Studia Praesocratica – serie

How did the Ancient Greek Atomists come to assume the existence of atoms, and how did they understand their indivisibility? These are the most difficult questions facing researchers into Atomism in Classical Antiquity, and it is these questions that Laura Gemelli addresses in the present study. She re-examines the Ancients' tradition from a new perspective, starting from the influence that academic atomism and the attendant problems and concepts had on Aristotle's interpretation of ancient Atomism.This hitherto neglected perspective leads to a critical revision of generally accepted theses such as the origins of Atomism in Eleatism and the postulation of the atom as a solution to the aporias of infinite divisibility. The author then follows the further development of the views of Atomism put forward by Aristotle and Theophrastus as far as the Neo-Platonists. This book provides the foundations for a re-evaluation of the sources and a shift in perspective for research into the Ancient Atomists.

thales of Miletus (7th-6th centuries BC) is regarded as one of the most important figures in Greek philosophy and science. In spite of this we know few anecdotes about his life, and none of his work has survived directly. This was one of the main reasons behind Andreas Schwab’s work, who for the first time commented on more than one hundred passages in early Christian authors on Thales’ life and works. These are documented in a new collection of testimonies on Thales (Traditio Presocratica vol 1, 2009). Particular attention is paid to the topics of literary discourse and the argumentative contexts within which reference is made to Thales. The commentary is not intended as a reconstruction of Thales’ life and teaching, rather the portrayals of his figure and ideas, as well as their function in later periods are analyzed and commented on with reference to the Christian texts. The Latin texts range from Tertullian to Augustine and Isidore of Seville, the Greek texts from the first apologists to Eusebius of Caesarea and the Chronicle of John Malalas. The interdisciplinary nature of this innovative, diachronous history of Thales’ “image” furthers both research into early Greek philosophy, as well as a deeper understanding of early Christian philosophy and theology.

The history of Pythagoreanism is littered with different and incompatible interpretations, to the point that Kahn (1974) suggested that, instead of another thesis on Pythagoreanism, it would be preferable to assess traditions with the aim of producing a good historiographical presentation. This almost fourty-year-old observation by Kahn, directs the author of this book towards a fundamentally historiographical rather than philological brand of work, that is, one neither exclusively devoted to the exegesis of sources such as Philolaus, Archytas or even of one of the Hellenistic Lives nor even to the theoretical approach of one of the themes that received specific contributions from Pythagoreanism, such as mathematics, cosmology, politics or theories of the soul. Instead, this monograph sets out to reconstruct the way in which the tradition established Pythagoreanism’s image, facing one of the central problems that characterizes Pythagoreanism more than other ancient philosophical movements: the drastically shifting terrain of the criticism of the sources. The goal of this historiographical approach is to embrace Pythagoreanism in its entirety, through - and not in spite of - its complex articulation across more than a millennium.

The purpose of the conference “On Pythagoreanism”, held in Brasilia in 2011, was to bring together leading scholars from all over the world to define the status quaestionis for the ever-increasing interest and research on Pythagoreanism in the 21st century. The papers included in this volume exemplify the variety of topics and approaches now being used to understand the polyhedral image of one of the most fascinating and long-lasting intellectual phenomena in Western history. Cornelli’s paper opens the volume by charting the course of Pythagorean studies over the past two centuries. The remaining contributions range chronologically from Pythagoras and the early Pythagoreans of the archaic period (6th-5th centuries BCE) through the classical, hellenistic and late antique periods, to the eighteenth century. Thematically they treat the connections of Pythagoreanism with Orphism and religion, with mathematics, metaphysics and epistemology and with politics and the Pythagorean way of life.

Heraklits Denken und seine philosophischen Positionen haben einen ungeheuren Einfluss im Altertum, in der Neuzeit und bis in die Moderne hinein ausgeübt. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes machen die kulturellen Bedingungen sichtbar, unter denen dieses Denken entstanden ist, und helfen, sowohl den ,Dunklen' selbst, wie er seit der Antike genannt wurde, als auch seine Wirkung systematisch besser zu verstehen. Alle Beiträge gehen auf eine internationale Konferenz zurück, die im Oktober 2013 ausgewiesene Spezialisten zu einem umfassenden Dialog in Ephesos zusammenführte. Im Zusammenwirken verschiedener Disziplinen ließ sich Heraklits Ort in der Philosophie- und Geistesgeschichte genauer bestimmen, als das in den bisher vorwiegend auf philosophiehistorisch-philologische Aspekte fokussierten Darstellungen geschehen ist. Das Alleinstellungsmerkmal der Konferenz in ihrer Orientierung am genius loci und auch die damit einhergehende Einbeziehung historischer und archäologischer Fragestellungen bedeutet etwas Neues für die Heraklit-Forschung: Das Aufzeigen der Verbindungen zwischen der naturräumlichen Situation in Ephesos zur Zeit Heraklits, dem Verhältnis des Denkers zu seiner Stadt sowie der Rolle seiner Reflexion auf die Bedingungen menschlicher Erkenntnis und ihrer Vermittlung.

This work contains an edition and translation of the testimonies on the Presocratic philosopher Melissus of Samos in Antiquity, and a commentary focusing on the history of the way in which he has been interpreted. The aim is to show how he has been understood by ancient writers according to their own agenda and to the knowledge available to them, and to present the main lines of the reception of Melissus throughout Antiquity.

The papyri transmit a part of the testimonia relevant to pre-Socratic philosophy. The ʼCorpus dei Papiri Filosofici‛ takes this material only partly into account. In this volume, a team of specialists discusses some of the most important papyrological texts that are major instruments for reconstructing pre-Socratic philosophy and doxography. Furthermore, these texts help to increase our knowledge of how pre-Socratic thought – through contributions to physics, cosmology, ethics, ontology, theology, anthropology, hermeneutics, and aesthetics – paved the way for the canonic scientific fields of European culture. More specifically, each paper tackles (published and unpublished) papyrological texts concerning the Orphics, the Milesians, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the early Atomists, and the Sophists. For the first time in the field of pre-Socratics studies, several papers are devoted to the Herculanean sources, along with others concerning the Graeco-Egyptian papyri and the Derveni Papyrus.