Hackett Publishing

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Building on the virtues that made the first edition of A Presocratics Reader the most widely used sourcebook for the study of the Presocratics and Sophists, the second edition offers even more value and a wider selection of fragments from these philosophical predecessors and contemporaries of Socrates.

With revised introductions, annotations, suggestions for further reading, and more, the second edition draws on the wealth of new scholarship published on these fascinating thinkers over the past decade or more, a remarkably rich period in Presocratic studies.

At the volume’s core, as ever, are the fragments themselves—but now in thoroughly revised and, in some cases, new translations by Richard D. McKirahan and Patricia Curd, among them those of the recently published Derveni Papyrus.


On the First Edition:

“One of the virtues of A Presocratics Reader is that students seeking to learn about Presocratic philosophy will be able to go directly to the primary materials without having to extract them from a surrounding commentary. The introductory essays place the philosophers in their historical setting, and identify the main interpretive questions, but let the philosophers speak for themselves
. . . . A Presocratics Reader provides an excellent way into the study of Presocratic philosophy.”
     —J. H. Lesher, University of Maryland


Patricia Curd is Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University.

Richard D. McKirahan is Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and
Professor of Philosophy at Pomona College. 

CONTENTS:

On Abbreviations and Notes
Maps
Time Line
Acknowledgments

1. Introduction
2. The Milesians
    2.1. Thales
    2.2. Anaximander
    2.3. Anaximenes
3. Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism
4. Xenophanes of Colophon
5. Heraclitus of Ephesus
6. Parmenides of Elea
7. Zeno of Elea
8. Empedocles of Acragas
9. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae
10. Leucippus and Democritus: Fifth-Century Atomism
11. Melissus of Samos
12. Philolaus of Croton
13. Diogenes of Apollonia
14. The Sophists
     14.1. Protagoras
     14.2. Gorgias
     14.3. Prodicus
     14.4. Hippias
     14.5. Antiphon
15. The Derveni Papyrus, Columns IV–XXVI

Concordance