Philosophy

The interest in Presocratic philosophy, and the scholarly output on it, have been rising again in the last few years. I start this review with a sample of recent publications in the area. It is easy to expect that Daniel Graham's collection of The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy, in two volumes, will become a popular tool for the study of Presocratic philosophy (for some qualifications on this expectation see below). The sourcebook aims to present ‘the complete fragments and a generous selection of testimonies’ for the major early Greek philosophers. English translations (all by Graham himself) are set opposite to Greek and Latin texts (with slim textual notes identifying substantive textual variants), with succinct introductions for each philosopher, and brief commentaries and basic bibliographies following the texts. The Diels-Kranz (hereafter DK) collection is the starting point for this sourcebook, but Graham is quite selective in his shortlist of those who deserve a place in his sourcebook: out of ninety DK sections, he includes only nineteen philosophers (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Diogenes of Apollonia, Melissus, Philolaus, Leucippus, Democritus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Prodicus, and Pythagoras, the last being relegated to an appendix) and two anonymous texts, the Anonymus Iamblichi and the Dissoi Logoi. Although the sourcebook includes some fragments and testimonies that did not appear in DK (e.g. the Strasbourg papyrus for Empedocles), and only a selection of the testimonies included there, the major difference in terms of the material included for the selected philosophers is the order in which fragments and testimonies are presented. The fragments are incorporated within the context of the broader testimonies containing them (and signalled in bold), rather than listed separately, as in DK; the numbering of fragments and testimonies does not correspond to DK, but the DK numbers are given in addition, and volume 2 includes a list of concordances (besides an index of sources, an index of other passages quoted by Graham in his end-of-chapter commentaries, and a short general index of names and topics). Graham's choice is definitely a healthy step forward from DK's largely artificial strategy of separating fragments and testimonies into two different sections; one might wonder whether the decision to signal in bold words, phrases, sentences, and sections that supposedly count as original fragments within the broader context in which they occur is still too heavily indebted to the DK model. For each author the texts are organized in four main sections: life, works, philosophy, and reception, with the philosophy section typically structured into thematic subsections. Of course the strengths and shortcomings of a monumental work such as Graham's can be fully appreciated only over time, once you use it repeatedly in your teaching and research. I have mentioned Graham's approach to the distinction between fragments and testimonies: some sustained methodological discussion, and explanation of the criteria guiding the distinction, would have been welcome. Unavoidably some readers will find Graham's shortlist of philosophers and selection of texts unsatisfactory and too narrow: some qualms about notable exclusions – such as Solon, Alcmaeon, Archytas, Pherecydes, the Orphics, and the Derveni author – have already been voiced (for example, by Jason Rheins in his review in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews). As far as I could see, the translations are reliable, and the short introductions, commentaries, and bibliographies provide just enough information for readers to contextualize the authors and texts within the philosophical tradition (less so within the broader archaic Greek cultural and literary tradition), and appreciate some of the key exegetical and philosophical issues that they raise. Just enough, and this brings me to what I find to be the less convincing aspect of such an enterprise as Graham's. His collection will certainly be of some use as an accessible reference tool for advanced students and researchers, but its selectivity will prevent it from becoming a research tool in its own right, and standard editions of individual Presocratics will remain the first port of call (for example, the second edition of Coxon's The Fragments of Parmenides, reviewed below). At the same time, the breadth of the material that it contains, coupled with the relative thinness of the apparatus of introductions and commentaries, does not make The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy the kind of introductory sourcebook that could be used on its own in an introductory undergraduate course on ancient philosophy, or on the Presocratics. It is difficult to imagine lecturers of such courses prescribing to their students more than a small fraction of the material offered by Graham; and those students will still need to use standard introductions to Presocratic philosophy such as Kirk–Raven–Schofield, Barnes, McKirahan, or Warren to make real sense of the evidence presented by Graham, placing it within a unified narrative about the nature and development of early Greek philosophy. From this point of view, Graham's collection risks falling into no man's land from the point of view of its readership: it is neither a ground-breaking, research-shaping tool such as, for example, Long and Sedley's collection on The Hellenistic Philosophers has been for three decades now, nor an introductory textbook easily accessible (for both sheer bulk and price) to undergraduate students. That said, Graham's work still deserves a place in all university libraries and on the shelves of ancient philosophy scholars.