Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy

Richard Rojcewicz teaches philosophy at Point Park University in Pittsburgh. He is author of The Gods and Technology and has translated several volumes of the works of Martin Heidegger.

Translator's Foreword
Preliminary Remarks

PART ONE. General Introduction to Ancient Philosophy
Chapter One. Working out of the central concepts and questions of ancient philosophy, with the first book of Aristotle's Metaphysics as guideline
Chapter Two. The question of cause and of foundation as a philosophical question

PART TWO. The Most Important Greek Thinkers: Their Questions and Answers

Section One. Philosophy up to Plato
Chapter One. Milesian philosophy of nature
Chapter Two. Heraclitus
Chapter Three. Parmenides and the Eleatics
Chapter Four. The later philosophy of nature: Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and atomism
Chapter Five. Sophistry and Socrates

Section Two. Plato's philosophy
Chapter One. Biography, secondary literature, and general characterization of Plato's questioning
Chapter Two. More concrete determination of the problem of Being in Plato's philosophy
Chapter Three. Interpretation of the dialogue, Theatetus: the connection between the question of the Idea of science and the question of Being
First definition
Second definition
Third definition
Chapter Four. Central concepts of Plato's philosophy in the context of the understanding of Being and the question of Being

Section Three. Aristotle's philosophy
Chapter One. On the problem of the development and of the adequate reception of Aristotle's philosophy
Chapter Two. The ontological problem and the idea of philosophical research
Chapter Three. The fundamental questioning of the problematic of Being
Chapter Four. The problem of motion and the ontological meaning of that problem.
Chapter Five. Ontology of life and of Dasein

APPENDICES
Supplementary Texts
Excerpts from the Mörchen Transcription
Bröcker Transcription
Editor's Afterword
Greek-English Glossary