Can I read Philosophy Before the Greeks : The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia on EtoBox?

Philosophy Before the Greeks : The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia by Marc Van De Mieroop is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Philosophy Before the Greeks : The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia about?

There is a growing recognition that philosophy isn't unique to the West, that it didn't begin only with the classical Greeks, and that Greek philosophy was influenced by Near Eastern traditions. Yet even today there is a widespread assumption that what came before the Greeks was "before philosophy." In Philosophy before the Greeks , Marc Van De Mieroop, an acclaimed historian of the ancient Near East, presents a groundbreaking argument that, for three millennia before the Greeks, one Near Eastern people had a rich and sophisticated tradition of philosophy fully worthy of the name. In the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily praised the Babylonians for their devotion to philosophy. Showing the justice of Diodorus's comment, this is the first book to argue that there were Babylonian philosophers and that they studied knowledge systematically using a coherent system of logic rooted in the practices of cuneiform script. Van De Mieroop uncovers Babylonian approaches to knowledge in three areas: the study of language, which in its analysis of the written word formed the basis of all logic; the art of divination, which interpreted communications between gods and human

Who reads Philosophy Before the Greeks : The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia?

Author

Marc Van De Mieroop

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published

2015

Language

EN

ISBN

9780691176352

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

History, Philosophy, Anthropology

Rating

3.45 / 5 (9 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14