From the sixth through the fourth centuries BCE, the landmark developments of Greek culture and the critical works of Greek thought and literature were accompanied by an explosive growth in the use of written texts. By the close of the classical period, a new culture of literacy and textuality had come into existence alongside the traditional practices of live oral discourse. New avenues for human activity and creativity arose in this period. The very creation of the 'classical' and the perennial use of Greece by later European civilizations as a source of knowledge and inspiration would not have taken place without the textual innovations of the classical period. This book considers how writing, reading and disseminating texts led to new ways of thinking and new forms of expression and behaviour. The individual chapters cover a range of phenomena, including poetry, science, religions, philosophy, history, law and learning.
From the sixth through the fourth centuries BCE, the landmark developments of Greek culture and the critical works of Greek thought and literature were accompanied by an explosive growth in the use of written texts. By the close of the classical period, a new culture of literacy and textuality had come into existence alongside the traditional practices of live oral discourse. New avenues for human activity and creativity arose in this period. The very creation of the 'classical' and the perennial use of Greece by later European civilizations as a source of knowledge and inspiration would not have taken place without the textual innovations of the classical period. This book considers how writing, reading and disseminating texts led to new ways of thinking and new forms of expression and behaviour. The individual chapters cover a range of phenomena, including poetry, science, religions, philosophy, history, law and learning.
This book tells an overlooked story in the history of the will, a contested idea in both politics and philosophy of mind. For it is Cicero, statesman and philosopher, who gives shape to the notion of will as it would become in Western thought and who invents the idea of 'the will of the people'. In a single word – voluntas – he brings Roman law in contact with Greek ideas, chief among them Plato's claim that a rational elite must rule. When the republic falls to Caesarism, Cicero turns his political argument inward: will is a force to win the virtue in the soul that was lost on the battlefield, the marker of inner freedom in an unfree age. Though his vision of a free republic failed in his time, Cicero's ideal of rational elitism has shaped and fractured the modern world – and Ciceronian creativity may yet save it.
Antoine Meillet mentored a generation of influential twentieth-century linguists and philologists, including Émile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, and André Martinet. One of the most influential comparative linguists of his time, he recognised that language is a social phenomenon, influenced by sociological factors. Originally published in 1933, this third edition of his 1928 history of Latin was the last to be published during his lifetime. In it, Meillet explores the historical context and significance of Latin. He describes how it developed from Indo-European and evolved according to the fluctuating fortunes of the Roman empire, imitating and borrowing from Greek in many ways but unified by the centralising influence of Rome. As the empire declined, the regional dialects of Latin began to develop into the modern Romance languages, with religion, philosophy and science ensuring the survival of Latin itself into the modern period.
First published in 1880–1885, Joseph B. Mayor's influential three-volume edition of De Natura Deorum places Cicero's speculative theological dialogue in the context of his other writings and the arguments of the Epicureans, the Stoics, the Academics, and their predecessors. Equipped with detailed commentary and a substantial introduction to the history of the Greek philosophy, this edition remains a clear presentation of Cicero's complex philosophical project, an enquiry into the nature of the divine and its relationship to forms of human knowledge. Set within the home of the orator Caius Aurelius Catto, Cicero's wide-ranging work explores questions of divine providence, natural law, the creation of the world, and the worship of the Roman pantheon of gods. As Cicero strives to incorporate a rich inheritance of Greek metaphysics and natural philosophy within the Roman intellectual tradition, the book reveals the intellectual rigour and sceptical wit that characterise his thought.
First published between 1880 and 1885, Joseph B. Mayor's three-volume edition of De Natura Deorum places Cicero's speculative theological dialogue in the context of the arguments of the Epicureans, the Stoics, the Academics, and their predecessors. Equipped with a detailed commentary and a substantial introduction to the history of Greek philosophy, it remains a clear presentation of Cicero's complex philosophical project, an enquiry into the nature of the divine and its relationship to modes of human perception. Set within the home of the orator Caius Aurelius Cotta, Cicero's Book 1 balances the arguments of the Epicurean Velleius against the Academic Cotta as they debate whether the gods may in any way resemble the human form. A demonstration above all of Cicero's own intellectual rigour and sceptical wit, this volume showcases his careful evaluation of the inheritance of Greek natural philosophy within the Roman intellectual tradition.
This Companion provides a comprehensive guide to ancient logic. The first part charts its chronological development, focussing especially on the Greek tradition, and discusses its two main systems: Aristotle's logic of terms and the Stoic logic of propositions. The second part explores the key concepts at the heart of the ancient logical systems: truth, definition, terms, propositions, syllogisms, demonstrations, modality and fallacy. The systematic discussion of these concepts allows the reader to engage with some specific logical and exegetical issues and to appreciate their transformations across different philosophical traditions. The intersections between logic, mathematics and rhetoric are also explored. The third part of the volume discusses the reception and influence of ancient logic in the history of philosophy and its significance for philosophy in our own times. Comprehensive coverage, chapters by leading international scholars and a critical overview of the recent literatu
This Companion provides a comprehensive guide to ancient logic. The first part charts its chronological development, focussing especially on the Greek tradition, and discusses its two main systems: Aristotle's logic of terms and the Stoic logic of propositions. The second part explores the key concepts at the heart of the ancient logical systems: truth, definition, terms, propositions, syllogisms, demonstrations, modality and fallacy. The systematic discussion of these concepts allows the reader to engage with some specific logical and exegetical issues and to appreciate their transformations across different philosophical traditions. The intersections between logic, mathematics and rhetoric are also explored. The third part of the volume discusses the reception and influence of ancient logic in the history of philosophy and its significance for philosophy in our own times. Comprehensive coverage, chapters by leading international scholars and a critical overview of the recent literatu
Discusses the importance of the early history of Greek mathematics to education and civic life through a study of the Parthenon and dialogues of Plato.
Discusses the importance of the early history of Greek mathematics to education and civic life through a study of the Parthenon and dialogues of Plato.
Originally published in 1907, this book contains the ancient Greek text of Aristotle's De Anima, his treatise on the differing souls of living things. An English translation is provided on each facing page, and Hicks supplies a very detailed commentary on each line at the end of the book, as well as a summary of each section. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Greek philosophy and the history of classical scholarship.
Sextus Empiricus' Against the Logicians is by far the most detailed surviving examination by any ancient Greek sceptic of the areas of epistemology and logic. It critically examines the pretensions of non-sceptical philosophers to have discovered methods for determining the truth, either through direct observation or by inference from the observed to the unobserved. It is therefore a fine example of the Pyrrhonist sceptical method at work. It also provides a mine of information about the ideas of other Greek thinkers, ideas that are in many cases poorly preserved in other sources. This volume presents Against the Logicians in a new and accurate translation, together with a detailed introduction that sets the work in its philosophical context.
Philosophy in the Islamic world emerged in the ninth century and continued to flourish into the fourteenth century. It was strongly influenced by Greek thought, but Islamic philosophers also developed an original philosophical culture of their own, which had a considerable impact on the subsequent course of Western philosophy. This volume offers new translations of philosophical writings by Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ghazali, Ibn Tufayl, and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). All of the texts presented here were very influential and invite comparison with later works in the Western tradition. They focus on metaphysics and epistemology but also contribute to broader debates concerning the conception of God, the nature of religion, the place of humanity in the universe, and the limits of human reason. A historical and philosophical introduction sets the writings in context and traces their preoccupations and their achievement.
This 2005 book is a critical examination of Michel Foucault's relation to ancient Greek thought, in particular his famous analysis of Greek history of sexuality. Wolfgang Detel offers an understanding of Foucault's theories of power and knowledge based on modern analytical theories of science and concepts of power. He offers a complex reading of the texts which Foucault discusses, covering topics such as Aristotle's ethics and theory of sex, Hippocratic dietetics, the earliest treatises on economics, and Plato's theory of love. The result is a philosophically rich and probing critique of Foucault's later writings, and a persuasive account of the relation between ethics, power and knowledge in classical antiquity. His book will have a wide appeal to readers interested in Foucault and in Greek thought and culture.
Philosophy in the Islamic world emerged in the ninth century and continued to flourish into the fourteenth century. It was strongly influenced by Greek thought, but Islamic philosophers also developed an original philosophical culture of their own, which had a considerable impact on the subsequent course of Western philosophy. This volume offers new translations of philosophical writings by Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ghazali, Ibn Tufayl, and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). All of the texts presented here were very influential and invite comparison with later works in the Western tradition. They focus on metaphysics and epistemology but also contribute to broader debates concerning the conception of God, the nature of religion, the place of humanity in the universe, and the limits of human reason. A historical and philosophical introduction sets the writings in context and traces their preoccupations and their achievement.
Allegory is a vast subject, and its knotty history is daunting to students and even advanced scholars venturing outside their own historical specializations. This Companion will present, lucidly, systematically, and expertly, the various threads that comprise the allegorical tradition over its entire chronological range. Beginning with Greek antiquity, the volume shows how the earliest systems of allegory developed in poetry dealing with philosophy, mystical religion, and hermeneutics. Once the earliest histories and themes of the allegorical tradition have been presented, the volume turns to literary, intellectual, and cultural manifestations of allegory through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The essays in the last section address literary and theoretical approaches to allegory in the modern era, from reactions to allegory in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to reevaluations of its power in the thought of the twentieth century and beyond.
Plato's Cratylus is a brilliant but enigmatic dialogue. It bears on a topic, the relation of language to knowledge, which has never ceased to be of central philosophical importance, but tackles it in ways which at times look alien to us. In this reappraisal of the dialogue, Professor Sedley argues that the etymologies which take up well over half of it are not an embarrassing lapse or semi-private joke on Plato's part. On the contrary, if taken seriously as they should be, they are the key to understanding both the dialogue itself and Plato's linguistic philosophy more broadly. The book's main argument is so formulated as to be intelligible to readers with no knowledge of Greek, and will have a significant impact both on the study of Plato and on the history of linguistic thought.
Cicero's De re publica contains the fullest ancient account of the theory of the mixed constitution and the oldest extant narrative of early Roman history; it concludes with the Dream of Scipio, one of the most influential ancient visions of the afterlife. The argument of the dialogue concerns the relationship between political theory and practice, and between social institutions and the individual citizen. This edition of most of the surviving portions of De re publica is the most detailed commentary ever to appear in English. It explains Cicero's philosophical argument and its relationship to his account of early Rome, and thoroughly elucidates the language and style of the treatise. The introduction offers a new and provocative interpretation of Cicero's dialogue as a work both of literature and of political philosophy.
The Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece provides a wide-ranging synthesis of history, society, and culture during the formative period of Ancient Greece, from the Age of Homer in the late eighth century to the Persian Wars of 490–480 BC. In ten clearly written and succinct chapters, leading scholars from around the English-speaking world treat all aspects of the civilization of Archaic Greece, from social, political, and military history to early achievements in poetry, philosophy, and the visual arts. Archaic Greece was an age of experimentation and intellectual ferment that laid the foundations for much of Western thought and culture. Individual Greek city-states rose to great power and wealth, and after a long period of isolation, many cities sent out colonies that spread Hellenism to all corners of the Mediterranean world. This Companion offers a vivid and fully documented account of this critical stage in the history of the West.
The Greeks have long been regarded as innovators across a wide range of fields in literature, culture, philosophy, politics and science. However, little attention has been paid to how they thought and felt about novelty and innovation itself, and to relating this to the forces of traditionalism and conservatism which were also present across all the various societies within ancient Greece. What inspired the Greeks to embark on their unique and enduring innovations? How did they think and feel about the new? This book represents the first serious attempt to address these issues, and deals with the phenomenon across all periods and areas of classical Greek history and thought. Each chapter concentrates on a different area of culture or thought, while the book as a whole argues that much of the impulse towards innovation came from the life of the polis which provided its setting.
