Need help choosing Greek/Roman authors

[Mudhammam]

I'm about to begin Herodotus' The History translated by David Grene! Later this week I'd like to order Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War... but which translation? ...Kulthenius?

[bennyboy]

He's obviously not Greek, but have you considered Gibbon's Decline and Fall? Pretty awesome stuff, and it's at least ABOUT Rome.

[Mudhammam]

He's obviously not Greek, but have you considered Gibbon's Decline and Fall? Pretty awesome stuff, and it's at least ABOUT Rome.

Funny thing. I picked up Vol. 1 at an antique store for like 5 bucks maybe about a month or so ago, in moderate to poor condition, not really sure who he was but CERTAIN I had come across his name in other reputable authors. Glad you confirmed that. I'm definitely going to read that when my conquest enters the Roman period.

[Pyrrho]

If you are wanting books about the ancient Greeks, a truly great one is Before and After Socrates by F.M. Cornford. The book is very short, and very expensive for how short it is. But it is worth the purchase price for the chapters on the Presocratics and on Socrates. He is concise and clear and very informative. This may well be the best introduction to the Presocratic philosophers ever written. Cornford was a great scholar.

[Mudhammam]

If you are wanting books about the ancient Greeks, a truly great one is Before and After Socrates by F.M. Cornford. The book is very short, and very expensive for how short it is. But it is worth the purchase price for the chapters on the Presocratics and on Socrates. He is concise and clear and very informative. This may well be the best introduction to the Presocratic philosophers ever written. Cornford was a great scholar.

Thanks for the suggestion. Are you familiar with G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven's The Presocratic Philosophers? I recently read that and it was pretty great. They basically went through the relevant Presocratics in considerable depth, including basically every important source document we have for each one. After Herodutos, and before I jump back into Plato to read Gorgias, Meno, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, Ion, Menexenus, Clitophon, and Republic (which then I'll be taking another break from Plato), I'm going to read Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, an unfinished work by Nietzsche that was published posthumously. Anyways, I think I'll be ready to bid the Presocratics farewell for a while, but I'll keep that one in mind for a later date (my list of wanted books seems to grow exponentially...)

[Brian37]

Plato was key in popularizing the idea of questioning authority. And some have equated his "Apology" in where Socrates question the powers and was forced to commit suicide by hemlock for doing such. Many have equated that story to the story of Jesus(questioning authority). His "Allegory Of The Cave", was also a message to question what you perceive.

But Dawkins in the opening of his book "The Greatest Show On Earth", blames much of humanity's utopia politics and religious ideology on his idea of "essence". The idea that if you simply thought about something you could find it's "true" form. Plato had no way of knowing how important the quality control of testing and falsification we know is key to modern science. Dawkins places blame on Plato for much of how human logic has suffered since.

[Mudhammam]

Plato was key in popularizing the idea of questioning authority. And some have equated his "Apology" in where Socrates question the powers and was forced to commit suicide by hemlock for doing such. Many have equated that story to the story of Jesus(questioning authority). His "Allegory Of The Cave", was also a message to question what you perceive.

But Dawkins in the opening of his book "The Greatest Show On Earth", blames much of humanity's utopia politics and religious ideology on his idea of "essence". The idea that if you simply thought about something you could find it's "true" form. Plato had no way of knowing how important the quality control of testing and falsification we know is key to modern science. Dawkins places blame on Plato for much of how human logic has suffered since.

I can definitely see some parallel between Socrates and Jesus in how they were perceived by their followers as great and pure teachers and their each (supposedly) facing a sham trial and then embracing the verdict with Stoic calm. I'd say that's where the similarities end, and minus Socrates' affection for "young" males, he emerges as the thinker whom I much more admire.

Dawkins is right to blame the influence that subsequent thinkers allowed Plato to have on them, but is it fair to blame Plato? I think he was a brilliant philosopher and writer in his time, and his consequence on history is so pervasive that it's practically impossible to imagine Western philosophy without him. Were many of his ideas bogus? Sure. But they also forced subsequent generations to think about the world in a fascinating new way and to present their arguments better than him.

[Brian37]

Plato was key in popularizing the idea of questioning authority. And some have equated his "Apology" in where Socrates question the powers and was forced to commit suicide by hemlock for doing such. Many have equated that story to the story of Jesus(questioning authority). His "Allegory Of The Cave", was also a message to question what you perceive.

But Dawkins in the opening of his book "The Greatest Show On Earth", blames much of humanity's utopia politics and religious ideology on his idea of "essence". The idea that if you simply thought about something you could find it's "true" form. Plato had no way of knowing how important the quality control of testing and falsification we know is key to modern science. Dawkins places blame on Plato for much of how human logic has suffered since.

I can definitely see some parallel between Socrates and Jesus in how they were perceived by their followers as great and pure teachers and their each (supposedly) facing a sham trial and then embracing the verdict with Stoic calm. I'd say that's where the similarities end, and minus Socrates' affection for "young" males, he emerges as the thinker whom I much more admire.

Dawkins is right to blame the influence that subsequent thinkers allowed Plato to have on them, but is it fair to blame Plato? I think he was a brilliant philosopher and writer in his time, and his consequence on history is so pervasive that it's practically impossible to imagine Western philosophy without him. Were many of his ideas bogus? Sure. But they also forced subsequent generations to think about the world in a fascinating new way and to present their arguments better than him.

Yes and no. Dawkins is right to blame him because he set in motion most of thought that divides humans to this day. But when you combine this with the God Delusion, and meme theory it amounts to our evolutionary flawed perceptions as a species.

It isn't that Plato was all bad, but what everyone took off with was the worst idea he came up with. It would be the same type of blame if everyone went after Newton's alchemy and not his physics.

---

And again for the reasons I stated. Plato's idea of questioning was not an act of testing and falsification. He had no clue back then how important control groups and peer review were. So his idea of questioning ended up leading people to fish for excuses not insure quality of data. It was a flawed idea, even though the intent was there.

[Mudhammam]

Yes and no. Dawkins is right to blame him because he set in motion most of thought that divides humans to this day. But when you combine this with the God Delusion, and meme theory it amounts to our evolutionary flawed perceptions as a species.

It isn't that Plato was all bad, but what everyone took off with was the worst idea he came up with. It would be the same type of blame if everyone went after Newton's alchemy and not his physics.

---

And again for the reasons I stated. Plato's idea of questioning was not an act of testing and falsification. He had no clue back then how important control groups and peer review were. So his idea of questioning ended up leading people to fish for excuses not insure quality of data. It was a flawed idea, even though the intent was there.

Unlike the Presocratics, Plato (and the Socrates he relates) are more concerned with the art of philosophical inquiry, how we know what we know or don't know, what it means for something to be or not to be. While it's true that Plato and the Greeks had nothing like the scientific method, their ideas have required relatively little change to remain relevant and still be part of intense debate, which is one that I think may be more metaphysical than scientific, and in an epistemological or linguistic sense, I think Plato's ideal forms remain an important contribution (remember he was essentially responding to the atomists and those who pretty much said nothing is true or false or even intelligible because the world of percepts is always changing i.e. can't step into the same river twice, whereas concepts are to some extent static).

[Pyrrho]

If you are wanting books about the ancient Greeks, a truly great one is Before and After Socrates by F.M. Cornford. The book is very short, and very expensive for how short it is. But it is worth the purchase price for the chapters on the Presocratics and on Socrates. He is concise and clear and very informative. This may well be the best introduction to the Presocratic philosophers ever written. Cornford was a great scholar.

Thanks for the suggestion. Are you familiar with G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven's The Presocratic Philosophers? I recently read that and it was pretty great. They basically went through the relevant Presocratics in considerable depth, including basically every important source document we have for each one. After Herodutos, and before I jump back into Plato to read Gorgias, Meno, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, Ion, Menexenus, Clitophon, and Republic (which then I'll be taking another break from Plato), I'm going to read Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, an unfinished work by Nietzsche that was published posthumously. Anyways, I think I'll be ready to bid the Presocratics farewell for a while, but I'll keep that one in mind for a later date (my list of wanted books seems to grow exponentially...)

Before and After Socrates by F.M. Cornford is a very different kind of book from The Presocratic Philosophers by Kirk, Raven, and Schofield. Cornford's book is essentially the written form of four lectures, and it is giving a broad overview of what is going on, rather than dealing with the details. If you will pardon an overused metaphor, it is about the forest, not about the trees. If you are wanting to look at the specific source materials, then you are not wanting to look at Before and After Socrates by Cornford. But I think he is a better introduction to the topic, as he is brief and also has a very good perspective on the overall project that the ancient Greeks were doing, as well as its importance in human thought. Cornford's book is not like a summary of Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, so you might want to take a look at it, if you can find a copy at a decent price. To return to the overused metaphor, he has more to say about the forest than one finds in The Presocratic Philosophers by Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, but there is very little information about the trees. For something with more details, then one would want to move on to something else, like what you have already read.

A book more like the The Presocratic Philosophers by Kirk, Raven, and Schofield is Philosophy Before Socrates by Richard D. McKirahan, Jr., which I prefer, as it seems better organized and clearer and coheres a bit better. If my memory is right (it has been a while since I read McKirahan; I see from looking at Amazon, that there is now a second edition which I have not seen), he seems to have a better appreciation for leaving things open to multiple interpretations and is less inclined to push his own particular interpretations. Also, I do not recall him repeatedly misusing the word "bisexual," which is quite displeasing in Kirk, Raven, and Schofield. (In a silly science fiction show, like the episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" in Star Trek, it is mostly funny when the word "bisexual" is misused, but when it is misused repeatedly in a scholarly work about presocratic philosophers, it is rather unsettling, as one wonders what other words they might be misusing.) But it is, for the most part, covering pretty much the same material.

Given what you have already read, you might find it more illuminating to read some of the sources for books like The Presocratic Philosophers and Philosophy Before Socrates, such as Herodotus' Histories and Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers. In doing so, one gets a better feel for how seriously one should take their pronouncements about specific individuals, as one may observe how they treat things generally. What one finds, of course, is that the evidential material about the presocratics leaves a lot to be desired. But you should have a decent idea of that from Kirk, Raven, and Schofield.