Retrieving the Ancients: An Introduction to Greek Philosophy

Rating:
Summary: profound, lucid, moving
Review: If there's a more graceful, convincing, learned and moving introduction to ancient thought out there, I don't know it. This work is philosophically deep, and yet not cold to the language, style and emotions that moved the various authors (Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle) to philosophize, teach and write. Roochnik lays out the history of ancient thought in four chapters (Presoc., Sophists and Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle). Moreover he refers to contemporary thinkers, and to our near contemporary Nietzsche, from time to time, in order to show the relevance of classical thought to philosophy today. (He also briefly compares The Symposium to Macbeth.) The book culminates in a defence of Aristotle that I find convincing (because, as I see it, Aristotle combines philosophical insight with a interlocking picture of how things hang together, while giving us a robustly commonsensical account of what the human animal is, and can be). But the chapter on Plato is sympathetic and compelling too, if unorthodox -- because it finds a tension in Plato's discussion of the city between the ideal and real (usually expositors find only an emphasis on the ideal).

Anyhow, here's a snippet of the writing; Roochnik has just quoted Heraclitus on lice in fragment B56:

"Knowledge is like lice. If it is grasped, it is lost. Only if it is missed is it kept. There is a necessary elusiveness in Heraclitus' writing. It is meant to articulate the fluid alterations of temporal beings. It is designed to do justice to the negations of temporal flow. His logos, therefore, must be enigmatic. Were it not, it would be false." (37.) ... "Heraclitean flux seems to shake the ground under our feet. Nothing endures. Such a thought may well cause despair. If nothing endures, then one might conclude that nothing matters. But Heraclitus' own writings do not suggest a trace of despondency." (37) ...

See? Clear and smart. I recommend this book to many, even ambitious grade 12 students, or older curious neophyte generalists, as well as to philosophy students.