This book studies Wallace Stevens and pre-Socratic philosophy, showing how concepts that animate Stevens' poetry parallel concepts and techniques found in the poetic works of Parmenides, Empedocles, and Xenophanes, and in the fragments of Heraclitus. Tompsett traces the transition of pre-Socratic ideas into poetry and philosophy of the post-Kantian period, assessing the impact that the mythologies associated with pre-Socratism have had on structures of metaphysical thought that are still found in poetry and philosophy today. This transition is treated as becoming increasingly important as poetic and philosophic forms have progressively taken on the existential burden of our post-theological age. Tompsett argues that Stevens' poetry attempts to 'play' its audience into an ontological ground in an effort to show that his 'reduction of metaphysics' is not dry philosophical imposition, but is enacted by our encounter with the poems themselves. Through an analysis of the language and form of Stevens' poems, Tompsett uncovers the mythology his poetry shares with certain pre-Socratics and with Greek tragedy. This shows how such mythic rhythms are apparent within the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, and how these rhythms release a poetic understanding of the violence of a 'reduction of metaphysics.'

This installment of the distinguished RUSCH series focuses on two Peripatetic philosophers of the fourth and third centuries BCE: namely, Chamaeleon and Praxiphanes, both of whom were associated with Theophrastus, Aristotle's successor as head of the Peripatetic School. Chamaeleon and Praxiphanes were intellectuals active in the political and civic life of the Hellenistic Period. Their scholarly interests included inter alia ethics, biography, textual criticism, and linguistics.

The work presents new editions of the ancient source texts for Chamaeleon and Praxiphanes. Each is accompanied by an apparatus of textual variants and a second apparatus of parallel texts. In addition, there is a facing translation in English as well as notes to the translation. There follow ten essays that clarify material presented in the text translation. The volume closes with an index listing the ancient sources that are referred to the preceding essays.

This volume continues over thirty years of tradition in the RUSCH series, edited by William W. Fortenbaugh, the finest series available in Aristotelian studies.

All of us are faced countless times with the challenge of persuading others, whether we're trying to win a trivial argument with a friend or convince our coworkers about an important decision. Instead of relying on untrained instinct--and often floundering or failing as a result--we'd win more arguments if we learned the timeless art of verbal persuasion, rhetoric. How to Win an Argument gathers the rhetorical wisdom of Cicero, ancient Rome's greatest orator, from across his works and combines it with passages from his legal and political speeches to show his powerful techniques in action. The result is an enlightening and entertaining practical introduction to the secrets of persuasive speaking and writing--including strategies that are just as effective in today's offices, schools, courts, and political debates as they were in the Roman forum. How to Win an Argument addresses proof based on rational argumentation, character, and emotion; the parts of a speech; the plain, middle, and grand styles; how to persuade no matter what audience or circumstances you face; and more. Cicero's words are presented in lively translations, with illuminating introductions; the book also features a brief biography of Cicero, a glossary, suggestions for further reading, and an appendix of the original Latin texts. Astonishingly relevant, this unique anthology of Cicero's rhetorical and oratorical wisdom will be enjoyed by anyone who ever needs to win arguments and influence people--in other words, all of us.

Homer and the Poetics of Gesture is the first book of its kind to consider the epic formula in terms that are gestural as well as verbal. Drawing on studies from multiple disciplines, including movement theory, dance studies, phenomenology, and early film, it suggests new approaches for interpreting the relationship between repetition and embodiment in Homer. Through a series of dynamic close readings, Purves argues that the deep-seated habits and gestures of epic bodies are instrumental to our understanding of the Iliad and Odyssey, especially insofar as they attune us to the kinetic structures and sensibilities that shape the meaning of the poems. Each of the chapters isolates a scene in which a specific action, posture, or gesture (falling, running, leaping, standing, and reaching) emerges from the background of its other iterations in order to make larger claims about its poetic significance within the epics as a whole. Beginning from the premise that gestures are shared between characters and often identically repeated within the poems' formulaic system, the book reconsiders long-standing arguments about Homeric agency and character by focusing on those moments when a gesture diverges from its expected course, redirecting the plot or drawing the poem in new and surprising directions. Homer and the Poetics of Gesture not only affords new insights into the nature of epic repetition and poetic originality but also reveals unnoticed connections between Homeric structure and technique and the embodied habits and movements of the characters within the poems.

Aristoxenus of Tarentum was reported to have been bitterly disappointed when Theophrastus was chosen instead of him to succeed Aristotle as the head of the Peripatetic School. He had a truly phenomenal output of some 453 volumes, most of which survive only in fragments. He was the most famous music theorist in antiquity and came to be referred to simply as "the musician." In addition, he was a founder of Greek biography and wrote the life histories of Pythagoras, Archytas, Socrates, and Plato among others.

This volume includes eleven selections, which are almost evenly divided between his work in music theory and biography. There is a chapter on his general biographical method as well as chapters on his specific treatments of the Pythagoreans, Socrates, and Plato. There are chapters evaluating the extent to which Aristoxenus was a historian of music, his account of music therapy, his views on musical "character," the use of instruments and empiricism in his harmonic theory, and his relation to the "Neoclassical" Greek composers of the fourth century.

This volume includes: "Did Aristoxenus Write Musical History?," Andrew Barker; "Instruments and Empiricism in Aristoxenus' Elementa harmonica," David Creese; "Aristoxenus and Musical Ethos," Eleonora Rocconi; "Aristoxenus and Music Therapy: Fr. 26 Wehrli Within the Tradition on Music and Catharsis," Antonella Provenza; "Aristoxenus and the "Neoclassicists," Timothy Power; "Apollonius on Theophrastus on Aristoxenus," William W. Fortenbaugh; "Aristoxenus' Biographical Method," Stefan Schorn; "Aristoxenus and the Pythagoreans," Leonid Zhmud; "Aristoxenus' Life of Socrates," Carl A. Huffman; "Aristoxenus' Life of Plato," John Dillon; and "Aristoxenus and the Early Academy," Andrew Barker. Spanning close to three full decades, Transaction's Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities Series continues to pioneer in the field of classical studies.

This book brings together sixteen studies by internationally renowned scholars on the origins and early development of the Latin and Syriac biblical and philosophical commentary traditions. It casts light on the work of the founder of philosophical biblical commentary, Origen of Alexandria, and traces the developments of fourth- and fifth-century Latin commentary techniques in writers such as Marius Victorinus, Jerome and Boethius. The focus then moves east, to the beginnings of Syriac philosophical commentary and its relationship to theology in the works of Sergius of Reshaina, Probus and Paul the Persian, and the influence of this continuing tradition in the East up to the Arabic writings of al-Farabi. There are also chapters on the practice of teaching Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy in fifth-century Alexandria, on contemporaneous developments among Byzantine thinkers, and on the connections in Latin and Syriac traditions between translation (from Greek) and commentary. With its enormous breadth and the groundbreaking originality of its contributions, this volume is an indispensable resource not only for specialists, but also for all students and scholars interested in late-antique intellectual history, especially the practice of teaching and studying philosophy, the philosophical exegesis of the Bible, and the role of commentary in the post-Hellenistic world as far as the classical renaissance in Islam.

This book proposes to rethink the relationship between philosophy and literature through an engagement with Plato's dialogues. The dialogues have been seen as the source of a long tradition that subordinates poetry to philosophy, but they may also be approached as a medium for understanding how to overcome this opposition. Paradoxically, Plato then becomes an ally in the attempt "to overturn Platonism," which Gilles Deleuze famously defined as the task of modern philosophy. Max Statkiewicz identifies a "rhapsodic mode" initiated by Plato in the dialogues and pursued by many of his modern European commentators, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Irigaray, Derrida, and Nancy. The book articulates this rhapsodic mode as a way of entering into true dialogue (dia-logos), which splits any univocal meaning and opens up a serious play of signification both within and between texts. This mode, he asserts, employs a reading of Plato that is distinguished from interpretations emphasizing the dialogues as a form of dogmatic treatise, as well as from the dramatic interpretations that have been explored in recent Plato scholarship--both of which take for granted the modern notion of the subject. Statkiewicz emphasizes the importance of the dialogic nature of the rhapsodic mode in the play of philosophy and poetry, of Platonic and modern thought--and, indeed, of seriousness and play. This highly original study of Plato explores the inherent possibilities of Platonic thought to rebound upon itself and engender further dialogues.

The ancient Greeks were not only the founders of western philosophy, but the actual term "philosophy" is Greek in origin, most likely dating back to the late sixth century BC. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Euclid, and Thales are but a few of the better-known philosophers of ancient Greece. During the amazingly fertile period running from roughly the middle of the first millennium BC to the middle of the first millennium AD, the world saw the rise of science, numerous schools of thought, and-many believe-the birth of modern civilization. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Ancient Greek Philosophy covers the history of Greek philosophy through a chronology, an introductory essay, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1500 cross-referenced entries on important philosophers, concepts, issues, and events. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Greek philosophy.

Ranging from lively epistles to serious essays, these 124 letters selected from Epistulae Morales and Lucilium espouse the philosophy of Stoicism. This volume includes Tacitus's account of Seneca's death.

First published in 1981 this unique study discusses the evolution of Plato's thought through the actual developments in Athenian democracy, the book also demonstrates Plato's continuing responses to changes in political theory and argues for a new understanding of Plato's goals for the state and his ultimate concern for the moral well-being of the citizens.

This book reconstructs the Stoic doctrine of prolepsis. Prolepses are conceptions that develop naturally from ordinary experience. They are often identified with preconceptions (i.e. the first conceptions one unconsciously forms of something). However, this is inconsistent with the Stoics' claim that prolepseis are criteria of truth. Rather, prolepseis are analytically true claims embedded within one's ordinary conceptual scheme (e.g. the good is beneficial). When they have been articulated and systematized, prolepseis can be used to judge conceptual claims that go beyond the scope of sense-perceptual knowledge (e.g. pleasure is the good). The Stoics often refer to prolepseis as "common conceptions" to emphasize that they are shared by everyone, although in most people they remain unarticulated. This reconstruction suggests that Chrysippus was influenced by Platonic recollection to a greater extent than previously recognized. It supports the orthodoxy of Epictetus' statements about prolepsis and suggests that later authors who assimilate the Epicurean and Stoic doctrines were misled by the polemical attacks of Carneades. The argument of the book is supported by a comprehensive collection of fragments relating to prolepsis in Epicurus, the early Stoa, Cicero, Epictetus, Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, and Alexander of Aphrodisias.

The volume presents essays on the philosophical explanation of the relationship between body and soul in antiquity from the Presocratics to Galen, including papers on Parmenides on thinking (E. Hussey, R. Dilcher), Empedocles' Love (D. O'Brien), tripartition of the soul in Plato (T. Buchheim), Aristotle - especially the Parva Naturalia - (C. Rapp, T. Johansen, P.-M. Morel), Peripatetics after Aristotle (R. Sharples), Hellenistic Philosophy (C. Rapp, C. Gill), and Galen (R. J. Hankinson). The title of the volume alludes to a phrase found in Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, referring to aspects of living behaviour involving both body and soul, and is a commonplace in ancient philosophy, dealt with in very different ways by different authors.

This book elaborates a moral realism of phenomenological inspiration by introducing the idea that moral experience, primordially, constitutes a perceptual grasp of actions and of their solid traces in the world. The main thesis is that, before any reference to values or to criteria about good and evil?that is, before any reference to specific ethical outlooks?one should explain the very materiality of what necessarily constitutes the ?moral world?. These claims are substantiated by means of a text- centered interpretation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in dialogue with contemporary moral realism. The book concludes with a critique of Heidegger?s, Gadamer's and Arendt's approaches to Aristotle's ethics.

The overall aim of the volume is to explore the relation of Socratic philosophizing, as Plato represents it, to those activities to which it is typically opposed. The essays address a range of figures who appear in the dialogues as distinct "others" against whom Socrates is contrasted-most obviously, the figure of the sophist, but also the tragic hero, the rhetorician, the tyrant, and the poet. Each of the individual essays shows, in a different way, that the harder one tries to disentangle Socrates' own activity from that of its apparent opposite, the more entangled they become. Yet, it is only by taking this entanglement seriously, and exploring it fully, that the distinctive character of Socratic philosophy emerges. As a whole, the collection sheds new light on the artful ways in which Plato not only represents philosophy in relation to what it is not, but also makes it "strange" to itself. It shows how concerns that seem to be raised about the activity of philosophical questioning (from the point of view of the political community, for example) can be seen, upon closer examination, to emerge from within that very enterprise. Each of the essays then goes on to consider how Socratic philosophizing can be defined, and its virtues defended, against an attack that comes as much from within as from without. The volume includes chapters by distinguished contributors such as Catherine Zuckert, Ronna Burger, Michael Davis, Jacob Howland, and others, the majority of which were written especially for this volume. Together, they address an important theme in Plato's dialogues that is touched upon in the literature but has never been the subject of a book-length study that traces its development across a wide range of dialogues. One virtue of the collection is that it brings together a number of prominent scholars from both political science and philosophy whose work intersects in important and revealing ways. A related virtue is that it treats more familiar dialogues (Republic, Sophist, Apology, Phaedrus) alongside some works that are less well known (Theages, Major Hippias, Minor Hippias, Charmides, and Lovers). While the volume is specialized in its topic and approach, the overarching question-about the potentially troubling implications of Socratic philosophy, and the Platonic response-should be of interest to a broad range of scholars in philosophy, political science, and classics.

This book examines the relationship between athletics and philosophy in ancient Greece and Rome focused on the connection between athleticism and virtue. It begins by observing that the link between athleticism and virtue is older than sport, reaching back to the athletic feats of kings and pharaohs in early Egypt and Mesopotamia. It then traces the role of athletics and the Olympic Games in transforming the idea of aristocracy as something acquired by birth to something that can be trained. This idea of training virtue through the techniques and practice of athletics is examined in relation to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Then Roman spectacles such as chariot racing and gladiator games are studied in light of the philosophy of Lucretius, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. The concluding chapter connects the book's ancient observations with contemporary issues such as the use of athletes as role models, the relationship between money and corruption, the relative worth of participation and spectatorship, and the role of females in sport. The author argues that there is a strong link between sport and philosophy in the ancient world, calling them offspring of common parents: concern about virtue and the spirit of free enquiry. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Ethics and Sport.

Ancient and Medieval Philosophy Series 2, No. 37The Stadsbibliotheek of Brugge houses a manuscript (ms. 510, f. 227ra-237vb) that holds a short logical text on the Syncategoremata. In this manuscript the text is ascribed to Henry of Ghent, who was a leading thinker of the second half of the thirteenth century. If Henry wrote the text, he had much more technical knowledge of logic and semantics than is often imagined. The text was influenced by the logical works of Peter of Spain."

Accompanied by a new translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics X, this volume presents a hybrid between a traditional commentary and a scholarly monograph. Aristotle's text is divided into one hundred lemmata which not only explore comprehensively the content and strength of each of these units of thought, but also emphasise their continuity, showing how the smaller units feed into the larger structure. The Commentary illuminates what Aristotle thinks in each lemma (and why), and also shows how he thinks. In order to bring Aristotle alive as a thinker, it often explores several possible ways of reading the text to enable the reader to make up their own mind about the best interpretation of a given passage. The relevant background in Plato's dialogues is discussed, and a substantial Introduction sets out the philosophical framework necessary for understanding Book X, the final and most arresting section of the Ethics.

This book offers an original interpretation and close reading of Plato's Phaedo, focusing on the relation between logos and the soul in order to illuminate the ethical and political dimensions of philosophy as "care of the soul." Jesse I. Bailey argues that the central issue of the dialogue is the relation between logos and the defining activity of the soul. The soul, in accord with logos, gathers the multiplicity of phenomena into the intelligible wholes of experience. This definitive activity also applies to the soul itself, as the soul gathers itself to itself in logos. Ethical living demands the development of a harmonious unity in the self through this activity. Thus, the book argues that the traditional "pillars" of Platonism-the immortality of the soul and the Forms-are presented not as fully-developed theories to be accepted by the reader whole cloth, but rather as provocations for thought.

Johnson argues that Aristotle's Politics needs to be understood as a 'two-layered' treatise - the first being Aristotle's political theory, and the second as a set of questions for statesmen and politicians. Employing this model, the book sets about to provide a reconceptualization of Politics as a multi-layered, canonical work.

First published in 2000. This is Volume VIII of ten in the International Library of Philosophy in a series on Ancient Philosophy. Written in 1947, it focuses on Plato's theory of education and initially written for students of educational theory, but also for teachers and for those who are interested in Plato as a thinker who find in his writings a challenge to their powers of thought which assists them to develop a philosophy of their own.

Although reasoned discourse on human-animal relations is often considered a late twentieth-century phenomenon, ethical debate over animals and how humans should treat them can be traced back to the philosophers and literati of the classical world. From Stoic assertions that humans owe nothing to animals that are intellectually foreign to them, to Plutarch's impassioned arguments for animals as sentient and rational beings, it is clear that modern debate owes much to Greco-Roman thought.

Animals in Greek and Roman Thought brings together new translations of classical passages which contributed to ancient debate on the nature of animals and their relationship to human beings. The selections chosen come primarily from philosophical and natural historical works, as well as religious, poetic and biographical works. The questions discussed include: Do animals differ from humans intellectually? Were animals created for the use of humankind? Should animals be used for food, sport, or sacrifice? Can animals be our friends?

The selections are arranged thematically and, within themes, chronologically. A commentary precedes each excerpt, transliterations of Greek and Latin technical terms are provided, and each entry includes bibliographic suggestions for further reading.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.