|
Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Ancient Western philosophy to c 500
This book analyses the diverse ways in which women have been
represented in the Puranic traditions in ancient India - the
virtuous wife, mother, daughter, widow, and prostitute - against
the socio-religious milieu around CE 300-1000. Puranas (lit.
ancient narratives) are brahmanical texts that largely fall under
the category of socio-religious literature which were more
broad-based and inclusive, unlike the Smrtis, which were accessible
mainly to the upper sections of society. In locating, identifying,
and commenting on the multiplicity of the images and depictions of
women's roles in Puranic traditions, the author highlights their
lives and experiences over time, both within and outside the
traditional confines of the domestic sphere. With a focus on five
Mahapuranas that deal extensively with the social matrix Visnu,
Markandeya Matsya, Agni, and Bhagavata Puranas, the book explores
the question of gender and agency in early India and shows how such
identities were recast, invented, shaped, constructed, replicated,
stereotyped, and sometimes reversed through narratives. Further, it
traces social consequences and contemporary relevance of such
representations in marriage, adultery, ritual, devotion, worship,
fasts, and pilgrimage. This volume will be of interest to
researchers and scholars in women and gender studies, ancient
Indian history, religion, sociology, literature, and South Asian
studies, as also the informed general reader.
The" Posterior Analytics" contains Aristotle's Philosophy of
Science. In Book 2, Aristotle asks how the scientist discovers what
sort of loss of light constitutes lunar eclipse. The scientist has
to discover that the moon's darkening is due to the earth's shadow.
Once that defining explanation is known the scientist possesses the
full scientific concept of lunar eclipse and can use it to explain
other necessary features of the phenomenon. The present commentary,
arguably misascribed to Philoponus, offers some interpretations of
Aristotle that are unfamiliar nowadays. For example, the scientific
concept of a human is acquired from observing particular humans and
repeatedly receiving impressions in the sense image or percept and
later in the imagination. The impressions received are not only of
particular distinctive characteristics, like paleness, but also of
universal human characteristics, like rationality. Perception can
thus in a sense apprehend universal qualities in the individual as
well as particular ones.
Described as "a powerful, brilliant, and original study" when first
published, this second edition of Froma Zeitlin's experiment in
decoding the Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes in the light of
contemporary theory now updates her explorations of the tragic
struggle between Eteocles and Polyneices, the doomed sons of
Oedipus, with a new preface, a new afterword, and the addition of
the relevant Greek texts. The mutual self-destruction of the enemy
brothers in this last act of the cursed family is preceded (and
determined) by one of Aeschylus' most daring innovations through
the pairing of the shields of attackers and defenders in the
central scene of the play as an extended dialogue explicitly
concerned with visual and verbal symbols. In a preliminary
consideration of the relations between language and kinship and
between city and family, between self and society, as determining
forces in fifth-century drama, the heart of the book is a detailed
investigation of this tour de force of semiotic energy. Zeitlin's
decipherment of this provocative text yields a heightened
appreciation of Aeschylus' compositional artistry and the
complexity of his worldview. At the same time, this study points
the way to Zeitlin's larger engagement with the special ideological
role that the city of Thebes comes to play on the tragic stage as
the negative counterpart to the self-representation of Athens.
Proclus' Commentary on Plato's dialogue Timaeus is arguably the
most important commentary on a text of Plato, offering unparalleled
insights into eight centuries of Platonic interpretation. This
edition offered the first new English translation of the work for
nearly two centuries, building on significant advances in
scholarship on Neoplatonic commentators. It provides an invaluable
record of early interpretations of Plato's dialogue, while also
presenting Proclus' own views on the meaning and significance of
Platonic philosophy. The present volume, the third in the edition,
offers a substantial introduction and notes designed to help
readers unfamiliar with this author. It presents Proclus' version
of Plato's account of the elements and the mathematical proportions
which bind together the body of the world.
This book examines the origins of ancient Greek science using the
vehicles of blood, blood vessels, and the heart. Careful attention
to biomedical writers in the ancient world, as well as to the
philosophical and literary work of writers prior to the Hippocratic
authors, produce an interesting story of how science progressed and
the critical context in which important methodological questions
were addressed. The end result is an account that arises from
debates that are engaged in and "solved" by different writers.
These stopping points form the foundation for Harvey and for modern
philosophy of biology. Author Michael Boylan sets out the history
of science as well as a critical evaluation based upon principles
in the contemporary canon of the philosophy of science-particularly
those dealing with the philosophy of biology.
Nietzsche is undoubtedly one of the most original and influential
thinkers in the history of philosophy. With ideas such as the
overman, will to power, the eternal recurrence, and perspectivism,
Nietzsche challenges us to reconceive how it is that we know and
understand the world, and what it means to be a human being.
Further, in his works, he not only grapples with previous great
philosophers and their ideas, but he also calls into question and
redefines what it means to do philosophy. Nietzsche and the
Philosophers for the first time sets out to examine explicitly
Nietzsche's relationship to his most important predecessors. This
anthology includes essays by many of the leading Nietzsche
scholars, including Keith Ansell-Pearson, Daniel Conway, Tracy B.
Strong, Gary Shapiro, Babette Babich, Mark Anderson, and Paul S.
Loeb. These excellent writers discuss Nietzsche's engagement with
such figures as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Socrates, Hume,
Schopenhauer, Emerson, Rousseau, and the Buddha. Anyone interested
in Nietzsche or the history of philosophy generally will find much
of great interest in this volume.
Seneca's Letters to Lucilius are a rich source of information about
ancient Stoicism, an influential work for early modern
philosophers, and a fascinating philosophical document in their own
right. This selection of the letters aims to include those which
are of greatest philosophical interest, especially those which
highlight the debates between Stoics and Platonists or
Aristotelians in the first century AD, and the issue, still
important today, of how technical philosophical enquiry is related
to the various purposes for which philosophy is practised. In
addition to examining the philosophical content of each letter,
Brad Inwood's commentary discusses the literary and historical
background of the letters and to their relationship with other
prose works by Seneca. Seneca is the earliest Stoic author for whom
we have access to a large number of complete works, and these works
were highly influential in later centuries. He was also a
politically influential advisor to the Roman emperor Nero and a
celebrated author of prose and verse. His philosophical acuity and
independence of mind make his works exciting and challenging for
the modern reader. CLARENDON LATER ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS General
Editors: Jonathan Barnes and A. A. Long This series is designed to
encourage philosophers and students of philosophy to explore the
fertile terrain of later ancient philosophy. The texts range in
date from the first century BC to the fifth century AD, and will
cover all the parts and all the schools of philosophy. Each volume
contains a substantial introduction, an English translation, and a
critical commentary on the philosophical claims and arguments of
the text. The translations aim primarily at accuracy and fidelity;
but they are also readable and accompanied by notes on textual
problems that affect the philosophical interpretation. No knowledge
of Greek or Latin is assumed.
Of Philoponus' commentary on the" Meteorology" only that on
chapters 1-9 and 12 of the first book has been preserved. It is
translated in this series in two volumes, the first covering
chapters 1-3; the second (this volume) chapters 4-9 and 12. The
subjects discussed here include the nature of fiery and light
phenomena in the sky, the formation of comets, the Milky Way, the
properties of moist exhalation, and the formation of hail.
Philoponus pays special attention to the distinction between the
apparent and the real among the sky phenomena; he criticises
Aristotle's theory of the Milky Way as sublunary, and argues for
its origin in the heavenly realm; gives a detailed exposition of
Aristotelian theory of antiperistasis, mutual replacement of the
hot and the cold, as the mechanism of condensation and related
processes. As in the first volume, Philoponus demonstrates
scholarly erudition and familiarity with methods and results of
post-Aristotelian Greek science. Despite the fragmented state of
the work and the genre of commentary, the reader will find the
elements of a coherent picture of the cosmos based on a radical
re-thinking of Aristotelian meteorology and physics. The volume
will be of interest to all students of ancient and medieval
philosophy, history of Early Modern philosophy, history and
philosophy of science.
Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) was one of the outstanding French
philosophers of the 20th century and his work is widely read in the
English-speaking world. This unique volume comprises the lectures
that Ricoeur gave on Plato and Aristotle at the University of
Strasbourg in 1953-54. The aim of these lectures is to analyse the
metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle and to discern in their work the
ontological foundations of Western philosophy. The relation between
Plato and Aristotle is commonly portrayed as a contrast between a
philosophy of essence and a philosophy of substance, but Ricoeur
shows that this opposition is too simple. Aristotelian ontology is
not a simple antithesis to Platonism: the radical ontology of
Aristotle stands in a far more subtle relation of continuity and
opposition to that of Plato and it is this relation we have to
reconstruct and understand. Ricoeur’s lectures offer a brilliant
analysis of the great works of Plato and Aristotle which has
withstood the test of time. They also provide a unique insight into
the development of Ricoeur’s thinking in the early 1950s,
revealing that, even at this early stage of his work, Ricoeur was
focused sharply on issues of language and the text.
|
|