In the field of scholarship on ancient philosophy, you can’t be more of a renegade than Peter Kingsley. He started out as a sober academic, and this early book, published by Oxford University Press, only gives a hint of the subversive work he would pursue in later years. Kingsley turned into a genuine mystic and guru—and all based on what he had discovered in the ancient writings of Parmenides, Empedocles, and the earliest Greek philosophers. What no one will tell you is that these pre-Socratic philosophers were actually singers, and their works were intended as songs. Even more important, these were empowered songs with the potential to change lives—the bottom line, as amazing as it sounds, is that music made philosophy possible. A handful of other classicists had come close to grasping this (E.R. Dodds, F.M. Cornford right before he died, Vittorio Macchioro), but Kingsley put all the pieces together here and in his subsequent books. He explained the most important truths about the origins of Western music, but they aren’t recognized because (once again) he didn’t write music books.