From Homer to Aristotle, understanding anger and harnessing its power was at the core of Hellenic civilization. Homer created the framework for philosophical inquiries into anger, one that persisted until it was overturned by Stoicism and Christianity. Plato saw anger as the guardian of justice and Aristotle conceived of it as bound to friendship. Yet both showed that anger can become a guardian of injustice and a defender of our psychological abnormalities. Plato claimed that reason is a tertiary factor in controlling anger and Aristotle argued that non-cognitive powers can issue commands for anger's arousal - findings that shed light as to why cognitive therapeutic approaches often prove to be ineffective. Both proposed nurturing the "thumos," the receptacle of anger and the seat of self-esteem. Aristotle's view of public anger as an early warning sign of social dissolution continues to be relevant to this day. In this carefully argued study, Kostas Kalimtzis examines the theories of anger in the context of the ancient world with an eye to their implications for the modern predicament.

Though the ancient Greek philosophical concept of schole is usually translated as 'leisure', there is a vast difference between the two. Leisure, derived from Latin licere, has its roots in Roman otium and connotes the uses of free time in ways permitted by the status quo. Schole is the actualization of mind and one's humanity within a republic that devotes its culture to making such a choice possible. This volume traces the background in Greek culture and the writings of Plato of a daring proposal presented by Aristotle, that schole is a principle for political organization. The concept of schole by and large did not survive Aristotle. To sharpen our understanding of schole the book goes on to identify the concepts of leisure which we have inherited from the intellectuals of the Hellenistic and Roman empires and the early Church Fathers. Schole also had its contrary ascholia - busyness - which Plato described as a social and psychological pathology and his analysis suggests why, due to these ills, current visions of a leisure society are highly unlikely.

From Homer to Aristotle, understanding anger and harnessing its power was at the core of Hellenic civilization. Homer created the framework for philosophical inquiries into anger, one that persisted until it was overturned by Stoicism and Christianity. Plato saw anger as the guardian of justice and Aristotle conceived of it as bound to friendship. Yet both showed that anger can become a guardian of injustice and a defender of our psychological abnormalities. Plato claimed that reason is a tertiary factor in controlling anger and Aristotle argued that non-cognitive powers can issue commands for anger's arousal - findings that shed light as to why cognitive therapeutic approaches often prove to be ineffective. Both proposed nurturing the thumos, the receptacle of anger and the seat of self-esteem. Aristotle's view of public anger as an early warning sign of social dissolution continues to be relevant to this day. In this carefully argued study, Kostas Kalimtzis examines the theories of anger in the context of the ancient world with an eye to their implications for the modern predicament.

Though the ancient Greek philosophical concept of schole is usually translated as 'leisure', there is a vast difference between the two. Leisure, derived from Latin licere, has its roots in Roman otium and connotes the uses of free time in ways permitted by the status quo. Schole is the actualization of mind and one's humanity within a republic that devotes its culture to making such a choice possible. This volume traces the background in Greek culture and the writings of Plato of a daring proposal presented by Aristotle, that schole is a principle for political organization. The concept of schole by and large did not survive Aristotle. To sharpen our understanding of schole the book goes on to identify the concepts of leisure which we have inherited from the intellectuals of the Hellenistic and Roman empires and the early Church Fathers. Schole also had its contrary ascholia - busyness - which Plato described as a social and psychological pathology and his analysis suggests why, due to these ills, current visions of a leisure society are highly unlikely.