Philosophy

Abstract

Maria Michela Sassi's masterful 2009 volume on the origins and nature of early Greek philosophy is now available in an updated English translation. Sassi's aim is not to provide a primer of the views of individual thinkers. Rather, she seeks to scrutinize what sense we can make of attempts to unravel the ‘origins’ of philosophy. Her work is useful not only for its wide-ranging assessment of the evidence, including that from beyond the central Mediterranean, but also for its careful engagement with central works of scholarship. Sassi seeks to defend the inherently ‘philosophical’ nature of those who presented their views about the nature of the cosmos (and more), prior to the efforts of Plato and Aristotle to establish the identity of philosophy itself. She is particularly keen to defend the value of Aristotle's account of his predecessors against those who are too hasty to dismiss it as self-serving. For her, ‘Aristotle's exposition [of the beginnings of philosophy] is fundamentally correct’ (xv), and she makes a persuasive and engaging case for this point, working with a conception of philosophy as characterized by a particular kind of critical attitude towards explanations.