On Ancient Philosophy

by Peterman, John

• ISBN13: 9780534595722
• ISBN10: 0534595723
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-03-06
• Publisher: Cengage Learning

Summary

ON ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY examines ancient Greek thought from the world views of Homer and Hesiod through the developments of and challenges to rational inquiry in the Presocratics to the multi-layered dynamic approaches to inquiry and criticism in the dialogues of Plato and the writings of Aristotle to the fading echoes of this inquiry in the post-Aristotelian Hellenistic schools. The discussion of the Presocratics is given the same amount of space and detail as those on Plato and Aristotle. This book provides readers with the philosophical and cultural background in order to better appreciate and evaluate the philosophical contributions of these thinkers. The roles of rhetoric, religion, war, politics and the study of nature as the impetus to inquiry instead of doctrine are all explained and connected. Many of our textbooks and discussions use the ideas of these ancient thinkers only as points of departure, frequently as examples of misguided reasoning, instead of as our peers facing similar problems and using similar methods to confront them. The intention here is to help readers gain a positive understanding of their ideas and the language they used to express them. It is not meant to be an interpretation of these ideas so much as an approach to help readers understand the issues, create better informed questions and opinions about them, and know where to find further information to pursue their inquiries. A glossary of Greek terms is included to help negotiate the centuries of translations and interpretations that have often obscured as much as revealed the ideas of these vital thinkers.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Historical and Cultural Background

The Polis, Colonies and Empires

War

Religion

The Presocratics

Ionia

Homer

Hesiod

Thales

Anaximander

Anaximenes

Xenophanes

Heraclitus

Italy

Pythagoras

Parmenides

Zeno and Melissus

Reinterpreting Parmenides: the Return of the Many

Empedocles

Anaxagoras

Leucippus and Democritus

The Sophists

Socrates

Plato

Plato?s Biography

Approaching Philosophy through Dialogues

Literary Background

Settings and Structures

Conversations and Dialectic

Stories and Myths

Socratic Irony

Plato?s Philosophy

The Practice of Dying and Being Dead

The Life of Ideas

Truth, Sophistry and Rhetoric

Aristotle

Biography and Writings

Logic

Physics and Change

Psyche: the Life Force of the Soul

Animals

Metaphysics

Ethics and Politics

Rhetoric

Poetics

Nicomachean Ethics: A Closer Reading

An Aristotelian Survival Kit

Epilogue: After Aristotle

Stoics

Skeptics

Epicureans

Neoplatonists

Glossary

Index

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