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.

The birth of philosophical thought across the ancient world brought with it a keen interest in the study of leadership - reflections on who should lead and on how to create the best leadership structures became central to the debates of most prominent ancient philosophers. Philosophy and Leadership offers a panorama of the main philosophies, both ancient and modern, which form the basis of contemporary leadership theories. This book will draw on many philosophical positions to offer a critique of the most important nodes of modern leadership studies – such as ethics, purpose, meaning and legacy. It will include probing questions and theoretical as well practical exercises aimed at reinforcing the points discussed in each chapter, as well as examples from history, literature, films and music. This book will be invaluable reading for scholars on undergraduate and postgraduate leadership courses, as well as those studying philosophy, leadership ethics and business ethics, and responsible leadership.

The Heirs of Plato is the first full study of the various directions in philosophy taken by Plato's followers in the first seventy years after his death in 347 BC - the period generally known as 'The Old Academy', unjustly neglected by historians of philosophy. Lucid and accessible, John Dillon's book provides an introductory chapter on the school itself, and a summary of Plato's philosophical heritage, before looking at each of the school heads and other chief characters, exploring both what holds them together and what sets them apart.

The life and teachings of Diogenes of Sinope, the Greek philosopher who gave rise to classical Cynicism, deserve careful consideration because of their relevance to contemporary ethical issues. The task of reconstructing the philosopher's life, however, is exceedingly difficult, because in his case, more than in those of other ancient philosophers, we must deal not only with the scarcity of reliable sources and testimonies, but also with the mountains of anecdotal and fictional accounts that are responsible for the creation of a veritable literary legend around the Cynic who once lived in a tub. This comprehensive study reconstructs his biography on the basis of classical and Arabic sources, identifies the main ideas and principles of his philosophy, and shows the application of his philosophical message for our contemporary world. It also includes an extensively annotated translation of Diogenes Laertius' Life of Diogenes of Sinope, which is our principal source of information about the philosopher.

Plato’s Timaeus is unique in Greek Antiquity for presenting the creation of the world as the work of a divine demiurge. The maker bestows order on sensible things and imitates the world of the intellect by using the Forms as models. While the creation-myth of the Timaeus seems unparalleled, this book argues that it is not the first of Plato’s dialogues to use artistic language to articulate the relationship of the objects of the material world to the world of the intellect. The book adopts an interpretative angle that is sensitive to the visual and art-historical developments of Classical Athens to argue that sculpture, revolutionized by the advent of the lost-wax technique for the production of bronze statues, lies at the heart of Plato’s conception of the relation of the human soul and body to the Forms. It shows that, despite the severe criticism of mimēsis in the Republic, Plato’s use of artistic language rests on a positive model of mimēsis. Plato was in fact engaged in a constructive dialogue with material culture and he found in the technical processes and the cultural semantics of sculpture and of the art of weaving a valuable way to conceptualise and communicate complex ideas about humans’ relation to the Forms.

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.

This work presents a new critical edition of The Spartan Constitution, a treatise in state philosophy attributed to the historian Xenophon (c. 430 - c. 355 B. C.). The Greek text, reconstructed on the basis of extant manuscript sources, is prefaced by an introduction and supplemented by a critical commentary and an English translation. The introduction discusses the problem of the text's authenticity and dating and provides a comprehensive account of its sources, reception, language, style and structure as well as an analysis of the manuscript sources and the textual tradition. The commentary addresses linguistic as well as historical problems.

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.

This is the first volume dedicated to a direct exploration of Wittgenstein and Plato. It is a compilation of essays by thirteen authors of diverse geographical provenance, orientation and philosophical interest.
The volume offers the most complete and detailed view to date on Wittgenstein and Plato, without being tied to any unilateral guidelines from either a critical or philosophical perspective. The authors are scholars of Wittgenstein, but also of Plato and Greek philosophy. The book is a sort of game of mirrors: Plato in the mirror of Wittgenstein, and Wittgenstein in the mirror of Plato. All essays always seek to combine philosophical interest and philological attention, although, in some essays one interest prevails over the other.
Despite the preponderance of scholars of Wittgenstein, the volume seeks to be not only a book on Wittgenstein and Plato, but also, simultaneously, on Plato and Wittgenstein.

This book defines the relationship between the thought of Adam Smith and that of the ancients---Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and the Stoics. Vivenza offers a complete survey of all Smith's writings with the aim of illustrating how classical arguments shaped opinions and scholarship in the eighteenth century.

"The Moral Maxims of the Sages of Israel" is a study of the moral maxims of the sages of Israel, who thrived from 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E., that are contained in the work known as Pirkei Avot, probably the oldest anthology of its kind in literary history. Although the work has been translated from the original Hebrew numerous times, much of it remains inaccessible because of the epigrammatic rather than discursive style of the original, which employs idiomatic expressions, unusual turns of phrase, grammatically awkward constructions, euphemisms, and plays on words that confound even those who are able to read it in the original language.

An ancient work like Pirkei Avot can be read from a variety of perspectives. It may be read it from the standpoint of what it says that resonates with the contemporary concerns of the reader or commentator, often attaching meaning to a maxim that its author could not reasonably be expected to have intended. It may also be read from the perspective of attempting to understand what the redactor of the work had in mind when making his editorial decisions about what to include or exclude, and why he made such choices from the large volume of materials available to him. Finally, the work can be read as representing the concerns of the individual authors in the context of the times in which they lived.

In essence, then, one must choose between reading meaning into the text and reading meaning out of it. The approach in this book is to do the latter, that is, to understand the maxims and teachings of the sages that appear in Pirkei Avot primarily from the standpoint of the originators, and secondarily from the standpoint of the redactor, some of whose own thoughts are included in the work. In so doing, it will suggest, wherever possible and plausible, the unstated problems and questions to which the sages' teachings and assertions probably were deemed appropriate responses.

Like its ancient rivals, Stoic ethics was a form of virtue ethics, yet while the concept of virtue was clearly central to Stoic ethics, the concept of Stoic virtue has not yet been fully explored. Instead, the existing literature tends to impose on the Stoic material philosophically quite alien non-Aristotelian interpretations of virtue. According to Christoph Jedan, however, a thorough examination of the Stoic concept of virtue leads to a reassessment of our understanding of Stoic ethics. This book emphasises in particular the theological underpinning of Stoic ethics, which Jedan contends has been underestimated in current accounts of Stoic ethics. Jedan argues that the theological motifs in Stoic ethics are in fact pivotal to a complete understanding of Stoic ethics. The book focuses on Chrysippus, the most important of the early Stoic thinkers, suggesting that his contribution, and in particular its religious aspect, remained a key point of reference for later Stoics. This fascinating book makes a crucial contribution to the field of ancient ethics.>

This book argues that, rather than being conceived merely as a hindrance, the body contributes constructively in the fashioning of a Platonic unified self. The Phaedo shows awareness that the indeterminacy inherent in the body infects the validity of any scientific argument but also provides the subject of inquiry with the ability to actualize, to the extent possible, the ideal self. The Republic locates bodily desires and needs in the tripartite soul. Achievement of maximal unity is dependent upon successful training of the rational part of the soul, but the earlier curriculum of Books 2 and 3, which aims at instilling a pre-reflectively virtuous disposition in the lower parts of the soul, is a prerequisite for the advanced studies of Republic 7. In the Timaeus, the world soul is fashioned out of Being, Sameness, and Difference: an examination of the Sophist and the Parmenides reveals that Difference is to be identified with the Timaeus' Receptacle, the third ontological principle which emerges as the quasi-material component that provides each individual soul with the alloplastic capacity for psychological growth and alteration.

This edited volume brings together contributions from prominent scholars to discuss new approaches to Plato's philosophy, especially in the burgeoning fields of Platonic ontology and psychology. Topics such as the relationship between mind, soul and emotions, as well as the connection between ontology and ethics are discussed through the analyses of dialogues from Plato's middle and late periods, such as the Republic, Symposium, Theaetetus, Timaeus and Laws. These works are being increasingly studied both as precursors for Aristotelian philosophy and in their own right, and the analyses included in this volume reveal some new interpretations of topics such as Plato's attitude towards artistic imagination and the possibility of speaking of a teleology in Plato. Focusing on hot topics in the area, Psychology and Ontology in Plato provides a good sense of what is happening in Platonic scholarship worldwide and will be of interest to academic researchers and teachers interested in ancient philosophy, ontology and philosophical psychology.

Lloyd Gerson offers an original new study of Plato's account of persons, a topic of continuing interest to philosophers. His book locates Plato's psychology within his two-world metaphysics, showing that embodied persons are images of a disembodied ideal, and that they reflect many of the conflicting states of the sensible world. For Plato, Gerson argues, philosophy is the means to recognizing one's true identity.

Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics is a collection of new and cutting-edge essays by prominent Aristotle scholars and Aristotelian philosophers on themes in ontology, causation, modality, essentialism, the metaphysics of life, natural theology, and scientific and philosophical methodology. Though grounded in careful exegesis of Aristotle's writings, the volume aims to demonstrate the continuing relevance of Aristotelian ideas to contemporary philosophical debate. The contributors are Robert Bolton, Stephen Boulter, David Charles, Edward Feser, Lloyd Gerson, Gyula Klima, Kathrin Koslicki, E. J. Lowe, Fred D. Miller, Jr., David S. Oderberg, Christopher Shields, Allan Silverman, Tuomas Tahko, and Stephen Williams

Method in Ancient Philosophy brings together fifteen new, specially written essays by leading scholars on a broad subject of central importance. It is characteristic of human beings that they direct their activities by reasoning. Methods of reasoning, even toward the same ends, vary. Self-conscious reflection on the methods of reasoning marks the beginning of philosophy in the West; examination of how the ancient Greeks reasoned, and how they thought about methods of reasoning, helps us to see how they came to hold the views they did, and how we have come to think as we do. For the views of the ancients have had a considerable influence upon our own assumptions about the demarcations between different kinds of enquiry and the sorts of methods that are appropriate for them. The aims of the volume are thus both exegetical and philosophical. Most of the essays focus on Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, but earlier and later ancient philosophy is brought into the picture by essays on Eleatic and Epicurean thought.

A landmark defense of democracy that has been hailed as one of the most important books of the twentieth century One of the most important books of the twentieth century, The Open Society and Its Enemies is an uncompromising defense of liberal democracy and a powerful attack on the intellectual origins of totalitarianism. An immediate sensation when it was first published, Karl Popper's monumental achievement has attained legendary status on both the Left and Right. Tracing the roots of an authoritarian tradition represented by Plato, Marx, and Hegel, Popper argues that the spirit of free, critical inquiry that governs scientific investigation should also apply to politics. In a new foreword, George Soros, who was a student of Popper, describes the "revelation" of first reading the book and how it helped inspire his philanthropic Open Society Foundations.

This is the only commentary on Aristotle's theological work, Metaphysics, Book 12, to survive from the first six centuries CE - the heyday of ancient Greek commentary on Aristotle. Though the Greek text itself is lost, a full English translation is presented here for the first time, based on Arabic versions of the Greek and a Hebrew version of the Arabic. In his commentary Themistius offers an extensive re-working of Aristotle, confirming that the first principle of the universe is indeed Aristotle's God as intellect, not the intelligibles thought by God. The identity of intellect with intelligibles had been omitted by Aristotle in Metaphysics 12, but is suggested in his Physics 3.3 and On the Soul 3, and later by Plotinus. Laid out here in an accessible translation and accompanied by extensive commentary notes, introduction and indexes, the work will be of interest for students and scholars of Neoplatonist philosophy, ancient metaphysics, and textual transmission.

Modern interpreters of Plato s Socrates have generally taken the dialogues to be aimed at working out objective truth. Attending closely to the texts of the early dialogues and the question of virtue in particular, Sean D. Kirkland suggests that this approach is flawed that such concern with discovering external facts rests on modern assumptions that would have been far from the minds of Socrates and his contemporaries. This isn t, however, to accuse Socrates of any kind of relativism. Through careful analysis of the original Greek and of a range of competing strands of Plato scholarship, Kirkland instead brings to light a radical, proto-phenomenological Socrates, for whom what virtue is is what has always already appeared as virtuous in everyday experience of the world, even if initial appearances are unsatisfactory or obscure and in need of greater scrutiny and clarification."

Sextus Empiricus is one of the most important ancient philosophical writers after Plato and Aristotle. His writings are our main source for the doctrines and methods of Scepticism. He probably lived in the second century AD. Eleven books of his writings have survived, covering logic, physics, ethics, and many other fields. Against the Grammarians is the first book of Sextus' Adversus Mathematicos, his broad-ranging polemic against the various liberal studies of classical learning. It is prefaced by a short general attack on the arts (included in this volume); then Sextus focuses on the grammatical writers of the classical era, categorizing, analysing, and criticizing their doctrines. The result is not only an invaluable source for ancient ideas about grammar, language, and literary technique, but an excellent example of sustained Sceptical reasoning. David Blank presents a new translation into clear modern English of this important treatise, together with the first ever commentary on the work. In an extended introduction he discusses Against the Grammarians in the broad context of Sextus' work as a whole, Scepticism in general, and the history of ancient writings in this field.