The collection of nineteen articles in Jaap Mansfeldâs Studies in Early Greek Philosophy span the period from Anaximander to Socrates. Solutions to problems of interpretation are offered through a scrutiny of the sources, and also of the traditions of presentation and reception found in antiquity. Excursions in the history of scholarship help to diagnose discussions of which the primum movens may have been forgotten. General questions are treated, for instance the phenomenon of detheologization in doxographical texts, while problems relating to individual philosophers are also discussed. For example, the history of Anaximanderâs cosmos, the status of Parmenidesâ human world, and the reliability of what we know about the soul of Anaximenes, and of what Philoponus tells us about the behaviour of Democritusâ atoms.
Jaap Mansfeld is Professor Emeritus of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy in the University of Utrecht. He has published on Ancient Philosophy from the Presocratics to the Late Commentators, with a particular focus on ancient historiographical traditions relating to philosophy.
"Throughout Mansfeldâs new collection of papers on early Greek philosophy, we are reminded both of the achievement of Diels, and of the need to maintain a critical attitude to even such an august tool of philological, philosophical, and historical scholarship. Mansfeld is one of the best scholars to remind us of this point, as he, like Diels, and David Runia (Mansfeldâs colleague on the important Aëtiana project), is a master of the historiography of ancient Greek philosophy (not limited to the earliest Greek thinkers). This new volume brings together nineteen discussions of the Presocratics and of the history of scholarship dealing with them." - Patricia Curd, in: Gnomon 93.1 (2021)
Acknowledgements Introduction
1 DetheologizationAëtian Chapters and Their Peripatetic Background
2 Insight by HindsightIntentional Unclarity in Presocratic Proems
3 Bothering the InfiniteAnaximander in the Nineteenth Century and Beyond
4 Anaximanderâs Fragment: Another Attempt
5 Anaximenesâ Soul
6 Minima ParmenideaExegetical Notes on 28B1.22â23a, B2.1â5, B6.3, and B8.38â41 DK
7 Parmenides from Right to Left
8 Parmenides on Sense Perception in Theophrastus and Elsewhere
9 Heraclitus on Soul and Super-SoulWith an Afterthought on the Afterlife
10 Alcmaeon and Plato on Soul
11 The Body PoliticAëtius on Alcmaeon on Isonomia and Monarchia
12 Aristotle on Anaxagoras in relation to Empedocles in Metaphysics A
13 âDas verteufelte LastschiffâPhilolaus 44B12 DK
14 Democritus on PoetryFragments 68B18 and B21 DK
15 Out of TouchPhiloponus as a Source for Democritus
16 The Presocratic PhilosophersA Discussion of a New Handbook
17 Protagoras on Epistemological Obstacles and Persons
18 Aristotle on Socratesâ Contributions to Philosophy
19 Hermann Diels (1848â1922) Index LocorumIndex Nominum et Rerum
All graduate students, specialists, libraries and other institutions interested in the Presocratics, the Sophists, Socrates, ancient historiographical traditions relating to philosophy, reception studies, and Ancient Philosophy in general.