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The Thinking Root: The Poetry of Earliest Greek Philosophy
Acclaimed poet and translator Dan Beachy-Quick offers this newest addition to the Seedbank a warm, vivid rendering of the earliest Greek intellects, inviting us to reconsider writing, and thinking, as a way of living meaningfully in the world.
“We have lost our sense of thinking as the experience that keeps us in the world,” writes Beachy-Quick, and the figures rendered in The Thinking Root—Heraclitus, Anaximander, Empedocles, Parmenides, and others—are among the first examples we have in Western civilization of thinkers who used writing as to record their impressions of a world where intuition and observation, and spirit and nature, have yet to be estranged. In these pages, we find clear-eyed ideas searching for shapes and forms with which to order the world, and to reveal our life in flux.
Drawn from “words that think,” these ancient Greek texts are fresh and alive in the hands of Beachy-Quick, who translates with the empathy of one who knows that “a word is its own form of life.” In aphorisms, axioms, vignettes, and anecdotes, these first theories of the world articulate a relationship to the world that precedes our story of its making, a world where “the beginning and the end are in common.”
A remarkable collection from one of our most accomplished poets, The Thinking Root renders a primary apprehension of life amidst life, a vision that echoes our gaze upon the stars.
“We have lost our sense of thinking as the experience that keeps us in the world,” writes Beachy-Quick, and the figures rendered in The Thinking Root—Heraclitus, Anaximander, Empedocles, Parmenides, and others—are among the first examples we have in Western civilization of thinkers who used writing as to record their impressions of a world where intuition and observation, and spirit and nature, have yet to be estranged. In these pages, we find clear-eyed ideas searching for shapes and forms with which to order the world, and to reveal our life in flux.
Drawn from “words that think,” these ancient Greek texts are fresh and alive in the hands of Beachy-Quick, who translates with the empathy of one who knows that “a word is its own form of life.” In aphorisms, axioms, vignettes, and anecdotes, these first theories of the world articulate a relationship to the world that precedes our story of its making, a world where “the beginning and the end are in common.”
A remarkable collection from one of our most accomplished poets, The Thinking Root renders a primary apprehension of life amidst life, a vision that echoes our gaze upon the stars.
- GenresPoetryPhilosophy
140 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 11, 2023
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59 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 28, 2024
& and & and & and & and
August 18, 2023
This book was a beautiful introduction to Ancient Greek philosophy. Too often, philosophy dissolves into dense, overly technical prose, but Beachy-Quick manages to keep the essential ideas of the philosophers without constructing walls of text. It's a perfect book for a beginner, who wants to see what preceded Socrates et al., and is a wonderful experience to read.
August 24, 2023
Lots of cool, gnomic utterances from the ancient Greek philosophers. So much more thought provoking than the way I was taught the pre-Socratics in school.
September 20, 2023
A poetic interface to ancient thought. Surprisingly unique lens.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews