Jacques Maritain Center : A History of Western Philosophy Vol. I / by Ralph McInerny

Foreword

This history of ancient philosophy tries to give a comprehensive but wholly introductory sketch of a difficult and changing historical terrain. We are still learning about the beginnings of philosophy and the scholarly contributions to our knowledge mount almost menacingly, intimidating one who would attempt an over-all simplified presentation. Writing a memo in anticipation of the Libyan battles, Churchill predicted that renown awaited the commander who would restore artillery to its proper place on the battle field: later he seemed as pleased with his phrasing of the claim as of its fulfillment. Perhaps a relieved welcome, if not renown, awaits an introductory history which is not studded with the artillery of footnotes apprising the bewildered neophyte of esoteric studies on the fine points of recent scholarship in the period he is encountering for the first time. It is my feeling that there is little point in cluttering an introductory work with such references: the teacher does not need them and the student is not ready for them. Better unabashedly to popularize the period so as to make it as immediately and painlessly accesible as can honestly be done. The short reading lists at the back of the book will enable the interested reader to begin study in that scholarship on which such books as this are based. Of course, in the narrative, broad divergences of interpretation are mentioned and occasionally even adjudicated, but in every instance the attitude has been irenic and permissive. It is an Aristotelian axiom that we must begin any study with a confused view of the whole and this volume provides only a first step in the study of ancient philosophy.

The present work was not conceived to fill some glaring gap in the works available for classroom use; there is a plethora of good histories of ancient philosophy. This effort differs from some in the manner indicated in the preceding paragraph; it differs from others in being more brief; it differs from all, hopefully, in the style of its approach which may appeal to student and teacher alike. It is difficult to resist the impulse to put what one has learned into his own words even when what he knows is neither a private possession nor a personal discovery. In the course of teaching the history of ancient philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, on campus as well as in Moreau Seminary, I amassed folders of notes, made sketches of chapters, had visions of a volume. When an opportunity came to prepare this book for Henry Regnery Company I was willing if not wholly ready to accept it. The result, being actual, seems almost a betrayal of the shimmering possibility I had cherished. But that is often the way with actualities. I shall now let my imagination play on the possibility that this book will be of some aid to teacher and student in courses in the history of ancient philosophy. That hope, at once modest and immense, is why it was written.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to the following publishers for their permission to quote copyrighted material: To the Clarendon Press, Oxford, for quotations from The Works of Aristotle Translated into English, 12 volumes, edited by W. D. Ross, 1905-1952, and from E. R. Dodds, Proclus' Elements of Theology, 1933; To Harvard University Press for quotations from the following volumes in the Loeb Classical Library: Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 2 volumes, edited by R. D. Hicks, 1950; H. G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica (1943); Sextus Empiricus, 4 volumes, edited by R. G. Bury, 1933-1949. To the Editors off the Encyclopedia Britannica for permission to quote from the MacKenna and Page translation of the Enneads of Plotinus which appears in Great Books of the Western World. To Cambridge University Press for generous permission to quote from G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge, 1957. To Basil Blackwell for permission to quote from Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Presocratic Philosophers, Oxford, 1948. To Appleton-Century-Crofts for permission to quote from Selections from Hellenistic Philosophy by Gordon Clark, 1940. To Princeton University Press for permission to quote from Philip Wheelwright, Heraclitus, Princeton, 1959. To Columbia University Press for permission to quote from Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology by Charles H. Kahn, 1960.

Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from the dialogues of Plato are taken from the 19th century translation by Benjamin Jowett. Quotations from the letters of Plato are from the L. A. Post translation by permission of The Clarendon Press, Oxford.

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