الهیات نخستین فیلسوفان یونان

by Werner Wilhelm Jaeger, فریده فرنودفر (Translator)

این کتاب به نحوی روشن می کوشد تا جایگاه ممتاز اندیشمندان پیش سقراطی را در سرآغازهای الهیات فلسفی یونان شرح دهد. بدون شک پژوهش حاضر بهترین اثری است که به تطور اندیشه امر الوهی از سرآغازهای آن یعنی طالس و آناکسیماندر تا سوفیست ها می پردازد. نویسنده کتاب با علم به اینکه نزد پیش سقراطیان هرچند هنوز با شاخه ای از فلسفه به نام الهیات که مجزا از طبیعیات باشد - آنگونه که نزد ارسطو می یابیم - رو به رو نیستیم، در صدد تحقیق و تفسیر مجدد آن دسته از قطعات به جای مانده از این اندیشمندان بر می آید که از سوی شارحان دوره جدید به نادرست تفسیر شدند، تا از این رهگذر بن مایه الهیاتی اندیشه پیش سقراطیان را در آرای کیهان شناختی آنها نشان دهد.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, History, Nonfiction, Theology

423 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

Jaeger attended school at Lobberich and at the Gymnasium Thomaeum in Kempen Jaeger studied at the University of Marburg and University of Berlin. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Berlin in 1911 for a dissertation on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. His habilitation was on Nemesios of Emesa (1914). Only 26 years old, Jaeger was called to a professorship with chair at the University of Basel in Switzerland. One year later he moved to a similar position at Kiel, and in 1921 he returned to Berlin. Jaeger remained in Berlin until 1936, when he emigrated to the United States because he was unhappy with Adolf Hitler's regime. Jaeger expressed his veiled disapproval with Humanistische Reden und Vortraege (1937) and his book on Demosthenes (1938) based on his Sather lecture from 1934. Jaeger's messages were fully understood in German university circles; the ardent Nazi followers sharply attacked Jaeger.
In the United States, Jaeger worked as a full professor at the University of Chicago from 1936 to 1939, at which time he moved to Harvard University to continue his edition of the Church father Gregory of Nyssa on which he started before World War I. Jaeger remained in Cambridge, Massachusetts, until his death. The Canadian philosopher James Doull was among his students at Harvard.
Jaeger wrote two dissertations, one in Latin and one in German, on Aristotle's Metaphysics. Jaeger's edition of the Metaphysics was printed in 1957. Only two years after editing Gregory of Nyssa's Contra Eunomium (1921), Jaeger became famous with his groundbreaking study on Aristotle in 1923 which largely remained undisputed until the 1960s.
Jaeger founded two journals: Die Antike (1925–1944) and the influential review journal Gnomon (since 1925).
Jaeger was the editor of the church father Gregory of Nyssa, Gregorii Nysseni Opera, editing Gregory's major work Contra Eunomium (1921, 1960). This edition is a major scholarly achievement and the philological foundation of the current studies on the Cappadocian Fathers.
Jaeger is perhaps best known for his multivolume work "Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture", an extensive consideration of both the earliest practices and later philosophical reflections on the cultural nature of education in Ancient Greece, which he hoped would restore a decadent early 20th century Europe to the values of its Hellenic origins.
Jaeger's last lecture, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (1961) is a very impressive summary of his life's work covering Greek philology, philosophy and theology from Homer, the Presocratic philosophers, Plato to the Church Fathers, roughly a thousand years.
Source

Reviews

[David A. Beardsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, originally presented as the Gifford Lectures in 1936, looks at the some of the earliest Greek philosophers in their quest for understanding the Boundless. Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles and many others come alive in this work of deep scholarship imbued with mysticism. These are the men who paved the way for Plato but they also stand as major figures in their own right. Highly recommended.

[Joshua Laferriere · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Yale Professor recommended Jaegar to me (Paidaea), but this was my first excursion. My favorite chapter is the final chapter which discusses theories such as those by Critias on religion as a tool of the masses as a sort of cop in the sky enforcing morality after death during judgement by the 3 judges. Yet the book is really about the evolution of a milesian based physics.

Great book to read after Shape of Ancient Thought

[Mateusz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Greatly written resource on theological shifts in structure of ideas in the Hellenic world. I've started with an idea that "in an indivisible cosmos, the divine reveals itself" in sages, philosophers, mystai, logioi interpret it (hermeneuien). Those few that experienced the world of the Divine and weren't left in their speculations without this support of convinction, understanding and experience. Thinking that any thought that lifted the theological narration in a different direction in this days was a heroic, titanic move by those few mystai and physikoi acknowledging the Divine, or those seeking the reasons for natural religion forged in fear managed by a political order to have a "bigger, greater man" in the sky to be feared. This reading helped me reconcile the neoplatonic ideas of Iamblichus with the Pythagorean Tetractys, I needed plenty of philosophical glue to solve the progression from apeiron and monadic generator and further generation of the mutually reflecting world of descending and ascending coil-like (transmigrative) powers. This personal exploration attempts to reconcile a superstructure of theological grand vision with the various worldviews of the Hellenic philosophers, as well as building bridges to Chaldean, Egyptian and Hindi ones. They weren't the same, however, they picked differect aspects of categories of human and religious experience, different practices and mystagogy, but there are points of reference among the models and measuring rods that greatly improve one's personal epiphany, apocalypsis (revealing), by knowing where to put the accentuation in order to interpret them through each other.

[Nihad Marwan · Rating 3 out of 5]

El libro comienza centrándose en desmentir esta visión de la «física milesia» como un anticipo de la investigación física moderna; para ello, asume la tarea de mostrar el aspecto «teológico» que las especulaciones presocráticas indudablemente poseen y que pone en tela de juicio su inserción en las relaciones de independencia e incluso de disputa que poseen las categorías modernas de «ciencia» y «religión». Seguidamente, las conferencias redondean esta perspectiva de la temprana filosofía griega prolongando los análisis hasta llegar a la antesala del pensamiento platónico-aristotélico: la sofística. El camino que se dibuja desde Tales de Mileto hasta Protágoras, pasando por Anaxágoras, Parménides, Empédocles, Heráclito, etc., muestra la correlación entre los pensamientos de estos autores y la literatura y las prácticas religiosas de su contexto.