Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.

In this book, Joseph Torchia, OP, explores the mid-rank of the soul theme in Plotinus and Augustine with a special focus on its metaphysical, epistemological, and moral implications for each thinker's intellectual outlooks. For both, human existence assumes the character of a prolonged journey-or, in the nautical imagery they both employ, an extended voyage. Augustine's account incorporates theological significance, addressing the ontological difference between God and creatures. As a rational creature, the soul stands mid-way between God and corporeal natures and, in broader terms, between eternity and temporality. Plotinus and Augustine on the Mid-Rank of Soul: Navigating Two Worlds encompasses two parts: Part I addresses the significance that Plotinus attributes to the soul's mid-rank within the broader context of his understanding of universal order, and Part II delineates Augustine's interpretation of the intermediary status of the soul with an ongoing reference to his spiritual and intellectual peregrinatio, as recounted in the Confessions.

Stephen Scully both offers a reading of Hesiod's Theogony and traces the reception and shadows of this authoritative Greek creation story in Greek and Roman texts up to Milton's own creation myth, which sought to "soar above th' Aonian Mount [i.e., the Theogony] ... and justify the ways of God to men." Scully also considers the poem in light of Near Eastern creation stories, including the Enuma elish and Genesis, as well as the most striking of modern "scientific myths," Freud's Civilization and its Discontents. Scully reads Hesiod's poem as a hymn to Zeus and a city-state creation myth, arguing that Olympus is portrayed as an idealized polity and - with but one exception - a place of communal harmony. This reading informs his study of the Theogony's reception in later writings about polity, discord, and justice. The rich and various story of reception pays particular attention to the long Homeric Hymns, Solon, the Presocratics, Pindar, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and Plato in the Archaic and Classical periods; to the Alexandrian scholars, Callimachus, Euhemerus, and the Stoics in the Hellenistic period; to Ovid, Apollodorus, Lucan, a few Church fathers, and the Neoplatonists in the Roman period. Tracing the poem's reception in the Byzantine, medieval, and early Renaissance, including Petrarch and Erasmus, the book ends with a lengthy exploration of Milton's imitations of the poem in Paradise Lost. Scully also compares what he considers Hesiod's artful interplay of narrative, genealogical lists, and keen use of personified abstractions in the Theogony to Homeric narrative techniques and treatment of epic verse.

others in his discipline tend not to bring their studies to bear on the substance of the dialogues. Conversely, philosophical interpreters have generally felt free to approach the extensive logical and ontological, cosmological, and political doctrines of the later dialogues without concern for questions of literary style s and form. Given, moreover, the equally sharp distinction between the diSCiplines of philosophy and cultural history, it has been too easy to treat this bulk of doctrine without a pointed sense of the specific historical audience to which it is addressed. As a result, the pervasive tendency has been the reverse of that which has dominated the reading of the early dialogues: here we tend to neglect drama and pedagogy and to focus exclusively on philosophical substance. Both in general and particularly in regard to the later dialogues, the difficulty is that our predispositions have the force of self-fulfilling prophecy. Are we sure that the later Plato's apparent loss of interest in the dramatic is not, on the contrary, a reflection of our limited sense of the integrity of drama and sub stance, form and content? What we lack eyes for, of course, we will not see. The basic purpose of this essay is to develop eyes, as it were, for that integrity. The best way to do this, I think, is to take a later dialogue and to try to read it as a whole of form, content, and communicative function."

With a novel approach to Aristotle's zoology, this study looks at animals as creatures of nature (physis) and reveals a scientific discourse that, in response to his predecessors, exiles logos as reason and pursues the logos intrinsic to animals' bodies, empowering them to sense the world and live. The volume explores Aristotle's conception of animals through a discussion of his ad hoc methodology to study them, including the pertinence of the soul to such a study, and the rise of zoology as a branch of natural philosophy. For Aristotle, animal life stems from the body in the space of existence and revolves around sensation, which is entwined with pleasure, pain, and desire. Lack of human reason is irrelevant to an understanding of the richness of animal life and cognition. In sum, the reader will acquire knowledge of the "animal as such," which lay at the core of Aristotle's agenda and required a study of its own, separate from plants and the elements. This book is intended for students of the history of science, ancient biology, and philosophy and all those who, from different fields, are interested in animal studies and the human-animal relation.

The modern global economy and discipline of economics place mathematical calculation above human concern. However, a re-reading of Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy can positively highlight the contrast in values and spirit of the early medieval European world with our own scientific age. This book discusses the historical and cultural contexts that influenced Boethius' writing and explores how Consolation offers a radically different understanding of economic concepts: wealth from inner happiness and virtues, poverty from hoarding outer possessions, self-sufficiency in the greater whole, enlightenment through misfortune, and development as fruition from the Good. These economic considerations resonate with a range of heterodox economic perspectives, such as Ecological and Buddhist Economics. The fundamental revaluations gained through Boethius pose a critique of mainstream neoclassical and neoliberal economics: to consumerism, avarice, growth and technology fetishism, and market rationality. These economic foundations resonate into a time when global crises raise the question of fundamental human priorities, offering alternatives to an ever-expanding industrial market economy designed for profit, and helping to avoid irrevocable socio-ecological disasters. The issues raised and questioned in this book will be of significant interest to readers with concern for pluralist approaches to economics, philosophy, classics, ancient history and theology.

It explores how the Presocratic natural philosophers and early Hippocratic medical writers developed theories which drew from wider investigations into physiology and psychology, the natural world and the self, while also engaging with wider literary depictions and established cultural beliefs. attention is devoted from the outset to sleep and dreams in Homer and the mythic tradition, as well as to depictions across lyric, drama and historiography.

The question The Republic sets out to define is "What is justice?" Given the difficulty of this task, Socrates and his interlocutors are led into a discussion of justice in the city, which Socrates suggests may help them see justice in the person, but on a grander (and therefore easier to discuss) scale ("suppose that a short-sighted person had been asked by some one to read small letters from a distance; and it occurred to some one else that they might be found in another place which was larger and in which the letters were larger," 368, trans. Jowett). Some critics (such as Julia Annas) have adhered to this premise that the dialogue's entire political construct exists to serve as an analogy for the individual soul, in which there are also various potentially competing or conflicting "members" that might be integrated and orchestrated under a just and productive "government."

Hellenistic philosophy concerns the thought of the Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics, the most influential philosophical groups in the era between the death of Alexander the Great (323 BCE) and the defeat of the last Greek stronghold in the ancient world (31 BCE). The Routledge Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy provides accessible yet rigorous introductions to the theories of knowledge, ethics, and physics belonging to each of the three schools, explores the fascinating ways in which interschool rivalries shaped the philosophies of the era, and offers unique insight into the relevance of Hellenistic views to issues today, such as environmental ethics, consumerism, and bioethics. Eleven countries are represented among the Handbook's 35 authors, whose chapters were written specifically for this volume and are organized thematically into six sections: The people, history, and methods of Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism. Earlier philosophical influences on Hellenistic thought, such as Aristotle, Socrates, and Presocratics. The soul, perception, and knowledge. God, fate, and the primary principles of nature and the universe. Ethics, political theory, society, and community. Hellenistic philosophy's relevance to contemporary life. Spanning from the ancient past to the present, this Handbook aims to show that Hellenistic philosophy has much to offer all thinking people of the twenty-first century.

This volume features original essays on the philosophy of love. The essays are organized thematically around the past, present, and future of philosophical thinking about love. In Part I, the contributors explore what we can learn from the history of philosophical thinking about love. The chapters cover Ancient Greek thinkers, namely Plato and Aristotle, as well as Kierkegaard's critique of preferential love and Erich Fromm's mystic interpretation of sexual relations. Part II covers current conceptions and practices of love. These chapters explore how love changes over time, the process of falling in love, the erotic dimension of romantic love, and a new interpretation of grand-parental love. Finally, Part III looks at the future of love. These chapters address technological developments related to love, such as algorithm-driven dating apps and robotic companions, as well as the potential of polyamory as a future romantic ideal. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in moral philosophy and social and political philosophy who are working on issues related to the philosophy of love.

"Concept" is a central notion in modern philosophy that also influences other disciplines like psychology and linguistics. The author compares modern theories to the work of Aristotle as the first philosopher with an extensive corpus and one of the predecessors both of classical theory and of modal theories of "concepts". It is surprising that there is no equivalent term for "concept" in his work. Both pathema and logos are central to his theory of language and thought. Therefore, this book describes which notion in Aristotle's writing comes closest to "concept" and whether or not it generates a precise theory.

This title was first published in 2000. This work identifies the differences between the Russian intellectual approach to reading Plato and that of other European countries. This study offers a complex perspective on Russian philosophical learnings up to 1930. The book contains five chapters with the first aiming to provide the general institutional context in which Russian 19th century Plato scholarship developed, caught as it were, between the rise of the historical sciences and the heavy hand of state interference in standardizing the educational system in the name of nation building and modernization. The second chapter attempts to illustrate how Plato served as a reference in Russian philosophical culture and the third deals with aspects of Russian philosophy of law. In the fourth chapter, the author shifts his approach to compare and contrast a number of reactions to a single dialogue, the "Republic" and in the final concluding chapter, addresses the question of whether it is legitimate to speak of a Russian Platonism.

Whereas the history of demography as a social science has been amply explored, that of the construction of the concept of population has been neglected. Specialists systematically ignore a noteworthy paradox: strictly speaking, the great intellectual figures of the past dealt with in this book have not produced demographic theories or doctrines as such, but they have certainly given some thought to population at both levels. First, the central epistemological and methodological orientation of the book is presented. Ideas on population, far from being part of the harmonious advancement of knowledge are the product of their context, that is evidently demographic, but also economic, political and above all intellectual. Then the ideas on population of Plato, Bodin, the French mercantilists, Quesnay and the physiocrats are examined under this light. The last chapter addresses the implicit philosophical, economic and political issues of population thought.

Much of the work that has been done on virtue has been devoted to getting virtue ethics a seat at the theoretical table. It has been concerned with showing that virtue ethics can provide a satisfactory account of right action to rival accounts offered by consequentialism and deontology. This volume of essays explores the nitty-gritty details of particular virtues. It includes original contributions from a number of leading scholars in virtue ethics. Most of the virtues discussed - such as ambition, cheerfulness, creativity, magnificence, pride, wit, and wonder - have been almost wholly neglected by contemporary ethicists. The volume also includes coverage of other virtues that have received a fair amount of attention in recent years, such as charity, hope, justice, practical wisdom, and temperance. Here the essays address largely ignored dimensions of these virtues and show how these discussions can enrich our understanding of neglected virtues. Neglected Virtues is a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on virtue ethics. Its focus on individual virtues, while not meant to be exhaustive, will open new avenues for future research in this rapidly growing area of ethics and moral philosophy.

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy is an annual publication which includes original articles, some of substantial length, on a wide range of topics in ancient philosophy, and review articles of major books. Contributors include Mary Margaret Mackenzie, Aryeh Finkelberg, Charles H. Kahn, Christopher Shields, Paul Woodruff, Christopher Gill, Rosalind Hursthouse, G.E.R Lloyd, Henry Maconi, and David Bostock.

Springs of Western Civilization is a comparative exploration of the Hebraic and classical traditions that form our heritage. In examining these traditions before they united, James Arieti locates the catalyst for their bonding in two related circumstances: adoption by the biblical world of an eclectic melange of Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism that, in the centuries on each side of the Common Era, produced consensus models both of God and of a warmhearted individual; and belief that the writings of Plato were literally true-a belief that arose from failing to understand his playful, metaphorical techniques of composition. Among the many effects of the mingling of biblical and philosophical values was a re-focusing of literature from the heroes of epic to the compassionate characters we recognize as Menschen.

The Metaphysics of Good and Evil is the first, full-length contemporary defence, from the perspective of analytic philosophy, of the Scholastic theory of good and evil - the theory of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and most medieval and Thomistic philosophers. Goodness is analysed as obedience to nature. Evil is analysed as the privation of goodness. Goodness, surprisingly, is found in the non-living world, but in the living world it takes on a special character. The book analyses various kinds of goodness, showing how they fit into the Scholastic theory. The privation theory of evil is given its most comprehensive contemporary defence, including an account of truthmakers for truths of privation and an analysis of how causation by privation should be understood. In the end, all evil is deviance - a departure from the goodness prescribed by a thing's essential nature. Key Features: Offers a comprehensive defence of a venerable metaphysical theory, conducted using the concepts and methods of analytic philosophy. Revives a much neglected approach to the question of good and evil in their most general nature. Shows how Aristotelian-Thomistic theory has more than historical relevance to a fundamental philosophical issue, but can be applied in a way that is both defensible and yet accessible to the modern philosopher. Provides what, for the Scholastic philosopher, is arguably the only solid metaphysical foundation for a separate treatment of the origins of morality.

The only book introducing Plato and Aristotle for literature students; it assumes no prior knowledge of philosophy so is pitched at the ideal level Uses literary examples all students will be familiar with from across the world and time periods so will be of relevance at every stage of study Ideal text book for those studying literary theory as its foundations are in Plato and Aristotle The book's usefulness will last throughout students' degrees and courses as the influence of Plato and Aristotle is evident in all periods/locations

The only book introducing Plato and Aristotle for literature students; it assumes no prior knowledge of philosophy so is pitched at the ideal level Uses literary examples all students will be familiar with from across the world and time periods so will be of relevance at every stage of study Ideal text book for those studying literary theory as its foundations are in Plato and Aristotle The book's usefulness will last throughout students' degrees and courses as the influence of Plato and Aristotle is evident in all periods/locations

The present work has three principal objectives: (1) to fix the chronology of the development of the pre-Euclidean theory of incommensurable magnitudes beginning from the first discoveries by fifth-century Pythago reans, advancing through the achievements of Theodorus of Cyrene, Theaetetus, Archytas and Eudoxus, and culminating in the formal theory of Elements X; (2) to correlate the stages of this developing theory with the evolution of the Elements as a whole; and (3) to establish that the high standards of rigor characteristic of this evolution were intrinsic to the mathematicians' work. In this third point, we wish to counterbalance a prevalent thesis that the impulse toward mathematical rigor was purely a response to the dialecticians' critique of foundations; on the contrary, we shall see that not until Eudoxus does there appear work which may be described as purely foundational in its intent. Through the examination of these problems, the present work will either alter or set in a new light virtually every standard thesis about the fourth-century Greek geometry. I. THE PRE-EUCLIDEAN THEORY OF INCOMMENSURABLE MAGNITUDES The Euclidean theory of incommensurable magnitudes, as preserved in Book X of the Elements, is a synthetic masterwork. Yet there are detect able seams in its structure, seams revealed both through terminology and through the historical clues provided by the neo-Platonist commentator Proclus."

If you've ever wondered why Plato staged Timaeus as a kind of sequel to Republic, or who its unnamed missing fourth might be; or why he joined Critias to Timaeus, and whether or not that strange dialogue is unfinished; or what we should make of the written critique of writing in Phaedrus, and of that dialogue's apparent lack of unity; or what is the purpose of the long discussion of the One in the second half of Parmenides, and how it relates to the objections made to the Theory of Forms in its first half; or if the revisionists or unitarians are right about Philebus, and why its Socrates seems less charming than usual, or whether or not Cratylus takes place after Euthyphro, and whether its far-fetched etymologies accomplish any serious philosophical purpose; or why the philosopher Socrates describes in the central digression of Theaetetus is so different from Socrates himself; then you will enjoy reading the continuation of William H. F. Altman's Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (Lexington; 2012), where he considers the pedagogical connections behind "the post-Republic dialogues" from Timaeus to Theaetetus in the context of "the Reading Order of Plato's dialogues."

Widely praised for its accessibility and its concentration on the metaphysical issues that are most central to the history of Greek philosophy, Greek Philosophy: Thales to Aristotle offers a valuable introduction to the works of the Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle.

For the Third Edition, Professor Allen has provided new translations of Socrates' speech in the Symposium and of the first five chapters of Aristotle's Categories, as well as new selections bearing on Aristotle's Theory of Infinity, Continuity, and Discreteness. The book also contains a general introduction which sets forth Professor Allen's distinctive and now widely accepted interpretation of the development of Greek philosophy and science, along with selective bibliography, and lists of suggested readings.