Géneros literarios y filosofía presocrática

  1. Bernabé Pajares, Alberto 1
  1. 1 Universidad Complutense de Madrid
    info
    Universidad Complutense de Madrid

    Madrid, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02p0gd045

    Geographic location of the organization Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Journal:
Quaderns de filosofia

ISSN: 2341-1414

Year of publication: 2025

Issue Title: Gèneres literaris i filosofia antiga

Volume: 12

Issue: 1

Pages: 53-96

Type: Article

DOI: 10.7203/QFIA.12.1.30396 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Quaderns de filosofia

Abstract

Philosophy is not a literary genre, since in Greece these are distinguished not so much by content as by very specific formal features. The first philosophers tried to express themselves in already created genres, although adapting them to their new perspectives of analysis. This chapter attempts to present an overview of the productions of the pre-Socratic philosophers from the point of view of the various literary resources they chose, independently of the ideas they expressed through them, by drawing on three types of material as sources of information: a) literal passages, which provide direct information, but which is only relevant when we have a significant number of them, b) evaluations offered by other authors on the style or formal characteristics of the philosophers (although they have the disadvantage of being influenced by the criteria of the source that transmits them) and c) philological work on diverse data, the comparison of which allows us to extract valuable information from them. With all this, it is possible to articulate a history of the way in which the first philosophers found their own forms of literary expression. With this in mind, we begin by making a brief reference to the antecedents that could have been more suitable for the expression of the new ideas, because they had evolved to try out forms of expression of proposals similar to those of the philosophers, and then go on to review the options of the pre-Socratic philosophers: a) epic verse (Xenophanes, Parmenides and Empedocles), b) the development of the gnomic tradition (Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, the maxims of Democritus); and the one that would eventually prevail, c) the prose treatise (Anaximander, Anaximenes, Zeno, Melissus, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia and the treatises of Democritus). After a brief examination of the reasons for the success of this form over the previous ones, the chapter closes with references to two peculiar cases (the theatre, with Epicarmus, and the commentary on a poem, in the Derveni Papyrus).

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