Revisiting Aristotle’s Fragments


Book Description

The philosophical and philological study of Aristotle fragments and lost works has fallen somewhat into the background since the 1960’s. This is regrettable considering the different and innovative directions the study of Aristotle has taken in the last decades. This collection of new peer-reviewed essays applies the latest developments and trends of analysis, criticism, and methodology to the study of Aristotle’s fragments. The individual essays use the fragments as tools of interpretation, shed new light on different areas of Aristotle philosophy, and lay bridges between Aristotle’s lost and extant works. The first part shows how Aristotle frames parts of his own understanding of Philosophy in his published, 'popular' work. The second part deals with issues of philosophical interpretation in Aristotle’s extant works which can be illuminated by fragments of his lost works. The philosophical issues treated in this section range from Theology to Natural Science, Psychology, Politics, and Poetics. As a whole, the book articulates a new approach to Aristotle’s lost works, by providing a reassessment and new methodological explorations of the fragments.




Revisiting Aristotle’s Fragments


Book Description

The philosophical and philological study of Aristotle fragments and lost works has fallen somewhat into the background since the 1960’s. This is regrettable considering the different and innovative directions the study of Aristotle has taken in the last decades. This collection of new peer-reviewed essays applies the latest developments and trends of analysis, criticism, and methodology to the study of Aristotle’s fragments. The individual essays use the fragments as tools of interpretation, shed new light on different areas of Aristotle philosophy, and lay bridges between Aristotle’s lost and extant works. The first part shows how Aristotle frames parts of his own understanding of Philosophy in his published, 'popular' work. The second part deals with issues of philosophical interpretation in Aristotle’s extant works which can be illuminated by fragments of his lost works. The philosophical issues treated in this section range from Theology to Natural Science, Psychology, Politics, and Poetics. As a whole, the book articulates a new approach to Aristotle’s lost works, by providing a reassessment and new methodological explorations of the fragments.




Revisiting Aristotle's Fragments


Book Description

This book articulates a new approach to Aristotle's lost works by providing a reassessment and new methodological explorations of the fragments. The individual essays use the fragments as tools of interpretation, shed new light on different areas




Clearchus of Soli


Book Description

This book showcases a figure whose life and work bridge Classical and Hellenistic Greece. It comprises Tiziano Dorandi’s comprehensive new edition of the Clearchus ‘fragments’, accompanied by a richly annotated English translation from Stephen White, as well as nine new studies examining key aspects of Clearchus’ thought. Clearchus, from Soli on the island of Cyprus, was an Aristotelian philosopher and cultural historian active in the later fourth and early third centuries BCE. A versatile thinker and prolific author, he wrote on a wide range of subjects. Although none of his works survive, he is cited extensively by later authors. Topics addressed in this volume include his accounts of souls during sleep, educational traditions, forms of love, luxurious living, sage maxims and other traditional sayings, aquatic wildlife, lunar phenomena, and his relation to Plato and Platonism. Clearchus of Soli will interest both students and scholars of ancient Greek history, philosophy and science, and especially anyone interested in Aristotle and his circle, Hellenistic literature and culture, or Greek cultural history generally.




Dissection in Classical Antiquity


Book Description

Dissection is a practice with a long history stretching back to antiquity and has played a crucial role in the development of anatomical knowledge. This absorbing book takes the story back to classical antiquity, employing a wide range of textual and material evidence. Claire Bubb reveals how dissection was practised from the Hippocratic authors of the fifth century BC through Aristotle and the Hellenistic doctors Herophilus and Erasistratus to Galen in the second century AD. She focuses on its material concerns and social contexts, from the anatomical subjects (animal or human) and how they were acquired, to the motivations and audiences of dissection, to its place in the web of social contexts that informed its reception, including butchery, sacrifice, and spectacle. The book concludes with a thorough examination of the relationship of dissection to the development of anatomical literature into Late Antiquity.




From Scribes to Scholars


Book Description

Yakir Paz argues that ancient Homeric scholarship had a major impact on the formation of rabbinic biblical commentaries and their modes of exegesis. This impact is discernible not only in the terminology and hermeneutical techniques used by the rabbis, but also in their perception of the Bible as a literary product, their didactic methods, editorial principles and aesthetic sensitivities. In fact, it is the influence of Homeric scholarship which can best explain the drastic differences between earlier biblical commentaries from Palestine, such as those found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the scholastic Halakhic Midrashim (second to third century CE). The results of the author's study call for a re-examination of many assumptions regarding the emergence of Midrash, as well as a broader appreciation of the impact of Homeric scholarship on biblical exegesis in Antiquity.




Revisiting Kant's Universal Law and Humanity Formulas


Book Description

This book offers new readings of Kant’s “universal law” and “humanity” formulations of the categorical imperative. It shows how, on these readings, the formulas do indeed turn out being alternative statements of the same basic moral law, and in the process responds to many of the standard objections raised against Kant’s theory. Its first chapter briefly explores the ways in which Kant draws on his philosophical predecessors such as Plato (and especially Plato’s Republic) and Jean-Jacque Rousseau. The second chapter offers a new reading of the relation between the universal law and humanity formulas by relating both of these to a third formula of Kant’s, viz. the “law of nature” formula, and also to Kant’s ideas about laws in general and human nature in particular. The third chapter considers and rejects some influential recent attempts to understand Kant’s argument for the humanity formula, and offers an alternative reconstruction instead. Chapter four considers what it is to flourish as a human being in line with Kant’s basic formulas of morality, and argues that the standard readings of the humanity formula cannot properly account for its relation to Kant’s views about the highest human good.




Hellenization Revisited


Book Description

This volume focuses on the role of Judaism, particularly that of Philo, and of Gnosticism, as two important forces shaping the response of early Christianity to the Hellenistic Greco-Roman culture of its time. The sections which examine Hellenistic Judaism investigate themes from Greek philosophy, like 'reason controlling the passions, ' which are also crucial in shaping Philo's perception of the feminine. The manner in which Jewish authors of this period attempt to synthesize Old Testament with Greek philosophical themes like creation/cosmology receives specific treatment. Essays dealing with Gnosticism re-examine themes from Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle in Gnostic documents, but also look at the role of Hellenistic Judaism with its interests in Sophia. Co-published with the Institute for Christian Studies




Medieval Supposition Theory Revisited


Book Description

In 1962–1967 Professor L.M. de Rijk published his Logica Modernorum – A Contribution to the History of Early Terminist Logic. The first part (1962) has the title: On the Twelfth Century Theories of Fallacy. The second part (two volumes, 1967) has as title: The Origin and the Early Development of the Theory of Supposition. De Rijk’s Logica Modernorum provides the basis for the modern study of medieval theories of supposition. Now, nearly 50 years later, scholars have made great progress in the study of the properties of terms. De Rijk’s study was primarily about the early development of terminist logic, i.e. during the 12th and 13th centuries. Scholars have also investigated later developments well into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Not only logical texts, but also texts on grammar have been published. Many of the scholars who have contributed to this development, present papers in this volume. Contributors are Fabrizio Amerini, Jenny Ashworth, Allan Bäck, Bert Bos, Julie Brumberg-Chaumont, Laurent Cesalli, Lambert Marie de Rijk, Sten Ebbesen, Alessandro Conti, Catarina Dutilh-Novaes, Onno Kneepkens, Costantino Marmo, Dafne Mure, Claude Panaccio, Ernesto Perini Santos, Joel Lonfat, Angel d’Ors, Göran Sundholm and Luisa Valente.




Plato’s ›Statesman‹ Revisited


Book Description

This volume tackles both the apparent lack of unity and the perplexing philosophical content of the Statesman as it explores, in what is now Plato's second account, subsequent to that of the Republic, of what would constitute the best society, the role and nature of the statesman in it; the art of governance of it; the role and nature of its laws; the role and status of its female citizens; and how the virtues are interwoven within it, along with many other topics, including (in a major Myth) that of the origins of the universe and of humankind. Coming as they do from often widely differing hermeneutical traditions, the authors in the volume offer responses to substantive and intriguing questions that the dialogue raises which are frequently divergent, but by that very token of much value in any attempt to interpret a complex and multifaceted work.