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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Ancient Western philosophy to c 500 > General
One of the great fears many of us face is that despite all our
effort and striving, we will discover at the end that we have
wasted our life. In A Guide to the Good Life, William B. Irvine
plumbs the wisdom of Stoic philosophy, one of the most popular and
successful schools of thought in ancient Rome, and shows how its
insight and advice are still remarkably applicable to modern lives.
In A Guide to the Good Life, Irvine offers a refreshing
presentation of Stoicism, showing how this ancient philosophy can
still direct us toward a better life. Using the psychological
insights and the practical techniques of the Stoics, Irvine offers
a roadmap for anyone seeking to avoid the feelings of chronic
dissatisfaction that plague so many of us. Irvine looks at various
Stoic techniques for attaining tranquility and shows how to put
these techniques to work in our own life. As he does so, he
describes his own experiences practicing Stoicism and offers
valuable first-hand advice for anyone wishing to live better by
following in the footsteps of these ancient philosophers. Readers
learn how to minimize worry, how to let go of the past and focus
our efforts on the things we can control, and how to deal with
insults, grief, old age, and the distracting temptations of fame
and fortune. We learn from Marcus Aurelius the importance of
prizing only things of true value, and from Epictetus we learn how
to be more content with what we have.
Finally, A Guide to the Good Life shows readers how to become
thoughtful observers of their own lives. If we watch ourselves as
we go about our daily business and later reflect on what we saw, we
can better identify the sources of distress and eventually avoid
that pain in our life. By doing this, the Stoics thought, we can
hope to attain a truly joyful life.
Epicurus on the Self reconstructs a part of Epicurean ethics which
only survives on the fragmentary papyrus rolls excavated from an
ancient library in Herculaneum, On Nature XXV. The aim of this book
is to contribute to a deeper understanding of Epicurus' moral
psychology, ethics and of its robust epistemological framework. The
book also explores how the notion of the self emerges in Epicurus'
struggle to express the individual perspective of oneself in the
process of one's holistic self-reflection as an individual
psychophysical being.
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.
Spanning the twentieth century, this 4-volume set contains titles
originally published between 1935 and 1990. The volumes explore the
concept of Idealism from its roots in the theories of Plato,
discussing many other philosophers and their perspectives, as views
have developed through the centuries, to more modern
interpretations.
This book explores the origins of western biopolitics in ancient
Greek political thought. Ojakangas's argues that the conception of
politics as the regulation of the quantity and quality of
population in the name of the security and happiness of the state
and its inhabitants is as old as the western political thought
itself: the politico-philosophical categories of classical thought,
particularly those of Plato and Aristotle, were already
biopolitical categories. In their books on politics, Plato and
Aristotle do not only deal with all the central topics of
biopolitics from the political point of view, but for them these
topics are the very keystone of politics and the art of government.
Yet although the Western understanding of politics was already
biopolitical in classical Greece, the book does not argue that the
history of biopolitics would constitute a continuum from antiquity
to the twentieth century. Instead Ojakangas argues that the birth
of Christianity entailed a crisis of the classical biopolitical
rationality, as the majority of classical biopolitical themes
concerning the government of men and populations faded away or were
outright rejected. It was not until the renaissance of the
classical culture and literature - including the translation of
Plato's and Aristotles political works into Latin - that
biopolitics became topical again in the West. The book will be of
great interest to scholars and students in the field of social and
political studies, social and political theory, moral and political
philosophy, IR theory, intellectual history, classical studies.
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.
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