San Antonio College Library

In the second volume of his History of Greek Philosophy Professor Guthrie completes his study of the Presocratic tradition. He groups together families of philosophers who were interested in the same things, distinguishing particularly between the natural philosopher, with their primary interest in cosmogony and the nature of matter, and the moral philosopher with their absorption in human nature and in problems of individual and social morality.

Socrates spent a lifetime analysing ethical issues, and the Euthyphro finds him outside the court-house, still debating the nature of piety with an arrogant acquaintance. The Apology is both a robust rebuttal to the charges of impiety and corrupting young minds and a definitive defence of the philosopher's life. Later, condemned and imprisoned in the Crito, Socrates counters the arguments of friends urging him to escape. And finally, in the Phaedo,...

This concise, elegant essay on the roots and historical justification of philosophy marks a decisive step in posing the problem of what philosophy is. With consummate clarity and the charisma that distinguished him as a lecturer, Jos Ortega y Gasset re-creates "that moment when Parmenides began talking about something exceptionally strange, which he called 'being'". How and why, he asks, did such a surprising adventure come about? Considering the...

"Peter Adamson aims ultimately to present a complete history of philosophy, more thoroughly but also more enjoyably than ever before. He offers an accessible, humorous, and detailed look at the emergence of philosophy with the Presocratics, the probing questions of Socrates, and the first full flowering of philosophy with the dialogues of Plato and the treatises of Aristotle. The story is told 'without any gaps', discussing not only such major figures...

Conford traces the remarkable burst of abstract speculation among pre-Socratic thinkers of the sixth century B.C. from the religious thought of the preceding era in Greece. Combining deep classical scholarship with anthropological and sociological insights, he examines the mythic precursors of enduring metaphysical concepts such as destiny, God, the soul, substance, nature, and immortality. His original and engaging explorations profile the rise of...