We're all searching for answers to the biggest questions. How to be good? How to find calm? How to properly grieve? How to beat FOMO? How to work out what truly matters? Well, good news is that the wisest minds in history asked the exact same questions - and they found answers. Their ancient philosophy of Stoicism can show us that we today are in fact already in possession of the very tools we need to excavate this much-needed wisdom for ourselves. So into the past we go with Brigid Delaney, to a time not unlike our own: one full of pandemonium, war, plagues, pestilence, treachery, corruption, anxiety, overindulgence­ and, even then, the fear of a climate apocalypse. By learning and living the teachings of three ancient guides, Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, Brigid shows us how we can apply these lessons to our modern lives in a way that allows us to regain a sense of agency and tranquillity. Stoicism can be tough medicine to swallow, but not here-this book is awash with insight, humour and compassion. Timely and so very useful, and filled to the brim with ways you can wrest back control, here are all the reasons not to worry.

Given its brevity, Plato's Meno covers an astonishingly wide array of topics: politics, education, virtue, definition, philosophical method, mathematics, the nature and acquisition of knowledge and immortality. Its treatment of these, though profound, is tantalisingly short, leaving the reader with many unresolved questions. This book confronts the dialogue's many enigmas and attempts to solve them in a way that is both lucid and sympathetic to Plato's philosophy. Reading the dialogue as a whole, it explains how different arguments are related to one another and how the interplay between characters is connected to the philosophical content of the work. In a new departure, this book's exploration focuses primarily on the content and coherence of the dialogue in its own right and not merely in the context of other dialogues, making it required reading for all students of Plato, be they from the world of classics or philosophy.

Walking through Elysium stresses the subtle and intricate ways writers across time and space wove Vergil's underworld in Aeneid 6 into their works. These allusions operate on many levels, from the literary and political to the religious and spiritual. Aeneid 6 reshaped prior philosophical, religious, and poetic traditions of underworld descents, while offering a universalizing account of the spiritual that could accommodate prior as well as emerging religious and philosophical systems. Vergil's underworld became an archetype, a model flexible enough to be employed across genres, and periods, and among differing cultural and religious contexts. The essays in this volume speak to Vergil's incorporation of and influence on literary representations of underworlds, souls, afterlives, prophecies, journeys, and spaces, from sacred and profane to wild and civilized, tracing the impact of Vergil's underworld on authors such as Ovid, Seneca, Statius, Augustine, and Shelley, from Pagan and Christian traditions through Romantic and Spiritualist readings. Walking through Elysium asserts the deep and lasting influence of Vergil's underworld from the moment of its publication to the present day.

Plato and Xenophon are the two students of Socrates whose works have come down to us in their entirety. Their works have been studied by countless scholars over the generations; but rarely have they been brought into direct contact, outside of their use in relation to the Socratic problem. This volume changes that, by offering a collection of articles containing comparative analyses of almost the entire range of Plato's and Xenophon's writings, approaching them from literary, philosophical and historical perspectives.

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This volume examines the influence that Epicureanism and Stoicism, two philosophies of nature and human nature articulated during classical times, exerted on the development of European thought to the Enlightenment. Although the influence of these philosophies has often been noted in certain areas, such as the influence of Stoicism on the development of Christian thought and the influence of Epicureanism on modern materialism, the chapters in this volume contribute a new awareness of the degree to which these philosophies and their continued interaction informed European intellectual life well into early modern times. The influence of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophies in the areas of literature, philosophy, theology, and science are considered. Many thinkers continue to perceive these philosophies as significant alternatives for understanding the human and natural worlds. Having become incorporated into the canon of philosophical alternatives, Epicureanism and Stoicism continued to exert identifiable influences on scientific and philosophical thought at least until the middle of the eighteenth century.

* Offers nuanced, non-traditional readings of Plato * Builds upon the dialogues by bringing them into conversation with psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and contemporary Continental thought more broadly * Addresses a major gap in the literature, one which has been perpetuated down through the centuries; a gap caused by reading Plato as a metaphysician or moral or political philosopher and not, primarily, as a psychologist, a doctor of the human soul

* Offers nuanced, non-traditional readings of Plato * Builds upon the dialogues by bringing them into conversation with psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and contemporary Continental thought more broadly * Addresses a major gap in the literature, one which has been perpetuated down through the centuries; a gap caused by reading Plato as a metaphysician or moral or political philosopher and not, primarily, as a psychologist, a doctor of the human soul

Archytas of Tarentum is one of the three most important philosophers in the Pythagorean tradition, a prominent mathematician, who gave the first solution to the famous problem of doubling the cube, an important music theorist, and the leader of a powerful Greek city-state. He is famous for sending a trireme to rescue Plato from the clutches of the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius II, in 361 BC. This 2005 study was the first extensive enquiry into Archytas' work in any language. It contains original texts, English translations and a commentary for all the fragments of his writings and for all testimonia concerning his life and work. In addition there are introductory essays on Archytas' life and writings, his philosophy, and the question of authenticity. Carl A. Huffman presents an interpretation of Archytas' significance both for the Pythagorean tradition and also for fourth-century Greek thought, including the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.

Specifically focusing on the relationship between the Eudemian and the Nicomachean Ethics, this collection of essays studies major themes from Aristotle's ethics. This volume builds on a recent revival of interest in Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics, which offers an invaluable complement to the Nicomachean Ethics in the study of the development of Aristotle's ethical ideas. It brings together a series of new studies by leading scholars covering the main points of inquiry raised by the relationship between the two works, exploring their continuities and divergences. At the same time, it showcases a variety of approaches to and perspectives on the main questions posed by Aristotle's ethical thought. Investigating the Relationship Between Aristotle's Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics is offered as a contribution to long-standing debates over Aristotle's ethical thinking, as well as an inspiration for new approaches, which take both of his surviving ethical treatises seriously. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of ancient philosophy and ethics, particularly Aristotle's two ethics.

Herodotus is the epochal authority who inaugurated the European and Western consciousness of collective identity, whether in an awareness of other societies and of the nature of cultural variation itself or in the fashioning of Greek self-awareness - and necessarily that of later civilizations in?uenced by the ancient Greeks - which was perpetually in dialogue and tension with other ways of living in groups. In this book, 14 contributors explore ethnicity - the very self-understanding of belonging to a separate body of human beings - and how it evolves and consolidates (or ethnogenesis). This inquiry is focussed through the lens of Herodotus as our earliest master of ethnography, in this instance not only as the stylized portrayal of other societies, but also as an exegesis on how ethnocultural di?erentiation may a?ect the lives, and even the very existence, of one's own people. Ethnicity and Identity in Herodotus is one facet of a project that intends to bring Portuguese and English-speaking scholars of antiquity into closer cooperation. It has united a cross-section of North American classicists with a distinguished cohort of Portuguese and Brazilian experts on Greek literature and history writing in English.

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.

This volume examines the discussion of the Chaldean Oracles in the work of Proclus, as well as offering a translation and commentary of Proclus' Treatise On Chaldean Philosophy. Spanu assesses whether Proclus' exegesis of the Chaldean Oracles can be used by modern research to better clarify the content of Chaldean doctrine or must instead be abandoned because it represents a substantial misinterpretation of originary Chaldean teachings. The volume is augmented by Proclus' Greek text, with English translation and commentary. Proclus and the Chaldean Oracles will be of interest to researchers working on Neoplatonism, Proclus and theurgy in the ancient world.

Fashion | Sense is designed to explode "fashion," and with it, the stigma in philosophy against fashion's superficiality. Fashion appears to be altogether differently occupied, disingenuous and insubstantial, even sophistic in its pretense to peddle surfaces as if they were something deep. But is fashion's apparent beguilement more philosophical than it seems? And is philosophy's longing for exposed depth concealing fashion in its anti-fashion stance? Using primarily ancient Greek texts, peppered with allusions to their echoes across the history of philosophy and contemporary fashion and pop culture, Gwenda-lin Grewal not only examines the rift between fashion and philosophy, but also challenges the claim that fashion is modern. Indeed, fashion's quarrel with philosophy may be at least as ancient as that infamous quarrel between philosophy and poetry alluded to in Plato's Republic. And the quest for fashion's origins, as if a quest for a neutrally-outfitted self, stripped of the self-awareness that comes with thinking, prompts questions about human agency and our immersion in time. The touch of reality's fabric bristles in our relationship to our looks, not simply through the structure of clothes but in the plot of our wearing them. Meanwhile, the fashion of our words sharpens our meaning like a cutting silhouette. Grewal's own writing is playfully and daringly self-conscious, aware of its style and the entrapment it arouses from the very first line. The reactions provoked by fashion's flair, not only among the philosophical set but also among those who would never deck themselves out in the title, "philosopher," show it forth as perhaps philosophy's most important and underestimated doppelganger.

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."

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The first to systematically compare biblical, Ancient Near Eastern and Greek creation accounts and to show that Genesis 1-3 is heavily indebted to Plato's Timaeus and other cosmogonies by Greek natural philosophers.

"Pleasure in Aristotle's Ethics" provides an innovative and crucially important account of the role of pleasure and desire in Aristotle's ethics. Michael Weinman seeks to overcome common impasses in the mainstream interpretation of Aristotle's ethical philosophy through the careful study of Aristotle's account of pleasure in the human, but not merely human, good, thus presenting a new way in which we can improve our understanding of Aristotle's ethics. Weinman asserts that we should read Aristotle's ethical arguments in the light of his views on the cosmos (the living whole we call nature) and the never-changing principles informing that living whole. Weinman shows that what, above all else, emerges from this new re-reading of the ethical writings is a new understanding of human desire as the natural stretching ourselves toward pleasure, which is the good, and which is the good by nature. These lessons will demonstrate why we must understand the virtues as unified, why the good described in "Nicomachean Ethics" is both a human and greater-than-human good, and why the reasoning and desiring parts of the soul must be understood as companions. The necessary but as yet unrealised account of pleasure this book advances is integral to improving our understanding of Aristotle's ethics. This fascinating book will be of interest to anyone with an interest in Aristotle's ethical theory and in particular his "Nicomachean Ethics".

John Henderson focuses on three key Letters visiting three Roman villas, and reveals their meaning as designs for contrasting lives. Seneca brings the philosophical epistle to Latin literature, creating models for moralizing which feature self-criticism, parody, and animated revision of myth. The Stoic moralist wrests writing away from Greek gurus and texts, and recasts it into critical thinking in Latin terms, within a Roman context. The Letters embody critical thinking on metaphor and translation, self-transformation and cultural tradition.

Nietzsche, Tension, and the Tragic Disposition examines the role that tension plays in Nietzsche s recovery, in his mature thought, of the Greek tragic disposition. This is achieved by examining the ontological structure to the tragic disposition presented in his earliest work on the Greeks and then exploring its presence in points of tension that emerge in the more mature concerns with nobility. In pursuing this ontological foundation, the work builds upon the centrality of a naturalist argument derived from the influence of the pre-Platonic Greeks. It is the ontological aspect of the tragic disposition, identified in Nietzsche s earliest interpretations of Greek phusis and the inherent tensions of the chthonic present in this hylemorphic foundation, that are examined to demonstrate the importance of the notion of tension to Nietzsche s recovery of a new nobility. By bringing to light the functional importance of tension for the Greeks in the ontological, varying points of tension can be identified that demonstrate a reemergence at different aspects in Nietzsche's later work. Once these aspects are elaborated, the evolving influence of tension is shown to play a central role in the re-emergence of the noble that possesses the tragic disposition. With solid argumentation linking Nietzsche with pre=Platonic Greek tradition, Matthew Tones's book brings new insight to studies of metaphysics, ontology, naturalism, and German, continental, and Greek philosophies."

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.

Nietzsche and Classical Greek Philosophy: Beautiful and Diseased explains Friedrich Nietzsche's ambivalence toward Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Daw-Nay N. R. Evans Jr. argues that Nietzsche's relationship to his classical Greek predecessors is more subtle and systematic than previously believed. He contends that Nietzsche's seemingly personal attacks on his philosophical rivals hide philosophically sophisticated disputes that deserve greater attention. Evans demonstrates how Nietzsche's encounters with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle reveal the philosophical influence they exercised on Nietzsche's thought and the philosophical problems that he sought to address through those encounters. Having illustrated Nietzsche's ambivalence Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Evans draws on Nietzsche's admiration for Heraclitus as a counterpoint to Plato to suggest that the classical Greek philosophers are just as important to Nietzsche's thought as their pre-Socratic precursors. This book will appeal to those interested in continental philosophy, ancient philosophy, and German studies.

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.