BOOK REVIEWS 145
Early Greek Philosophy: The Presocratics and the Emergence of Reason. Edited by Joe McCoy. Pp. xxxv, 237,
The Catholic University of America Press, 2013, £59.50.
This book consists of introduction, ten chapters on the from mythos to logos? Recent work on Pythagoras has
Presocratics by ten different authors, and the usual end emphasized that, as far as our meagre evidence goes,
matter. The first of the ten chapters is an overall he was not a mathematician and scientist, but an expert
survey of ‘early Greek philosophy’, then the next seven on religious ritual and promulgator of a particular way
each focus on just one of the Presocratics, with no over- of life. And so Huffman concludes that Philolaus was
lap, and then the final two chapters are about the recep- the first scientific Pythagorean, and that within Pytha-
tion of the Presocratics. With such a format, you might goreanism itself there was a parallel transition from
expect the purpose of the book to be an introduction to mythos to logos.
Presocratic thought, but in fact each of the essays devel- J.H. Lesher considers to what extent Xenophanes
ops a particular thesis about just some of the chosen deserves to be called a Presocratic: was he any
thinker’s work, rather than the whole. However, several kind of systematic thinker, or just a poet? Lesher
of the chapters begin with a kind of survey of the whole argues that in at least three important areas of
of the thinker’s thought. Overall, however, the collec- thought – cosmology, theology, and epistemology
tion is designed, as the editor says in his introduction, – Xenophanes’ had a unified system, whatever we
‘to elaborate the development of certain basic philo- are to make of the rest of his fragments. The essay
sophical notions by the Presocratics, as well as to study serves as an excellent introduction to the philo-
their later reception’ (xii). The chapters originated in a sophical side of Xenophanes’ poems.
lecture series at the Catholic University of America. Alexander Mourelatos next brings out the importance
The introduction surveys the entire Presocratic of Parmenides’ astronomical breakthroughs, despite the
enterprise and their legacy, slotting summaries of the fact that he chose to present them in the Doxa part of his
subsequent chapters into their places in the story. The poem. This is the best account of Parmenides’ astron-
first chapter, by Charles Kahn, is another survey, tak- omy that I have read. Mourelatos ends with reflections
ing ‘early Greek philosophy’ up to Plato’s Timaeus. on whether the distinction in Kant between noumena
Whereas McCoy in the introduction divided the and phaenomena, or the distinction in Sellars between
Presocratic enterprise into three main phases, Kahn ‘Scientific Image’ and ‘Manifest Image’, can shed light
describes it as ‘a drama in five acts’. His purpose is to on the relation between the two parts of Parmenides’
bring out at each phase the boldness and genius of the poem: Sellars more than Kant, he thinks.
thinkers and the overall enterprise. Patricia Curd argues for the incorporeality of
Chapter 2 is a fairly slight offering by Kurt Pritzl on Empedocles’ cosmic forces Love and Strife. They are
Anaximander, exploring the relation between the not equivalent to his four elements. This is a good
apeiron and Anaximander’s famous fragment. He paper, and makes its case clearly, but she is arguing
finds the connection in the concept of time. Taking for a position that most would accept anyway.
the ‘primary meaning’ of apeiron as ‘circular’ (which Daniel Graham argues for the thoroughly scien-
can only be a secondary meaning), he connects this tific spirit Anaxagoras displays in a number of con-
with the circularity of time in ancient thought and con- texts, but most specifically in determining the
cludes that the apeiron in the fragment is itself time. causes of both solar and lunar eclipses (where he
In a rather pointless essay, Kenneth Dorter tackes built on the work of Parmenides that Mourelatos
‘the problem of evil in Heraclitus’, but all he does is discussed in his chapter).
precis Heraclitus’ thought and say that though it is The final two chapters consider the reception of
better for humans to wake up to the reality Heraclitus the Presocratics, by Francis Bacon (John McCarthy,
is trying to describe, there is a place within the unity seeing, therefore, Presocratic influence right at the
that makes up the universe even for sleepers. start of modern scientism) and by Nietzsche and
With Carl Huffman’s essay on ‘reason and myth in Heidegger (Richard Velkley).
early Pythagorean cosmology’ we get more substance.
What part did the Pythagoreans play in the transition Lakonia, Greece Robin Waterfield
The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy. Edited by Patricia Curd and Daniel W. Graham. Pp. xii, 588,
Oxford University Press, 2008, £87.00/$150.00.
OUP’s terrific Handbook series continues with this on the back jacket flap, are awkward: one sentence
weighty volume on the Presocratics – weighty, but speaks of ‘an authoritative and state-of-the-art survey
several of the Handbooks I’ve seen run closer to 1,000 of current thinking and research in a particular area’,
pages than 500. The aims of the series, as announced but the next talks about ‘compelling new perspectives’.
