The philosophy of Plato, universally acknowledged as the most important thinker of the Ancient World, is a major focus of contemporary attention - not only among philosophers, but also classicists and literary and political theorists. This set selects the best and most influential examples of Platonic scholarship published in English over the last fifty years, and adds translations of outstanding works published in other languages. It represents radically different scholarly approaches, and illuminates the key issues in the most hotly debated topics, including Plato's theory of the Forms and Platonic Erotics. It is especially concerned with the interpretations and major debates of philosophers of the Anglo-American schools over the last three decades.

Rhetorical Strategies in Late Antique Literature: Images, Metatexts and Interpretation offers new and penetrating insights into the rhetorical nature of a selection of works from the fourth and fifth centuries, with the intent of providing innovative interpretations that firmly situate these texts within their historical and religious coordinates.

This four volume set is a collection of some of the most significant scholarship published on the philosophy of Socrates in the last half century. The contributors include many of the most prominent scholars in this field. As the growth in Socratic studies in the past three decades is due in large part to the influential work of Gregory Vlastos, articles by him figure prominently in the collection, and works by other authors are generally related to his work (as sources of it, responses to it, or further developments of it). The volumes deal with different areas of Socratic thought. The first volume begins with the question whether and to what degree we can discern a distinctive philosophy of Socrates in the ancient sources. The second volume deals with the trial of Socrates and the philosophical issues that arise from it. The third volume considers the philosophical methodology of Socrates and the fourth his moral philosophy. This collection shares some material with earlier collections on the philosophy of Socrates, but it is more extensive and up-to-date. Unlike other collections, which may offer the reader only a single article on a given topic, this collection offers a conversation in-depth. The reader can thus get a sense of the dimensions of the scholarly debate on these central issues in the philosophy of Socrates. No collection can be complete, but this aims at a representative portrait of Socratic studies in the last fifty years.

Virtue ethics is perhaps the most important development within late twentieth-century moral philosophy. Rosalind Hursthouse, who has made notable contributions to this development, now presents a full exposition and defence of her neo-Aristotelian version of virtue ethics. She shows how virtue ethics can provide guidance for action, illuminate moral dilemmas, and bring out the moral significance of the emotions. Deliberately avoiding a combative stance, she finds less disagreement between Kantian and neo-Aristotelian approaches than is usual, and she offers the first account from a virtue ethics perspective of acting 'from a sense of duty'. She considers the question which character traits are virtues, and explores how answers to this question can be justified by appeal to facts about human nature. Written in a clear, engaging style which makes it accessible to non-specialists, On Virtue Ethics will appeal to anyone with an interest in moral philosophy.

Ancient Greek Philosophy: From the Presocratics to the Hellenistic Philosophers presents a comprehensive introduction to the philosophers and philosophical traditions that developed in ancient Greece from 585 BC to 529 AD. * Provides coverage of the Presocratics through the Hellenistic philosophers * Moves beyond traditional textbooks that conclude with Aristotle * A uniquely balanced organization of exposition, choice excerpts and commentary, informed by classroom feedback * Contextual commentary traces the development of lines of thought through the period, ideal for students new to the discipline * Can be used in conjunction with the online resources found at http://tomblackson.com/Ancient/toc.html

In this third Volume of Logological Investigations, Sandywell continues his sociological reconstruction of the origins of reflexive thought and discourse with special reference to pre-Socratic philosophy and science and their socio-political context.
He begins by criticizing traditional histories of philosophy which abstract speculative thought from its sociocultural and historical contexts, and proposes instead an explicitly contextual and reflexive approach to ancient Greek society and culture.
Each chapter is devoted to a seminal figure or "school" of reflection in early Greek philosophy. Special emphasis is placed upon the verbal and rhetorical innovations of protophilosophy in the sixth and fifth centuries BC. These chapters are also exemplary displays of the distinctive Logological method of culture analysis and through them Sandywell shows that by returning to the earliest problematics of reflexivity in pre-modern culture we may gain an insight into some of the central currents of modern and postmodern self-reflection.

The series, founded in 1970, publishes works which either combine studies in the history of philosophy with a systematic approach or bring together systematic studies with reconstructions from the history of philosophy. Monographs are published in English as well as in German. The founding editors are Erhard Scheibe (editor until 1991), Gunther Patzig (until 1999) and Wolfgang Wieland (until 2003). From 1990 to 2007, the series had been co-edited by Jurgen Mittelstrass.

While the early Platonic dialogues have often been explored and appreciated for their ethical content, the characteristc features of these dialogues are decidedly epistemological - Socrates' method of questions and answers, known as elenchos, Socrates' fascination with definition, Socrates' profession of ignorance, and Socrates' thesis that virtue is knowledge. Benson here attempts to uncover the epistemological view that underlies these previously neglected features of Socratic thought.

Geoffrey Lloyd engages in a wide-ranging exploration of what we can learn from the study of ancient civilisations that is relevant to fundamental problems, both intellectual and moral, that we still face today. How far is it possible to arrive at an understanding of alien systems of belief? Is it possible to talk meaningfully of 'science' and of its various constituent disciplines, 'astronomy', 'geography', 'anatomy', and so on, in the ancient world? Are logic and its laws universal? Is there one ontology - a single world - to which all attempts at understanding must be considered to be directed? When we encounter apparently very different views of reality, how far can that be put down to a difference in conceptions of what needs explaining, or of what counts as an explanation, or to different preferred modes of reasoning or styles of inquiry? Do the notions of truth and belief represent reliable cross-cultural universals? In another area, what can ancient history teach us about today's social and political problems? Are the discourses of human nature and of human rights universally applicable? What political institutions do we need to help secure equity and justice within nation states and between them? Lloyd sets out to answer all these questions, and to convince us that the science and culture of ancient Greece and China provide precious resources to advance modern debates.

Offering a bold new vision on the history of modern logic, Lukas M. Verburgt and Matteo Cosci focus on the lasting impact of Aristotle's syllogism between the 1820s and 1930s. For over two millennia, deductive logic was the syllogism and syllogism was the yardstick of sound human reasoning. During the 19th century, this hegemony fell apart and logicians, including Boole, Frege and Peirce, took deductive logic far beyond its Aristotelian borders. However, contrary to common wisdom, reflections on syllogism were also instrumental to the creation of new logical developments, such as first-order logic and early set theory. This volume presents the period under discussion as one of both tradition and innovation, both continuity and discontinuity. Modern logic broke away from the syllogistic tradition, but without Aristotle's syllogism, modern logic would not have been born. A vital follow up to The Aftermath of Syllogism, this book traces the longue duree history of syllogism from Richard Whately's revival of formal logic in the 1820s through the work of David Hilbert and the Goettingen school up to the 1930s. Bringing together a group of major international experts, it sheds crucial new light on the emergence of modern logic and the roots of analytic philosophy in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

This collection of articles is an important milestone in the history of the study of time conceptions in Greek and Roman Antiquity. It spans from Homer to Neoplatonism. Conceptions of time are considered from different points of view and sources. Reflections on time were both central and various throughout the history of ancient philosophy. Time was a topic, but also material for poets, historians and doctors. Importantly, the contributions also explore implicit conceptions and how language influences our thought categories.

Aristotle's treatise De Interpretatione is one of his central works; it continues to be the focus of much attention and debate. C. W. A. Whitaker presents the first systematic study of this work, and offers a radical new view of its aims, its structure, and its place in Aristotle's system, basing this view upon a detailed chapter-by-chapter analysis. By treating the work systematically, rather than concentrating on certain selected passages, Dr Whitaker is able to show that, contrary to traditional opinion, it forms an organized and coherent whole. He argues that the De Interpretatione is intended to provide the underpinning for dialectic, the system of argument by question and answer set out in Aristotle's Topics ; and he rejects the traditional view that the De Interpretatione concerns the assertion and is oriented towards the formal logic of the Prior Analytics. In doing so, he sheds valuable new light on some of Aristotle's most famous texts.

St. Maximus the Confessor (580-662), was a major Byzantine thinker, a theologian and philosopher. He developed a philosophical theology in which the doctrine of God, creation, the cosmic order, and salvation is integrated in a unified conception of reality. Christ, the divine Logos, is the centre of the principles (the logoi ) according to which the cosmos is created, and in accordance with which it shall convert to its divine source.
Torstein Tollefsen treats Maximus' thought from a philosophical point of view, and discusses similar thought patterns in pagan Neoplatonism. The study focuses on Maximus' doctrine of creation, in which he denies the possibility of eternal coexistence of uncreated divinity and created and limited being. Tollefsen shows that by the logoi God institutes an ordered cosmos in which separate entities of different species are ontologically interrelated, with man as the centre of the created world. The book also investigates Maximus' teaching of God's activities or energies, and shows how participation in these energies is conceived according to the divine principles of the logoi. An extensive discussion of the complex topic of participation is provided.

Philoponus' On Aristotle Categories 1-5 discusses the nature of universals, preserving the views of Philoponus' teacher Ammonius, as well as presenting a Neoplatonist interpretation of Aristotle's Categories. Philoponus treats universals as concepts in the human mind produced by abstracting a form or nature from the material individual in which it has its being. The work is important for its own philosophical discussion and for the insight it sheds on its sources. For considerable portions, On Aristotle Categories 1-5 resembles the wording of an earlier commentary which declares itself to be an anonymous record taken from the seminars of Ammonius. Unlike much of Philoponus' later writing, this commentary does not disagree with either Aristotle or Ammonius, and suggests the possibility that Philoponus either had access to this earlier record or wrote it himself. This edition explores these questions of provenance, alongside the context, meaning and implications of Philoponus' work. The English translation is accompanied by an introduction, comprehensive commentary notes, bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index. The latest volume in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, the edition makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern readership. Philoponus was a Christian writing in Greek in 6th century CE Alexandria, where some students of philosophy were bilingual in Syriac as well as Greek. In this Greek treatise translated from the surviving Syriac version, Philoponus discusses the logic of parts and wholes, and he illustrates the spread of the pagan and Christian philosophy of 6th century CE Greeks to other cultures, in this case to Syria. Philoponus, an expert on Aristotle's philosophy, had turned to theology and was applying his knowledge of Aristotle to disputes over the human and divine nature of Christ. Were there two natures and were they parts of a whole, as the Emperor Justinian proposed, or was there only one nature, as Philoponus claimed with the rebel minority, both human and divine? If there were two natures, were they parts like the ingredients in a chemical mixture? Philoponus attacks the idea. Such ingredients are not parts, because they each inter-penetrate the whole mixture. Moreover, he abandons his ingenious earlier attempts to support Aristotle's view of mixture by identifying ways in which such ingredients might be thought of as potentially preserved in a chemical mixture. Instead, Philoponus says that the ingredients are destroyed, unlike the human and divine in Christ. This English translation of Philoponus' treatise is the latest volume in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series and makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern readership. The translation in each volume is accompanied by an introduction, comprehensive commentary notes, bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index.

Protagoras is a lively and often humorous look at virtue, knowledge, and the best means of acquiring them. Ostensibly a debate between Socrates and a sophist opponent over the education of a young man, the dialogue also concerns the nature of the contest itself. As told in retrospect by a somewhat frustrated Socrates, he is asked by Hippocrates to broker an introduction to Protagoras, a famous sophist with whom the young man wants to study. Socrates then begins a public debate with Protagoras in order to see what the sophist has to teach. The two men examine the nature of virtue - whether it can be taught, and whether all virtues are connected - but end up in conflict over their styles of discourse. Plato contrasts the crowd-pleasing oratory of Protagoras with the difficult and unglamorous questioning used by Socrates. The multiple layers of conflict and discussion make Protagorus one of Plato's most dramatically satisfying works, and an excellent starting point for those new to his philosophy.