In more than 60 essays by an international team of scholars, this volume explores the full breadth and reach of Greek thought, investigating what the Greeks knew as well as what they thought they knew, and what they believed, invented, and understood about the possibilities of knowing. 65 color illustrations. Maps.

Ancient Greek Philosophy: From the Presocratics to the Hellenistic Philosophers presents a comprehensive introduction to the philosophers and philosophical traditions that developed in ancient Greece from 585 BC to 529 AD. Provides coverage of the Presocratics through the Hellenistic philosophers Moves beyond traditional textbooks that conclude with Aristotle A uniquely balanced organization of exposition, choice excerpts and commentary, informed by classroom feedback Contextual commentary traces the development of lines of thought through the period, ideal for students new to the discipline Can be used in conjunction with the online resources found at http://tomblackson.com/Ancient/toc.html

Early Greek Thought calls into question a longstanding mythology - operative in both the Analytic and Continental traditions - that the 'Pre-Socratics had the grandiose audacity to break with all traditional forms of knowledge' (Badiou). Each of the variants of this mythology is dismantled in an attempt to not only retrieve an 'indigenous' interpretation of early Greek thought, but also to expose the mythological character of our own contemporary meta-narratives regarding the 'origins' of 'Western', 'Occidental' philosophy. Using an original hermeneutical approach, James Luchte excavates the context of emergence of early Greek thought through an exploration of the mytho-poetic horizons of the archaic world, in relation to which, as Plato testifies, the Greeks were merely 'children'. Luchte discloses 'philosophy in the tragic age' as a creative response to a 'contestation' of mytho-poetic narratives and 'ways of being'. The tragic character of early Greek thought is unfolded through a cultivation of a conversation between its basic thinkers, one which would remain incomprehensible, with Bataille, in the 'absence of myth' and the exile of poetry.

A lucid presentation of the first and most influential attempts to weave together philosophical thought on God, reason and happiness.

How were the Greeks of the sixth century BC able to invent philosophy and tragedy? In this book Richard Seaford argues that a large part of the answer can be found in another momentous development, the invention and rapid spread of coinage, which produced the first ever thoroughly monetised society. By transforming social relations monetisation contributed to the ideas of the universe as an impersonal system, fundamental to Presocratic philosophy, and of the individual alienated from his own kin and from the gods, as found in tragedy.

Aimed at students of classics and of philosophy who would like a taste of the subject before being committed to a full course and at those who have already started and need to find their bearings in what may seem at first a complex maze of names and schools, "Introducing Greek Philosophy" is a concise, lively, philosophically aware introduction to ancient Greek philosophy. The book begins with the Milesians in Asia Minor before moving over to the developments in the western Greek world, then focusing on Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Athens, finishing with the Hellenistic schools and their arrival in Rome, where the main ideas are set out in the Latin poetry of Lucretius and the prose of Cicero.The book eschews the method of most histories of ancient philosophy of addressing one thinker after another through the centuries. Instead, after a basic mapping of the territory, it takes the great themes that the Greeks were engaged in from the earliest times, and looks at them individually, their development in argument and counter-argument, from the beginnings of recorded Greek history, through the various upheavals of tyrannies, democracies, oligarchies and kingships, to their introduction into Rome in the first century BC.

The works collected in this volume form the true foundation of Western philosophy—the base upon which Plato and Aristotle and their successors would eventually build. Yet the importance of the Pre-Socratics thinkers lies less in their influence—great though that was—than in their astonishing intellectual ambition and imaginative reach. Zeno's dizzying 'proofs' that motion is impossible; the extraordinary atomic theories of Democritus; the haunting and enigmatic epigrams of Heraclitus; and the maxims of Alcmaeon: fragmentary as they often are, the thoughts of these philosophers seem strikingly modern in their concern to forge a truly scientific vocabulary and way of reasoning. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Allegory in Early Greek Philosophy examines the role that allegory plays in Greek thought, particularly in the transition from the mythic tradition of the archaic poets to the philosophical traditions of the Presocratics and Plato. It explores how a mode of speech that "says one thing, but means another" is integral to philosophy, which otherwise seeks to achieve clarity and precision in its discourse. By providing the early Greek thinkers with a way of defending and appropriating the poetic wisdom of their predecessors, allegory enables philosophy to locate and recover its own origins in the mythic tradition. Allegory allows philosophy simultaneously to move beyond mythos and express the whole in terms of logos, a rational account in which reality is represented in a more abstract and universal way than myth allows.