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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Ancient Western philosophy to c 500 > General
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy is a volume of original
articles on all aspects of ancient philosophy. The articles may be
of substantial length, and include critical notices of major books.
OSAP is now published twice yearly, in both hardback and paperback.
"The serial Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy (OSAP) is fairly
regarded as the leading venue for publication in ancient
philosophy. It is where one looks to find the state-of-the-art.
That the serial, which presents itself more as an anthology than as
a journal, has traditionally allowed space for lengthier studies,
has tended only to add to its prestige; it is as if OSAP thus
declares that, since it allows as much space as the merits of the
subject require, it can be more entirely devoted to the best and
most serious scholarship."--Michael Pakaluk, Bryn Mawr Classical
Review
Meaning (significance) and nature are this book's principal topics.
They seem an odd couple, like raisins and numbers, though they
elide when meanings of a global sort-ideologies and religions, for
example-promote ontologies that subordinate nature. Setting one
against the other makes reality contentious. It signifies workmates
and a coal face to miners, gluons to physicists, prayer and
redemption to priests. Are there many realities, or many
perspectives on one? The answer I prefer is the comprehensive
naturalism anticipated by Aristotle and Spinoza: "natura naturans,
natura naturata." Nature naturing is an array of mutually
conditioning material processes in spacetime. Each structure or
event-storm clouds forming, nature natured-is self-differentiating,
self-stabilizing, and sometimes self-disassembling; each alters or
transforms a pre-existing state of affairs. This surmise
anticipated discoveries and analyses to which neither thinker had
access, though physics and biology confirm their hypothesis beyond
reasonable doubt. Hence the question this book considers: Is
reality divided:nature vrs. lived experience? Or is experience,
with all its meanings and values, the complex expression of natural
processes?
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