Audiobook Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1

The work opens with an analysis of the early Greek mind and its reliance on polytheistic agents, before examining the transition to physical hypotheses initiated by Thales. Grote details the successive systems of Anaximander and Anaximenes, highlighting their searches for a primordial substance and the mechanics of condensation and rarefaction. A substantial portion is devoted to Pythagoras and the Pythagorean brotherhood, detailing their doctrine that number is the essence of things and their astronomical system featuring central fire and counter-earth. The transition from physical speculation to the absolute is traced through Xenophanes and Parmenides, who posited the unchangeable Ens and severed ontology from relative phenomena. The author then explores the antithetical philosophy of Herakleitus, based on perpetual change, transition, and the coincidence of contraries, followed by the four-element theory of Empedokles and the multifarious homœomeries of Anaxagoras, who introduced Nous as an initiating force. The final chapters examine the atomic theory of Leukippus and Demokritus, presenting atoms and vacua as the basis of reality, and trace the growth of dialectic through Zeno and the Megaric philosophers, concluding with an overview of Xenophon and the life of Plato.