| Summary: | "Joseph I. Breidenstein Jr.’s account of the complex origins of the philosophical tradition in the west skillfully crosses disciplinary boundaries and speaks at once to scholars of Nietzsche, feminism, and the presocratics—groups that are not always on speaking terms with one another. The author’s analysis of women and the feminine in presocratic thought and of philosophy itself as partnership is sure to find a receptive readership among those interested in re-examining the story of western philosophy’s inception in preclassical Greece." —Paul Fairfield, Professor of Philosophy at Queen's University Kingston Ontario This book is the first sustained scholarly account of women and goddesses in presocratic philosophy. It approaches the origin of western philosophy via Nietzsche, Feminism, and Embodied Cognition in order to argue that the presocratics were reviving, within the largely patriarchal and death-glorifying culture of archaic Greece, a paleo/neolithic goddess-centered religiosity that affirmed life and rebirth. By taking readers from prehistoric Europe to classical Athens, Joseph I. Breidenstein Jr. provides a novel narrative of the dawn of western philosophy which is more comprehensive than traditional accounts and which helps us address contemporary problems—the patriarchal attitudes and ideas that continue to corrupt academic-philosophical culture; the fascist-dominator lifestyle that continues to threaten western democracy and which is encouraged by the patriarchal aspects of academia; and the consumerism that continues to result from a materialistic-secular paradigm that is being increasingly recognized as both intellectually untenable and socially unsustainable. Joseph I. Breidenstein Jr. received his Ph.D. from Queen’s University in 2021, and is currently an independent philosopher and yoga instructor.
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