Spectacles Of Truth In Classical Greek Philosophy

In fourth-century Greece (BCE), the debate over the nature of philosophy generated a novel claim: that the highest form of wisdom is theoria, the rational 'vision' of metaphysical truths (the 'spectator theory of knowledge'). This 2004 book offers an original analysis of the construction of 'theoretical' philosophy in fourth-century Greece. In the effort to conceptualise and legitimise theoretical philosophy, the philosophers turned to a venerable cultural practice: theoria (state pilgrimage). In this practice, an individual journeyed abroad as an official witness of sacralized spectacles. This book examines the philosophic appropriation and transformation of theoria, and analyses the competing conceptions of theoretical wisdom in fourth-century philosophy. By tracing the link between traditional and philosophic theoria, this book locates the creation of theoretical philosophy in its historical context, analysing theoria as a cultural and an intellectual practice. It develops a new, interdisciplinary approach, drawing on philosophy, history and literary studies.

Challenges the idea that Plato is a secular thinker, exploring the interaction of philosophy and Greek religion in the dialogues.

This book, originally published in 1991, sets forth the assumptions about thought and language that made falsehood seem so problematic to Plato and his contemporaries, and expounds the solution that Plato finally reached in the Sophist. Free from untranslated Greek, the book is accessible to all studying ancient Greek philosophy. As a well-documented case study of a definitive advance in logic, metaphysics and epistemology, the book will also appeal to philosophers generally.

How does God think? How, ideally, does a human mind function? Must a gap remain between these two paradigms of rationality? Such questions exercised the greatest ancient philosophers, including those featured in this book: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Plotinus. This volume encompasses a series of studies by leading scholars, revisiting key moments of ancient philosophy and highlighting the theme of human and divine rationality in both moral and cognitive psychology. It is a tribute to Professor A. A. Long, and reflects multiple themes of his own work.

Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Volume Two, reflects the refinements in scholarship and philosophical analysis that have impacted classical philosophy in recent years. It is a selection of the best papers presented at the annual meetings of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy during the last decade. The papers presented indicate a shift in accent from a predominant preference for the application of linguistic methods in the study of texts to a more intensified concern for contextual examinations of philosophical concepts. The works of both younger scholars and senior authors show a more liberal, yet controlled, use of historical and cultural elements in interpretation. The papers also reflect advances in scholarship in adjacent fields of Greek studies. From pre-Socratic to post-Aristotelian philosophers, the papers in this volume are intended to stimulate interest in the major accomplishments of classical philosophers. This work augments its companion volume Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy.

The ancient Greeks were not only the founders of western philosophy, but the actual term "philosophy" is Greek in origin, most likely dating back to the late sixth century BC. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Euclid, and Thales are but a few of the better-known philosophers of ancient Greece. During the amazingly fertile period running from roughly the middle of the first millennium BC to the middle of the first millennium AD, the world saw the rise of science, numerous schools of thought, and—many believe—the birth of modern civilization. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Ancient Greek Philosophy covers the history of Greek philosophy through a chronology, an introductory essay, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1500 cross-referenced entries on important philosophers, concepts, issues, and events. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Greek philosophy.

This newest addition to the Classical Foundations series is thematically unified and examines Greek philosophical tradition and how it was created and sustained. Suitable for independent study of degree and A-level students, and the general reader.

Several myths about Plato's work are decisively challenged by Catherine Rowett: the idea that Plato agreed with Socrates about the need for a definition of what we know; the idea that he set out to define justice in the Republic; the idea that knowledge is a kind of true belief, or that Plato ever thought that it might be something like that; the idea that " is propositional, and that the Theaetetus was Plato's best attempt to define knowledge as a species of belief, and that it only failed due to his incompetence. Instead Rowett argues that Plato was replacing the failed methods of Socrates, including his attempt to find a definition or single common factor, and that he replaced those methods with methods derived from geometry, including methods that involve inference from shadows to their originals (a method which Rowett calls "). As a result we should see that Plato is presenting the knowledge that is acquired as non-propositional and pictorial in nature, and that it is to be identified not with knowledge of facts nor of objects, but of types qua types-types that stand to the tokens that are used in our enquiry as original to shadow. The book includes detailed studies of the Meno, Republic and Theaetetus, and argues that the insights that Plato brings about the nature of conceptual knowledge, its importance in underpinning all other activities, and about the notion of truth as it applies to conceptual competence, are significant and should be taken seriously as a corrective to areas in which current analytic philosophy has lost its way.