Method and Metaphysics presents twenty-six essays in ancient philosophy by Jonathan Barnes, one of the most admired and influential scholars of his generation. The essays span four decades of his career, and are drawn from a wide variety of sources: many of them will be relatively unknown even to specialists in ancient philosophy. Several essays are now translated from the original French and made available in English for the first time; others have been substantially revised for republication here.
The volume opens with eight essays about the interpretation of ancient philosophical texts, and about the relationship between philosophy and its history. The next five essays examine the methods of ancient philosophers. The third section comprises thirteen essays about metaphysical topics, from the Presocratics to the late Platonists. This collection will be a rich feast for students and scholars of ancient philosophy.

What has Alexander the Great to do with Jesus Christ? Or the legendary king's conquest of the Persian Empire (335-23 BCE) to do with the prophecies of the Old Testament? In many ways, the early Christian writings on Alexander and his legacy provide a lens through which it is possible to view the shaping of the literature and thought of the early church in the Greek East and the Latin West. This book articulates that fascinating discourse for the first time by focusing on the early Christian use of Alexander. Delving into an impressively deep pool of patristic literature written between 130-313 CE, Christian Thrue Djurslev offers original interpretations of various important authors, from the learned lawyer Tertullian to the 'Christian Cicero' Lactantius, and from the apologist Tatian to the first church historian Eusebius. He demonstrates that the early Christian adaptations of the Alexandrian myths created a new tradition that has continued to develop and expand ever since. This innovative work of reception studies is important reading for all scholars of Alexander the Great and early church history.

Protagoras is one of Plato's most delightfully comic and playful dialogues, and is also one of his most important. This new edition of Plato's Protagoras provides a rigorously clear and accurate translation that communicates Plato's puns, metaphors, figures of speech, and other verbal techniques naturally; allowing scholars to feel the full scope of Plato's rhetoric. Translators James Arieti and Roger Barrus confront and discuss the critical linguistic choices made in rendering difficult or obscure terms into an easily readable and understandable rendition. They also include an historical overview of the intellectual milieu of fifth-century B.C.E. Athens, careful biographies of the dialogues major characters, notes that discuss the major issues, citations of the literary and philosophical parallels, and call attention to rhetorical tactics. In addition, Arieti and Barrus provide appendices on the challenges of translating Plato's Greek into English, the diverse modern interpretations of the ode by Simonides that Socrates and Protagoras lampoon, the relationship of the dialogue to Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations, and a glossary elucidating many of the key words in the dialogue.

Ian Crombie s impressive volumes provide a comprehensive interpretation of Plato s doctrines. Volume 1 contains topics of more general interest and is mainly concerned with what Plato has to say in the fields of moral philosophy, political philosophy, the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion.

Proclus' Commentary on Plato's dialogue Timaeus is arguably the most important commentary on a text of Plato, offering unparalleled insights into eight centuries of Platonic interpretation. This edition offers the first new English translation of the work for nearly two centuries, building on significant recent advances in scholarship on Neoplatonic commentators. It provides an invaluable record of early interpretations of Plato's dialogue, while also presenting Proclus' own views on the meaning and significance of Platonic philosophy. The present volume, the first in the edition, deals with what may be seen as the prefatory material of the Timaeus. In it Socrates gives a summary of the political arrangements favoured in the Republic, and Critias tells the story of how news of the defeat of Atlantis by ancient Athens had been brought back to Greece from Egypt by the poet and politician Solon.

A great thinker once said that "all philosophy is merely footnotes to Plato." Through Plato, Father O'Connell provides us here with an introduction to all philosophy. Designed for beginning students in philosophy, Plato on the Human Paradox examines and confronts human nature and the eternal questions concerning human nature through the dialogues of Plato, focusing on the Apology, Phaedo, Books III-VI of the Republic, Meno, Symposium, and O'Connell presents us here with an introduction to Plato through the philosopher's quest to define "human excellence" or arete in terms of defining what "human being" is body and soul, focusing on Plato's preoccupations with the questions of how and what it means to have a "good life" in relation to or as opposed to a "moral life."

This volume re-examines some of the major themes at the intersection of traditional and contemporary metaphysics. The book uses as a point of departure Francisco Suarez's Metaphysical Disputations published in 1597. Minimalist metaphysics in empiricist/pragmatist clothing have today become mainstream in analytic philosophy. Independently of this development, the progress of scholarship in ancient and medieval philosophy makes clear that traditional forms of metaphysics have affinities with some of the streams in contemporary analytic metaphysics. The book brings together leading contemporary metaphysicians to investigate the viability of a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics.

The Sophists, the Socratics and the Cynics had one important characteristic in common: they mainly used spoken natural language as their instrument of investigation, and they were more concerned to discover human nature in its various practical manifestations than the facts of the physical world. The Sophists are too often remembered merely as the opponents of Socrates and Plato. Rankin discusses what social needs prompted the development of their theories and provided a market for their teaching. Five prominent Sophists - Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias and Thrasymachus - are looked at individually. The author discusses their origins, aims and arguments, and relates the issues they focussed on to debates apparent in contemporary literature. Sophists, Socratics and Cynics, first published in 1983, also traces the sophistic strand in Greek thought beyond the great barrier of Plato, emphasising continuity with the Cynics, and concludes with a look forward to Epicureans and Stoics.

Originally published between 1920-70, The History of Civilization was a landmark in early twentieth century publishing. It was published at a formative time within the social sciences, and during a period of decisive historical discovery. The aim of the general editor, C.K. Ogden, was to summarize the most up to date findings and theories of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists. This reprinted material is available as a set or in the following groupings: * Prehistory and Historical Ethnography Set of 12: 0-415-15611-4: GBP800.00 * Greek Civilization Set of 7: 0-415-15612-2: GBP450.00 * Roman Civilization Set of 6: 0-415-15613-0: GBP400.00 * Eastern Civilizations Set of 10: 0-415-15614-9: GBP650.00 * Judaeo-Christian Civilization Set of 4: 0-415-15615-7: GBP250.00 * European Civilization Set of 11: 0-415-15616-5: GBP700.00

The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle reflects the lively international character of Aristotelian studies, drawing contributors from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, and Japan; it also, appropriately, includes a preponderance of authors from the University of Oxford, which has been a center of Aristotelian studies for many centuries. The volume equally reflects the broad range of activity Aristotelian studies comprise today: such activity ranges from the primarily textual and philological to the application of broadly Aristotelian themes to contemporary problems irrespective of their narrow textual fidelity. In between these extremes one finds the core of Aristotelian scholarship as it is practiced today, and as it is primarily represented in this handbook: textual exegesis and criticism. Even within this more limited core activity, one witnesses a rich range of pursuits, with some scholars seeking primarily to understand Aristotle in his own philosophical milieu and others seeking rather to place him into direct conversation with contemporary philosophers and their present-day concerns. No one of these enterprises exhausts the field. On the contrary, one of the most welcome and enlivening features of the contemporary Aristotelian scene is precisely the cross-fertilization these mutually beneficial and complementary activities offer one another. The volume, prefaced with an introduction to Aristotle's life and works by the editor, covers the main areas of Aristotelian philosophy and intellectual enquiry: ethics, metaphysics, politics, logic, language, psychology, rhetoric, poetics, theology, physical and biological investigation, and philosophical method. It also, and distinctively, looks both backwards and forwards: two chapters recount Aristotle's treatment of earlier philosophers, who proved formative to his own orientations and methods, and another three chapters chart the long afterlife of Aristotle's philosophy, in Late Antiquity, in the Islamic World, and in the Latin West.

Julian: An Intellectual Biography, first published in 1981, presents a penetrating and scholarly analysis of Julian's intellectual development against the background of philosophy and religion in the late Roman Empire. Professor Polymnia Athanassiadi tells the story of Julian's transformation from a reclusive and scholarly adolescent into a capable general and an audacious social reformer. However, his character was fraught with a great many contradictions, tensions and inconsistencies: he could be sensitive and intelligent, but also uncontrollably spontaneous and subject to alternating fits of considerable self-pity and self-delusion. Athanassiadi traces the Emperor Julian's responses to personal and public challenges, and dwells on the conflicts that each weighty choice imposed on him. This analysis of Julian's character and of all the issues that confronted him as an emperor, intellectual and mystic is based largely on contemporary evidence, with particular emphasis on the extensive writings of the man himself.

The Four Books of pseudo-Democritus, written in the first century AD, rank among the very earliest known alchemical writings. In this volume, Matteo Martelli presents not only a fresh edition and translation of the surviving Greek fragments, but also, for the first time, additional materials preserved in Syriac. The volume also presents important examples of the medieval and early modern reception of these writings, including the dialogue of Synesius and Dioscorus the most influential Byzantine commentary on the Four Books and previously unpublished Latin translations of both the Four Books and Synesius commentary made by Matthaeus Zuber in 1606. Accompanied by a full introduction and commentary, these sources offer new and significant insights into the world of ancient chemistry: practical recipes and lists of ingredients, clues to the doctrinal content of ancient alchemy, and early hints of a tradition that linked the alchemist Democritus to the wisdom of Egypt and Persia."

The Language of Atoms argues that ancient Epicurean writing on language offers a theory of performative language. Such a theory describes how languages acts, providing psychic therapy or creating new verbal meanings, rather than passively describing the nature of the universe. This observation allows us new insight into how Lucretius, our primary surviving Epicurean author, uses language in his great poem, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). The book begins with a double contention: on the one hand, while scholarship on Lucretius has looked to connect Lucretius' text to its larger cultural and historical context, it has never turned to speech act theory in this quest. This omission is striking at least in so far as speech act theory was developed precisely as a way of locating language (including texts) within a theory of action. The book studies Lucretius' work in the light of performative language, looking at promising, acts of naming, and the larger political implications of these linguistic acts. The Language of Atoms locates itself at the intersection of both older scholarly work on Epicureanism and recent developments on the reception history, and will thus offer scholars across the humanities a challenging new perspective on Lucretius' work.

Intellectuals in Politics in the Greek World, first published in 1984, was the first comprehensive study of this recurrent theme in political sociology with specific reference to antiquity, and led to significant revaluation of the role of intellectuals in everyday political life. The term 'intellectual' is carefully defined, and figures as diverse as Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle; Isocrates, Heracleides of Ponteius and Clearchus of Soli are discussed. The author examines the difference between the success of an intellectual politician, like Solon, and the failure of those such as Plato who attempted to mould society to abstract ideals. It is concluded that, ultimately, most philosophers were conspicuously unsuccessful when they intervened in politics: citizens regarded them as propagandists for their rulers, while rulers treated them as intellectual ornaments. The result was that many thinkers retreated to inter-scholastic disputation where the political objects of discussion increasingly became far removed from contemporary reality.

George Gemistos Plethon (c. 1360-1454) was a remarkable and influential thinker, active at the time of transition between the Byzantine Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance. His works cover literary, historical, scientific, but most notably philosophical issues. Plethon is arguably the most important of the Byzantine Platonists and the earliest representative of Platonism in the Renaissance, the movement which generally exercised a huge influence on the development of early modern thought. Thus his treatise on the differences between Plato and Aristotle triggered the Plato-Aristotle controversy of the 15th century, and his ideas impacted on Italian Renaissance thinkers such as Ficino. This book provides a new study of Gemistos' philosophy. The first part is dedicated to the discussion of his 'public philosophy'. As an important public figure, Gemistos wrote several public speeches concerning the political situation in the Peloponnese as well as funeral orations on deceased members of the ruling Palaiologos family. They contain remarkable Platonic ideas, adjusted to the contemporary late Byzantine situation. In the second, most extensive, part of the book the Platonism of Plethon is presented in a systematic way. It is identical with the so-called philosophia perennis, that is, the rational view of the world common to various places and ages. Throughout Plethon's writings, it is remarkably coherent in its framework, possesses quite original features, and displays the influence of ancient Middle and Neo-Platonic discussions. Plethon thus turns out to be not just a commentator on an ancient tradition, but an original Platonic thinker in his own right. In the third part the notorious question of the paganism of Gemistos is reconsidered. He is usually taken for a Platonizing polytheist who gathered around himself a kind of heterodox circle. The whole issue is examined in depth again and all the major evidence discussed, with the result that Gemistos seems rat

In Volume One of Ernest Fortin: Collected Essays, the renowned theologian and political philosopher examines various facets of the unique encounter between biblical religion and Greek philosophy during the early Christian centuries and the Middle Ages. Fortin's aim is to uncover the crucial issues to which this encounter gave rise, such as the sometimes troubling but immensely fruitful tension between divine revelation and philosophic reason. The book includes sections on St. Augustine and the refounding of Christianity; the encounter between Jerusalem and Athens; the medieval roots of Christian education; and Dante and the politics of Christendom.

The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy is a collection of new essays on the philosophy and philosophers of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Written by a cast of international scholars, it covers the full range of ancient philosophy from the sixth century BC to the sixth century AD and beyond. There are dedicated discussions of the major areas of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle together with accounts of their predecessors and successors. The contributors also address various problems of interpretation and method, highlighting the particular demands and interest of working with ancient philosophical texts. All original texts discussed are translated into English.

In the sixth century BC, Pherekydes of Syros, the reputed teacher of Pythagoras and contemporary of Thales and Anaximander, wrote a book about the birth of the gods and the origin of the cosmos. Considered one of the first prose works of Greek literature, Pherekydes' book survives only in fragments. On the basis of these as well as the ancient testimonies, the author attempts to reconstruct the theo-cosmological schema of Pherekydes. An introductory chapter on the life of Pherekydes is followed by four chapters on the contents of his book. From Pherekydes' mythopoeic creation account, his colourful narratives of a divine marriage and a battle of the gods, and finally from his remarks on the soul, Professor Schibli is careful to unfold the philosophical implications. Pherekydes emerges as a figure who moved in that fascinating frontier between myth and philosophy. The theogonies of Hesiod and the Orphics, the cosmological speculations of certain Presocratics, and the Pythagorean tenets on the soul are all profitably compared with the remnants of Pherekydes' book. Pherekydes is thus shown to be an important witness to early Greek thought in its various manifestations. This is the first book-length study in English dedicated to Pherekydes. It includes a comprehensive appendix of the fragments and ancient testimonies, along with limited critical apparatus and English translations.

The ancient Greek medical thinkers were profoundly influenced by Ionian natural philosophy. This philosophy caused them to adopt a radically new attitude towards disease and healing. James Longrigg shows how their rational attitudes ultimately resulted in levels of sophistication largely unsurpassed until the Renaissance. He examines the important relationship between philosophy and medicine in ancient Greece and beyond, and reveals its significance for contemporary western practice and theory.

The Cyrenaic school of philosophy (named after its founder Aristippus' native city of Cyrene in North Africa) flourished in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. This book begins by introducing the main figures of the Cyrenaic school beginning with Aristippus and setting them in their historical context. Once the reader is familiar with those figures and with the genealogy of the school, the book offers an overview of ancient and modern interpretations of the Cyrenaics, providing readers with alternative accounts of the doctrines they endorsed and of the role they played in the context of ancient thought. Finally, the book offers a reconstruction of Cyrenaic philosophy and shows how the ethical side of their speculation connected with the epistemology and ontology they endorsed and that, as a result, the Cyrenaics were able to offer a quite sophisticated philosophy. Indeed, Zilioli demonstrates that they represented, in ancient philosophy, an important and original metaphysical position and alternative to the kind of realism endorsed by Plato and Aristotle.

The idea of heroism has become thoroughly muddled today. In contemporary society, any behavior that seems distinctly difficult or unusually impressive is classified as heroic: everyone from firefighters to foster fathers to freedom fighters are our heroes. But what motivates these people to act heroically and what prevents other people from being heroes? In our culture today, what makes one sort of hero appear more heroic than another sort? In order to answer these questions, Ari Kohen turns to classical conceptions of the hero to explain the confusion and to highlight the ways in which distinct heroic categories can be useful at different times. Untangling Heroism argues for the existence of three categories of heroism that can be traced back to the earliest Western literature - the epic poetry of Homer and the dialogues of Plato - and that are complex enough to resonate with us and assist us in thinking about heroism today. Kohen carefully examines the Homeric heroes Achilles and Odysseus and Plato's Socrates, and then compares the three to each other. He makes clear how and why it is that the other-regarding hero, Socrates, supplanted the battlefield hero, Achilles, and the suffering hero, Odysseus. Finally, he explores in detail four cases of contemporary heroism that highlight Plato's success. Kohen states that in a post-Socratic world, we have chosen to place a premium on heroes who make other-regarding choices over self-interested ones. He argues that when humans face the fact of their mortality, they are able to think most clearly about the sort of life they want to have lived, and only in doing that does heroic action become a possibility. Kohen's careful analysis and rethinking of the heroism concept will be relevant to scholars across the disciplines of political science, philosophy, literature, and classics.

First published in 1964, this is a short collection of both literary and philosophical essays. Whilst two essays consider Greek literature written at the point at which the Athenian empire was breaking apart, another group explore the background from which Christianity arose, considering Paganism and the religious philosophy at the time of Christ. These, in particular, display Gilbert Murray's 'profound belief in ethics and disbelief in all revelational religions' as well as his conviction that the roots of our society lie within Greek civilization. Finally, there is an interesting discussion of Order and the motives of those who seek to overthrow it.

This book is an interpretation of Plato in general, and several dialogues in particular, from the point of view of dramatic characterization. It thus forms part of the growing movement towards reading Plato "dramatically", as opposed to reading him as if he wrote treatises like most philosophers. At the same time, it is intended to show traditional "analytical" philosophical interpreters the significance of such "literary" features for understanding the philosophical issues at stake. Its overall goal is to bridge the gulf still existing between such interpreters and more "literary" readers.

Offering a complete reinterpretation of Empedocles, Simon Trepanier reconstructs a single original philosophical poem, against previous interpretations which allocate our extant fragments on two works: a religious poem, 'The Purifications', and a scientific poem, 'On Nature'.