Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy 2 Volume Hardback Set
Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy 2 Volume Hardback Set
$221.00
USDM.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, 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
"...The collection as a whole reveals the historical and philosophical power of a truly extraordinary mind, one whose influence has been almost as great through his teaching as through his books and the papers collected here.... It would be foolish to pick out one or two of these papers for discussion. Every reader will have his or her favorites.... Readers who have come this far will already know what to do – buy this book or make sure that their library does so as soon as possible.... the reader has been brought to deeper insights in a way that is as much literary and historical as it is philosophical..."
--Brad Inwood, University of Toronto, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Product details
July 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.
