The U.S. occupation of Japan transformed a brutal war charged with overt racism into an amicable peace in which the issue of race seemed to have disappeared.
This paper is based on a lecture given at the University of Haifa on 22 March 1982, and at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem on 28 March 1982. An Italian version of the lecture was published in memory of Giorgio Radetti by the Circolo della Cultura e delle Arti, Trieste in 1981.
Die Geschichte dieses Buches spiegelt eindrucksvoll den Lebensweg eines heute beruhmten Emigranten der dreissiger Jahre, des Renaissance-Forscher und Philosophen Paul Oskar Kristeller. Unter dem Einfluss Martin Heideggers 1931 in Freiburg i.Br. begonnen und nach der Auswanderung nach Italien dort 1937 beendet, wurde von dem deutschen Manuskript 1938 eine italienische Fassung hergestellt. In den USA, wohin Kristeller 1939 emigrierte, wurde das Manuskript ins Englische ubersetzt und 1943 von der Columbia University Press in New York gedruckt - Ernst Cassirer wies damals in (...) einer ausfuhrlichen Besprechung auf die Bedeutung des Buches hin. Die italienische Fassung erschien erst nach dem Krieg 1953 in Florenz, und wiederum erst fast zwanzig Jahre spater konnte die ursprungliche deutsche Fassung des Buches bei Vittorio Klostermann erscheinen. Das Buch gilt heute als die klassische Darstellung der Philosophie des Marsilio Ficino, der zusammen mit Cusanus, Pico und anderen den Platonismus der Renaissance begrundete. Diesen Rang behalt das Buch unbestritten auch unter der in der Zwischenzeit erschienenen neueren Literatur uber Ficino. (shrink)
Greek Philosophers of the Hellenistic Age examines an important but frequently neglected group of philosophers writing after Aristotle between the third and first centuries B.C. The work of a distinguished intellectual historian, this book is based on an erudite reading of a vast number of primary sources: the Greek and Latin writings of the philosophers, and the fragments, paraphrases, and testimonies from their lost works. Kristeller explores the thought of Epicurus; Zenon and Cleanthes, the founder of the Stoic school and (...) his successor; Pyrrhon and Arcesilaus, the founder of Skepticism and the philosopher who introduced it into the Platonic Academy; and Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school and its most important representative. Other figures include Carneades and Philo of Larissa, the second and third representatives of Skepticism in the Platonic Academy, respectively; Panaetius, the first leader of Middle Stoicism; and Antiochus of Ascalon, the head of the Academy, who led it back from Skepticism and prepared Middle Platonism, which paved the way for Neoplatonism. Originally presented as a series of lectures before the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, Greek Philosophers of the Hellenistic Age assesses a group of philosophers who exerted an enormous influence upon pagan and Christian writers of late antiquity - including Cicero and St. Augustine - and on many medieval and early modern philosophers, theologians, and other thinkers. (shrink)
