Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy 2 Volume Hardback Set
Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy 2 Volume Hardback Set
AUD$281.82
exc GSTM. F. Burnyeat taught for 14 years in the Philosophy Department of University College London, then for 18 years in the Classics Faculty at Cambridge, 12 of them as the Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy, before migrating to Oxford in 1996 to become a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at All Souls College. The studies, articles and reviews collected in these two volumes of Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy were all written, and all but two published, before that decisive change. Whether designed for a scholarly audience or for a wider public, they range from the Presocratics to Augustine, from Descartes and Bishop Berkeley to Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore. Their subject-matter falls under four main headings: Part I on Logic and Dialectic, Part II on Scepticism Ancient and Modern, Part III on Knowledge, and Part IV on Philosophy and the Good Life. The title 'Explorations' well expresses Burnyeat's ability to discover new aspects of familiar texts, new ways of solving old problems. In his hands the history of philosophy becomes itself a philosophical activity.
- A collection of essays by one of the world's greatest ancient philosophers alive today
- The only place where so much of his previously published work is collected
- Includes many seminal contributions to the subject
Reviews & endorsements
'… at the end of so many of the essays collected here, the reader has been brought to deeper insights in a way that is as much literary and historical as it is philosophical. The moral of the story is that, at least in Burnyeat's hands, serious progress cannot be made in any of these areas on its own. Philosophical, literary and historical methods work together in Burnyeat's essays in an exemplary manner. On any of his topics (and they are often quite central to the concerns of any classicist) he sets the bar high and then shows us how the job is to be done. Would that more of us had the capacity to follow his lead.' Brad Inwood, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Product details
June 2012Multiple copy pack
9781107400061
776 pages
234 × 156 × 43 mm
1.47kg
Temporarily unavailable - available from TBC
Table of Contents
- Volume 1: Preface
- Introduction
- Part I. Logic and Dialectic:
- 1. Protagoras and self-refutation in later Greek philosophy
- 2. Protagoras and self-refutation in Plato's Theaetetus
- 3. The upside-down back-to-front sceptic of Lucretius IV.472
- 4. Antipater and self-refutation: elusive arguments in Cicero's Academica
- 5. Gods and heaps
- 6. The origins of non-deductive inference
- 7. Enthymeme: Aristotle on the logic of persuasion
- Part II. Scepticism Ancient and Modern:
- 8. Can the sceptic live his scepticism?
- 9. Tranquillity without a stop: Timon, frag. 68
- 10. Idealism and Greek philosophy: what Descartes saw and Berkeley missed
- 11. Conflicting appearances
- 12. The sceptic in his place and time
- 13. Dissoi logoi
- Bibliography. Volume 2: Part I. Knowledge:
- 1. Examples in epistemology: Socrates, Theaetetus and G. E. Moore
- 2. Socratic midwifery, Platonic inspiration
- 3. The philosophical sense of Theaetetus' mathematics
- 4. Plato on the grammar of perceiving
- 5. Socrates and the jury: paradoxes in Plato's distinction between knowledge and true belief
- 6. Aristotle on understanding knowledge
- 7. Platonism and mathematics: a prelude to discussion
- 8. Wittgenstein and Augustine, De magistro
- Part II. Philosophy and the Good Life:
- 9. Message from Heraclitus
- 10. Virtues in action
- 11. The impiety of Socrates
- 12. The passion of reason in Plato's Phaedrus
- 13. Aristotle on learning to be good
- 14. Did the ancient Greeks have the concept of human rights?
- 15. Sphinx without a secret
- 16. First words
- Bibliography.
