Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Joseph Margolis. "The Emergence of Philosophy." In Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy. Ed. by Kevin Robb. La Salle, IL: Monist Library of Philosophy/The Hegeler Institute, pp. 228-43.

Disagrees with Havelock's (1983) view about the conceptual capacity of members of an oral culture inasmuch as such a culture, while lacking an alphabet, "is bound to produce either a philosophical practice or an alternative but equally abstractive practice" (234). Disputes the view that philosophy had to await the Ionians in the sixth century because there is no reason that a non-democratized philosophical tradition could not have existed co-extensively with a general popular oral culture. Supports his own view by pointing to the verse philosophy of Parmenides and the Epicheirêmata of Zeno, and holds that such an impulse could well have begun with the Milesian school.
Area: AG