Kevin’s Reviews > Heraclitus and Thales’ Conceptual Scheme: A Historical Study > Status Update

The information and arguments in this book have really opened up my thinking on Presocratic philosophy. I’m full-on into the authors reverse development of his Thaletan cosmic model and find myself coming around to his way of thinking. G.S. Kirk has been a large inspiration for me in these studies up to now, and the consistency which this author argues with Kirks assessments is an unexpected Catharsis.

So, we’ve completed the authors reconstruction of Heraclitus’ thought, which I find on the whole to be very compelling. Now we move onto the relationship and development of that thought with relation to its Milesian predecessors.
Going to take a digestive break for a day though and read some Walter Burkert before driving through the final stretch.

We’re steering towards an overall revaluation of Ionian philosophy (cosmology), based on the title and the direction the author is leading. The tendency to place the Hellenistic interpretations of Heraclitus’ (i.e.,Stoic and Pythagorean) back to Heraclitus himself, are attractive, but raise questions I can’t answer at this point. It’s going to be interesting to see where we end up in these next few chapters.

I’ve encountered the argument that Pythagoras and his school’s contribution to our modern world was a late Platonic white-wash now numerous times, and still struggle to swallow the hard line scholarship takes on this point. Apparently Burkett’s “Lore and Science In Ancient Pythagoreanism” is the main study to push that point.
I’m still loving this book, but this Pythagoras question is a nagging one!

With the caveat that I've only read this sort of material on my own, and not in school or under any outside authority than my own reason and intuition, I think this is the best study of an ancient philosophy that I've read.

The author treats Heraclitus on his own merits (his fragments and commentators), divorced from the later philosophers he influenced and the result is a refreshing and brilliant portrait.

Good review on this work. Contextualizes the study well.

http://readingreligion.org/books/hera...

I am really enjoying this, and am looking forward to investigating Finkleberg’s sources in more detail in coming months.

I was planning to jump into The Greek Poems this week, but Amazon decided this was more important.
Nearly 50 pages in, I’m enthralled by the authors approach to ancient sources and his revisioning of our approach to the study of Pre-Socratic thought.
His analysis of prior scholarship reads like the WWE smack-down of Classical Studies and I am loving it!