Returning to the Greek understanding of art to rethink its capacities, Creation and the Function of Art focuses on the relationship between techne and phusis (nature). Moving away from the theoretical Platonism which dominates contemporary understandings of art, this book instead reinvigorates Aristotelian causation. Beginning with the Greek topos and turning to insights from philosophy, pure mathematics, psychoanalysis and biology, Jason Tuckwell re-problematises techne in functional terms. This book examines the deviations at play within logical forms, the subject, and upon phusis to better situate the role of the function in poiesis (art). In so doing, Tuckwell argues that art concerns a genuinely creative labour that cannot be resolved via an ontological or epistemological problem, but which instead constitutes an encounter with the problematic. As such, techne is shown to be a property of the living, of intelligence coupled to action, that not only enacts poiesis or art, but indicates a broader role for creative deviation in nature.

The History and Philosophy of Science: A Reader brings together seminal texts from antiquity to the end of the nineteenth century and makes them accessible in one volume for the first time. With readings from Aristotle, Aquinas, Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Lavoisier, Linnaeus, Darwin, Faraday, and Maxwell, it analyses and discusses major classical, medieval and modern texts and figures from the natural sciences. Grouped by topic to clarify the development of methods and disciplines and the unification of theories, each section includes an introduction, suggestions for further reading and end-of-section discussion questions, allowing students to develop the skills needed to: read, interpret, and critically engage with central problems and ideas from the history and philosophy of science understand and evaluate scientific material found in a wide variety of professional and popular settings appreciate the social and cultural context in which scientific ideas emerge identify the roles that mathematics plays in scientific inquiry Featuring primary sources in all the core scientific fields - astronomy, physics, chemistry, and the life sciences - The History and Philosophy of Science: A Reader is ideal for students looking to better understand the origins of natural science and the questions asked throughout its history. By taking a thematic approach to introduce influential assumptions, methods and answers, this reader illustrates the implications of an impressive range of values and ideas across the history and philosophy of Western science.

A new account of Aristotle's Ethics, this book argues for the central importance of the concept of techne or craft in Aristotle's moral theory. Exploring the importance of techne in the Platonic and pre-Platonic intellectual context in which Aristotle was writing, Tom Angier here shows that this concept has an important role in Aristotle's Ethics that has rarely been studied in Anglo-American scholarship. Through close-analysis of the primary texts, this book uses the focus on techne to systematically critique and renew Aristotelian moral philosophy. Techne in Aristotle's Ethics provides a novel and challenging approach to one of the Ancient World's most enduring intellectual legacies.

The volumes of the 'Symposium Aristotelicum' have become obligatory reference works for Aristotle studies. In this eighteenth volume a distinguished group of scholars offers a chapter-by-chapter study of the first book of the Metaphysics. Aristotle presents here his philosophical project as a search for wisdom, which is found in the knowledge of the first principles allowing us to explain whatever exists. As he shows, earlier philosophers had been seeking such a wisdom, though they had divergent views on what these first principles were. Before Aristotle sets out his own views, he offers a critical examination of his predecessors' views, ending up with a lengthy discussion of Plato's doctrine of Forms. Book Alpha is not just a fundamental text for reconstructing the early history of Greek philosophy; it sets the agenda for Aristotle's own project of wisdom on the basis of what he had learned from his predecessors. The volume comprises eleven chapters, each dealing with a different section of the text, and a new edition of the Greek text of Metaphysics Alpha by Oliver Primavesi, based on an exhaustive examination of the complex manuscript and indirect tradition. The introduction to the edition offers new insights into the question which has haunted editors of the Metaphysics since Bekker, namely the relation between the two divergent traditions of the text.

Maximus the Confessor (c.580-662) has become one of the most discussed figures in contemporary patristic studies. This is partly due to the relatively recent discovery and critical edition of his works in various genres, including On the Ascetic Life, Four Centuries on Charity, Two Centuries on Theology and the Incarnation, On the 'Our Father', two separate Books of Difficulties, addressed to John and to Thomas, Questions and Doubts, Questions to Thalassius, Mystagogy and the Short Theological and Polemical Works. The impact of these works reached far beyond the Greek East, with his involvement in the western resistance to imperial heresy, notably at the Lateran Synod in 649. Together with Pope Martin I (649-53 CE), Maximus the Confessor and his circle were the most vocal opponents of Constantinople's introduction of the doctrine of monothelitism. This dispute over the number of wills in Christ became a contest between the imperial government and church of Constantinople on the one hand, and the bishop of Rome in concert with eastern monks such as Maximus, John Moschus, and Sophronius, on the other, over the right to define orthodoxy. An understanding of the difficult relations between church and state in this troubled period at the close of Late Antiquity is necessary for a full appreciation of Maximus' contribution to this controversy. The editors of this volume aim to provide the political and historical background to Maximus' activities, as well as a summary of his achievements in the spheres of theology and philosophy, especially neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Greek Heroes in and out of Hades is a study on heroism and mortality from Homer to Plato. In a collection of thirty enjoyable essays, Stamatia Dova combines intertextual research and thought-provoking analysis to shed new light on concepts of the hero in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Bacchylides 5, Plato's Symposium, and Euripides' Alcestis. Through systematic readings of a wide range of seemingly unrelated texts, the author offers a cohesive picture of heroic character in a variety of literary genres. Her characterization of Achilles, Odysseus, and Heracles is artfully supported by a comprehensive overview of the theme of descent to the underworld in Homer, Bacchylides, and Euripides. Aimed at the specialist as well as the general reader, Greek Heroes in and out of Hades brings innovative Classical scholarship and insightful literary criticism to a wide audience.

The decline of the Roman Empire gave rise to two problems, which combined to form one of the most perplexing philosophical questions of late antiquity. On the one hand, Rome found itself under constant military threat as various tribes from the north an east encroached along its borders to fill the power vacuum left by the receding Empire. On the other hand, adherents to the Empire's new official faith - Christianity - found themselves without clear guidance as to what military roles their faith would permit. The death of the apostles has left Christians without ongoing revelatory guidance, and the New Testament writings alone were not definitive on the subject. The question thus became: 'Can a Christian answer the Empire's call to military duty and still have a clear conscience before God?' Fifth-century philosopher St Augustine of Hippo sought to provide an answer to the question. His approach formed the foundation of the 'just war' tradition, which has has enormous influence upon moral-philosophical thought on military issues in the West ever since.This major new study identifies Augustine's fundamental premises, reconstructs his judt-war theory, and critically evaluates the reconstructed theory in light of the historical context and neo-Platonic and Christian philosophical considerations. John Mark Mattox PhD is a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. He has lectured and published widely on military ethics, and has taught at the United States Militar Academy, West Point, the University of Maryland in Europe and the NATO School, Oberammergau, Germany.

Anaximander, the sixth century BCE philosopher of Miletus, is often credited as being the instigator of both science and philosophy. The first recorded philosopher to posit the idea of the boundless cosmos, he was also the first to attempt to explain the origins of the world and humankind in rational terms. Anaximander's philosophy encompasses theories of justice, cosmogony, geometry, cosmology, zoology and meteorology. "Anaximander: A Re-assessment" draws together these wide-ranging threads into a single, coherent picture of the man, his worldview and his legacy to the history of thought. Arguing that Anaximander's statements are both apodeictic and based on observation of the world around him, Andrew Gregory examines how Anaximander's theories can all be construed in such a way that they are consistent with and supportive of each other. This includes the tenet that the philosophical elements of Anaximander's thought (his account of the" apeiron," the extant fragment) can be harmonised to support his views on the natural world. The work further explores how these theories relate to early Greek thought and in particular conceptions of theogony and meterology in Hesiod and Homer.

Dynamic Reading examines the reception history of Epicurean philosophy through a series of eleven case studies, which range chronologically from the latter days of the Roman Republic to late twentieth-century France and America. Rather than attempting to separate an original Epicureanism from its later readings and misreadings, this collection studies the philosophy together with its subsequent reception, focusing in particular on the ways in which it has provided terms and conceptual tools for defining how we read and respond to texts, artwork, and the world more generally. Whether it helps us to characterize the "swerviness" of literary influence, the transformative effects of philosophy, or the "events" that shape history, Epicureanism has been a dynamic force in the intellectual history of the West. These essays seek to capture some of that dynamism.

The Problemata physica is the third longest work in the corpus Aristotelicum, but among the least studied. It consists of 38 books, over 900 chapters, covering a vast range of subjects, including medicine and music, sex and salt water, fatigue and fruit, animals and astronomy, moderation and malodorous things, wind and wine, bruises and barley, voice and virtue. Aristotelian Problemata Physica: Philosophical and Scientific Investigations consists of 21 essays by scholars of ancient Greek philosophy and science. These essays shed light on this mysterious work, providing insights into the nature of philosophical and scientific inquiry in the Lyceum during Aristotle's life and especially in the years following his death.

Aristotle described the scientific explanation of universal or general facts as deducing them through scientific demonstrations, that is, through syllogisms that met requirements of logical validity and explanatoriness which he first formulated. In Chapters 19-23, he adds arguments for the further logical restrictions that scientific demonstrations can neither be indefinitely long nor infinitely extendible through the interposition of new middle terms. Chapters 24-26 argue for the superiority of universal over particular demonstration, of affirmative over negative demonstration, and of direct negative demonstration over demonstration to the impossible. Chapters 27-34 discuss different aspects of sciences and scientific understanding, allowing us to distinguish between sciences, and between scientific understanding and other kinds of cognition, especially opinion. Philoponus' comments on these chapters are interesting especially because of his metaphysical analysis of universal predication and his understanding of the notion of subordinate sciences. We learn from his commentary that Philoponus believed in Platonic Forms as inherent in, and posterior to, the Divine Intellect, but ascribed to Aristotle an interpretation of Plato's Forms as independent substances, prior to the Demiurgic Intellect. A very important notion from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics is that of the 'subordination' of sciences, i.e. the idea that some sciences depend on 'higher' ones for some of their principles. Philoponus goes beyond Aristotle in suggesting a taxonomy of sciences, in which the subordinate science concerns the same scientific genus as the superordinate, but a different species.