Bibliographia Praesocratica

Bibliographia Praesocratica differs from others with respect to the approach adopted, the kind and the quantity of the material collected and in respect to the way it was organized.
This Bibliography encompasses a period spanning five and a half centuries (1450-2000), i. e. from the beginnings of typography until the present. It includes texts written in almost all the European languages and in some non-European languages. On a scale unusual in the West it takes into consideration literature on the subject written in Modern Greek as well as in the Slavic languages. The Bibliography contains 17,664 entries, which is evidence of its thematic comprehensiveness.

The topics range from myth and religion, covered exhaustively, and Orphism, presented rather extensively; Homer and Hesiod, covered selectively; theogonies and oriental influences scrutinized thoroughly; the Presocratic problems and concepts dealt with extensively and systematically (cosmology and natural philosophy, theology and ontology, history and historiography, anthropology and psychology, ethics and politics, aesthetics and poetics, logic and epistemology), whereas early Greek science and medicine are covered exhaustively; the Presocratics and their doctrines are presented very extensively, coupled with their reception and influence throughout the intellectual tradition ranging from Antiquity to Modern times (in several cases the living tradition was left uninterrupted even when it was overreaching the Presocratic framework: e. g. Plato and myth, the Platonic doctrine on the soul). Our Bibliography also includes an introductory bibliography on historiography and philosophy of the history of philosophy.
Judging by the amount of data and the number of entries this Bibliography surpasses, by far, all bibliographies of a similar kind. In addition, a large number of faulty and incomplete data found in other bibliographies has been rectified and now completed. Many data regarding new publications, or reprinted editions and publications representing collections of reprinted articles have been introduced. The rich material of this Bibliography was organized through 600 headings and subheadings. The division of this material was executed by means of combining three particular methods: the systematic, chronological and alphabetical. From the systematic point of view, the material was structured according to historical and topical categories, so as to render the subject index - redundant (this kind of index has practically been built into this Bibliography and the same function is assigned to many cross-references).