ancient philosophy

Hardcover. Edinburgh, T and T Clark, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 342 pages. Jewish-Christian contact and controversy were central to early Christian experience. An understanding of this contact and controversy and its continuation over the centuries is also central to any true understanding of the history of Christianity and of the history of Judaism. The twelve chapters of this book deal especially with the interconnected subjects of polemic and biblical interpretation. Nine are concerned with the ancient world, beginning with post-exilic Jewish writing and the New Testament and going on to later pagan, Jewish and Christian controversies. Three concentrate on medieval and early modern Jewish controversies. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Israel, Yeshivat Kol Yehuda, Reprint, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 264 pages. Hardcover. Black & white illustrations. Dust jacket with light wear along edges. Clean, unmarked pages.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 326 pages. Lucretius' didactic masterpiece De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) is one of the most brilliant and powerful poems in the Latin language, a passionate attempt at dispelling humanity's fear of death and its enslavement by false beliefs about the gods, and a detailed exposition of Epicurean atomist physics. For centuries, it has raised the question of whether it is primarily a poem or primarily a philosophical treatise, which also presents scientific doctrine. The current volume seeks to unite the three disciplinary aspects -- poetry, philosophy, and science -- in order to offer a holistic response to an important monument in cultural history. With ten original essays and an analytical introduction, the volume aims not only to combine different approaches within single covers, but to offer responses to the poem by experts from all three scholarly backgrounds. Philosophers and scholars of ancient science look closely at the artistic placement of individual words, while literary critics explore ethical matters and the contribution of Lucretius' poetry to the argument of the poem. Topics covered include death and grief, evolution and the cosmos, ethics and politics, perception, and epistemology.Name and date on front fly leaf, light pencil marking to about 25 pages.

Softcover. Hanover NH, Wesleyan University Press, 3rd pr., 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wraps, 343 pages. The focus of this book is the secular cultures of pagan Greece and imperial Rome, and the religious cultures of Judaism and Christianity which, in turn, grew from and influenced them and the modern world. For Momigliano, religion, secular ideology, and politics live in and illuminate the present. Brings together nineteen essays written over five years from sources such as The New York Review of Books, The American Scholar, and the Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 354 pages. From the turn of the fifth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, Christian writers were fascinated and troubled by the "Problem of Paganism," which this book identifies and examines for the first time. How could the wisdom and virtue of the great thinkers of antiquity be reconciled with the fact that they were pagans and, many thought, damned? Related questions were raised by encounters with contemporary pagans in northern Europe, Mongolia, and, later, America and China. Pagans and Philosophers explores how writers-philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travelers such as Las Casas and Ricci-tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great inspired Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, American Philological Association, 1st, 1941, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers with gilt lettering on spine, 200 pages. The Greek text with facing translation runs from pages 22-199. The rest of the book is discussions chapters discussing the polemics between Stoic and Epicureans and the ways the Philodemus arguments might be improvements on Early Modern empiricism. Classic scholarly treatise presents a detailed study of the manner in which the problem of method was expressed by the empirically oriented philosophy of the Epicureans and Sceptics, and by their rationalistic opponents, the Stoics. Each of these schools developed a theory of signs, as the basis for both epistemological and logical speculations. Philodemus' treatise is a defense of Epicurean empirical method, and simultaneously an attack on the rival Stoic rationalistic method. This is first English translation of this work. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket, dark green cloth covers with gilt title on spine. 350 pages. The distinctive aim of Philosopher-Kings is to show, by giving a rational reconstruction of its overall argument, that the Republic is not the flawed patchwork it is usually made out to be by interpreters, but a deeply consistent and systematic work, which raises fundamental problems for philosophy and develops powerful and probing solutions to them. The book's central innovative thesis is that Plato's psychology, more specifically his theory of desires, holds the key to this, his most ambitious work. "Although the Republic has come to seem frazzled from too much use in introductory courses, in Reeve's hands it is new and refreshing".--Paul Woodruff, Ancient Philosophy "Although the philosopher-kings of Reeve's title are central to the argument of this handsomely produced book, it is in reality nothing less than a complete reinterpretation of the Republic. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 249 pages. Plato's late dialogues have often been neglected because they lack the literary charm of his earlier masterpieces. Charles Kahn proposes a unified view of these diverse and difficult works, from the Parmenides and Theaetetus to the Sophist and Timaeus, showing how they gradually develop the framework for Plato's late metaphysics and cosmology. The Parmenides, with its attack on the theory of Forms and its baffling series of antinomies, has generally been treated apart from the rest of Plato's late work. Kahn shows that this perplexing dialogue is the curtain-raiser on Plato's last metaphysical enterprise: the step-by-step construction of a wider theory of Being that provides the background for the creation story of the Timaeus. This rich study, the natural successor to Kahn's earlier Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, will interest a wide range of readers in ancient philosophy and science. Name and date on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 238 pages. The Laws is Plato's last and longest dialogue. Although it has been neglected (compared to such works as the Republic and Symposium), it is beginning to receive a great deal of scholarly attention. Book 10 of the Laws contains Plato's fullest defence of the existence of the gods, and his last word on their nature, as well as a presentation and defence of laws against impiety (e.g. atheism). Plato's primary aim is to defend the idea that the gods exist and that they are good - this latter meaning that they do not neglect human beings and cannot be swayed by prayers and sacrifices to overlook injustice. As such, the Laws is an important text for anyone interested in ancient Greek religion, philosophy, and politics generally, and the later thought of Plato in particular. Robert Mayhew presents a new translation, with commentary, of Book X of the Laws. His primary aim in the translation is fidelity to the Greek. His commentary focuses on philosophical issues (broadly understood to include religion and politics), and deals with philological matters only when doing so serves to better explain those issues. Knowledge of Greek is not assumed, and the Greek that does appear has been transliterated. It is the first commentary in English of any kind on Laws X for nearly 140 years. Light pencil notations to about 15 pages.

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 384 pages. Plato is the best known and most widely studied of all the ancient Greek philosophers. Malcolm Schofield, a leading scholar of ancient philosophy, offers a lucid and accessible guide to Plato's political thought, enormously influential and much discussed in the modern world as well as the ancient. Schofield discusses Plato's ideas on education, democracy and its shortcomings, the role of knowledge in government, utopia and the idea of community, money and its grip on the psyche, and ideological uses of religion. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a very good dust jacket with light fading to spine, 342 pages. The Platonic Theology is a visionary work and the philosophical masterpiece of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, he was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and return of the golden age. His Platonic evangelizing was eminently successful and widely influential, and his Platonic Theology, translated into English for the first time in this edition, is one of the keys to understanding the art, thought, culture, and spirituality of the Renaissance.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with fading to spine and front cover, 397 pages. The Platonic Theology is a visionary work and the philosophical masterpiece of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, he was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and return of the golden age. His Platonic evangelizing was eminently successful and widely influential, and his Platonic Theology, translated into English for the first time in this edition, is one of the keys to understanding the art, thought, culture, and spirituality of the Renaissance. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press , 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright orange dust jacket, 336 pages. This book is a commentary on the surviving testimonia and fragments of Posidonius' work collected in Volume I of this edition. Posidonius was one of the most important philosophers and intellectuals writing in the first century BC Graeco-Roman world. The purpose of this commentary is to assess the fragmentary evidence and reports of Posidonius found in the writings of about sixty ancient authors, and to separate what Posidonius himself actually said from the interpretations and distortions of his reporters. Since Posidonius also wrote at length on the sciences and on geography, and composed a large History, Kidd assesses his work against the philosophical, scientific, and historical writings of Posidonius' predecessors and contemporaries. Each fragment is explored through detailed examination of its context, philosophical and scientific content, and its relationship to Posidonius' whole thought and to contemporary ideas. VOLUME 1 ONLY. The fragments are in the original Greek and Latin (mostly Greek). The Introduction is in English. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf, embossed stamp, otherwise a clean copy.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, orange wrappers, 341 pages. Classic scholarly text contains a collection of the surviving attested fragments of Posidonius, the leading stoic philosopher of his time in the first half of the first century, B.C. This exhaustive work was begun by Prof. Edelstein, a preeminent authority on Posidonius, and subsequently completed and edited after his death by Ian Kidd. There are some sixty different ancient reporters represented in this volume. First published in 1972, this re-issue contains 60 new readings, nearly eighty alterations to the apparatus criticus and corrections of errors. GREEK AND LATIN TEXT. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise, clean.

Hardcover. NY, George Braziller , 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 95 pages. Oblong format. 33 color plates of the artist's fresco in the Vatican. Other b&w illustrations. Recognizing the precocious talent of Raphael, then age twenty-six, Pope Julius II commissioned the artist in 1509 to paint four monumental murals and numerous smaller scenes that gave visual form to the enlightened world of the Renaissance. Guided by the leading scholars of his day, Raphael chose themes that glorified the four branches of learning required for a general education, particularly that of a pope: Theology, Poetry, Jurisprudence, and Philosophy. The painting of the latter, perhaps best known today as "The School of Athens," shows Plato and Aristotle striding through a vast, open hallway and flanked by scientists and philosophers of the ancient world; rediscovered in the Renaissance, they hold a convention where they discuss issues that will inspire a new age. Short inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 2nd pr., 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 327 pages. John Damascene, a monk near Jerusalem in the early 700s, never set foot in the Byzantine Empire, yet he had a great influence on Byzantine theology. This book, the first to present an overall account of John's life and work, sets him in the context of the early synods of the Church that took place in the Palestinian monasteries during the first century of Arab rule.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 242 pages. While few soldiers may have read the works of Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius, it is undoubtedly true that the ancient philosophy known as Stoicism guides the actions of many in the military. Soldiers and seamen learn early in their training "to suck it up," to endure, to put aside their feelings and to get on with the mission. Stoic Warriors is the first book to delve deeply into the ancient legacy of this relationship, exploring what the Stoic philosophy actually is, the role it plays in the character of the military (both ancient and modern), and its powerful value as a philosophy of life. Marshalling anecdotes from military history--ranging from ancient Greek wars to World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq--Nancy Sherman illuminates the military mind and uses it as a window on the virtues of the Stoic philosophy, which are far richer and more interesting than our popularized notions. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with mild edgewear. 295 pages. Stoicism is now widely recognized as one of the most important philosophical schools of ancient Greece and Rome. But how did it influence Western thought after Greek and Roman antiquity? The contributors recruited for this volume include leading international scholars of Stoicism as well as experts in later periods of philosophy. They trace the impact of Stoicism and Stoic ideas from late antiquity through the medieval and modern periods. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 322 pages. In this groundbreaking work, C. D. C. Reeve uses a fundamental problem--the Primacy Dilemma--to explore Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, dialectic, philosophy of mind, and theology in a new way. At a time when Aristotle is most often studied piecemeal, Reeve attempts to see him both in detail and as a whole, so that it is from detailed analysis of hundreds of particular passages, drawn from dozens of Aristotelian treatises, and translated in full that his overall picture of Aristotle emerges. Primarily a book for philosophers and advanced students with an interest in the fundamental problems with which Aristotle is grappling, Substantial Knowledge's clear, non-technical and engaging style will appeal to any reader eager to explore Aristotle's difficult but extraordinarily rewarding thought. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a very good dust jacket with fading to spine, 403 pages. The concept of the atom is very near scientific bedrock, touching first causes, fundamental principles, our conception of the nature of reality. This book is a translation from the French of a history of atomic thought and theory, from ancient Greece to the present day. Pullman grounds his coverage of scientific theory always in the religious and philosophical context of the times, covering the whole period of Western civilization, including in passing the major scientific philosophies of the Muslim world and India. The transition of atomism from a philosophical position to an experimental science, in the mid-19th century, is well handled, and the coverage is nicely rounded out by a treatment of the first visual proof of atoms' material existence by direct microscopic imaging of individual atoms about 10 years ago. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 4th pr., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 745 pages. Beginning with Homer and ending in late antiquity with Christian and pagan reflections on divine and human order, this volume is the first general and comprehensive treatment of Rome ever to be published in English. Its international team of distinguished scholars includes historians of law, politics, culture and religion, as well as philosophers. The volume will long remain an accessible and authoritative guide to Greek and Roman thinking about government and community. Remainder line on bottom edge otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Verso, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 241 pages. In essays that range from ancient Greece to the end of the Anthropocene, Bull addresses questions central to contemporary political theory in novel readings of texts by Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, and Arendt, and shows how classic philosophical problems have a bearing on issues like political protest and climate change. The result is an entirely original account of political agency for the twenty-first century in which uncertainty and idleness are limned with utopian promise. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Leiden/Boston, Brill, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, decorated cloth, 482 pages. This book explores the dynamics of the commentary and textbook traditions in Aristotelian natural philosophy under the headings of doctrine, method, and scientific and social status. It inquires what the evolution of the Aristotelian commentary tradition can tell us about the character of natural philosophy as a pedagogical tool, as a scientific enterprise, and as a background to modern scientific thought. In a unique attempt to cut old-fashioned historiographic divisions, it brings together scholars of ancient, medieval, Renaissance and seventeenth-century philosophy. The book covers a remarkably broad range of topics: it starts with the first Greek commentators and ends with Leibniz. Small ink stamp on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.