Includes bibliographical references (p. [186]-191) and index.

Prologue : before the dawn -- Meta-philosophy of early Greek thought -- The motif of the dawn, or, On gossip -- The dance of being : contexts of emergence and mytho-poetic horizons -- "War is the mother of all things" : Nietzsche and the birth of philosophy -- Aletheia and being : Heidegger contra Nietzsche -- Philosophy as tragedy (and comedy) : a note on post-structuralism -- The question of the first : Thales and Anaximander -- Recoiling from the abyss : Anaximenes and Xenophanes -- All is flux : Heraclitus -- Eternal return of the soul : Pythagoras -- Tragic differing : Parmenides -- Love, strife, and mind : Empedocles and Anaxagoras -- The divine beauty of chaos : Democritus -- Plato in the shadow of the sublime -- Epilogue. poetics, and the matheme : on Badiou.