What makes us alive? When does life begin? And what is the difference between various forms of life? Z.'s recent book studies the Presocratics’ debate on life and living beings. By challenging the traditional view that ancient Greek philosophers prioritised humans beings over animals and plants, Z. argues that the Presocratics enquired into ‘the common origin for all living beings’ and their ‘interrelatedness’ (p. 16). Although particular points could have been argued with more care and detail, the book as a whole is an original and valuable contribution to the literature and will be a stimulus for future scholars of Presocratic biology.
Traditional approaches to Presocratic philosophy of life are twofold. On the one hand, W.K.C. Guthrie's In the Beginning (1957, pp. 46–62) and E. Havelock's Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (1957, pp. 104–24) devote lengthy discussions to the early Greek theories of life. Yet they primarily focus on human life. On the other hand, isolated aspects of Presocratic biology have been examined in subject-specific monographs, with a focus on either particular questions or individual philosophers, such as K. Rudolph on the five senses (‘Sight and the Presocratics’, in M. Squire, Sight and the Ancient Senses [2015], pp. 36–53), M.M. Sassi on Democritus’ theory of perception (Le teorie della percezione in Democrito [1978]) and O. Kember on Parmenides’ embryology (‘Right and Left in the Sexual Theories of Parmenides’, JHS 91 [1971], 70–9). In response, Z.'s goal is to show that ‘humans were only one of the many forms of life’ into which the Presocratics enquired (p. 52) and thus to provide the first systematic study of life, lifeforms and living functions in early Greek philosophers from Thales in the sixth century to the Atomists in the early fourth century, all the way to Plato's Timaeus, when according to Z. philosophy of life started revolving around human beings. This book builds on the study of ancient Greek biological and zoological sciences in both the medical and the philosophical tradition, which has drawn serious academic attention in recent years. Within philosophy, the focus has been on Plato, Aristotle and Hellenistic philosophers (e.g. J. Wilberding, ‘Plato's Embryology’, Early Science and Medicine 20 [2015], 150–68; S.M. Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals [2016]). By contrast, the Presocratic theories of life remain largely unexplored.
Z. addresses this gap in two steps. The first part of the book provides the theoretical framework for the study and is organised into six thematic chapters, each unpacking a different aspect of the Presocratic discourse on the living world and the relations between living beings. The second part consists in a useful collection of the available textual evidence for Presocratic philosophy of life, both in Greek and in translation. The second edition revises a few specific points of the argument and adds some fragments to the relevant sources.
The book starts with an overview of the Presocratic doctrines of the origins of life and the first constitution of animal bodies. The argument in Chapter 1 is that the process of the emergence of the cosmos and of the coming into being of the natural world is one and the same for all living beings, which share common descent and then evolve into different, although interrelated, kinds. Chapter 2 focuses on the perpetuation of life and sexual reproduction. The continuity among different forms of life is further supported by the Presocratic theories of the soul as the life-bringing principle (Chapter 5) and sense perception (Chapter 3), where the lack of differentiation in human, animal and plant psychology and the similarity between the process of sensation and thought in both human and non-human animals strengthen the belief that all living beings are akin. Chapter 4 is a stand-alone study dedicated to plants and their status as zôa, animated beings. Finally, the last chapter turns to Plato and assesses his psychological and biological theories, as illustrated in the Timaeus. The conclusive argument is that this dialogue marks a radical change in Greek philosophy of life, shifting the focus from the interrelatedness between living beings to the superiority of human life and portraying animals and plants as deteriorations of the human soul.
Z.'s study is a helpful introduction to Presocratic biology, with a well-defined scope and readable style. It does a nice job of acquainting readers, both students and researchers, to this new and rising field and will benefit scholars of both Presocratic philosophy and ancient Greek biology. Z.'s conclusion that the Presocratics as a group were more interested in the connections and relations, rather than the differences, between forms of human, animal and plant life is valid and persuasive. My sole worry is that this objective is perhaps too ambitious to be undertaken all at once. The book might have benefited from closer studies of the evidence, rather than a wide-ranging survey, highlighting the peculiarities of each theory and the line of development between each thinker.
Specifically, I have three concerns. First, as an Aristotle scholar (p. 28 n. 63), Z. admits to adopting Aristotle's approach to the history of philosophy ‘where he chooses to bypass differences among early philosophers and instead pinpoints the common denominator of the enquiry into nature’ (p. 29). As a result, the book often jumps from observations about individual Presocratics to claims about early Greek philosophy as a whole. An example: in Chapter 3 the fact that Democritus equates sensation and thought leads Z. to argue that all Presocratics did so (p. 60). However, Philolaus’ differentiation between the principles of intelligence and sense (Fr. 13) and Theophrastus’ claim that Alcmaeon offered a criterion to distinguish feeling and understanding (Sens. 25) prove that there were exceptions, which Z. mentions, but does not account for in her conclusions. Second, and related, the overall narrative the book constructs is slightly odd. After showing that the Presocratics enquired into all forms of life and that Plato alone departed from this tradition by focusing almost exclusively on human beings, Z. argues that Aristotle retraced the steps of early Greek philosophers, studied both human and non-human animals and thus proved himself to be ‘a faithful heir of the Presocratics’ (p. 155). Whether Aristotle is an advocate of the Presocratic or the Platonic approach to the phenomenon of life is, I would argue, debatable. Despite valuing the study of animals and plants, Aristotle clearly distinguishes thought from sensation and, based on this differentiation, demarcates a hierarchy of life (DA 413a21–b14). This suggests that, as Z. points out (p. 30), like Plato and unlike the Presocratics, Aristotle prioritises humans over other forms of life. My third doubt concerns human beings: it is unclear whether, and if so why and to what extent, the Presocratics believed humans to be different from other forms of life. Z.'s suggestion is twofold. First, compared to animals, humans are culturally evolved. Second, they have the capacity for knowledge and rational thinking, although, she argues, this goes beyond the human perspective and ‘stretches out to embrace the origin of the world and its creatures’ (p. 28). Z. is right in noticing that among the Presocratics there is no clear and distinct separation between humans, animals and plants. This, however, does not exclude the possibility that they feel the peculiarities of human life and attempt to draw lines between various lifeforms, the boundaries of which should be explored in more depth.
Overall, Z. shows that the Presocratics thought of humans, animals and plants as characterised by a ‘nuanced homogeneity’ (p. 153). Although the book primarily argues for the ‘homogeneity’ and does not always analyse the ‘nuances’ in detail, the conclusion as a whole is strong and convincing. Thanks to Z.'s book it is clear that Presocratic philosophy of life deserves more and more thorough scholarship. This is the first, but nevertheless an indispensable and much-needed step in this direction.
