​Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short introduction (2004) by Catherine Osborne

Catherine Osborne’s very decent addition to the A Very Short Introduction series focusing on presocratic philosophy. The book briefly explores the key texts (or what is left of them—in the first chapter, Osborne discusses the incompleteness of these ancient texts and the process required to salvage them) and main ideas of a few of the major presocratic philosophers, like Empedocles, Parmenides, Zenos, and Pythagoras.
 
Osborne orders the book alongside her contention with the general scholarship of presocratic philosophy. She criticizes the scholarship for forcing these various philosophers into conversation with one another. This makes for a neat and clean narrative about philosophical progression, but ends up obfuscating and sometimes, suppressing, elements of each philosophy. Osborne’s approach to the subject is to take each philosopher and their ideas in their own context.
 
With this approach, Osborne exposes the readers to a wide variety of thinking among the presocratic philosophers, like Parmenides’ focus on being and becoming and appearance and truth, Zenos’ reality-questioning paradoxes, Heraclitus on identity and change, Pythagoras and his mysticism, and finally, the sophists. Osborne leaves us with a section for further reading materials for those that are interested in learning more about each philosopher. 

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