David Charles presents a major new study of Aristotle's views on meaning, essence, necessity, and related topics. These interconnected views are central to Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, and are also highly relevant to current philosophical debates. Charles aims to reach a clear understanding of Aristotle's claims and arguments, to assess their truth, and to evaluate their importance to ancient and modern philosophy.

Robert Hanna presents a fresh view of the Kantian and analytic traditions that have dominated continental European and Anglo-American philosophy over the last two centuries, and of the connections between them. But this is not just a study in the history of philosophy, for out of this emerges Hanna's original approach to two much-contested theories that remain at the heart of contemporary philosophy. Hanna puts forward a new 'cognitive-semantic' interpretation of transcendental idealism, and a vigorous defense of Kant's theory of (...) analytic and synthetic necessary truth, making this compelling reading for all who are interested in these fundamental philosophical issues. (shrink)

This book is not a study of Plato's philosophy, but a contribution to the literary interpretation of the dialogues, through analysis of their formal structure, ...

A study of Hippolytus of Rome and his treatment of Presocratic Philosophy, used as a case study to argue against the use of collections of fragments and in favour of the idea of reading "embedded texts" with attention to the interpretation and interests of the quoting author. A study of methodology in early Greek Philosophy. Includes novel interpretations of Heraclitus and Empedocles, and an argument for the unity of Empedocles's poem.

Mimesis is one of the oldest, most fundamental concepts in Western aesthetics. This book offers a new, searching treatment of its long history at the center of theories of representational art: above all, in the highly influential writings of Plato and Aristotle, but also in later Greco-Roman philosophy and criticism, and subsequently in many areas of aesthetic controversy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Combining classical scholarship, philosophical analysis, and the history of ideas--and ranging across discussion of poetry, painting, (...) and music--Stephen Halliwell shows with a wealth of detail how mimesis, at all stages of its evolution, has been a more complex, variable concept than its conventional translation of "imitation" can now convey. Far from providing a static model of artistic representation, mimesis has generated many different models of art, encompassing a spectrum of positions from realism to idealism. Under the influence of Platonist and Aristotelian paradigms, mimesis has been a crux of debate between proponents of what Halliwell calls "world-reflecting" and "world-simulating" theories of representation in both the visual and musico-poetic arts. This debate is about not only the fraught relationship between art and reality but also the psychology and ethics of how we experience and are affected by mimetic art. Moving expertly between ancient and modern traditions, Halliwell contends that the history of mimesis hinges on problems that continue to be of urgent concern for contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

A comprehensive reassessment of the concept of mimesis in the history of ancient Greek aesthetics and philosophy of art, with particular attention to Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, and neoplatonism. There is also a wide-ranging review of arguments pro and contra the idea of artistic mimesis from the Renaissance to modern literar theory. The book challenges standard accounts in numerous respects and builds a new dialectical model with which to make sense of the entire history of mimeticist thinking in aesthetics.

This 1995 book takes as its starting point Plato's incorporation of specific genres of poetry and rhetoric into his dialogues. The author argues that Plato's 'dialogues' with traditional genres are part and parcel of his effort to define 'philosophy'. Before Plato, 'philosophy' designated 'intellectual cultivation' in the broadest sense. When Plato appropriated the term for his own intellectual project, he created a new and specialised discipline. In order to define and legitimise 'philosophy', Plato had to match it against genres of (...) discourse that had authority and currency in democratic Athens. By incorporating the text or discourse of another genre, Plato 'defines' his new brand of wisdom in opposition to traditional modes of thinking and speaking. By targeting individual genres of discourse Plato marks the boundaries of 'philosophy' as a discursive and as a social practice. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was one of the great philosophers and novelists of the twentieth century and The Sovereignty of Good is her most important and enduring philosophical work. She argues that philosophy has focused, mistakenly, on what it is right to do rather than good to be and that only by restoring the notion of ‘vision’ to moral thinking can this distortion be corrected. This brilliant work shows why Iris Murdoch remains essential reading: a vivid and uncompromising style, a commitment to (...) forceful argument, and a courage to go against the grain. With a foreword by Mary Midgley. (shrink)

Emotions shape the landscape of our mental and social lives. Like geological upheavals in a landscape, they mark our lives as uneven, uncertain and prone to reversal. Are they simply, as some have claimed, animal energies or impulses with no connection to our thoughts? Or are they rather suffused with intelligence and discernment, and thus a source of deep awareness and understanding? In this compelling book, Martha C. Nussbaum presents a powerful argument for treating emotions not as alien forces but (...) as highly discriminating responses to what is of value and importance. She explores and illuminates the structure of a wide range of emotions, in particular compassion and love, showing that there can be no adequate ethical theory without an adequate theory of the emotions. This involves understanding their cultural sources, their history in infancy and childhood, and their sometimes unpredictable and disorderly operations in our daily lives. (shrink)

The Presocratics were the founding fathers of the Western philosophical tradition, and the first masters of rational thought. This volume provides a comprehensive and precise exposition of their arguments, and offers a rigorous assessment of their contribution to philosophical thought.

In "Upheavals of Thought", Martha Nussbaum offers a theory of the emotions. She argues that emotions are best conceived as thoughts, and she argues that emotion-thoughts can make valuable contributions to the moral life. She develops extensive accounts of compassion and erotic love as thoughts that are of great moral import. This paper seeks to elucidate what it means, for Nussbaum, to say that emotions are forms of thought. It raises critical questions about her conception of the structure of emotion, (...) and about her conception of compassion, in particular. Finally, the paper seeks to show how analyzing the structure, as well as the moral value, of the emotions ultimately requires entering the realm of religious ethics. (shrink)

The Greek word eoikos can be translated in various ways. It can be used to describe similarity, plausibility or even suitability. This book explores the philosophical exploitation of its multiple meanings by three philosophers, Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato. It offers new interpretations of the way that each employs the term to describe the status of their philosophy, tracing the development of this philosophical use of eoikos from the fallibilism of Xenophanes through the deceptive cosmology of Parmenides to Plato's Timaeus. The (...) central premise of the book is that, in reflecting on the eoikos status of their accounts, Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato are manipulating the contexts and connotations of the term as it has been used by their predecessors. By focusing on this continuity in the development of the philosophical use of eoikos, the book serves to enhance our understanding of the epistemology and methodology of Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato's Timaeus. (shrink)

This two-part volume collects the complete fragments and most important testimonies for the leading presocratic philosophers. The Greek and Latin texts are translated on facing pages and accompanied by a brief commentary for each philosopher.

This book provides a text, translation, and commentary on the forty-five fragments attributed to the ancient Greek poet and philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon. Part 1 contains almost all of the fragments credited to Xenophanes in the edition by Diels and Kranz. Part 2 consists of four interpretive commentaries on the fragments grouped by subject matter: On Men and Morals, On the Divine, On Nature, and on Human Understanding. Part 3 provides English translations of the collection of ancient testimonia and imitations (...) included in Diels-Kranz. Also included are listings of ancient sources and authorities and three indexes. The aim of this work is to provide the basic information needed in order to assess Xenophanes' achievements as a philosopher. The author defends the view that Xenophanes was a central figure in the intellectual revolution which marks the beginning of Western philosophy and science. (shrink)

The earliest phase of philosophy in Europe saw the beginnings of cosmology and rational theology, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethical and political theory. It also saw the development of a wide range of radical and challenging ideas, from Thales' claim that magnets have souls and Parmenides' account of one unchanging existence to the development of an atomist theory of the physical world. This general account of the Presocratics introduces the major Greek philosophical thinkers from the sixth to the middle of the (...) fifth century B.C. It explores how we might reconstruct their views and understand the motivation and context for their work, and it highlights the ongoing philosophical interest of their often surprising claims. Separate chapters are devoted to each of the major Presocratic thinkers, including Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Leucippus, and Democritus. With a chronology and guide to further reading, this book is an ideal introduction for the student and general reader. _Copub: Acumen Publishing Limited_. (shrink)

In seiner Schrift "De generatione et corruptione" entwickelt Aristoteles seine Antworten auf die Aporien, die sich aus dem Begriff des Werdens ergeben. Dabei geht es ihm ebenso darum, analytisch - und dies im angelsachsischen Sinne des Wortes - das gesamte Bedeutungsspektrum des griechischen Verbes "genesthai" zu klaren und zu ordnen, wie darum, auf rein physikalischer Ebene allgemeine Betrachtungen zur Einfuhrung in die physiologischen Studien des biologischen Corpus anzustellen.Die philosophische Uberlieferung hat, mehr oder minder bewusst, immer erkannt, dass es in Aristoteles (...) Schrift um die Machbarkeit und den Platz einer physikalischen Untersuchung des Lebendigen ging und - unter monotheistischen Vorzeichen - um das Verhaltnis Gottes zu seinen Geschopfen. Man denke nur an den Ps.-Okellos in hellenistischer Zeit, ferner an die galenische Tradition und an die bahnbrechenden physikalischen Intuitionen des Alexander von Aphrodisias. Man denke auch an die grosse Anziehungskraft, die dieser Text auf die arabischen Philosophen und spater auf die Physiker-Arzte Suditaliens ausgeubt hat. Und man denke schliesslich an die fast siebzig byzantinischen Manuskripte, die uns den Text des Traktats in der Originalsprache uberliefert haben. All das zeugt von der Faszination, die dieser Text auf Denker ausgeubt hat, die zu verstehen versucht haben, warum und wie die Welt der reinen Potenz und Materie unter bestimmten, sehr spezifischen Bedingungen in die Individualisierung der aktualisierten Form munden kann.Auch die Gegner waren sich der Bedeutung des Textes bewusst. So hat Philoponus den Traktat nicht ausdrucklich verworfen, wenn er auch in seinem De Aeternitate mundi contra Aristotelem und seinem De Aeternitate munde contra Proclum die These von der Ewigkeit der Welt und dem Fortbestand der Arten ablehnt, der ja, wie wir gerade gesehen haben, in dem Traktat eine grundlegende Bedeutung zukommt. Eine systematische Widerlegung von De generatione et corruptione wird erstmals von einem der grossten islamischen Theologen zu Anfang des 10. Jahrhunderts gefuhrt. Der Autor zeigt unter anderem, dass die wichtigste unter den drei arabischen Ubersetzungen sehr wahrscheinlich auf das byzantinische Exemplar der physikalischen Traktate zuruckgeht, dass die suditalienischen Arzte es nicht versaumt haben, sich unverzuglich die vielfaltigen, von Burgundio von Pisa zusammen mit seiner Version ubersetzten Randnotizen zunutze zu machen, - dass ubrigens die beiden Manuskripte, die mit Suditalien in Verbindung gebracht werden konnen, jeweils medizinische Texte enthalten -, dass zahlreiche byzantinische Gelehrte es sich haben angelegen sein lassen, den Text durch oft interessante, zuweilen brillante Konjekturen zu verbessern.Der Autor liefert mit seiner Uberlieferungsgeschichte also nicht nur das fur eine wirklich textkritische Ausgabe unerlassliche Stemma. Er fuhrt uns ebenso die Vielgestaltigkeit der Geschichte der Philosophie vor Augen, die sich ebenso mit der Theologie wie mit den Naturwissenschaften befasst. Nur die Uberlieferungsgeschichte kann uns vor historischen Trugbildern bewahren, d. h. vor der pseudo-philosophischen Rekonstruierung riesiger Phantasiefresken. (shrink)

Le présent article est consacré à la réédition et, pour certaines d’entre elles, à l’édition de scholies byzantines comportant des données chiffrées sur les périodes du cycle d’Empédocle. Celles-ci ont été copiées au xii e siècle sous forme de gloses à différents traités d’Aristote. On s’attachera à démontrer la cohérence interne de ces nouveaux renseignements, leur compatibilité avec les fragments conservés du poème Sur la nature et, enfin, on suggérera un canal possible de transmission.

Le présent article est consacré à la réédition et, pour certaines d’entre elles, à l’édition de scholies byzantines comportant des données chiffrées sur les périodes du cycle d’Empédocle. Celles-ci ont été copiées au xii e siècle sous forme de gloses à différents traités d’Aristote. On s’attachera à démontrer la cohérence interne de ces nouveaux renseignements, leur compatibilité avec les fragments conservés du poème Sur la nature et, enfin, on suggérera un canal possible de transmission.

I argue that philosophy was naturally conceived and written in verse, not prose, in the early years of philosophy, and that prose writing would be the exception not the norm. I argue that philosophers developed their ideas in verse and did not repackage ideas and thoughts first formulated in non-poetic genres, so there is no adaptation or modification involved in "putting it into poetry". This also means that the content and the form are interdependent, and the poetic details are part (...) of the message, and integral to understanding the philosophy. In both Parmenides and Empedocles there are interesting patterns of linearity and circularity in the composition which mimic and reinforce the message in the poem, which is a philosophical message about, respectively, linear journeys and cosmic cycles. (shrink)

It is no longer generally believed that Empedocles was the divided character portrayed by nineteenth-century scholars, a man whose scientific and religious views were incompatible but untouched by each other. Yet it is still widely held that, however unitary his thought, nevertheless he still wrote more than one poem, and that his poems can be clearly divided between those which do, and those which do not, concern ‘religious matters’.1 Once this assumption can be shown to be shaky or actually false, (...) the grounds for dividing the quotations of Empedocles into two poems by subject matter disappear; and without that division our interpretation of Empedocles stands in need of radical revision. This paper startswith the modest task of showing that Empedocles may have written only one philosophical poem and not two, and goes on to suggest some of the ways in which we have to rethink the whole story if he did. If all our material belongs to one poem we are bound to link the cycle of the daimones with that of the elements, and this has far-reaching consequences for our interpretation. (shrink)

This book explores the pervasiveness of poetry's impact on philosophy and, conversely, how philosophy has sometimes resisted or denied poetry's influence.

Aristotle's solution to the problem raised in Ch. 4 depends on his account of how we arrive at thoughts on the basis of experience. In his view, we standardly acquire a term for a kind on the basis of contact with members of a kind, without thereby knowing that the kind in question exists. Further, we can grasp such terms without knowing that the kind has a unifying basic feature that explains its necessary properties. Our understanding of the kind is (...) to be compared with that of a craftsman and not that of a proto‐scientist. Aristotle's view is distinguished from several twentieth‐century accounts of these issues. (shrink)

Plato targets the encomiastic genre in three separate dialogues: the Lysis, the Menexenus and the Symposium. Many studies have been devoted to Plato's handling of the funeral oration in the Menexenus. Plato's critique of the encomium in the Lysis and Symposium, however, has not been accorded the same kind of treatment. Yet both of these dialogues go beyond the Menexenus in exploring the opposition between encomiastic and philosophic discourse. In the Lysis, I will argue, Plato sets up encomiastic rhetoric as (...) a foil for Socrates' dialectical method; philosophic discourse is both defined and legitimated by way of its opposition to eulogy. In the Symposium, Plato offers a much more complex critique. First, he illustrates and comments on the vices that inhere in the encomiastic genre. Second, he juxtaposes Socrates' ironic ‘praises’ of his interlocutors with traditional encomiastic discourse, thus inviting the reader to explore the relation between Socratic irony and the rhetoric of eulogy . And, third, the Symposium exhibits two untraditional ‘encomia’ – Socrates' eulogy for Eros and Alcibiades' for Socrates – that illustrate and interrogate the false ontology underlying the rhetoric of praise. (shrink)

Plato targets the encomiastic genre in three separate dialogues: theLysis, theMenexenusand theSymposium. Many studies have been devoted to Plato's handling of the funeral oration in theMenexenus. Plato's critique of the encomium in theLysisandSymposium, however, has not been accorded the same kind of treatment. Yet both of these dialogues go beyond theMenexenusin exploring the opposition between encomiastic and philosophic discourse. In theLysis, I will argue, Plato sets up encomiastic rhetoric as a foil for Socrates' dialectical method; philosophic discourse is both defined (...) and legitimated by way of its opposition to eulogy. In theSymposium, Plato offers a much more complex critique. First, he illustrates and comments on the vices that inhere in the encomiastic genre. Second, he juxtaposes Socrates' ironic ‘praises’ of his interlocutors with traditional encomiastic discourse, thus inviting the reader to explore the relation between Socratic irony and the rhetoric of eulogy (and censure). And, third, theSymposiumexhibits two untraditional ‘encomia’ – Socrates' eulogy for Eros and Alcibiades' for Socrates – that illustrate and interrogate the false ontology underlying the rhetoric of praise. (shrink)

The Presocratics were the founding fathers of the Western philosophical tradition, and the first masters of rational thought. This volume provides a comprehensive and precise exposition of their arguments, and offers a rigorous assessment of their contribution to philosophical thought.

An analysis of Hippolytus' Refutation of All Heresies, to discover his practices and motivations in preserving and quoting extracts from Greek Philosophy, in particular his important contribution to our knowledge of Presocratic Philosophy. The work argues that such sources must be read as embedded texts, and that fragments must not be extracted and treated in isolation from the quoting authority whose interests and knowledge are important in interpreting the material.

The motifs of love and seduction in the Phaedrus are not about sexual love but about philosophy, and particularly about two different approaches to philosophy, one engaged and emotionally, even poetically, involved and one cold, rational and detached. Socrates' palinode speech in the Phaedrus contrasts the lover of beauty whose philosophical sensitivities enable the wings to grow and intellectual vision to occur, with the cool rational character of the non-lover who has no place for love of beauty and cares only (...) for utility and reason. When Socrates took the part of the non-lover, and denigrated the value of love in philosophical enquiry, in his first speech that attacked love as a distorting factor, and praised reason devoid of emotion, he had been seduced by a calculating and over-rational love of "speeches" which is the dominant character of Phaedrus, cool lover of reason with no emotional intelligence. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1. Poetry: the roots of a problem; 2. A radical solution: Plato's Republic; 3. The natural history of poetry: Aristotle; 4. Ways to find truth in falsehood; 5. The marriage of Homer and Plato.