This two-part sourcebook gives the reader easy access to the language and thought of the Presocratic thinkers, making it possible either to read the texts continuously or to study them one by one along with commentary. It contains the complete fragments and a generous selection of testimonies for twenty major Presocratic thinkers including cosmologists, ontologists, and sophists, setting translations opposite Greek and Latin texts on facing pages to allow easy comparison. The texts are grouped in chapters by author in a mainly chronological order, each preceded by a brief introduction and an up-to-date bibliography, and followed by a brief commentary. Significant variant readings are noted. This edition contains new fragments and testimonies not included in the authoritative but now outdated Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. It is the first and only complete bilingual edition of the works of the Presocratic philosophers for English-speakers.

《前苏格拉底哲学家》以一篇考察前苏格拉底哲学家的先驱者们的长篇导论始，追溯了泰勒斯所发动的那场理智革命，经由巴门尼德的形而上学、阿那克萨戈拉和原子论者们的复杂的物理学理论而达到顶峰。该书详加剪裁、精审翻译，并予以专业评论，历史地展现了哲学思维本身发生、发育、发展、演化、 转变的进程。
《前苏格拉底哲学家》精选600余条原文残篇和证言，附上英译文和从古希腊文直接译出的中译文，形成古希腊文-英文-中文三文对照文本，并针对一些重要概念术语以及不同译法以“译者按”形式做专门说明。本书中译本之出版将为国内学者研究前苏格拉底哲学提供最具权威的原文文献参考资料。

Beginning with a long and extensively rewritten introduction surveying the predecessors of the Presocratics, this book traces the intellectual revolution initiated by Thales in the sixth century B.C. to its culmination in the metaphysics of Parmenides and the complex physical theories of Anaxagoras and the Atomists in the fifth century it is based on a selection of some six hundred texts, in Greek and a close English translation which in this edition is given more prominence. These provide the basis for a detailed critical study of the principal individual thinkers of the time. Besides serving as an essential text for undergraduate and graduate courses in Greek philosophy and in the history of science, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers with interests in philosophy, theology, the history of ideas and of the ancient world, and indeed to anyone who wants an authoritative account of the Presocratics.