Kategoria BISAC: Philosophy >> History & Surveys - Ancient & Classical

Fifteen of these essays by one of the leading authorities on Renaissance Platonism explore the complex philosophical, hermeneutical, and mythological issues addressed by the Florentine, Marsilio Ficino (1433-99). Ficino was the pre-eminent Platonist of his time and a distinguished philosopher, scholar and magus who had an enormous influence on the intellectual and cultural life of two and a half centuries, and who is one of the most important witnesses to the preoccupations of his age, above all to its fascination with ancient poetry and philosophy and their uneasy accommodation as an...

In this humorous, inspiring and delightfully British tale, Gary finds solitude and weary limbs bring him closer to the wisdom of the world's greatest thinkers. Recalling Rousseau's reverie, Bertrand Russell's misery, Plato's love of beauty and Epicurus' joy in...

In the Erga Works and Days] Hesiod unfolds an image of a man whose existence is not determined solely by ineluctable fate. Led by his mind (nous), the individual instead assumes responsibility for his own behavior. This study examines both this perspective novel in the context of early Greek literature and shows that nous is of critical importance for the proper understanding of the Erga.

For Socrates, philosophy is not like Christian conversion from error to truth, but rather it is like the pagan process whereby a young man is initiated into cult mysteries by a more experienced man - the mystagogos - who prepares him and leads him to the sacred precinct. In Greek cult religion, the mystagogos prepared the initiate for the esoteric mysteries revealed by the hierophant. Socrates treats traditional wisdom with scepticism, and this makes him appear ridiculous or dangerous in the eyes of cultural conservatives. Nevertheless, his scepticism is not radical: custom is not...

Pyrrho of Elis went with Alexander the Great to Central Asia and India during the Greek invasion and conquest of the Persian Empire in 334-324 BC. There he met with early Buddhist masters. Greek Buddha shows how their Early Buddhism shaped the philosophy of Pyrrho, the famous founder of Pyrrhonian scepticism in ancient Greece.

Christopher I. Beckwith traces the origins of a major tradition in Western philosophy to Gandhara, a country in Central Asia and northwestern India. He systematically examines the teachings and practices of Pyrrho and of Early Buddhism, including...

Why did Greek tragedy and "the tragic" come to be seen as essential to conceptions of modernity? And how has this belief affected modern understandings of Greek drama? In Genealogy of the Tragic, Joshua Billings answers these and related questions by tracing the emergence of the modern theory of the tragic, which was first developed around 1800 by thinkers associated with German Idealism. The book argues that the idea of the tragic arose in response to a new consciousness of history in the late eighteenth century, which spurred theorists to see Greek tragedy as both a unique,...

ON DUTIES deserves more attention than it gets, and it rewards the attention it receives, because it deals with the question of the well-lived life in a clear, thoughtful, accessible, and compelling manner. Cicero believed On Duties to be his magnum opus, and much of history has agreed with him on this. Of On Duties, the French philosopher Voltaire wrote: "No one will ever write anything more wise, more true, or more useful." And Martin Luther, in his Table Talk says this of Cicero: "Let those who wish to see a true philosophy read Cicero. Cicero was a wise and...

Husserl beruft sich immer wieder programmatisch auf Platon als den Grundervater der europaischen Philosophie, arbeitet jedoch die Bezuge der Phanomenologie zum Platonismus nie auf - obwohl er die -historische Ruckbesinnung- auf die Urstiftung seines Denkens als wesentlichen Bestandteil der -Selbstbesinnung auf ein Selbstverstandnis dessen hin, worauf man eigentlich hinaus will, als der man ist, als historisches Wesen- (Hua VI, S. 73) charakterisiert. Die vorliegende Arbeit will diese Reflexion leisten.

Ihr Gegenstand ist mithin die Transformation Platonischer Gedanken in Husserls...