This collective volume is the proceedings of the 22nd conference supported by the Karl und Gertrud Abel Foundation, held in Trier in 2018. It is dedicated to Georg Wöhrle for his 65th birthday. The book contains thirteen papers, written in German or English, an introduction, a bibliography of G. Wöhrle's works and two indexes. It aims to examine not the Presocratics themselves, but the various ways in which they were interpreted and used, as announced in the introduction (p. 4): ‘Es geht nicht primär darum, aus den in den Zeugnissen enthaltenen Zuschreibungen an die Vorsokratiker eigene Zuschreibungen zu gewinnen, sondern darum zu erklären, warum der Autor des Zeugnisses gerade die Zuschreibungen vornimmt, die er vornimmt’. This approach is in line with the recent renewal of studies in the history of the reception of the Presocratics, to which G. Wöhrle particularly contributed. The volume deals with a broad time scale, since the first contribution examines the complex reception of some lines by Simonides in Plato's Protagoras, and the last one focuses on twentieth-century anti-humanistic philosophy. It examines both well-studied texts such as Plato's and Aristotle's and little-known testimonies that are usually not considered in the collections of testimonies on the Presocratics.
Despite the common focus on the history of reception, the methods and aims of the papers are extremely diverse: while an article may focus on editorial issues, such as the precise paper by A. Verlinsky on ‘The Atomists’ Comparison of Atoms with Letters (Arist., Met. A 4.985 b 4–19 = 67 A 6 D.-K.): Two Problems of the Text’, others study the rhetorical uses of the Presocratics, the interpretation of their thought, claims on the origin of their doctrine or their portrayal as individuals. This eclecticism constitutes a good reflection of the various ways in which one may approach the study of reception. However, despite the advocated focus on the reception and not the Presocratics themselves, many papers cannot help but draw from the testimonies some conclusions on Presocratic thought (especially when they deal with our earliest and most informative texts) or present an interpretation of their fragments. For example, A. Verlinsky uses the analysis of the manuscript transmission of Aristotle's Metaphysics to understand Democritus’ concept of contact, R. McKirahan, in ‘Teleology in the Presocratics’, after an interesting discussion of the kind of teleology that is attributed to Anaxagoras, studies fragments of other Presocratic thinkers to show that it might be illegitimate to attribute the invention of teleology to him. This tendency is indicative of the difficulty of distinguishing between the history of reception and the inquiry into Presocratic thought, since we only have access to the latter through the former. Examining an interpretation of the Presocratics often leads to wondering what text they used and how faithful their interpretation is, which results in a commentary on the thought of the Presocratics. Although this reasoning may be legitimate, there is a risk that the study of reception will only be the starting point for a paper on the Presocratics. This is especially the case for C. Vassallo's paper, ‘Puzzling over so-called “Rationalismus” and its Forerunners – Again on Xenophanes’ B 18 D.-K. (= Xen 204 & 220 Strobel-Wöhrle)’, which begins with a presentation of various trends in the interpretation of Xenophanes and then focuses on an (otherwise dense and interesting) study of the fragments.
Articles that deal with the rhetorical strategies of their authors usually focus more clearly on the reception, and most of them present stimulating analyses. This is the case, among others, for S. Föllinger's paper, ‘Aristoteles’ Auseinandersetzung mit Empedokles in De generatione animalium’, which offers a refreshing classification of the various reasons why Aristotle quotes Empedocles’ poem, or L. Willms's thorough study of the Stoic use of the Presocratics (‘Zur Rezeption der Vorsokratiker bei den Stoikern’). This may raise the difficulty that the authors’ approach to the Presocratics often blends into a general doxographical strategy: the focus on the Presocratics then constitutes a case study of a much broader method, as is the case for the papers on Cicero (T. Fuhrer, ‘Zur argumentativen Funktion doxographischer Informationen in Ciceros Philosophica’) and Erasmus (U. Eigler, ‘Fragmente für Freunde? Die vorsokratischen Philosophen in den Adagia des Erasmus von Rotterdam’). M. Asper, in ‘Presocratics and Predecessions: the Cases of Plato and Aristotle’, also presents interesting remarks concerning the way in which Plato and Aristotle define what it is to be a predecessor, but his analysis of Plato is weakened by his reliance mainly on apocryphal dialogues.
Many papers deal with testimonies that have little value for the knowledge of the Presocratics, but present an often-unexpected representation of them: for example J. Althoff's study of the Pseudo-Hippocratic correspondence, ‘Das Bild Demokrits im kaiserzeitlichen Hippokrates-Briefroman’, which draws a singular portrait of Democritus as an eccentric wiseman and physician, or Josephus’ and Francesco Patrizi's fanciful chronological reconstructions that reflect their own conception of the relationship between philosophy and religion in the papers of A. Schwab (‘Über Moses und Homer, Gotteserkenntnis und Altersbeweis: Frühgriechische Philosophen bei Josephus’) and L. Deitz (‘“Wie ein Tintenfisch!” – Francesco Patrizi da Cherso über Aristoteles und die Vorsokratiker’). These analyses provide a welcome new perspective on the history of reception of the Presocratics.
The last paper, ‘Homo Mensura- oder Seins-Satz? Zur neueren Humanismuskritik und zu aktuellen fundamentalrhetorischen Ansätzen’ by J. Knape, contrasts sharply with the other studies: it revendicates not to be philological (a trait that characterises the other papers) and connects the opposition between humanism and anti-humanism in the twentieth century with the one between Protagoras, who, in his view, puts the human at the centre of his philosophy, and Parmenides, who focuses on being itself. Besides Martin Heidegger, who directly refers to Parmenides, most of the thinkers Knape deals with, at least as far as he presents them, do not make use of those Presocratic thinkers in their philosophy, which makes this contribution ill-fitted for a volume on their reception.
This book contributes nicely to the renewal in the history of reception of the Presocratics, in particular thanks to the light it sheds on the rhetorical practices when dealing with the predecessors and on usually neglected kinds of reception. The variety of approaches and the difficulty to draw a line between a study of reception and of the Presocratics themselves reveals inherent challenges to this kind of investigation.
