Tetsugaku no kotoba wo kiku (Listening to the Logos of Philosophy - Studies in Classical Western Philosophy)

Ancient Greek philosophy has exerted a profound influence down to the present day. Yet the works that have been transmitted to us are extremely limited, and much of what we know has come down in the form of fragmentary testimonies. For this reason, their interpretation involves distinctive methodological difficulties. Insofar as they require an approach that integrates classical philology with the history of philosophy, ancient philosophical texts differ fundamentally from philosophical works of the modern and contemporary periods.
 
The writings of Plato and Aristotle, composed some 2,400 years ago, were transmitted from ancient papyrus rolls through medieval manuscripts. Modern scholars critically edited these handwritten texts and published them as printed editions, through which they came to be widely disseminated. In classical philology, which examines these texts in detail, there are many scholarly controversies over how key passages should be read, and new proposals continue to be advanced. Moreover, for philosophers whose works have not survived, testimonies and fragments preserved in quotations and references in texts written in late antiquity are carefully compared in order to reconstruct the original sources—this is the work of doxography and fragment studies. In some cases, the interpretation of ancient papyri that have miraculously resurfaced across the centuries is also brought to bear. By employing this wide range of philological methods, the present book seeks to reconstruct classical Western philosophy through close and detailed analysis of the surviving texts.
 
The book consists of nineteen essays and a general introduction, organized into five parts. Part I comprises four chapters on early Greek philosophy and the Sophistic movement. Parts II through IV contain thirteen chapters on Plato’s philosophy, ranging from his early to late works. Part V consists of two chapters devoted to Aristotle. At the core of the volume are five essays on the Politeia (Republic), which was the theme of an international Plato conference organized by the author in 2010. Although some of the essays were originally written in the late 1990s, the arguments and bibliographies have been revised as far as possible to reflect the most recent scholarship, and each chapter is accompanied by an editorial note that traces its publication history. These notes assess the significance of the research at the time it was conducted and the influence it has exerted since. In addition to chapters originally published in Japanese, the volume includes three chapters translated from English articles and eight chapters presented in Japanese in parallel with their English versions. The book is intended to serve as a bridge between international scholarship and research conducted in Japan.
 
Among the essays are studies that examine how differing readings of a single word or even a single letter across medieval manuscripts can give rise to radically different interpretations, and which of these readings should be regarded as most plausible. Other chapters explore the cultural and political contexts in which the works were written, as well as their reception and treatment in modern and contemporary thought. Taken together, these diverse approaches bring into relief, in a comprehensive way, the language and thought of ancient Greek philosophy.
 

(Written by NOTOMI Noburu, Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2025)