Suny Ancient Greek Philosophy Breaking Light: Toward a Poetics of Opacity in Early Greek Thinking, (Paperback)

<p><b>Discloses the ways in which opacity and relation in the thought of Thales, Anaximandros, and Anaximenes depart from the predominant understanding of philosophy as clarity.</b></p><p>In <i>Breaking Light</i> D. M. Spitzer discloses the ways in which opacity and relation orient the thought of Thales, Anaximandros, and Anaximenes. In so doing, <i>Breaking Light</i> departs from a predominant understanding of <i>philosophy</i> as constituted by the principle of clarity--a principle already operative in Plato's and Aristotle's interpretations of the shadowy figures from the Greek east identified as the first philosophers, the Milesians. Drawing on <i>opacity</i> and <i>relation</i> as articulated by Martinican thinker Édouard Glissant and enhanced by the insights of Martin Heidegger and contemporary feminisms in the (trans-)continental tradition(s), <i>Breaking Light</i> lets the central terms orienting Milesian thinking--<i>&amp;#8021;&amp;#948;&amp;#969;&amp;#961;</i>, <i>&amp;#7940;&amp;#960;&amp;#949;&amp;#953;&amp;#961;&amp;#959;&amp;#957;</i>, <i>&amp;#7936;&amp;#942;&amp;#961;</i>--radiate with the energies of provisionality, uncertainty, and abundance--of opacity. A comparative approach attends to figures like Pherekydes and texts from Egypt and the Near East that are understudied in the continental traditions.</p>

• Suny Ancient Greek Philosophy Breaking Light: Toward a Poetics of Opacity in Early Greek Thinking, (Paperback)
• Author: D M Spitzer
• ISBN: 9798855807387
• Format: Paperback
• Publication Date: 2026-11-02
• Page Count: 180