This enterprising book presents papers from a conference dedicated to the European reception of the Presocratics from the twelfth to the nineteenth century. P. furnishes a synoptic introductory chapter. The thirteen following chapters (eight in English, four in German, one in French) offer elements of a comprehensive history of this reception by leading scholars in the field, each richly documented and perspicacious. Twelve chapters are revised or amplified papers, and an additional chapter balances the account of the ‘Ionian’ Presocratics in the Latin Middle Ages with a picture of the Medieval reception of their ‘Italic’ counterparts. The reason for this complement exemplifies the historical concern informing this volume, which is indebted to Diels' innovative editorial work on the testimonia and sources for understanding philosophy's ‘first sailing’. His doxographical reconstruction of this infrastructure confirmed the autonomy of the Presocratics and vindicated their philosophical authority. After Nietzsche's call for radically revaluating the Greek ‘tragic period’, Diels made ‘return to the Presocratics’ possible.
Several contributors discuss the influence of Latin translations of Diogenes Laertius' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers in shaping reconstructions of early Greek philosophy since the late Middle Ages. M.M. Sassi examines Diogenes' now cliché distinction between an ‘Ionian’ and an ‘Italic’ school of philosophers, which dominated subsequent receptions of the ancient thinkers and ‘prevented, for a long time, the demarcation of a self-contained Presocratic epoch in the history of philosophy’. The ‘Ionian’ exploration of the sensible world and the ‘Italic’ interest in the formal structures of reality and religious revelation reflect geographical and conceptual differences, and also bequeath a third, Eleatic lineage, signalling either two or three beginnings of philosophy.
Latin translations of Diogenes' description of the ‘Ionian’ thinkers (Books 1–2) were available as early as 1167, but his testimonies about the ‘Italic’ school (Books 3–10) remained untranslated until Traversari's 1433 edition for Cosimo di Medici. Knowledge of the ‘Italic’ Presocratics could only be collected from classical Latin authors and from Arabico-Latin translations of Greek sources. P. appraises the Medieval scholarship on the Presocratics which the first two books of Diogenes did not treat. St Jerome's Latin translation of Eusebius' Chronicle mentions all the main classical authors, and these entries were enlarged in the early thirteenth century in Hélinand's Chronicon. His chapter on Parmenides and Empedocles included material both from classical Latin authors and ‘modern’ Medieval ones, and was incorporated by Vincent de Beauvais into the Speculum maius, which became the principal source of chapters on Empedocles and Parmenides in the fourteenth century. Vincent added texts on Empedocles from other Latin authors and parts of Aristotle translated into Latin from the Arabic.
T. Ricklin assesses the two Latin translations of Diogenes' Lives between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Aristippus translated the first two books in 1167, but the complete work only became available in Traversari's 1433 translation. Aristippus' partial text was used to present the Presocratics in the anonymous De vita et moribus philosophorum, so philosophers known via this translation determined the Medieval picture of the early thinkers for some time. Diogenes' depictions of Presocratics appear in other contexts during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but general knowledge about them by Latin scholars of the period was evidently unexceptional.
The first collection of Presocratic fragments in the original Greek, Henri II Estienne's Poiesis philosophos (1573), contained quotations both from the poets and the works of almost all major Presocratics. P. explains that the sections in Estienne's collection on Empedocles, Parmenides and Orpheus would have been superseded by a far richer collection prepared by Scaliger towards the end of the sixteenth century, but Scaliger's work was never printed. Estienne's Poiesis philosophos remained unchallenged until the end of the eighteenth century. (One wishes that A. Grafton's conference paper on Scaliger could have been included here.)
The influences of Diogenes' Presocratics are illustrated in C. Huffman's assessment of Stanley's History of Philosophy (1655–1662). While the basic structure and significant portions of the History come from Diogenes, less than half directly depends on it. Stanley shares Bacon's ideal of retrieving the correct view from the ancients, and criticises Diogenes for ascribing views to Plato and Aristotle that already appear in their predecessors. H. sees Stanley's History as simply an objective and well-organised collection of testimonia – not primary texts – on the lives and opinions of the ancients, grouped by philosopher, free from bias of any philosophical school. Evidently Stanley presents no original analysis or discussion, but he sought, like Diogenes, to combine the lives and doctrines, despite the paucity of ancient scholarly material.
C. Osborne illuminates the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth's use of the Presocratics as a tool to refute atheism and avoid idealism and hylozoism. His True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678) pursues substance dualism back to its Presocratic origin in a true Ancient Atomism, as opposed to the reductionism represented by Leucippus and Democritus. He aims to prove that thinkers before Plato also conceived of incorporeality, and traces this idea to the very beginnings. For Cudworth, the Italian school was correct in its atomism about the body, which preserved space for the reality and permanence of the soul. O. credits him for engaging ‘the Presocratics as philosophers with significant things to say (and things that were important as philosophy)’.
G. Most considers Bayle's Presocratics in his famous Dictionnaire historique et critique (1702), which excludes many important Presocratics. Bayle still lauds Anaxagoras' intelligence and moral character but simultaneously levels a polemic against his main doctrines. Such contradiction often engenders scepticism, but M. contends that for Bayle this actually worked in service to the Christian faith, since inadequate human reason cannot dislodge the truth of revelation.
Three secular histories of philosophy by the eighteenth-century German scholars Brucker, Tiedemann and Tennemann inform G. Rechenauer's enlightening study of a hermeneutic turn for Presocratic studies. Ancient pagan philosophy came to be seen as an autonomous sign of human reason, freed from theological explanation, and these histories contribute significantly to this emancipation. Brucker still distinguishes the ‘Ionian’ and ‘Italic’ Presocratics but urges separating philosophy from eruditio universalis and from theology. Tiedemann escapes the Laertian template by using a strictly chronological order of presentation, and consequently the epoch marked by Socrates reappears. Tennemann presents the history of Presocratic philosophy as a development ending with, and leading to, Socrates.
A. Laks's revealing paper aims to show that Schleiermacher's study of Heraclitus (1808) exposes several methodological problems stemming from the fragmentary transmission of the famously obscure Ephesian's book and the uncertain dependability of the ancient testimony. Although Schleiermacher's general views about early Greek philosophy and its implications differ considerably from Hegel's, L. suggests that Schleiermacher's groundwork influenced Hegel more than is usually acknowledged.
The comparative study by W. Leszl analyses how Schleiermacher, Hegel and Zeller treat the Presocratics: they share common assumptions about philosophy's organic development, its systematic aims and idealistic orientation, which bear interpretative consequences. Among their on-going and influential contributions are the division of the history of ancient philosophy into periods – and recognition that a new period begins with Socrates – evaluations of the role of mythical thought and careful use of sources.
C. Rapp compares Nietzsche's programme for revaluation from his early lectures on Die vorplatonische Philosophen with his treatment of individual thinkers in Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen. By modern standards of textual scholarship the latter does not measure up. The Presocratics present an alternative and superior way of philosophising for Nietzsche, which cannot be grasped by considering them as a prelude to the so-called classical period of Greek philosophy. Nietzsche challenges philologists to go beyond the methods of classical scholarship to account for the philosophical value of the Presocratics, but R. finds his methods idiosyncratic and far from convincing.
G. Betegh evaluates Tannery's Pour l'historie de la science hellène (1887) and its provocative general thesis that the Presocratics were primarily scientists rather than philosophers. Tannery's assessments of individual authors illustrate a radical divergence from teleological reconstructions of Presocratic philosophy. Detailing each chapter, B. reviews the interpretative strategies and principal explanatory concepts through which Tannery profoundly influenced understanding of the Presocratics.
J. Mansfeld authoritatively closes the book by describing and evaluating the sources of influence on Diels' pioneering scholarship on the Presocratics, beginning with reviews he wrote on Bywater's edition of the Reliquiae of Heraclitus (1877), wherein Diels outlines the tasks of an editor of fragments, viz., ‘to collect, study, and critically evaluate the sources, and to present the evidence in as objective a way as possible’. Reviewing Diels' œuvre from Doxographi Graeci (1879) to editions of Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (1903–1922), M. explicates Diels' crucial editorial division of testimonia and the verbatim fragments and suggests how his views on the relation of mythos and logos affected his interpretations.
