AY fo Aa 4 2 7 ow Cc foc Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical LexiconGREEK PHILOSOPHICAL TERMS A Historical Lexicon F.E.PETERS »New York: New york UNIVERSITY PRESSright so8p by Newr Vor Univers OSes se catoy Card Nembers 87 #5000 Marek. ued isthe Usted Sins of Anciion oes s Prejace ‘The glory and the bene of Greck philosophy is its lack of « past. Drawing on nothing moze than common speech an the elastic poten- al of the Greek language the Helleme philesophers not oaly form. lated a problematic within which all subsequent thinkers cast their ovin reflections, but devised as well a sophisticated und complex termiral- ogy as a vehicie for :heir thoughts. Koth the terms aad the eoneepis ‘hey employed have since been overgrown with a millennium and a half of connotation thet not even che acest determined can compietely steip aay. The contemporary philosopher or theologian may attempt to rethink the concept, but he is betzayed in the utterance, For what the thinker hus striven to clear away the reader or listener supplies ancw. “Soul” and “God” carry their history heavily with them, By a not too peculiar frony we rend heir philosophical future back into oar Greek past in a variety of ways, One hus experience of a ‘Whticheadean and Nletzschean Placo, a Thomistic and Hegelian Aris- toile, and even an ) Diogenes, As in much else, the Greeks {invented this perticuler historical fallacy. Iti cleat that the Stoics read, Meuselves Gack Into Heraclitus; end the Neaplatonists, lotaus 2n{0 Plato. Tis aa obvious necessity to make some sort of attempt at coming to the Guecks on tieir own terms, This can, T chinit, best be accom- plished not by the usual chronclogical and historical approach that, for all its divisions into “schools” and “successions,” obscures rather than Mlumiaatos the evolutious we auight otherwise élscern in ancient philos- ‘phy, but rather from the Gicection of the problemasic as revealed by a consccative treatment of some of the basic ecncepts. This can he dane ino number of ways aud uu different scales, Bue the method and scale adopter in this work is the one most conformable to the needs of what, may be termed an “intermediate student” of the subject, not the beginner whe iy mebing Ins faa a-yusiatauue wiih Greek potesophy and. who would be better served hy @ histery of excient philosophy and, ezhaps, 2 dictionsry of basic terms, nox, on tho other faaad, the Drafescional echoler who would require a treatment Luds aivie unslve ‘an more nuarced. °