Los filósofos presocráticos como autores literarios

Abstract

The author examines the Pre-Socratic philosophers from a literary point of view. He treats the literary genres they chose and discusses how this choice conditions the content of their works. Pre-philosophical thought (epic, Pherecydes, the Logographi, the Seven Wise Men) are first considered and thereafter the solutions of the first philosophers to the problem of presenting their ideas in a literary form. The following are considered: a) the Milesians and the first prose works; b) the survival of epic models in Xenophanes, Parmenides and Empedocles; c) the development of the gnomic tradition, especially in Heraclitus; d) the peculiar case of Epicharmus; e) the primacy of the prose treatise and the reasons for the prevalence of this form in the Vth century B. C. Finally, the author points out the new literary modes of later philosophy.