Origins of Philosophy: Its Rise in Myth and the Pre-Socratics

Origins of Philosophy: Its Rise in Myth and the Pre-Socratics by Hyland, Drew A.. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781573923507.

Dr. Drew A. Hyland traces the origins of philosophy from its earliest roots in Babylonian and Homeric-Hesiodic mythology to its flowering in the Pre-Socratic imagination. Using selections from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Hesiod, Homer, Pythagoras, Zeno, Plato, and Socrates, to name but a few, Dr. Hyland argues against what he calls the "historical approach" to the origin of philosophy. In Hylands view the differentiation of the human self from notions of God and nature may rightly be called the origin of philosophy. The books skilled intermingling of original source material, with commentaries by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, among others, and the authors own thought-provoking introduction, provides an invaluable study of this fascinating period in human intellectual development.