The Presocratics After Heidegger
David C. Jacobs
State University of New York Press
Offering a diversity of strategies and approaches to the philosophical issues involved in reading and thinking about the Presocratics in the wake of Martin Heidegger's thought, the authors explicate the thinking of key figures such as Homer, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles. The philosophical problems of logos, logic, truth, history, tradition, ethics, and tragedy are presented and re-thought in relation to Heidegger's thinking. Not only is the role of the Presocratics in Heidegger's reading re-thought but also, following a trajectory opened up by Heidegger, questions and readings of the Presocratics that he himself did not broach are pursued. These include: How does logos change in Heidegger's dialogue with the Presocratics? What is the place of the Presocratics in the "other inception" of thinking? How is Heidegger's reading of tragedy also a dialogue with Nietzsche and Holderlin? How do concealment and disclosure function in Homer's corpus? Do the pronouncements of Anaximander bring us to think the beginning of history and to question the need for ethics and justice? How does Anaximenes come to think and speak all that manifests itself? What is the role of presence in Parmenides' divine pedagogy? How does Heidegger come to remember Heraclitus and what is the disruptive nature of Heraclitus' sayings?