modern term. For all the general goal of the early philosophers was, to tell the truth about nature: to describe, to organize, and to explain the universe and its contents with reason, logic, and observation approach which disregard their contemporary superstition of the Mythology.

It is fascinating and intriguing just by reading the ancient texts of early thinkers. In some degree, we can be able to grasp some truth of their theories which how they perceive the cosmo with only their observations and reflections. Nonetheless, we can assume that the early thinkers attempt to look at nature with logic and a systematic approach to form a unified theory to explain the world – the desire to explain as much as possible in terms of as little as possible. I mean their emphasis on the use of reason, on rationality, on logic and inference to provide a sound philosophical argument.

At last, let us not be judgemental towards the limitation of the early thinkers' postulation. Rather, we should read the text of the ancient wisdom with intriguing delights, find pleasure in contemplating their efforts to explain the nature with emphasis on rationality. As the author puts it this way: "They appeal to the intellectual imagination, and they excite readers to construct for themselves some picture of the whole from which they came.......The sketches are not substitutes for the texts in the main chapters, nor do they claim to convey definitive interpretations. Rather, they intended to provide a moderately intelligible framework within which the texts may first be read. They are fixed ropes on a difficult rock face, placed there for the inexperienced climber. Use them once or twice and then climb free. Read them, and forget them."

[Josh Doughty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was initially very interested/excited reading this, but became kind of bored by the end of it. Some of the fragments were confusing/constraining, but overall insightful.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book's shortcomings aren't really its fault. The presocratics weren't systematic thinkers, and even if they were none of their writings survive intact. The editor Jonathan Barnes does a fine job of putting them together, but even he admits that many of the arrangements are arbitrary.

1.

Emerging consensus on the infinite. The "infinite" implies "boundary markers" (216).

2.

If God is infinite, and infinity transcends boundaries, can he even be named and spoken? Did Greek Philosophy lead us to this point?

3.

Another consensus (rightly) is that the gods were silly, but the place the gods held was not abandoned. The concept of "number" took its place; "different angles were assigned to different gods" (Philolaus, quoted by Proclus, 219). This became the realm of "forms" with Plato. With Anchoretic Christianity the place of the forms were transformed to the realm of saints and angels (per Tillich).

3.1

St Paul said we are no longer under the elemental spirits of the age (Galatians 3-4).

4.

For better or worse "ousia/physis/essence" usually connoted materiality. It was the stuff of the universe and the universe was usually considered eternal. The editor doesn't draw this out but this explains some of the problems in the early church on Christology. They weren't simply sinful heretics by refusing to say that the Son was the same ousia of the Father. They understand ousia to be material, which the Father was not.

5.

Is the axiom "like is produced by like" (Democritus) correlative to the chain of being: as above, so below?

6.

What's the difference between this and neopaganism?

7.

Democritus says it's stupid to want children (280) and sex is irrational. Compare that with the Old Testament. Maybe there is a difference between Hebrew and Greek thought.

[Richard Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is the situation - there were a whole lot of pre-socratic philosophers and we only have fragments of their writings. In some cases, we don't have any of the originals, only people commenting on the originals or even people commenting on others' comments on the originals - and many of those commentaries are a couple of thousand years old. The texts were in ancient Greek, and using a style and references that will be difficult to understand even with the best translator. The result is subject matter that is open to huge variations in interpretation and is never going to provide an easy read. This is not a book for the feint hearted, but given the contents I don't see how it can ever be a straightforward read without simplifying the material to the point at which it ceases to reflect the original thinkers' intentions. There are some gems here, but there is also a lot which is simply impenetrable.

Barnes makes a very valiant attempt to present the material. There are other books if you want interpretations and commentary (including one by Barnes) - this book never sets out to provide that. It is primarily a reference source and as such, it is actually pretty good. What difficulties there are, are largely a result of the original materials.

[John Reis · Rating 4 out of 5]

One might think that the number of Presocratic philosophers was quite limited. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Xeno, Democritus and Empedocles immediately come to mind.

Barnes has collected here every fragment and every reference by later philosophers as he could find. That has a great many benefits but there is a downside as well.

This is a tedious and grueling read if you are not studying these thinkers. There are multiple repetitive references to a thought by multiple ancient sources.

[Parker Gonzalez]

Does what it needs to do: present the pre-Socratics. Barnes presents the pre-Socratics by giving a brief introduction of their name, homeland, birth/death dates, along with accounts of what they pioneered or supported. This method of introduction I think is very efficient, it clears out any unnecessary information and acts kind of as its own philosophy book since it features a lot of fragments from some of the greatest pre-Socratics such as Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and (in my opinion the most important) Democritus. Seeing what some of these people believed in back then--the moon being filled with fire and air (Heraclitus); the earth being flat (Thales); the thought that Pythagoras ate 'tender young children' (Pythagoras disciple)--is pretty unbelievable to say the least. However, even if most of these fellows were wholly uneducated besides from paradoxes, arguments, and natural philosophy, some of what they say was and still is extremely profound, such as Leucippus' and Democritus' theory on atomism, Pythagoras' cults' influence on Western mathematics, and a lot of skepticism surrounding the universe, being, and form that pioneered ontology and modern metaphysics (Parmenides). An extremely thoughtful, useful, and valuable resource.

[Gastjäle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Precisely the kind of a book I have been looking for. Sometimes one simply isn't content with listening to myriad paraphrases about philosophers—one wants to get to the source and drink in the fragmentary wisdom. The fragments vary violently in inspiration: some of them are almost empty, some dull, some rather spiffing and some profound. For me, it's all a little treasure trove that sends one back to the old times when there were no established rules to lull people into a sense of complacent certainty. And best of all, my favourite of the lot, Empedocles, has got the most massive page count!

Literally awe-inspiring—thank you, Jonathan Barnes!

[James Carrigy · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10

A pretty well-structured and assembled work from Jonathan Barnes here. Very much a reliable academic text for those wanting a collection of the ideas/concepts of pre-Socratic thinkers, who now only exist in fragments and quotations from the philosophers they would go on to inspire.

[Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm at the edge of my seat

[Martti · Rating 5 out of 5]

What exactly is cosmos, the universe of all things, everything, the whole world? Did the universe have a beginning? If so, how did it begin? Why does it move and develop? What are its basic constituents? What is rain, wind, thunder, minerals, plants, animals, and human life?

These profound questions are the subjects of this excellent book. The questions were first asked and answered by early Greek philosophers. The timeline of the book starts at 585 BC when the first Greek philosopher, Thales of Miletus, predicted an eclipse of the sun, and ends around 400 BC when the period of Plato and Aristotle and the famous Greek philosophical schools began.

The author Jonathan Barnes, Professor of Ancient Philosophy in Oxford University and in the University of Geneva, is undeniably an expert in the Greek philosophy. In 300 pages, Barnes presents ideas of famous pre-Socratic philosophers like Thales, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Leucippus, and Democritus.

It is strange that none of the earliest philosophers were Athenians. Philosophy bloomed first in the eastern shores of the Agean. It was at Miletus in current Turkey where the Greek philosophy was born. Miletus was a busy commercial trading place with connections to Greek, Black Sea, Egypt, Italy, Persia, and Babylonia. Barnes does not claim that the Presocratics began someting entirely novel but he concludes that Thales and his associates were men of genius. They were the forerunners of Aristotle and through him the forerunners of modern science and philosophy. The Presocratics invented the very idea of science and philosophy. They were champions of reason and rationality. They offered reasons for their opinions and they gave arguments for their views. They allowed gods but they removed some of the functions from the gods. Thunder was explaind scientifically - it was no longer a noise from Zeus. Iris, the goddes of rainbow, was nothing but a multicoloured cloud.

Of all the works of the Presocratics, no original writings have survived for us to read. Still e.g. Democritus was a prolific writer and apparently wrote some 50 books. Some of the works endured at least a thousand years: the scholar Simplicius in the sixth century AD could still consult some original Presocratic texts. What we have are some reports, references and quotations made by later scholars.

The book contains English translations of all the surviving philosophical fragments of the Presocratic thinkers. I found the structure of the book excellent. For readers not deeply familiar with early philosophical issues the 27 pages of the introduction are illuminative. The introduction is followed by a 14-page synopsis which briefly summarizes the key ideas of each philosopher. The remaining pages devote one chapter for each of the 20 philosophers of the book.

To me the main motivation to read the book was to become more familiar with the thinking of Leucippus and Democritus. These two philosophers, the Atomists, presented the theory of atoms which still, after 2500 years, is surprisingly valid in the science of our days. They argued that the universe consists of indivisible atoms which are small and solid. They have size and shape and hardness, but they lack secondary qualities (colour, smell, taste, etc). The atoms exist for ever and are unchangeable. Atomic movements create the world: colliding atoms can stick together, hooks in an atom lock with the eyes of another atom. When atoms collide or are entangled, the aggregates appear as water or fire or plants or men. Everything happens by a mechanical chance; but given infinite space and infinite time, it is only to be expected that the complex structures of the world will somewhere and somewhen be formed. It is truly amazing how Leucippus and Democritus could have such profound ideas 2500 years ago, almost without any instruments and without previous works, just by observing the nature and thinking! To me this can well be compared with the achievements of other giants of the science like Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. It is a great loss that no original writings of Leucippus and Democritus have survived. Luckily we have quotations from their writings saved by later scholars, e.g. the following famous maxims:

- By convention hot, by convention cold: in reality atoms and void.
- In reality we know nothing - for truth is in the depths.
- The world is change: life is opinion.
- I would rather discover a single causal explanation than become king of the Persians.

I quickly found that 20 pages/day was a suitable amount when trying to assimilate the text. Thank you for writing this excellent book, Jonathan Barnes!

[Oscar Despard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This compilation of pre-Socratic thought provides a rich insight into the beginnings of natural science and philosophy. It opens with a stirring introduction that underlines the influence that the early Greeks have had on modern thought. Their logic may have been in many cases fallacious, but they did much of the groundwork on which the more renowned Athenians built more durable edifices.

The pre-Socratics existed before the demarcation of knowledge into art and science, and were perhaps the first to separate the two: it is striking how many of the early philosophers wrote in verse. Their efforts are fascinating to uncover, not only because some of their reasoning is cogent and, in the case of Democritus, even brilliantly close to the truth, but because it allows us to see the ways in which modern science has progressed and what it has left behind.

The idea of the experiment does not seem to have occurred to the ancients, nor did the application of mathematics to nature, except obviously by the Pythagoreans, who did so in a most abstruse way. However, the obvious difference between the natural philosophy of then and now is the feeling that any individual must explain everything. It is striking that most philosophers in this book offer their own unique and entire explanation of the cosmos, with only few directly building on what was done by a predecessor; by contrast, one cannot imagine a modern physicist entirely disregarding Einstein or Newton to build their own independent theories of matter.

Of course, no physicist does so because the ideas of those scientists largely appear and have proven to be correct; a physicist who ignored them would be entirely irrelevant to modern research. There is something sad about what has thereby been lost: the courage to shake conventional perceptions, then wrong but alas, now right, and the excitement of offering an entirely new vision on the world. There may also be something of a lesson. To us, it certainly appears as if the Greeks were far too ambitious and comprehensive in their questions, too concerned with the metaphysical rather than small, verifiable predictions. Yet those are the questions that drive us to science in the first place, and some of them remain unanswered: is the universe infinite, and what do we mean by being?

[Collin Schoolcraft · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I listened to a few BBC podcasts about some of the pre-Socratic philosophers and was like, "Hell yeah, these people are super interesting. Let me get a book about them so that I can fully understand the start of philosophy and the search for wisdom." Turns out, those podcasts pretty much condense all the known bits and pieces into a few key concepts and ideas that are typically attributed to each thinker and then they left the minutia for dumbasses like me to go read. Suffice it to say, a majority of the stuff went over my head and reminded me of my place in the world of academia: outside of it.

All that to say, a few takeaways:
1. These people didn't write stuff down, so everything we have from them is written by later writers. It's like a generational game of telephone. We don't so much know that the thoughts attributed to each thinker were in fact originated by them, but rather, that they were attributed to them. And in some ways, who cares, we at least have a timeline for the history of certain lines of thinking, in and of themselves.
2. The section on Democritus' ethics/moral philosophy was easily the most enjoyable part to read. It was basically just hundreds of little proverbs that have been attributed to him by some 5th century AD compiler. We're in "step aside Jesus" territory here. Lots of thoughtful nuggets in here (and plenty that haven't aged as well when it comes to women and slavery, per usual).
3. Some of the most important scientific quandaries that are just now (in the last 100-200 years) being discovered and understood, can trace their origins back to the pre-Socratics. I mean they were wrong about most everything when it came to metaphysics, but still, they were starting to put humanity on the right track.

Just for good measure, I will rank my top three favorite thinkers highlighted in the book:
1. Democritus; see above, also he kind of guessed that atoms exist (along with Leucippus) which is pretty cool.
2. Pythagoras; cult leader/guru, lots of uncertainty around him but he seems to have had the most social impact.
3. Heraclitus; major dick, pretty much despised other people, also the king of Persia wrote him a letter fan-girling and Heraclitus basically told him to fuck off

[ragsgh]

“By convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour. In reality, atoms and void.“

In the age of humanity’s highest capabilities clashing with an overarching mental ‘fog’ and decline of cognitive capacity to think critically and individually, it is most striking to reach back thousand(s) of years ago and witness a prime crux—not to understate their revelations as negligible precursors—of natural sciences and laying ground for moral theories and later in sophists’ practice, which in their magnitude contributed to every conceivable civilisation and still manage to amaze little modern minions us.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in a class on Early Greek Philosophy, and this book was hard to digest at the time. This book is an excellent reference for philosophy students and maybe classics scholars, but not so much for the general public. This book is focused on the Pre-Socratics (philosophers before Socrates) and therefore does not contain anything by Socrates, Plato or Aristotle. However, I think they added in some Greek philosophers that came after Socrates but were outside his teaching and influence.

Barnes has done his work compiling and editing (and translating?) these texts. He takes care to show his work, noting every questionable, contested, missing, or reconstructed piece of the text. Commendable for scholarly work; tedious for the general public. There's always a trade off in deciding what to preserve and what to gloss over, and Barnes takes preservation to the extreme. Decent book for introductory course on philosophy, probably very good for graduate students, bad starter for the general public. For an introduction to Western Philosophy, try Sophie's World.

[c · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can't speak much to the ideas presented here; much of them seemed very mystical, nonsensical, or made egregious assumptions and went from there. But then again, these guys were working with very, very little (although probably not nothing), and it's nonetheless interesting to see some of these guys explore territory that will come up later, sometimes much later, in more systematic thinkers' works.

The presentation I can speak to: it is first and foremost minimal and nonintrusive. Aside from a brief intro and synopsis, Barnes largely lets the philosophers speak for themselves, as best they can. This is both good and bad. There is a very transparent editorial hand here, assigning order to fragments but giving little specific background, which yields a somewhat tedious experience for a very lay layman (like myself).

[Julia]

This book was difficult in subject for me and also hard for me to read. This is because:
1. I am a layman when it comes to ancient greek philisophy
2. English is not my native language and even though my english is not bad, academic language is a whole new level.

But:
1. Jonathan does a very well job in laying out the fundamentals of ancient greek philosophy.
2. The books has a logic and pleasant structure.
3. The sidenotes are a helpful guide through these different ancient philosophers.

Though, I will not give it a rating. I feel like I am not qualified (understood enough) to give it a rating.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting survey of early Greek thought. Essentially, almost no original writing remains from these early philosophers - thank you bishop dickhead for burning the library at Alexandria... Instead, we have endless fragments and quotations by later writers, who apparently did have some access to the original and/or earlier texts, or at least more access than is available to us now. And so, what we have is a ragged patchwork of fragments and interpretations. Given this sad situation, Barnes was still able to give us a scent of what these guys were all about.

Recommended to anyone who wants to learn more about where Socrates, et al, came from...

[Theresa Leone Davidson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barnes, a British professor of ancient philosophy, writes about the pre-Socratics, men like Democritus, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and Parmenides, who led the way to ideas of philosophy espoused by more famous names, like Socrates. Reading this in a class, with a professor like Barnes, or a professor of ancient Greece, would have been helpful, as I was left with many unanswered questions. Nevertheless, for anyone interested in philosophy, I would recommend.

[C. Çevik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eserin orjinali iyi ama çevirisinde sorunlar var, felsefî kavramları anlamakte sorun yaratabilir, dahası yanlış öğrenilmesine neden olabilir. İngilizcesi olanlara orjinalini okumalarını tavsiye ederim.

[Jed Ojeda · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book containing the fragments of some of the major pre-Socratic philosophers. The commentaries of the later philosophers (like Simplicius, Aristotle, and Plutarch, to name a few) quoting the pre-Socratic philosophers helps give an idea of what they might be saying.