The Cambridge Histories of philosophy, extending from Thales to the seventeenth century, are not a formal series. Nevertheless, they have a distinctive character: authoritative accounts that combine general coverage of a period with the individual contributions of their authors and indicate scholarly controversies. This volume is a worthy continuation of the tradition.

Plato is a philosophical writer of unusual and impressive versatility. His dialogues not only engage in argument but also abound in allegory, myth and paradox, with clearly characterised participants set against a particular historical context. This engrossing book shows how Plato's literary qualities are crucial to understanding his philosophy.

Presented in the popular Cambridge Texts format are three early Platonic dialogues in a new English translation by Tom Griffith that combines elegance, accuracy, freshness and fluency. Together they offer strikingly varied examples of Plato's critical encounter with the culture and politics of fifth and fourth century Athens. Nowhere does he engage more sharply and vigorously with the presuppositions of democracy. The Gorgias is a long and impassioned confrontation between Socrates and a succession of increasingly heated interlocutors about political rhetoric (...) as an instrument of political power. The short Menexenus contains a pastiche of celebratory public oratory, illustrating its self-delusions. In the Protagoras, another important contribution to moral and political philosophy in its own right, Socrates takes on leading intellectuals (the 'sophists') of the later fifth century BC and their pretensions to knowledge. The dialogues are introduced and annotated by Malcolm Schofield, a leading authority on ancient Greek political philosophy. (shrink)

This book presents an up-to-date overview of the main new directions taken by ancient philosophy in the first century BC, a period in which the dominance exercised in the Hellenistic age by Stoicism, Epicureanism and Academic Scepticism gave way to a more diverse and experimental philosophical scene. Its development has been much less well understood, but here a strong international team of leading scholars of the subject reconstruct key features of the changed environment. They examine afresh the evidence for some (...) of the central Greek thinkers of the period, as well as illuminating Cicero's engagement with Plato both as translator and in his own philosophising. The intensity of renewed study of Aristotle's Categories and Plato's Timaeus is an especially striking outcome of their discussions. The volume will be indispensable for scholars and students interested in the history of Platonism and Aristotelianism. (shrink)

Drawing upon original manuscripts and The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, this collection represents the latest scholarship on Bentham's late and mature thought on constitutional law. The contributions cover a diverse range of major topics, from official aptitude or competency to the interests of women, and explore Bentham's writings on courts, codification, and cosmopolitanism. Together, its chapters challenge the received notion, based on early jurisprudential writings, that Bentham's constitutional thought is authoritarian, and show that Bentham, as a constitutional theorist, offers (...) a distinctive liberal perspective. Freeing Bentham's theories from their long sentences and unfamiliar terminology, these essays make accessible Bentham's subtle and important ideas on liberal democracy. By shining a light on Bentham's mature thought, this volume offers a refreshingly comprehensive, detailed, and authentic account of Bentham's theory of democracy. (shrink)

It has been commonly accepted that Bentham, in his theory of constitutional law, aimed to replace the natural opposition of interests which existed between rulers and subjects with an artificial identification or junction of interests. This was brought about by making it the self-interest of rulers to act in such a way as to promote the general interest. In other words, any sinister interest to which the ruler was exposed, that is any desire he might feel to sacrifice the general (...) interest to his own particular interest, had to be nullified: this would leave that part of his interest which coincided with the general interest as the only interest by which his conduct could be determined. (shrink)

Jeremy Bentham's, hitherto known as, has recently appeared in definitive form in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. The essay contains what is arguably the most influential critique of natural rights, and by extension human rights, ever written. Bentham's fundamental argument was that natural rights lacked any ontological basis, except to the extent that they reflected the personal desires of those propagating them. Moreover, by purporting to have a basis in nature, the language of natural rights gave a veneer of (...) respectability to what, in the case of the French Revolutionaries at least, were at bottom violent and selfish passions. Yet that having been said, Bentham had no objection to the notion of a right which expressed a moral claim founded on the principle of utility. However, the phrase better captured what was at stake, and avoided all the ambiguities otherwise associated with the word. (shrink)

Of this batch of books 1 the one I found most compelling reading was Sarah Waterlow's Nature, Change and Agency . This work is an intense meditative commentary on the most important portions of the Physics; it probes beneath the text of Aristotle's loosely organized treatise to exhibit its deep structure. Waterlow attempts to show how Aristotle's apparently independent and self-contained discussions in Books I, II, III-IV and VIII all rest on a single notion, viz. that the world consists of (...) natural substances, understood as things engaged each in a unitary pattern of change whose source and determining plan is within themselves. (shrink)

This paper is a piece of detective work. Starting from an obvious excrescence in the transmitted text of Simplicius's treatment of the foundations of Presocratic atomism near the beginning of his "Physics" commentary, it excavates a Theophrastean correction to Aristotle's tendency to lump Leucippus and Democritus together: Theophrastus made application of the οὐ μ[unrepresentable symbol]λλον principle in the sphere of ontology an innovation by Democritus. Along the way it shows Simplicius reordering his Theophrastean source in his efforts to find material (...) which will strengthen the contrast between Leucippus's atomism and Eleatic metaphysics. And it argues that in doing so he all but obliterates Theophrastus's attempt to point up the Democritean credentials of the οὐ μ[unrepresentable symbol]λλον principle. (shrink)

Things and Their Place in Theories Our talk of external things, our very notion of things, is just a conceptual apparatus that helps us to foresee and ...

The essays in this volume were written to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of G. E. L. Owen, who by his essays and seminars on ancient Greek philosophy has made a contribution to its study that is second to none.

This book, first published in 2000, is a general and comprehensive treatment of the political thought of ancient Greece and Rome. It begins with Homer and ends in late antiquity with Christian and pagan reflections on divine and human order. In between come studies of Plato, Aristotle and a host of other major and minor thinkers - poets, historians, philosophers - whose individuality is brought out by extensive quotation. The international team of distinguished scholars assembled by the editors includes historians (...) of law, politics, culture and religion, and also philosophers. Some chapters focus mostly on the ancient context of the ideas they are examining, while others explore these ideas as systems of thought which resonate with modern or perennial concerns. This clearly written volume will long remain an accessible and authoritative guide to Greek and Roman thinking about government and community. (shrink)

A complete translation of Aristotle's classic that is both faithful and readable, along with an introduction that provides the modern reader with a means of understanding this seminal work and its impact on our culture. In this volume, Joe Sachs (translator of Aristotle's _Physics, Metaphysics,_ and the _Nicomachean Ethics _)also supplements his excellent translation with well-chosen notes and glossary of important terms. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a (...) glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Aristotle’s immediate audience. (shrink)

Explores the nature and types of mystical experience and discusses the value of mysticism for humanity.

W. V. Quine is one of the most eminent philosophers alive today. Now in his mid-eighties he has produced a sharp, sprightly book that encapsulates the whole of his philosophical enterprise, including his thinking on all the key components of his epistemological stance--especially the value of logic and mathematics. New readers of Quine may have to go slowly, fathoming for themselves the richness that past readers already know lies between these elegant lines. For the faithful there is much to ponder. (...) In this short book, based on lectures delivered in Spain in 1990, Quine begins by locating his work historically. He provides a lightning tour of the history of philosophy (particularly the history of epistemology), beginning with Plato and culminating in an appreciative sketch of Carnap's philosophical ambitions and achievements. This leads, in the second chapter, to an introduction to Quine's attempt to naturalize epistemology, which emphasizes his continuities with Carnap rather than the differences between them. The next chapters develop the naturalistic story of the development of science to take account of how our conceptual apparatus is enhanced so that we can view the world as containing re-identifiable objects. Having explained the role of observation sentences in providing a checkpoint for assessing scientific theories, and having despaired of constructing an empirical criterion to determine which sentences are meaningful, Quine in the remaining chapters takes up a variety of important issues about knowledge. He concludes with an extended treatment of his views about reference and meaning and his attitudes toward psychological and modal notions. The presentation is distinctive, and the many small refinements of detail and formulation will fascinate all who know Quine's philosophy. (shrink)

"More than any thing else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being," says W. Brian Arthur. Yet, until now the major questions of technology have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from -- how exactly does invention work? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Why are certain regions -- Cambridge, England, in the 1920s and Silicon Valley today -- hotbeds of innovation, while others languish? Does technology, like biological life, (...) evolve? How do new industries, and the economy itself, emerge from technologies? In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur sets forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology that gives answers to these questions. The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology's origins and evolution. It achieves for the progress of technology what Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for scientific progress. Arthur explains how transformative new technologies arise and how innovation really works. Conventional thinking ascribes the invention of technologies to "thinking outside the box," or vaguely to genius or creativity, but Arthur shows that such explanations are inadequate. Rather, technologies are put together from pieces -- themselves technologies -- that already exist. Technologies therefore share common ancestries and combine, morph, and combine again to create further technologies. Technology evolves much as a coral reef builds itself from activities of small organisms -- it creates itself from itself; all technologies are descended from earlier technologies. Drawing on a wealth of examples, from historical inventions to the high-tech wonders of today, and writing in wonder fully engaging and clear prose, Arthur takes us on a mind-opening journey that will change the way we think about technology and how it structures our lives. (shrink)

Through clear explanation of its characteristic concepts and doctrines, and paying close attention to the published works of its philosophers, the volume ...

v. 1. Science.--v. 2. Ethics and politics.--v. 3. Metaphysics.--v. 4. Psychology & aesthetics.

Hegel's often-echoed verdict on the apolitical character of philosophy in the Hellenistic age is challenged in this collection of new essays, originally presented at the sixth meeting of the Symposium Hellenisticum. An international team of leading scholars reveals a vigorous intellectual scene of great diversity: analyses of political leadership and the Roman constitution in Aristotelian terms; Cynic repudiation of the polis - but accommodation with its rulers; Stoic and Epicurean theories of justice as the foundation of society; Cicero's moral critique (...) of the traditional political pursuit of glory. The volume as a whole offers a fresh and comprehensive guide to the main currents of social and political philosophy in a period of increasing interest to classicists, philosophers and cultural and intellectual historians. (shrink)