This book demonstrates that we need not choose between seeing so-called Presocratic thinkers as rational philosophers or as religious sages. In particular, it rethinks fundamentally the emergence of systematic epistemology and reflection on speculative inquiry in Hesiod, Xenophanes and Parmenides. Shaul Tor argues that different forms of reasoning, and different models of divine disclosure, play equally integral, harmonious and mutually illuminating roles in early Greek epistemology. Throughout, the book relates these thinkers to their religious, literary and historical surroundings. It is thus also, and inseparably, a study of poetic inspiration, divination, mystery initiation, metempsychosis and other early Greek attitudes to the relations and interactions between mortal and divine. The engagements of early philosophers with such religious attitudes present us with complex combinations of criticisms and creative appropriations. Indeed, the early milestones of philosophical epistemolo
This book explores a variety of teleology present in Plato's Republic, in which actions are carried out for the sake of an end that is not the intended goal. Payne draws on examples from Republic to
This book offers an interpretation of the philosophical thought of the ancient Maya, in the classic and postclassic periods. Alexus McLeod adopts philosophical methodology, comparative philosophy, and
Contributors to this volume focus on the character of Socrates as the embodiment of philosophy, employing this as a starting point for exploring various themes exposed in the Apology. These include th
This book investigates the chaotic end of the Bronze Age in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean through the lens of Homeric poetry, with an emphasis on the description of piratical activities describ
Julia Annas presents a study of Plato's account of the relation of virtue to law: how it developed from the Republic to the Laws, and how his ideas were taken up by Cicero and by Philo of Alexandria.
‘We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece’, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote. It is in Greek that the questions which shaped the destiny o
‘We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece’, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote. It is in Greek that the questions which shaped the destiny o
Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue provides the most complete study of the immediate literary reaction to Socrates, by his contemporaries and the first-generation Socratics, and of the writings from A
Ennead VI.8 gives us access to the living mind of a long dead sage as he tries to answer some of the most fundamental questions we in the modern world continue to ask: are we really free when most of
The Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) recorded his moral philosophy and reflections on life as a highly original kind of correspondence. Letters on Ethics includes vivid descr
This volume of Proclus' commentary on Plato's Timaeus records Proclus' exegesis of Timaeus 27a–31b, in which Plato first discusses preliminary matters that precede his account of the creation of the universe, and then moves to the account of the creation of the universe as a totality. For Proclus this text is a grand opportunity to reflect on the nature of causation as it relates to the physical reality of our cosmos. The commentary deals with many subjects that have been of central interest to philosophers from Plato's time onwards, such as the question whether the cosmos was created in time, and the nature of evil as it relates to physical reality and its ontological imperfection.
All Galen's surviving shorter works on psychology and ethics - including the recently discovered Avoiding Distress, and the neglected Character Traits, extant only in Arabic - are here presented in one volume in a new English translation, with substantial introductions and notes and extensive glossaries. Original and penetrating analyses are provided of the psychological and philosophical thought, both of the above and of two absolutely central works of Galenic philosophy, Affections and Errors and The Capacities of the Soul, by some of the foremost experts in the field. Each treatise has also been subjected to fresh textual study, taking account of the latest scholarly developments, and is presented with accompanying textual discussions, adding greatly to the value and accuracy of the work without detracting from its accessibility to a wider readership. The volume thus makes a major contribution to the understanding of the ancient world's most prominent doctor-philosopher in his intel
Susan Sauvé Meyer presents a new translation of Plato's Laws, 1 and 2. In these opening books of Plato's last work, a Cretan, a Spartan, and an Athenian discuss legislative theory, moral psychology, a
