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  • The First Philosophers

  • The Presocratics and Sophists
  • By: Robin Waterfield
  • Narrated by: Adrian Hobart
  • Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (3 ratings)

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The First Philosophers

By: Robin Waterfield
Narrated by: Adrian Hobart
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Publisher's summary

Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wonder, and the first Western philosophers developed theories of the world which express simultaneously their sense of wonder and their intuition that the world should be comprehensible. But their enterprise was by no means limited to this proto-scientific task. Through, for instance, Heraclitus's enigmatic sayings, the poetry of Parmenides and Empedocles, and Zeno's paradoxes, the Western world was introduced to metaphysics, rationalist theology, ethics, and logic, by thinkers who often seem to be mystics or shamans as much as philosophers or scientists in the modern mold. And out of the Sophists' reflections on human beings and their place in the world arose and interest in language, and in political, moral, and social philosophy.

This volume contains a translation of all the most important fragments of the Presocratics and Sophists, and of the most informative testimonia from ancient sources, supplemented by lucid commentary.

©2000 Robin Waterfield (P)2023 Tantor
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Loads of detail and information about the ancient Philosophers

This is an an excellent biography about some obscure and not so obscure philosophers As a student of philosophy I learned a boatload from listening to this. Robin Waterfield is a genius. His ability to draw conclusions and make educated inferences from ancient fragments is masterful
I wish that the reader wouldn’t have read all of the source notes during the narrative. It got a bit long. Over all excellent text.

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