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

Whilst aesthetics as a discipline did not exist before the modern age, ancient philosophers give many insights about beauty and art. In Late Antiquity Plotinus confronted the problem of beauty and the value of the arts. Plotinus' reflections have an important role in the development of the concept of the value of artistic imagination during the Renaissance and the Romantic era, but he also influenced the artistic taste of his time.

Aesthetic Themes in Pagan and Christian Neoplatonism reconstructs the aesthetic philosophical views of Late Antiquity, and their relation to...

By bringing together influential critics of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics and some of the strongest defenders of an Aristotelian approach, this collection provides a fresh assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Aristotelian virtue ethics and its contemporary interpretations. Contributors critically discuss and re-assess the neo-Aristotelian paradigm which has been predominant in the philosophical discourse on virtue for the past 30 years.

Typically, the first decade of Friedrich Nietzsche's career is considered a sort of precis to his mature thinking. Yet his philological articles, lectures, and notebooks on Ancient Greek culture and thought - much of which has received insufficient scholarly attention - were never intended to serve as a preparatory ground to future thought. Nietzsche's early scholarship was intended to express his insights into the character of antiquity. Many of those insights are not only important for better understanding Nietzsche; they remain vital for understanding antiquity today....

Metaphysics and possibility are fundamental concepts in philosophical thought. How are they related? Maaen analyzes two paradigmatic metaphysicians in the history of philosophy and shows that in their arguments, Aristotle and Nicholas of Cusa use a differentiated semantics of possibility to resolve problems of substance, language, and thought.

This is the first comprehensive treatment of the history of the angle from Euclid to classical Arabic mathematics. The volume presents critically edited texts, with translations and commentaries, of Greek and Arabic philosophers and mathematicians including Euclid, Simplicius, al-Nayrīzī, Avicenna, Ibn al-Haytham, al-Tūsī, al-Shīrāzī, and al-Fārisī.

When Philip Sidney defends poetry by defending the methods used by poets and lawyers alike, he relies on the traditional association between fiction and legal procedure--an association that begins with Aristotle. In this study Kathy Eden offers a new understanding of this tradition, from its origins in Aristotle's Poetics and De Anima, through its development in the psychological and rhetorical theory of late antiquity and the Middle Ages, to its culmination in the literary theory of the Renaissance.

Originally published in 1986.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the...

It has been much disputed to what extent thinkers in Greek and Roman antiquity adhered to ideas of evolution and progress in human affairs. Did they lack any conception of process in time, or did they anticipate Darwinian and Lamarckian hypotheses?

The Origins of Civilization in Greek and Roman Thought, first published in1986, comprehensively examines this issue. Beginning with creation myths - Mother Earth and Pandora, the anti-progressive ideas of the Golden Age, and the cyclical theories of Orphism - Professor Blundell goes on to explore the origins of scientific...

Intellectuals in Politics in the Greek World, first published in 1984, " "was the first comprehensive study of this recurrent theme in political sociology with specific reference to antiquity, and led to significant revaluation of the role of intellectuals in everyday political life.

The term intellectual is carefully defined, and figures as diverse as Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle; Isocrates, Heracleides of Ponteius and Clearchus of Soli are discussed. The author examines the difference between the success of an intellectual politician, like Solon, and the failure of those such as...

Julian: An Intellectual Biography, first published in 1981, presents a penetrating and scholarly analysis of Julian's intellectual development against the background of philosophy and religion in the late Roman Empire.

Professor Polymnia Athanassiadi tells the story of Julian's transformation from a reclusive and scholarly adolescent into a capable general and an audacious social reformer. However, his character was fraught with a great many contradictions, tensions and inconsistencies: he could be sensitive and intelligent, but also uncontrollably spontaneous and subject...