The Italian humanist Polydore Vergil (1470-1555) was born in Urbino but spent most of his life in early Tudor England. His most popular work, "On Discovery" ("De inventoribus rerum," 1499), was the first comprehensive account of discoveries and inventions written since antiquity. Thirty Latin editions of this work were published in Polydore's lifetime, and by the eighteenth century more than a hundred editions had appeared in eight languages, including Russian. "On Discovery" became a key reference for anyone who wanted to know about "firsts" in theology, philosophy, science, technology, literature, language, law, material culture, and other fields. Polydore took his information from dozens of Greek, Roman, biblical, and Patristic authorities. His main point was to show that many Greek and Roman claims for discovery were false and that ancient Jews or other Asian peoples had priority. This is the first English translation of a critical edition based on the Latin texts published in Polydore Vergil's lifetime.

Preserved by Arabic mathematicians and canonized by Christian scholars, Aristotle’s works have shaped Western thought, science, and religion for nearly two thousand years. Richard McKeon’s The Basic Works of Aristotle–constituted out of the definitive Oxford translation and in print as a Random House hardcover for sixty years–has long been considered the best available one-volume Aristotle. Appearing in paperback at long last, this edition includes selections from the Organon, On the Heavens, The Short Physical Treatises, Rhetoric, among others, and On the Soul, On Generation and Corruption, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Poetics in their entirety.

Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) was one of the outstanding French philosophers of the 20th century and his work is widely read in the English-speaking world. This unique volume comprises the lectures that Ricoeur gave on Plato and Aristotle at the University of Strasbourg in 1953-54. The aim of these lectures is to analyse the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle and to discern in their work the ontological foundations of Western philosophy. The relation between Plato and Aristotle is commonly portrayed as a contrast between a philosophy of essence and a philosophy of substance, but Ricoeur shows that this opposition is too simple. Aristotelian ontology is not a simple antithesis to Platonism: the radical ontology of Aristotle stands in a far more subtle relation of continuity and opposition to that of Plato and it is this relation we have to reconstruct and understand. Ricoeur's lectures offer a brilliant analysis of the great works of Plato and Aristotle which has withstood the test of time. They also provide a unique insight into the development of Ricoeur's thinking in the early 1950s, revealing that, even at this early stage of his work, Ricoeur was focused sharply on issues of language and the text.

Private associations abounded in the ancient Greek world and beyond, and this volume provides the first large-scale study of the strategies of governance which they employed. Emphasis is placed on the values fostered by the regulations of associations, the complexities of the private-public divide (and that divide's impact on polis institutions) and the dynamics of regional and global networks and group identity. The attested links between rules and religious sanctions also illuminate the relationship between legal history and religion. Moreover, possible links between ancient associations and the early Christian churches will prove particularly valuable for scholars of the New Testament. The book concludes by using the regulations of associations to explore a novel and revealing aspect of the interaction between the Mediterranean world, India and China.

This volume is the first in English to provide a full, systematic investigation into Aristotle's criticisms of earlier Greek theories of the soul from the perspective of his theory of scientific explanation. Some interpreters of the De Anima have seen Aristotle's criticisms of Presocratic, Platonic, and other views about the soul as unfair or dialectical, but Jason W. Carter argues that Aristotle's criticisms are in fact a justified attempt to test the adequacy of earlier theories in terms of the theory of scientific knowledge he advances in the Posterior Analytics. Carter proposes a new interpretation of Aristotle's confrontations with earlier psychology, showing how his reception of other Greek philosophers shaped his own hylomorphic psychology and led him to adopt a novel dualist theory of the soul-body relation. His book will be important for students and scholars of Aristotle, ancient Greek psychology, and the history of the mind-body problem.

"Introducing Plato" begins by explaining how philosophers like Socrates and Pythagoras influenced Plato's thought. It provides a clear account of Plato's puzzling theory of knowledge, and explains how this theory then directed his provocative views on politics, ethics and individual liberty. It offers detailed critical commentaries on all of the key doctrines of Platonism, especially the very odd theory of Forms, and concludes by revealing how Plato's philosophy stimulated the work of important modern thinkers such as Karl Popper, Martha Nussbaum, and Jacques Derrida.

The scholarly tradition of the Presocratics is the beginning of the ""Greek Miracle,"" the remarkable flowering of arts and sciences in ancient Greece from the 600s to 400s BC. Greek thought turned from pagan religion and the mytho-poetic work of Hesiod and Homer, to inquiry into the natures of things, to the world and our place in it. This tradition, starting with Thales (b. 624 BC) and proceeding through Democritus (d. 370 BC), is the unifying theme of this volume. The contributors, renowned experts in their various fields of philosophy, provide introductions to the Presocratic philosophers and discuss how this philosophical school was appropriated and treated by later philosophers. Joe McCoy opens the volume with a survey of the historical developments within Presocratic philosophy, as well as its subsequent reception. The essays begin with Charles Kahn's account of the role of Presocractic philosophy in classical philosophy. Individual philosophers are then discussed, namely, Anaximander by Kurt Pritzl, Heraclitus by Kenneth Dorter, and Pythagoreans by Carl A. Huffman. Next are chapters on Xenophanes by James Lesher, Parmenides by Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Empedocles by Patricia Curd, and Anaxagoras by Daniel Graham. The collection concludes with an examination of the reception of the Presocratics in early modern and late modern philosophy by John C. McCarthy and Richard Velkley, respectively. The philosophy of the Presocratics still governs scholarly discussion today. This important volume grapples with a host of philosophical issues and philological and historical problems inherent in interpreting Presocratic philosophers.

This book offers a resolution of the paradox posed by the pleasure of tragedy by returning to its earliest articulations in archaic Greek poetry and its subsequent emergence as a philosophical problem in Plato's Republic. Socrates' claim that tragic poetry satisfies our 'hunger for tears' hearkens back to archaic conceptions of both poetry and mourning that suggest a common source of pleasure in the human appetite for heightened forms of emotional distress. By unearthing a psychosomatic model of aesthetic engagement implicit in archaic poetry and philosophically elaborated by Plato, this volume not only sheds new light on the Republic's notorious indictment of poetry, but also identifies rationally and ethically disinterested sources of value in our pursuit of aesthetic states. In doing so the book resolves an intractable paradox in aesthetic theory and human psychology: the appeal of painful emotions.

Plato's Sun-Like Good is a revolutionary discussion of the Republic's philosopher-rulers, their dialectic, and their relation to the form of the good. With detailed arguments Sarah Broadie explains how, if we think of the form of the good as 'interrogative', we can re-conceive those central reference-points of Platonism in down-to-earth terms without loss to our sense of Plato's philosophical greatness. The book's main aims are: first, to show how for Plato the form of the good is of practical value in a way that we can understand; secondly, to make sense of the connection he draws between dialectic and the form of the good; and thirdly, to make sense of the relationship between the form of the good and other forms while respecting the contours of the sun-good analogy and remaining faithful to the text of the Republic itself.

A literal translation, allowing the simplicity and vigor of the Greek diction to shine through.

Compiled by scholars at the court of Liu An, king of Huainan, in the second century B.C.E, "The Huainanzi" is a tightly organized, sophisticated articulation of Western Han philosophy and statecraft. Outlining "all that a modern monarch needs to know," the text emphasizes rigorous self-cultivation and mental discipline, brilliantly synthesizing for readers past and present the full spectrum of early Chinese thought.

"The Huainanzi" locates the key to successful rule in a balance of broad knowledge, diligent application, and the penetrating wisdom of a sage. It is a unique and creative synthesis of Daoist classics, such as the "Laozi" and the "Zhuangzi"; works associated with the Confucian tradition, such as the "Changes," the "Odes," and the "Documents"; and a wide range of other foundational philosophical and literary texts from the "Mozi" to the "Hanfeizi."

The product of twelve years of scholarship, this remarkable translation preserves "The Huainanzi"'s special rhetorical features, such as parallel prose and verse, and showcases a compositional technique that conveys the work's powerful philosophical appeal. This path-breaking volume will have a transformative impact on the field of early Chinese intellectual history and will be of great interest to scholars and students alike.

Cosmological narratives like the creation story in the book of Genesis or the modern Big Bang are popularly understood to be descriptions of how the universe was created. However, cosmologies also say a great deal more. Indeed, the majority of cosmologies, ancient and modern, explore not simply how the world was made but how humans relate to their surrounding environment and the often thin line which separates humans from gods and animals. Combining approaches from classical studies, anthropology, and philosophy, this book studies three competing cosmologies of the early Greek world: Hesiod’s Theogony; the Orphic Derveni Theogony; and Protagoras’ creation myth in Plato’s eponymous dialogue. Although all three cosmologies are part of a single mythic tradition and feature a number of similar events and characters, Olaf Almqvist argues they offer very different answers to an ongoing debate on what it is to be human. Engaging closely with the ontological turn in anthropology and in particular with the work of Philippe Descola, this book outlines three key sets of ontological assumptions – analogism, pantheism, and naturalism – found in early Greek literature and explores how these competing ontological assumptions result in contrasting attitudes to rituals such as prayer and sacrifice.

This is the first volume of a groundbreaking commentary on one of the most important works of ancient philosophy, the "Enneads" of Plotinus--a text that formed the basis of Neoplatonism and had a deep influence on early Christian thought and medieval and Renaissance philosophy. This volume covers the first three of the six "Enneads," as well as Porphyry's "Life of Plotinus," a document in which Plotinus's student--the collector and arranger of the "Enneads"--introduces the philosopher and his work. A landmark contribution to modern Plotinus scholarship, Paul Kalligas's commentary is the most detailed and extensive ever written for the whole of the "Enneads."

For each of the treatises in the first three "Enneads," Kalligas provides a brief introduction that presents the philosophical background against which Plotinus's contribution can be assessed; a synopsis giving the main lines and the articulation of the argument; and a running commentary placing Plotinus's thought in its intellectual context and making evident the systematic association of its various parts with each other.

Aristotle's voluminous writings on animals have often been marginalised in the history of philosophy. Providing the first full-length comprehensive account of Aristotle's biology, its background, content and influence, this Companion situates his study of living nature within his broader philosophy and theology and differentiates it from other medical and philosophical theories. An overview of empiricism in Aristotle's Historia Animalium is followed by an account of the general methodology recommended in the Parts of Animals. An account of the importance of Aristotle's teleological perspective and the fundamental metaphysics of biological entities provides a basis for understanding living capacities, such as nutrition, reproduction, perception and self-motion, in his philosophy. The importance of Aristotle's zoology to both his ethics and political philosophy is highlighted. The volume explores in detail the changing interpretations and influences of Aristotle's biological works from antiquity to modern philosophy of science. It is essential for both students and scholars.

From the Introduction: "Stoic philosophy, of which Epictetus (c. a.d. 50--130) is a representative, began as a recognizable movement around 300 b.c. Its founder was Zeno of Cytium (not to be confused with Zeno of Elea, who discovered the famous paradoxes). He was born in Cyprus about 336 b.c., but all of his philosophical activity took place in Athens. For more than 500 years Stoicism was one of the most influential and fruitful philosophical movements in the Graeco-Roman world. The works of the earlier Stoics survive only in fragmentary quotations from other authors, but from the Renaissance until well into the nineteenth century, Stoic ethical thought was one of the most important ancient influences on European ethics, particularly because of the descriptions of it by Cicero, through surviving works by the Stoics Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and also Epictetus--and also because of the effect that it had had in antiquity, and continued to have into the nineteenth century, on Christian ethical views. Nowadays an undergraduate or graduate student learning about ancient philosophy in a university course may well hear only about Plato and Aristotle, along perhaps with the presocratics; but in the history of Western thought and education this situation is somewhat atypical, and in most periods a comparable student would have learned as much or more about Stoicism, as well as two other major ancient philosophical movements, Epicureanism and Scepticism. In spite of this lack of explicit acquaintance with Stoic philosophers and their works, however, most students will recognize in Epictetus various ideas that are familiar through their effects on other thinkers, notably Spinoza, in our intellectual tradition."

First published in Plato: Complete Works , Donald J. Zeyl's masterful translation of Timaeus is presented along with his 75 page introductory essay, which discusses points of contemporary interest in the Timaeus , deals at length with long-standing and current issues of interpretation, and provides a consecutive commentary on the work as a whole. Includes an analytic table of contents and a select bibliography.

Plato's Euthyrphro, Apology, and Crito portray Socrates' words and deeds during his trial for disbelieving in the Gods of Athens and corrupting the Athenian youth, and constitute a defense of the man Socrates and of his way of life, the philosophic life. The twelve essays in the volume, written by leading classical philosophers, investigate various aspects of these works of Plato, including the significance of Plato's characters, Socrates's revolutionary religious ideas, and the relationship between historical events and Plato's texts. Readers will find their appreciation of Plato's works greatly enriched by these essays.

"The Laws," Plato's longest dialogue, has for centuries been recognized as the most comprehensive exposition of the "practical" consequences of his philosophy, a necessary corrective to the more visionary and utopian "Republic," In this animated encounter between a foreign philosopher and a powerful statesman, not only do we see reflected, in Plato's own thought, eternal questions of the relation between political theory and practice, but we also witness the working out of a detailed plan for a new political order that embodies the results of Plato's mature reflection on the family, the status of women, property rights, criminal law, and the role of religion and the fine arts in a healthy republic.
"Because it succeeds in being both literal and comprehensive, it is by far superior to any translation available. By reproducing dramatic detail often omitted, such as oaths, hesitations, repetitions, and forms of address, Pangle allows the reader to follow the dialogue's interplay between argument and dramatic context. . . . Pangle's translation captures the excitement and the drama of Plato's text."--Mary P. Nichols, "Ancient Philosophy"
"Pangle's achievement is remarkable. . . . The accompanying interpretive essay is an excellent distillation of a dialogue three times its size. The commentary is thoughtful, even profound; and it amply demonstrates the importance of reading Plato carefully and from a translation that is true to his language."--Patrick Coby, "American Political Science Review"

Aristotle thought of his logic and methodology as applications of the Socratic questioning method. In particular, logic was originally a study of answers necessitated by earlier answers. For Aristotle, thought-experiments were real experiments in the sense that by realizing forms in one's mind, one can read off their properties and interrelations. Treating forms as independent entities, knowable one by one, committed Aristotle to his mode of syllogistic explanation. He did not think of existence, predication and identity as separate senses of estin. Aristotle thus serves as an example of a thinker who did not rely on the distinction between the allegedly different Fregean senses, thereby shedding new light on our own conceptual presuppositions.
This collection comprises several striking interpretations that Jaakko Hintikka has put forward over the years, constituting a challenge not only to Aristotelian scholars and historians of ideas, but to everyone interested in logic, epistemology or metaphysics and in their history.