Synopses & Reviews
W.K.C. Guthrie has written a survey of the great age of Greek philosophy—from Thales to Aristotle—which combines comprehensiveness with brevity. Without pre-supposing a knowledge of Greek or the Classics, he sets out to explain the ideas of Plato and Aristotle in the light of their predecessors rather than their successors, and to describe the characteristic features of the Greek way of thinking and outlook on the world. Thus The Greek Philosophers provides excellent background material for the general reader—as well as providing a firm basis for specialist studies.
Review
"Admirably fulfills its aim of explaining the development of Greek thought and Greek ways of thinking to the reader or student, who, while lacking knowledge of Greek, yet wants to learn something about the philosophers whose ideas have coloured and influenced European culture." The Times (London) Literary Supplement
Review
"...The student who reads the work carefully will obtain a clear, coherent and balanced idea of the earlier cosmologies, of the humanistic reaction in the second half of the fifth century, B.C., and of the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle." Frederick C. Copleston, in The Tablet (London)
Table of Contents
Greek Ways of Thinking
Matter and Form
The Problem of Motion
The Reaction Towards Humanism
Plato: The Doctrine of Ideas; Ethical and Theological Answers to the Sophists
Aristotle: The Aristotelian Universe; Human Beings