How and why did Philosophy begin in Greece? The traditional answer to this question points at a group of thinkers that become consecrated as the predecessors and forefathers of philosophical inquiry. Since the early 20^th Century they are known collectively as the Presocratics and, according to a tradition that originates in Plato and Aristotle, these early thinkers have been mainly interested in the study of the physical world. Aristotle declared famously that ‘of the first philosophers…most thought the principles which were of the nature of matter were the only principles of all things’ (Metaphysics, Bk 1, Ch. 3). This takes care of the ‘how’. Regarding the ‘why’, Aristotle notes simply that all men ‘by nature desire to know’ (Met., Bk 1, Ch 1). Still, there is a gap between this general desire shared by mankind and the fact that traditionally we link the discipline that we call today Philosophy with specific thinkers living in Greece in the 5^th century BC. The 19^th Century French historian Ernst Renan, speaks of a ‘Greek miracle’, not to be compared with any other culture or civilization. A more ecumenical view was presented by the philosopher Karl Jaspers, who suggested a series of events across Asia and the Middle East which took place in what he named ‘the axial age’ from the 8^th to the 3^rdcentury BC, and which created the great religions of mankind, Philosophy, and Science.    

This traditional picture has been complicated by contemporary research. Professor Sassi’s book reviews the current literature on the question of early Greek philosophy in a clear and didactic way. She presents and criticizes two contemporary interpretative trends that downplay Aristotle’s traditional account. One emphasizes Oriental influences on Greek early thought. The second stresses the connections between democratic politics and Philosophy.  Against older and newer interpretations, she favors a pluralistic and balanced narration of the beginnings of Philosophy in Greece, one that she describes as an attempt to account for a complex interplay of tradition and innovation (167).

The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter one deals with Thales of Miletus –the legendary father of Philosophy– and with those interpretations that trace the teachings of the early Greek thinkers to the influence of Oriental traditions.  Against those views, Sassi reasserts the traditional interpretation that views the Presocratics as an original contribution to the understanding of the nature of things (xv).  Chapter two attempts to identify a criterion to establish an historic link between certain early Greek sages and what we call today Philosophy. Sassi offers the following one: ‘a critical intent directed toward traditional, or at any rate, established, points of view’ (xvi). Chapter three examines the thesis put forward by J.-P. Vernant and others regarding the relationship between Philosophy and Democracy. Without rejecting this hypothesis altogether, she suggests we learn about the political choices of Greek society in their time from the expository choices and the kind of rapports that the Presocratics established with their audiences (xvi). Chapter four deals with discourses on the soul, immortality, personal salvation, and their correlation with the discourse on the cosmos, as a way to explore the emergence of the concept of a subject of knowledge (111).  Finally, the fifth chapter deals with an apparent contradiction between form and content in some of the Presocratic works, which continue to use the rhetorical tools of the poets to divulge their speculations about the cosmos.  Her thesis is that while in Parmenides and Empedocles ‘philosophy cohabitates with poetry in the context of the hexameter…the products of this coexistence…are closer to philosophy than to poetry’ (141).  Sassi devotes several pages in this chapter to an analysis of Parmenides’ poem.  Indeed, this is a test case for her thesis. More than any other Presocratic, Parmenides can be reclaimed as a direct forefather of Philosophy as we understand it today. Nonetheless, it is clear that several images in his poem seem to point out to mystical or shamanic experiences rather than to Philosophy.  Sassi hypothesizes that the use of the poetic meter and references to Homer and Hesiod may be strategies to protect the author and his ‘scandalous enterprise’ (160). The last section in the chapter compares Philosophy with two concurrent emerging fields of intellectual curiosity, Medicine and History, and with the use of prose and writing as preferred ways to convey a sequence of arguments (which does not prevent a text be read aloud either in public or in private). The conclusion to the section and seemingly to the whole book recognizes the fact that the legacy of the Presocratics has come to us through ‘the mediation imposed upon it by a world of specialized reason’.  By taking this into account, we would be better able to appreciate an age ‘during which rationalities where “multiple”‘ (177).

Sassi tries to chart a middle way between an anthropological, a philological and an epistemological approach. She quotes from philosophers of science such as Karl Popper and Yehuda Elkanah, as well as more traditional scholars of Greek culture. Sassi wears her scholarship with lightness, and the book is accessible for any reader that has an interest in these questions. To make it more attractive to the non-specialist, the numerous quotes from the early Greek thinkers are given in English translation. A very useful chronological chart (xix-xx) provides references to historical events and cultural developments from 776 BC to 398 BC. 

© 2019 Michael Maidan

Michael Maidan, Bay Harbor Islands, Florida