"To be wise is one thing: to know the thought that directs all things through all things." "We should not act like the children of our parents." "I searched my nature." - from the Fragments of Heraclitus This bright, deep, meditative jewel-like study brings Heraclitus to life in a new way, and shows him to be one of the principal sources of ......
Once describing a life of exile, self-denial, physical rigor, and mastery of one's desires, cynicism now describes a life of political quietism, passivity, and moral indifference, representing not a weakening of ancient philosophic norms but rather their inversion. In The Making of Modern Cynicism, David Mazella asks: how did ancient Cynic ......
In its Golden Age, Athens was both the most powerful and most democratic of Ancient Greece's city-states. This exalted status called into being a new art - the art of oratory - with which the wealth and prominence of a political career could be won by mere speech. Itinerant teachers of the new techniques of persuasion bedazzled ambitious men with ......
The 1948 Notebook, with Lectures and Critical Writings
Leo Strauss famously asserted that the fundamental, defining debate within Western civilization is that between Jerusalem and Athens, piety and philosophy, the Bible and Plato. And yet, surprisingly, Strauss never published any of his thoughts on Plato's dialogue on piety, the Euthyphro. This volume presents, for the first time, Strauss's 1948 ......
A Comparative History of Ancient Chinese and Western Philosophy
Emperor Whisperers charts a comparative history of the two largest strains of ancient philosophy, from the first millennium BC to around AD 500. The book examines how philosophy arose from atheism in both China and Greece but entered a cul de sac when atheism spread from the elites to the middle classes. China's philosophy evolved to oppose law ......
Written in the fourth century BCE, Philebus is likely one of Plato's last Socratic dialogues. It is also famously difficult to read and understand. A multilayered inquiry into the nature of life, Philebus has drawn renewed interest from scholars in recent years. Yet, until now, the only English-language commentary available has been a work ......
Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308) is one of a handful of figures in the history of philosophy whose significance is truly difficult to overestimate. Despite an academic career that lasted barely two decades, and numerous writings left in various states of incompletion at his death, his thought has been profoundly influential in the history of western ......
Syllogism, Reasoning, and Narrative in Ancient Greek Rhetoric
Examines the concept of the enthymeme in ancient Greek rhetoric, arguing that it is a technique of storytelling aimed at eliciting from the audience an inference about a narrative.
