ancient philosophy

Hardcover. London, Rider & Co., 1st, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers, black lettering on spine, 143 pages. A spiritual guidebook that explores the four major initiations of the human soul. The book delves into the spiritual journey of the soul and its evolution through the four initiations: Birth, Baptism, Transfiguration, and Resurrection. Conroy draws on the teachings of ancient wisdom traditions and modern spiritual practices to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of these initiations and their significance in the spiritual path. The book is written in a clear and accessible language and provides practical exercises and meditations to help readers deepen their spiritual practice. Name on front fly leaf, inscription on dedication page. Otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, S.A. Russell, 2nd Ed., 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 390 pages. Winspear's volume on Plato's thought traces, in a realistic fashion, the deep-reaching social and economic roots of Plato's concept of the state and society. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 250 pages. With The Lucretian Renaissance, Gerard Passannante offers a radical rethinking of a familiar narrative: the rise of materialism in early modern Europe. Passannante begins by taking up the ancient philosophical notion that the world is composed of two fundamental opposites: atoms, as the philosopher Epicurus theorized, intrinsically unchangeable and moving about the void; and the void itself, or nothingness. Passannante considers the fact that this strain of ancient Greek philosophy survived and was transmitted to the Renaissance primarily by means of a poem that had seemingly been lost--a poem insisting that the letters of the alphabet are like the atoms that make up the universe. Name and date on front fly leaf, light pencil marginalia and a few underlinings.

Hardcover. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 3rd pr., 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth stamped in gilt, 532 pages. Translated by John Carman. Monumental work by the Norwegian professor on ancient religion, cosmology, and anthropology. Spine cloth lightly faded. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, reprint, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 368 pages. Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933) was an important and fascinating figure in German philosophy in the early twentieth century, founding the well-known journal Kantstudien. Yet he was overshadowed by the burgeoning movements of phenomenology and analytical philosophy, as well as hostility towards his work because of his defense of Jewish scholars in a Germany controlled by Nazism. However, it is widely acknowledged today that The Philosophy of 'As If' is a philosophical masterwork. Vaihinger argues that in face of an overwhelmingly complex world, we produce a simpler set of ideas, or idealizations, that help us negotiate it. When cast as fictions, such ideas provide an easier and more useful way to think about certain subjects, from mathematics and physics to law and morality, than would the truth in all its complexity. Even in science, he wrote, we must proceed "as if" a material world exists independently of perceiving subjects; in behavior, we must act "as if" ethical certainty were possible; in religion, we must believe "as if" there were a God. He also explores the role of fictions in the history of philosophy, going back to the ancient Greeks and the work of Leibniz, Adam Smith and Bentham. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 334 pages. This revised edition of The Poem of Empedocles (1992) integrates substantial new material from a recently discovered papyrus and published by A. Martin and O. Primavesi. The papyrus contains evidence of over seventy lines or part lines of poetry, of which more than fifty are both new and usable. The integration of this material into the previously known fragments has significant impact on our understanding of Empedocles, one of the most influential philosophers and poets of antiquity. Name on front fly leaf otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two softcover volumes: Vol. 1: Books 1-V, 364 pages. Vol. 2: Books VI-X and Indexes, 531 pages. Previous owner's name, otherwise clean. James Adam (1860-1907) was a Scottish classics scholar who taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A strong defender of the importance of Greek philosophy in a well-rounded education, Adam published a number of Plato's works including Protagoras and Crito. This two-volume critical edition of the Republic (1902) was another major contribution to the field. Though his preface claims 'an editor cannot pretend to have exhausted its significance by means of a commentary,' Adam's depth of knowledge and erudite analysis of the Greek text ensured that his edition remained the standard reference for decades to follow, and it remains a thought-provoking evaluation of one of the great works of Western thought.

Hardcover. Lanham MD, Lexington Books, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 143 pages. American nature writing characteristically embodies an appreciative, lyrical evocation of the natural world. But often, too, green-disposed authors have been moved to dramatize diverse, anthropogenic perils to environmental health. John Gatta freshly reveals how this dark yet graced and hopeful strain of environmental literature enlarges upon a jeremiad tradition of prophecy inherited from Puritan New England. Across successive historical periods, such expression has assumed a rich variety of American form--as creative nonfiction, poetry, fiction, or film documentary. In the spirit of ancient Hebrew prophecy, jeremiads--unlike diatribes--reach beyond effusions of doom and gloom toward the prospect of change through a conversion of heart. Accordingly, the new climate fiction and much other writing steeped in what Gatta terms this "Green Jeremiad" tradition not only warn of material threats to life's flourishing, but may also look to stir spiritual understanding and renewal. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 346 pages. Dr. Notomi presents a new interpretation of one of Plato's most important dialogues, the Sophist, addressing both historical context and philosophical content. He shows how important the issues concerning the sophist (professional teacher and rhetorician in ancient Greece) are to the possibility of philosophy. His new approach to the whole dialogue reveals that Plato struggles with difficult philosophical issues in a single line of inquiry; and that Plato shows, in defining the sophist, his conception of the authentic philosopher. Name, date on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, This is the first volume in the four-volume edition of The Works of Lucy Hutchinson, the first-ever collected edition of the writings of the pioneering author and translator. Hutchinson (1620-81) had a remarkable range of her interests, from Latin poetry to Civil War politics and theology. In two parts, two volumes: 797 total pages. This edition of her translation of Lucretius's De rerum natura offers new biographical material, demonstrating the changes and unexpected continuities in Hutchinson's life between the work's composition in the 1650s and its dedication in 1675. Hers is the first complete surviving English translation of one of the great classical epics, a challenging text at the borderlines of poetry and philosophy. For the first time, the Lucretius translation is made available alongside the Latin text Hutchinson used, which differs in innumerable ways from versions known today. The commentary, the fullest in any edition of a literary translation, provides multiple ways into further understanding of the translation and its contexts. Written at a momentous period in political and literary history, Hutchinson's Lucretius throws light on the complex transition between 'ancient' and 'modern' conceptions of the classical canon and of natural philosophy. It offers a case study in the history of reading, and more specifically of reading by a woman. Name on front fly leaves, pencil notations to front fly leaf, a dozen pages in Part 1. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Softcover. London/NY, Routledge, reprint, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 328 pages. This unique collection of essays, published together for the first time, not only elucidates the complexity of ancient Greek thought, but also reveals Karl Popper's engagement with Presocratic philosophy and the enlightenment he experienced in his reading of Parmenides. As Karl Popper himself states himself in his introduction, he was inspired to write about Presocratic philosophy for two reasons - firstly to illustrate the thesis that all history is the history of problem situations and secondly, to show the greatness of the early Greek philosophers, who gave Europe its philosophy, its science and its humanism. Light pencil marking to 8 pages.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 759 pages, b&w illustrations. A sweeping intellectual history of the role of wealth in the church in the last days of the Roman EmpireJesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven. Clean copy.

Softcover. Lanham MD, Rowman & Littlefield , 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 349 pages. In Vergil's Empire, Eve Adler offers an exciting new interpretation of the political thought of Vergil's Aeneid. Adler argues that in this epic poem, Vergil presents the theoretical foundations of a new political order, one that resolves the conflict between scientific enlightenment and ancestral religion that permeated the ancient world. The work concentrates on Vergil's response to the physics, psychology, and political implications of Lucretius' Epicurean doctrine expressed in De Rerum Natura. Proceeding by a close analysis of the Aeneid, Adler examines Vergil's critique of Carthage as a model of universal enlightenment, his positive doctrine of Rome as a model of universal religion, and his criticism of the heroism of Achilles, Odysseus, and Epicurus in favor of the heroism of Aeneas. Beautifully written and clearly argued, Vergil's Empire will be of great value to all interested in the classical world. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 2000, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 398 pages. The seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community of Amsterdam the age of twenty-four for 'horrendous heresies', and was eventually reviled by all religious authorities for claiming that human beings are parts of a single, unified nature, that God is identical with nature, and that reason, not revelation, supplies the truth of any aspect of God. Undeterred, he made this thesis the basis for a rational crusade against superstition and prejudice. Dr Gullan-Whur's biography, the first for twenty-eight years, shows how Spinoza's central philosophical beliefs developed within the context of his own life. Drawing on very recent scholary research and making detailed reference to primary sources, some not previously explored, the author focuses on the philosopher's attempt to act solely through reason in the face of turbulent personal and national circumstances. This new approach demolishes the myth that Spinoza was a lofty ascetic. It exposes his emotional and sexual vulnerabilit arrogance and misogyny, yet shows his living philosophical experiment to be shrply relevant today. Clean copy.

Softcover. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1st pbk, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 264 pages. Xenophanes of Colophon was a philosophical poet who lived in various cities of the ancient Greek world during the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC. In this book, James Lesher presents the Greek texts of all the surviving fragments of Xenophanes' teachings, with an original English translation on facing pages, along with detailed notes and commentaries and a series of essays on the philosophical questions generated by Xenophanes' remarks. Also included are English translations of all the ancient testimonia relating to Xenophanes' life and teachings, and a discussion of how many of the testimonia pose the impediments to achieving a consistent interpretation of his philosophy. The Xenophanes who emerges in this account fully warrants classification as a philosophical thinker: moral critic and reflective student of nature, critic of popular religious belief and practice, and perhaps the first to challenge claims to knowledge about divine matters and the basic forces at work in nature. As with earlier works in the Pheonix series, this volume aims to make an important portion of Presocratic writing accessible to all those interested in ancient philosophy and the first phase of European natural science. This paperback edition contains an updated bibliography. Clean copy.