Ostensibly a discussion about love, the debate in the Phaedrus also encompasses the art of rhetoric and how it should be practised. This new edition contains an introductory essay outlining the argument of the dialogue as a whole and Plato's arguments about rhetoric and eros in particular. The Introduction also considers Plato's style and offers an account of the reception of the dialogue from its composition to the twentieth century. A new Greek text of the dialogue is accompanied by a (...) select textual apparatus. The greater part of the book consists of a Commentary, which elucidates the text and makes clear how Plato achieves his philosophical and literary objectives. Primarily intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of ancient Greek literature and philosophy, it will also benefit scholars who want an up-to-date account of how to understand the text, argument, style and background of the work. (shrink)

A Lasting tradition among the ancients marked Sicily as the birthplace and Tisias and Corax as inventors of the art of rhetoric: and in this tradition, legendary though it became, there is a stricter truth than in most of the stories related about the foundation of invented arts. We, with more elaborate historical views, shall still say of rhetoric that it was created at a certain epoch; and can still point to the Sicilians Tisias and Corax as its authors. Oratory, (...) to be sure, has existed almost as long as speech. Its beginnings are prehistoric, and must in any case be imperceptible; and if by rhetorician we meant no more than one who uses speech with more than common effect, we might set the origin of rhetoric as far back as we chose, and could hardly bring it lower than the beginning of recorded literature. Indeed we are told that under the Antonine Emperors the eminent scholar Telephus of Pergamum wrote a book on Rhetoric in Homer, in which he illustrated from the Poet the whole contemporary system of the art down to the thirteen constitutions of Minucian; and in the same spirit the Venerable Bede, resenting the claim of the Greeks to have invented tropes and figures of speech, wrote a short work to show that they could all be found in Holy Scripture. But such inquiries, even when conducted less foolishly than by Telephus and less incompetently than by Bede, are irrelevant to the proper history of rhetoric. Let the practice of oratory have begun when it may, the first attempts known to us in Classical Antiquity to formulate a series of principles for the art of speech were made in the fifth century before Christ. These earliest systems were naturally very imperfect: they could not immediately be either comprehensive or well organized. But they were something that had not existed at all before: methodical principles for speaking. At the moment when these were first set out the art of rhetoric began. (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of these parts is now available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. The Sophists assesses the contribution of individuals like Protagoras, Gorgias and Hippias to the (...) extraordinary intellectual and moral fermant in fifth-century Athens. They questioned the bases of morality, religion and organized society itself and the nature of knowledge and language; they initiated a whole series of important and continuing debates, and they provoked Socrates and Plato to a major restatement and defence of traditional values. (shrink)

This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed (...) by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man. (shrink)

This sourcebook, a corrected reprint of the University of South Carolina Press edition of 1972, contains a complete English translation of the sophist material collected in the critical edition of Diels-Krantz, as well as Euthydemus and a completely re-edited Antiphon.

A fluent and accurate new translation of the dialogue that, all of Plato's works, has seemed to speak most directly to the interests of contemporary analytical philosophers. White's extensive introduction explores the dialogue's center themes, its connection with related discussions in other dialogues, and its implication for the interpretation of Plato's metaphysics.

In The Differend, Lyotard subjects to scrutiny- from the particular perspective of his notion of 'differend' - the turn of all Western philosophies toward language; the decline of metaphysics; the present intellectual retreat of Marxism; the hopes raised and mostly dashed, by theory; and the growing political despair. Taking his point of departure in an analysis of what Auschwitz meant philosophically, Lyotard attempts to sketch out modes of thought for our present.

At any time, basic assumptions about language have a direct effect on the writing of history. The structure of language is related to the structure of knowledge and thus to the definition of historical reality, while linguistic competence gives insights into the relation of ideas and action. Within the framework of these ideas, and drawing on recent work in linguistic theory, including that of the French structuralists. Professor Struever studies the major shift in attitudes toward language and history which the (...) Renaissance represents. One of the essential innovations of Renaissance Humanism is the substitution of rhetoric for dialectic as the dominant language discipline; rhetoric gives the Humanists their cohesion as a lay intellectual elite, as well as the force and direction of their thought. The author accepts the current trend in classical studies, the rehabilitation of the Sophists which finds its source in Nietzsche and includes the work of Rostagni, Untersteiner, and Buccellato, to reinstate rhetoric as the historical vehicle of Sophistic insight. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This comprehensive account of the history of ancient Greek thought circa 600 to 400 B.C. offers an accessible, nontechnical introduction to Presocratic philosophy.

At the top of his ethical system Aristotle placed, as the supreme value, eudai- monia (happiness). But what does this really mean? ...

In this stunning act of synthesis, Abraham Edel captures the entire range of Aristotle's thought in a manner that will prove attractive and convincing to a contemporary audience. Many philosophers approach Aristotle with their own, rather than his, questions. Some cast him as a partisan of a contemporary school. Even the neutral approach of classical scholarship often takes for granted questions that reflect our modern ways of dissecting the world. Aristotle and His Philosophy shows him at work in asking and (...) answering questions. Abraham Edel fashions a sound comparative way of using current analysis to deepen our understanding of Aristotle rather than argue with or simply appropriate him. Edel examines how Aristotle's basic ideas operated in his scientific and humanistic works, what they enabled him to do, what they kept him from doing, and what in turn we can learn from his philosophical experimentation. The purpose of this volume is twofold: to provide a comprehensive introduction to Aristotle's thought, and to throw fresh light on its patterned and systematic character. First, tracing the pattern in Aristotle's metaphysical and physical writings, he then explores the psychology, epistemology, ethics and politics, rhetoric and poetics. In the process, Edel discusses the way interpretations of Aristotle are built up and how different philosophical outlooks¿Catholic, Hegelian, Marxian, linguistic, naturalistic, and pragmatic¿have affected the reading of Aristotelian texts and ideas. The new introduction probes the general problem of interpreting a philosophy, and suggests how working through the different interpretations can contribute to a fuller understanding. This methodological self-consciousness makes Aristotle and His Philosophy markedly different from other studies of Aristotle. Martha C. Nussbaum of Brown University has described Edel as having "philosophical sensitivity and good sense throughout. His scholarship is comprehensive, but handled with grace and clarity.". (shrink)

An English language translation accompanies the original Greek text of Aristotle's book about the nature of the state, constitutions, revolutions, democracy, and oligarchy.

This translation of the central books of the Metaphysics aims at no literary value, only literalness.

This book considers the possibility of ethical political practice after deconstruction. Both authors probe the relationship of language to truth and the consequences, for ethics and politics, of any theoretical posture on this issue: 'Can we have a politics without the Idea of justice? and if so, can we do so on the basis of opinion?'.

The existence of God as demonstrated from motion has preoccupied men in every age, and still stands as one of the critical questions of philosophic inquiry. The four thinkers Father Buckley discusses were selected because their methods of reasoning exhibit sharp contrasts when they are juxtaposed. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts (...) of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)