The Presocratic Philosophers

Rating:
Summary: Read the Real Fragments - GET THE 1ST EDITION
Review: Don't buy this edition. Get the first edition, put together by the original editors, G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven (ISBN 0521091691), which is readily available through Amazon. The current edition has been hopelessly corrupted by M. Schofield, who has edited out crucial fragments in order to support his own "Analytical Philosophy" take on the Presocratics. As an example, he has removed crucial fragments which link Parmenides with the Pythagoreans.

So make sure you acquire the 1st Edition of this crucial sourcebook which was edited in an honest fashion by G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, and ignore any later edition which has been corrupted and invalidated by M. Schofield.

Also, take a look at Peter Kingsley's trilogy of books on Parmenides and Empedocles: "Reality," "In the Dark Places of Wisdom," and "Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition." These books will give you the real fragments, and provide you with a real take on why scholars with the intellectual dishonesty of an M. Schofield will rewrite and even abandon the original texts in order to further their own misguided agendas.

Rating:
Summary: The definitive collection of pre-socratic philosophy.
Review: I first read Kirk and Raven's `Presocratic Philosophers' as an undergrad. I was being taught pre-socratic philosophy by a Cambridge Classical Greek philosopher. Since then it has become one of my favourite and most valuable philosophy texts. Kirk and Raven present us with all the credible `fragments' of presocratic philosophy as quoted in later philosophers. They present the original greek and a (most times) definitive english translation and analysis. Although, what I learned through my professor via Kirk and Raven is that you sift or decant yourself through these most ancient and profound fragments - more akin to an approach to the `I Ching' and poetry than contemporary analytic philosophy. Kirk and Raven present us with the `holy' text of western philosophy which never fails to produce the wonder of thinking - a true thinking that is rare and primordial. Even if you usually don't like reading philosophy, the presocratics are really `post-modern' and poetic in their fragmentary and oracular collages of meaning. T.S. Eliot's `The Four Quartets' is soaked with pre-socratic philosophy.

The Pre-socratics deserve more attention because `all', and I mean all, of the basic philosophic and scientific positions are contained within these seeds of the western tradition.

Rating:
Summary: The definitive collection of pre-socratic philosophy.
Review: I first read Kirk and Raven's `Presocratic Philosophers' as an undergrad. I was being taught pre-socratic philosophy by a Cambridge Classical Greek philosopher. Since then it has become one of my favourite and most valuable philosophy texts. Kirk and Raven present us with all the credible `fragments' of presocratic philosophy as quoted in later philosophers. They present the original greek and a (most times) definitive english translation and analysis. Although, what I learned through my professor via Kirk and Raven is that you sift or decant yourself through these most ancient and profound fragments - more akin to an approach to the `I Ching' and poetry than contemporary analytic philosophy. Kirk and Raven present us with the `holy' text of western philosophy which never fails to produce the wonder of thinking - a true thinking that is rare and primordial. Even if you usually don't like reading philosophy, the presocratics are really `post-modern' and poetic in their fragmentary and oracular collages of meaning. T.S. Eliot's `The Four Quartets' is soaked with pre-socratic philosophy.

The Pre-socratics deserve more attention because `all', and I mean all, of the basic philosophic and scientific positions are contained within these seeds of the western tradition.

Rating:
Summary: RSK Presocratics
Review: This is the standard english language academic text book on the Presocratic Philosophers in Ancient Greece. It broke hundreds of years of tradition by including Orpheus, Musaeus, Pherecydes etc. - 'philosophers' before the Ionian Physicists.