The philosophers of Greece Robert S. Brumbaugh [Text]

This brilliant survey of the key ideas of Greek philosophy covers a period and scene unmatched by any other. It was a time when the germinal forces of Western culture were formulated by the woorld's great ckassical theinkers. It was the age of Thales, Anaximenes, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, the Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle. It produced the great philosophical writings on metaphysics, cosmology, politics, and logic -a unique record of man's use of reason to explain the world about him. As Dr. Brumbaugh traces the evolution of Greek philosophy, the reader sees his own familiar world emerge from the mist of myth which surrounded the ancients. ''What is real?" asked Thales, the great inventor and engineer, who sparked the systematic development of natural science. Following Anaximander, who extended law to the physical word, came Pythagotas and his followers with the discovery of pure matheamatics. It was Socrates who was to introduce the second major question into Western philosophy: "What am I?" His question led to a new phase of inquiry and inspired new approaches to politics and educaation. Endeavoring to answer both Thales and Socrates, Plato and Aristotle brought together all the earlier insights into two great speculative systems. In the philosophers of Greece, Dr. Brumbaugh analyzes all these historical figures, explains their works, and demonstrates their televance to modern thought. What awaits the reader is an axciting intellectual odyssey.