There's a book by Nietzsche about them that is good, but I don't know which collection of whatever survives is the one to get.
― P-Moose (Wants To Get Moosed Up) (James Redd), Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:42 (twelve years ago) link
Heraclitus!
― M. White, Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:45 (twelve years ago) link
This looks good:
http://www.amazon.com/First-Philosophers-Presocratics-Sophists-Classics/dp/0192824546
― tanuki, Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:48 (twelve years ago) link
Also, Democritus's life always appealed to me.
― M. White, Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:50 (twelve years ago) link
Kind of want to read this NYRB novel about Wittgenstein.
― P-Moose (Wants To Get Moosed Up) (James Redd), Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:21 (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink
the reissue of 'the world as i found it'? it's interesting but for most purposes i'd read the monk bio (or even the bartley one) instead maybe
― thompp, Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:54 (twelve years ago) link
xp - yes
Robin Waterfield's The First Philosophers is a good anthology.
― woof, Thursday, 29 December 2011 16:55 (twelve years ago) link
Yes, thomp. Actually I used to own a copy of the Monk bio, which went missing in a move. I liked what I read of it, maybe I should go back to that.
― P-Moose (Wants To Get Moosed Up) (James Redd), Thursday, 29 December 2011 17:02 (twelve years ago) link
Cordoza = Cardozo?
yes typo
― Mordy, Thursday, 29 December 2011 17:03 (twelve years ago) link
For a while I thought you meant Cordoba and I was wondering whether it was the one in Spain or Argentina :)
Re Wittgenstein: what about that Alexander Waugh book?
― P-Moose (Wants To Get Moosed Up) (James Redd), Thursday, 29 December 2011 17:04 (twelve years ago) link
Only read it if you intend to think of his name as being pronounced 'waff'.
― M. White, Thursday, 29 December 2011 17:07 (twelve years ago) link
I haven't read the Waterfield book but Jonathan Barnes' Early Greek Philosophy has been helpful to me. They seem to have the same basic layout of having all of the fragments tied together with context and exposition, so as introductions go I wouldn't imagine there'd be much to separate them. Beyond that kind of dry format Heidegger's obv v good on the pre-Socratics, and while offering ~unconventional~ readings he doesn't really do that major-thinker-writing-on-major-thinkers thing of completely assimilating them into his own thought.
― m. yeux, Thursday, 29 December 2011 17:19 (twelve years ago) link
Really? I haven't read Heidegger on the Vorsokrater. I really enjoyed the pre-Socratics as much as anyone in Philosophy.
― M. White, Thursday, 29 December 2011 17:23 (twelve years ago) link
iirc his essay 'The Anaximander Fragment' is particularly good. But looking at it again now I may have been lying terribly about the not-assimilating part...
― m. yeux, Thursday, 29 December 2011 17:29 (twelve years ago) link
:( Is his prose as turgid as usual?
― M. White, Thursday, 29 December 2011 17:33 (twelve years ago) link
ha, I dunno, scanning through and reading bits here and there it looks alright, but then I've spent the last three months reading The Phenomenology of Spirit so I'm sure I've lost all sense of what constitutes readable philosophical writing.
― m. yeux, Thursday, 29 December 2011 17:49 (twelve years ago) link