This book offers new insights into the workings of the human soul and the philosophical conception of the mind in Ancient Greece. It collects essays that deal with different but interconnected aspects of that unified picture of our mental life shared by all Ancient philosophers who thought of the soul as an immaterial substance. The papers present theoretical discussions on moral and psychological issues ranging from Socrates to Aristotle, and beyond, in connection with modern psychology. Coverage includes moral learning and the fruitfulness of punishment, human motivation, emotions as psychic phenomena, and more. Some of these topics directly stemmed from the Socratic dialectical experience and its tragic outcome, whereas others found their way through a complex history of refinements, disputes, and internal critique. The contributors present the gradual unfolding of these central themes through a close inspection of the relevant Ancient texts. They deliver a wide-ranging survey of some central and mutually related topics. In the process, readers will learn new approaches to Platonic and Aristotelian psychology and action theory. This book will appeal to graduate students and researchers in Ancient philosophy. Any scholar with a general interest in the history of ideas will also find it a valuable resource.

This book examines the biography of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It seeks to further understand the author of the Historia Augusta alongside the reminiscences of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Geoff W. Adams arrives at this understanding through a study of a wide range of literary texts. Marcus Aurelius was a very important ruler of the Roman Empire, who has had an impact symbolically, philosophically, and historically upon how the Roman Empire has been envisioned. Adams achieves this end to bring a clearer understanding to his representation and to modern interpretations of his highly interpreted and romanticized representations in the ancient texts.

There can be little doubt that the Greek tradition of philosophical criticism had its main source in Ionia. . . It thus leads the tradition which created the rational or scienti?c attitude, and with it our Western civilization, the only civilization, which is based upon science (though, of course, not upon science alone). Karl Popper, Back to the Presocratics Harvard University physicist and historian of Science, Gerald Holton, coined the term "Ionian Enchantment," an expression that links the idea back in the 6th c- tury B. C. to the ancient Ionians along the eastern Aegean coast, while capturing its fascination. Approximately within a seventy- ve year period (600-525 B. C. ) -a split second in the history of humanity- the three Milesian thinkers, Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, without plain evidence, but with an unequalled power of critical abstraction and intuition, had achieved a true intellectual re- lution; they founded and bequeathed to future generations a new, unprecedented way of theorizing the world; it could be summarized in four statements: beneath the apparent disorder and multiplicity of the cosmos, there exists order, unity and stability; unity derives from the fundamental primary substratum from which the cosmos originated; this, and, consequently, the cosmic reality, is one, and is based not on supernatural, but on physical causes; they are such that man can - vestigate them rationally. These four statements are neither self-evident nor se- explanatory.

Katja Maria Vogt's Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato explores a Socratic intuition about the difference between belief and knowledge. Beliefs - doxai - are deficient cognitive attitudes. In believing something, one accepts some content as true without knowing that it is true; one holds something to be true that could turn out to be false. Since our actions reflect what we hold to be true, holding beliefs is potentially harmful for oneself and others. Accordingly, beliefs are ethically worrisome and even, in the words of Plato's Socrates, "shameful." As Vogt argues, this is a serious philosophical proposal and it speaks to intuitions we are likely to share. But it involves a notion of belief that is rather different from contemporary notions. Today, it is a widespread assumption that true beliefs are better than false beliefs, and that some true beliefs (perhaps those that come with justifications) qualify as knowledge. Socratic epistemology offers a genuinely different picture. In aiming for knowledge, one must aim to get rid of beliefs. Knowledge does not entail belief - belief and knowledge differ in such important ways that they cannot both count as kinds of belief. As long as one does not have knowledge, one should reserve judgment and investigate by thinking through possible ways of seeing things. According to Vogt, the ancient skeptics and Stoics draw many of these ideas from Plato's dialogues, revising Socratic-Platonic arguments as they see fit. Belief and Truth retraces their steps through interpretations of the Apology, Ion, Republic, Theaetetus, and Philebus, reconstructs Pyrrhonian investigation and thought, and illuminates the connections between ancient skepticism and relativism, as well as the Stoic view that beliefs do not even merit the evaluations "true" and "false."

This book provides an introduction to the Stoics, ideal for undergraduate students taking courses in Ethics and Ancient Philosophy.Stoicism was a key philosophical movement in the Hellenistic period. Today, the Stoics are central to the study of Ethics and Ancient Philosophy. In "The Stoics: A Guide for the Perplexed", M. Andrew Holowchak sketches, from Zeno to Aurelius, a framework that captures the tenor of Stoic ethical thinking in its key terms.Drawing on the readily available works of Seneca, Epictetus and Aurelius, "The Stoics: A Guide for the Perplexed" makes ancient texts accessible to students unfamiliar with Stoic thought. Providing ancient and modern-day examples to illustrate Stoic principles, the author guides the reader through the main themes and ideas of Stoic thought: Stoic cosmology, epistemology, views of nature, self-knowledge, perfectionism and, in particular, ethics. Holowchak also endeavours to present Stoicism as an ethically viable way of life today through rejecting their notion of ethical perfectionism in favour of a type of ethical progressivism consistent with other key Stoic principles. Thus, "The Stoics: A Guide for the Perplexed" is the ideal companion to the study of Stoic thinking in philosophy.Continuum's "Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

This book examines what we can reliably know about Plato and the historical Socrates. It shows how pervasively the sources of information were biased by Pythagoreanism, Platonism, and Neoplatonism. It gives a source-critical account of how the climate of opinion in fourth-century Athens was captured by the Pythagoreans and how Speusippos's Academy also came to be pythagorized--adding definitional idealism to Pythagorean number idealism, and elevating Plato to a divine level that makes him into a coequal of Pythagoras, thus capturing Plato for Pythagoreanism. By showing how Plato's dialogues were dedramatized, dedialogized, and read or understood as if they were works expounding pythagorizing doctrine, Tejera has created a provocative reappraisal for scholars of ancient Greek philosophy.

Alan Bailey offers a clear and vigorous exposition and defence of the philosophy of Sextus Empiricus, one of the most influential of ancient thinkers, the father of philosophical scepticism. The subsequent sceptical tradition in philosophy has not done justice to Sextus: his views stand up today as remarkably insightful, offering a fruitful way to approach issues of knowledge, understanding, belief, and rationality. Bailey's refreshing presentation of Sextus to a modern philosophical readership rescues scepticism from the sceptics.

Die Bibliotheca Teubneriana, established in 1849, has evolved into the world's most venerable and extensive series of editions of Greek and Latin literature, ranging from classical to Neo-Latin texts. Some 4-5 new editions are published every year. A team of renowned scholars in the field of Classical Philology acts as advisory board: Gian Biagio Conte (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) James Diggle (University of Cambridge) Donald J. Mastronarde (University of California, Berkeley) Franco Montanari (Universita di Genova) Heinz-Gunther Nesselrath (Georg-August-Universitat Goettingen) Dirk Obbink (University of Oxford) Oliver Primavesi (Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat Munchen) Michael D. Reeve (University of Cambridge) Richard J. Tarrant (Harvard University) Formerly out-of-print editions are offered as print-on-demand reprints. Furthermore, all new books in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana series are published as eBooks. The older volumes of the series are being successively digitized and made available as eBooks. If you are interested in ordering an out-of-print edition, which hasn't been yet made available as print-on-demand reprint, please contact us: [email protected] All editions of Latin texts published in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana are collected in the online database BTL Online.

The Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE) recorded his moral philosophy and reflections on life as a highly original kind of correspondence. Letters on Ethics includes vivid descriptions of town and country life in Nero's Italy, discussions of poetry and oratory, and philosophical training for Seneca's friend Lucilius. This volume, the first complete English translation in nearly a century, makes the Letters more accessible than ever before. Written as much for a general audience as for Lucilius, these engaging letters offer advice on how to deal with everything from nosy neighbors to sickness, pain, and death. Seneca uses the informal format of the letter to present the central ideas of Stoicism, for centuries the most influential philosophical system in the Mediterranean world. His lively and at times humorous expositions have made the Letters his most popular work and an enduring classic. Including an introduction and explanatory notes by Margaret Graver and A. A. Long, this authoritative edition will captivate a new generation of readers.

The Chinese Tao and the Western Trinity have a fundamental unity of theme: the unity of opposites. Both are connected with problems as broad and diverse as how to describe the entire universe, how a system can talk about itself, the relationship between symbols and realities, and the nature of signs and sacraments.

Early Skepticism and its founder, Pyrrho of Elis, were introduced to the world in the third century BCE by the poet and philosopher Timon of Phlius. This is the first book-length study in English of the fragments of Timon's works. Of his more than 100 titles, four fragments remain of a catalogue elegy, the Indalmoi, and 133 verses of the Silloi, a hexameter parody in three books in which Timon ridicules philosophers of all periods whom he observes on a trip to Hades. Dee L. Clayman reconstructs the books of the Silloi starting from an outline in Diogenes Laertius and the book numbers assigned to a few fragments by their sources. This has not been attempted since Wachsmuth's edition of 1885, and carries his approach further by careful observation of syntactic and contextual clues in the text. Using the Greek text of Lloyd-Jones and Parsons of 1983, all of the extant fragments are translated into English and discussed as literature, rather than as source material for the history of philosophy. Separate chapters demonstrate that the principle Hellenistic poets, Callimachus, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes, were aware of Timon's work specifically, and of Skepticism generally. The book concludes with a definition of "Skeptical aesthetics" that places many of the characteristic features of Hellenistic literature in a skeptical milieu.

Aristotle's Prior Analytics marks the beginning of formal logic. For Aristotle himself, this meant the discovery of a general theory of valid deductive argument, a project that he had described as either impossible or impracticable, probably not very long before he actually came up with syllogistic reasoning. A syllogism is the inferring of one proposition from two others of a particular form, and it is the subject of the Prior Analytics. The first book, to which this volume is devoted, offers a fairly coherent presentation of Aristotle's logic as a general theory of deductive argument.

Pindar-the 'Theban eagle', as Thomas Gray famously called him-has often been taken as the archetype of the sublime poet: soaring into the heavens on wings of language and inspired by visions of eternity. In this much-anticipated new study, Robert Fowler asks in what ways the concept of the sublime can still guide a reading of the greatest of the Greek lyric poets. Working with ancient and modern treatments of the topic, especially the poetry and writings of Friedrich Hoelderlin (1770-1843), arguably Pindar's greatest modern reader, he develops the case for an aesthetic appreciation of Pindar's odes as literature. Building on recent trends in criticism, he shifts the focus away from the first performance and the orality of Greek culture to reception and the experience of Pindar's odes as text. This change of emphasis yields a fresh discussion of many facets of Pindar's astonishing art, including the relation of the poems to their occasions, performativity, the poet's persona, his imagery, and his myths. Consideration of Pindar's views on divinity, transcendence, time, and the limits of language reveals him to be not only a great writer but a great thinker.

Once Upon a Time of Transition is a journey through four decades in the career of a Czech dissident and diplomat reflecting on transitions from the 20th to the 21st century. A meaningful contribution to on-going public debates, and to a better understanding of our current political situation, Ambassador Martin Palous explores the uncertain territory between philosophy and politics. Directly or indirectly, his texts were inspired by three great Central European thinkers of the 20th century, Hannah Arendt, Jan Pato?ka and Eric Voegelin. At stake is the classical Socratic question concerning the "common good" that they all raised in their investigations of the human condition -- the question that Aristotle held to direct all our actions whether we adhere to some form of metaphysics or theology, or subscribe to the post-modern nihilism so fashionable these days.

How were non-human animals treated in the Classical world, and how did ancient authors record their responses to animals in Greek and Roman life? The civilisations of Greece and Rome left detailed records of their experience and opinions of animals: in these societies, which practised mass sacrifice and large-scale public animal hunts, as well as being economically reliant on animal power and products, how were animals actually treated and how was it acceptable to treat them?
This sourcebook presents specially-prepared translations from Greek and Latin texts across several genres which give a wide-reaching sense of the place of the non-human animal in the moral register of Classical Greece and Rome. From theories of the origins of animal life and vegetarianism, literary uses of animal imagery and its role in formulating cultural identity, to vivid descriptions of vivisection, force-feeding, intensive farming, agricultural and military exploitation, and detailed accounts of animal-hunting and the trade in exotic animal products: the battleground of the modern animal rights debate is here given its historical foundation in a selection of nearly 200 passages of Classical authors from Homer to Porphyry.

The volume collects the most important papers Pierluigi Donini wrote in the last three decades with the aim of promoting a better assessment of post-hellenistic philosophy. The philosophical relevance of post-hellenistic philosophy is now widely (though not yet universally) recognized. Yet much remains to be done. The common practice of focusing each single school in itself detracts from a balanced assessment of the strategies exploited by many philosophers of the period. On the assumption that debates among schools play a major role in the philosophy of the commentators, Donini concentrates on the interaction between leading Aristotelians and Platonists and demonstrates that the developments of both systems of thought were heavily influenced by a continuous confrontation between the two schools. And whereas in cases such as Alcinous and Aspasius this is basically uncontroversial, for other authors such us Alexander, Antiochus and Plutarch the pioneering work of Donini paves the way for a better understanding of their doctrines and definitely confirms the intellectual importance of the first imperial age, when the foundations were laid of versions of both Aristotelianism and Platonism which were bound to influence the whole history of European thought, from Late Antiquity onwards.

In this book--the first volume in his groundbreaking trilogy on the emergence of western political thought--Francis Oakley explores the roots of secular political thinking by examining the political ideology and institutions of Hellenistic and late Roman antiquity and of the early European middle ages. By challenging the popular belief that the ancient Greek and Roman worlds provided the origins of our inherently secular politics, Oakley revises our understanding of the history of political theory in a fundamental and far-reaching manner that will reverberate for decades. This book lays the foundations for Oakley's next two volumes, which will develop his argument that it is in the Latin middle ages that we must seek the ideological roots of modern political secularism.

'a wealth of detailed and resourceful argument that helps us to a deeper understanding of the major philosophical issues' Terence Irwin, Times Literary Supplement

This book reconstructs the theory of signification implicit in Aristotle's De Interpretatione and its psychological background in his writing De Anima, a project often envisioned by scholars but never systematically undertaken. I begin by explaining what sort of phonetic material, according to Aristotle, can be a significans and a phone. To that end, I provide a physiological account of which animal sounds count as phone, as well as a psychological evaluation of the cognitive content of the phonai under consideration in De Interpretatione: names, verbs, and assertive sentences. I then turn to noemata, which, for Aristotle, are the psychological reference and significata of names, verbs and assertive sentences. I explain what, for Aristotle, are the logical properties a significatum must have in order to be signified by the phonetic material of a name, verb or assertive sentence, and why noemata can fulfil those logical conditions. Finally, I elucidate the significans-significatum relation without making use of the modern semantic triangle. This approach is consonant with Aristotle's methodology and breaks new ground by exploring the connection between the linguistic and psychological aspects of Aristotle's theory of signification.

This comprehensive reference guide includes over 140 entries on every aspect of Plato's thought. Plato, mathematician, philosopher and founder of the Academy in Athens, is, together with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, universally considered to have laid the foundations of western philosophy. His philosophical dialogues remain among the most widely read and influential of all philosophical texts and his enduring influence on virtually every area of philosophical enterprise cannot be disputed. This comprehensive and accessible guide to Plato's life and times includes more than 140 entries, written by a team of leading experts in the field of ancient philosophy, covering every aspect of Plato's thought. The Companion presents details of Plato's life, historical, philosophical and literary context, synopses of all the dialogues attributed to Plato, a comprehensive overview of the various features, themes and topics apparent in the dialogues, and a thorough account of his enduring influence and the various interpretative approaches applied to his thought throughout the history of philosophy. This is an essential reference tool for anyone working in the field of ancient philosophy. "The Continuum Companions" series is a major series of single volume companions to key research fields in the humanities aimed at postgraduate students, scholars and libraries. Each companion offers a comprehensive reference resource giving an overview of key topics, research areas, new directions and a manageable guide to beginning or developing research in the field. A distinctive feature of the series is that each companion provides practical guidance on advanced study and research in the field, including research methods and subject-specific resources.

Plato has often been read as denigrating the cognitive and ethical value of poetry. In his dialogues, the faculty that corresponds to the poetic the imagination is located at the lowest level of human intelligence, and so it is furthest from true understanding. Simultaneously, the Platonic dialogues violate Plato s own alleged prohibitions against quoting and imitating poets, and much of the writing in the dialogues is poetic. All too often, the voluminous literature on Plato dismisses Plato s poetic formulations as merely the unintended contradictions of an otherwise meticulous author. In Praise of Plato s Poetic Imagination asks whether this ubiquitous reading misses something truly significant in Plato s understanding of the cognitive and ethical dimensions of human existence. Throughout the dialogues, Plato formulates ideas so precisely, utilizing carefully crafted images and structures, that we must question whether his flagrant and performative poetics can be mere mistakes, and inquire into how the poetic and creative arts contribute to true understanding. This book approaches the latter question by analyzing the role of the imagination in Platonic dialogues. It argues that critiquing poetry by poetic means, just as arguing against mimesis mimetically in the Republic or writing against the written word in the Phaedrus, constitute performative contradictions that bear significant philosophical meaning on further examination. The book suggests that the elusive examples of dialectic referred to in the divided line are the dialogues themselves the putting into practice of ethical ideals. If so, the role of the imagination is to be sought in the unfolding of the dialogues themselves, not simply in what is said, but also in what takes place within the dialogues.