Philosophy

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Abstract

Shaul Tor presents an illuminating and wide-ranging treatment of the relation between the epistemology and theology of Hesiod, Xenophanes, Parmenides, and, to a lesser extent, Empedocles. Over six detailed chapters, he combines philosophical innovation with philological and cultural sensitivity to offer new and fascinating insights on several widely discussed and difficult issues of early Greek philosophy. In his first chapter (‘Rationality and Irrationality, Philosophy and Religion’), Tor surveys the scholarly division between ‘rationalizing’ and ‘mysticizing’ readings of early Greek philosophers. His treatment is thorough and nuanced and helps to render with great clarity the assumptions underlying much modern analysis. Starting from the observation that reason and inspiration are generally treated as dichotomous, he begins with a consideration of some traditional ‘rationalizers’ (the Milesians, Hecataeus, the Hippocratics, etc.) and notes that none provide the sort of straightforward separation and rejection of the divine that standard accounts might lead one to assume. He provides a particularly useful critique of the distinction between the rational and irrational and the philosophical and the religious, arguing that the epistemological developments of early Greek philosophy are ‘an essentially theological enterprise’ (48).