Ancient Books - Page 23

Philo and Paul Among the Sophists: Alexandrian and Corinthian Responses to a Julio-Claudian Movement

Bruce W. Winter

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Interesting Insights Into Corinthians. 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

If the author had put the english equivilent in parentheses next to the Greek terms, (even the transliteration would have helped) I would have given it 5 stars. It is however, still an informative and interesting read. But, a person who is not familiar with NT Greek will most likely get bogged down in some of the later chapters. Really a shame though, because it would not have taken much to make it reader friendly.

The premise is simple. Paul wrote Corinthians in response to the the practice of sophistry which had permetated the church at Corinth. When seen in that light, many of the passages previously obscured become clear. (If you are not familiar with the first sophists or the terms concerning Greek rhetoric you may want to read "Retrieving the Ancients, an Introduction to Greek Philosophy" as a preamble. I'm sure there are other introductory books out there as well.) A glossary on the basic terms of Greek rhetoric would have been immensely helpful, but unfortunately none was provided. Obviously the intended audience was academicians. A shame really, because with a few alterations it could reach a much wider audience.

Part of the sophistic tradition was that the sophist teachers would gather around themselves disciples and then begin contending vigorously with other sophists--- Does the "I am of Paul, I am of Apollos" ring a bell now?"

A very good scholarly explanation and exegesis of the Corinthian letters.

Leo Strauss On Plato's Symposium

Leo Strauss

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Take Professor Strauss's Class 5 out of 5 stars.
20 of 22 people found this review helpful.

This is a remarkable book. It consists of transcriptions of the lectures given by Leo Strauss in his 1959 University of Chicago course on Plato's political philosophy. The course was devoted to the study of Plato's Symposium, but Strauss of course discusses several other dialogues that he suggests are related to the Symposium. The lectures read differently than the books and essays Professor Strauss prepared for publication. They are somewhat more open; they go somewhat more slowly through the material; they are perhaps somewhat less apparently ironic. But this only begins to hint at the special riches of the access this book affords to Professor Strauss's classroom.

Editorial Review:

The first major piece of unpublished work by Leo Strauss to appear in more than thirty years, this volume offers the public the unprecedented experience of encountering this renowned scholar as his students did. Given as a course in autumn 1959 under the title "Plato's Political Philosophy," these provocative lectures—until now, never published, but instead passed down from one generation of students to the next—show Strauss at his subtle and insightful best.

One Hundred Unorthodox Strategies: Battle And Tactics Of Chinese Warfare

Chi Liu

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Definite keeper, where's my Hardcover?!?!?!? 5 out of 5 stars.
20 of 21 people found this review helpful.

This book is fantastic. Each chapter is a stategy illustrated by historical examples, followed by authors comments. Sawyer does not ruin the historical accounts with his own take on the interpretation of the event. This is happily so unlike the myriad of crummy interpretations of 'Art of War' and 'Book of 5 Rings' available, polluted by the translators' opinions and biases. This is a testament to Sawyer as a scholar 1st and foremost.

He provides insight and opinions in his comments after the strategies and examples, but lets you draw your own conclusions about the relevence and applicability while you read each short strategy.

I have been able to apply these strategies to real life situations in dealing with individuals and groups. It has helped me in business and personal relationships by drawing parallels between the strategies and applying them figuratively. It has also helped me in a literal sense in mundane theaters like computer gaming as well.

I want this in hardcover!!! I will pay for it!!!

Editorial Review:

One Hundred Unorthodox Strategies was compiled in the fifteenth century, during the Ming Dynasty, as a handbook of tactics based on Chinese military classics. Translated into English for the first time, this unique work draws on over two thousand years of experience in warfare to present a distillation of one hundred key strategic principles. Originally prepared as a text for students aspiring to high political positions in Confucian China, One Hundred Unorthodox Strategies is a compendium of Oriental strategies concisely stated and each individually illustrated with a description of battle from Chinese history. These historical examples shed new light on the often enigmatic formulations of the ancient strategists on subjects such as Strategic Power, Defense, Vacuity, Spirit, and Victory. Acclaimed translator and Chinese military specialist Ralph Sawyer adds his own thoughtful commentary, deepening the reader's understanding of the intricacies of Chinese strategic thought.

Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima

Thomas Aquinas, Kenelm Foster

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All Humans Desire To Know 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I read these works for a graduate seminar on Aristotle.

Soul- De Anima Latin for Greek word Psuche=Life. It is a Phenomenology of Life. Living things are Aristotle¡¦s primary interest. Renee Descartes says thinking is only aspect of soul, not life. For Descartes the soul is the mind. Aristotle classifies features of living things. A soul can¡¦t be a body, (like a corpse). Psuche=life is a living form of the body, the phenomenon of life. Capacity to live is what he means. Ergon=function or work, thus when he talks about soul it is a body¡¦s function. Thus, a corpse is a deactivated body. Dunamis=capacity, Energia= actuality, thus both words are active words and can be seen as ¡§activating capacity.¡¨ Like a builder while building a house, past potential but not actual until the house is complete.
Entelecheia=¡¨living things have their ends inside them.¡¨ A living being has an end in itself.

What is the soul? Psuche= soul is being working toward ends of a self-moving body having the capacity to live. This is another way of talking about desire (like an animal that is hungry). Desire-animals have this as we do. Orexis=desire. The phenomenology of desire is to be motivated towards something that is lacking at the time, hunger, etc. Pleasure and pain.
Desire and action there are 3 kinds of desire.

1. Appetite like hunger and sex.
2. Emotion-like love not on crude level as appetite.
3. Wish-desire of the mind, (I want a good job).

All three strive towards something that is lacking. ¡§Desire is movement of the soul.¡¨ Human life is a set of desires. Human desires are more complicated. Desires clash like dieting and appetite.

¡§All humans desire to know.¡¨ This is the first line of the Metaphysics. Knowledge examined in terms of distinction between matter and form, perception has to do with intelligible form. Perception takes in visible form of something without the matter. Like imagination, an animal and human can do this. All knowledge starts with perception thus memory. Ultimate knowledge is intelligible form from visible form but mind is also using abstractions, this is a human capacity only. Humans use language to do this. Animals have image of a cat, word ¡§cat¡¨ is an abstraction for us. True knowledge organizes language.

Seing<³being seen. Two beings, seer and seen, this is act of vision it is only one actuality and two potentialities. In effect, Aristotle is saying that the capacity to see can only be actualized by seeing something. However, he goes the other way as well; something seeable only actualizes its seeability by being seen. One actuality, two potentials, the potential to see, the potential to be seen. In the modern world since Descartes, it is spoken as two actualities, the mind, and the outside world and there is a split between the two, two actualities, the mind as a separate thing and the object as a separate thing being seen. This is the source of the classic problem of skepticism. When there is seeing obviously you have two beings, the seer and the seen, but the act of vision is one actuality. Aristotle does not have this skeptical problem because he seems to stipulate this idea of single actuality and the whole point of the capacity to know is meant to hook up with things known. The whole point of knowable things is to be known by knower¡¦s, that is what he means by one actuality, thus there is no split between the mind and the world. There is no purely inside and outside. It isn¡¦t that minds are in here and the world is out there, and we might wonder about how they hook up. The nature of things and the nature of the mind are meant to hook up. Thus, Aristotle is not a radical skeptic like Descartes or Hume. Act of seeing the desk is joint actuality of seer and seen.

Actual hearing and actual sounding occur at the same time. Berkeley¡¦s famous question¡K¡¨If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? For Berkeley, to be is to be perceived. Aristotle answers Berkeley¡¦s question that it does make a sound, but you have to have the capacity to hear, it is a joint venture. The mind and the world are not separated like for Descartes. Aristotle doesn¡¦t buy the idea that ¡§everything in my mind can be false¡¨ like the skeptics argue, Aristotle would say this is impossible. Getting things true and false are part of what the mind has to do, but the possibility that the whole mental realm could be put into question is impossible. Thus, he doesn¡¦t have to answer the question put to skeptics. ¡§If you are right that there is a radical doubt about the possibility of our knowledge hooking up with reality, why would the human situation ever come to pass in this way that it is possible that we could be totally wrong.¡¨ The skeptics answer we are not sure that we are wrong, they are saying we can¡¦t be sure that we are right. If that were the case then Aristotle can say, well is this a recipe for the human condition? One can be skeptical about this or that, but not about everything.

Aristotle moves from perception to thought. The thinking of the world and world to be thought is actualization. Nous=highest capacity of intellect for Aristotle. Mind is potential and until it thinks isn¡¦t actualization. The implication of this the world wants to be known according to Aristotle. The world also activates our desire. One actualization of two potentialities. Taking in form without matter that is what knowledge is. A knowing soul cannot be separation from the body. The mind has built in capacity to understand for Aristotle, no actual knowledge until intellect engages with objects. ¡§Actually thinking mind is the thing that it thinks. In this respect the soul is all existing things.¡¨ Soul is capacity to think the world in the passage.

I recommend Aristotle¡¦s works to anyone interested in obtaining a classical education, and those interested in philosophy. Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and the standard that all others must be judged by.

Editorial Review:

This precise new translation of Thomas Aquinas`s most important study of Aristotle-the first English translation from the definitive Gauthier edition (1984)-throws bright light on the thinking of both philosophers. Aquinas`s influential reading of Aristotle reflects the views of the two philosophers on such central topics as the nature of the soul, the mind-body problem, and the character of emotions.

Exploring Personhood: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Nature

Joseph Torchia O.P.

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This book explores the metaphysical underpinnings of theories of human nature, personhood, and the self. The coverage of the work is broad in scope, moving from the Pre-Socratics to Postmodernism, critically assessing what transpired during the intervening 2500 year period, with a special focus on the contributions of the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition of inquiry. The work is designed to meet the needs of a wide range of readers, from beginners to more advanced students.

Poetics I With the Tractatus Coislinianus: A Hypothetical Reconstruction of Poetics II (Creative Classic Series) (Bk. 1)

Aristotle

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Outstanding Translation and Reconstruction 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This text is the first book of literary criticism in the western literary tradition--and the most influential. It is also a how-to-write-a-successful-story text, based on Aristotle's inductive study of Greek literature. Richard Janko's rendering is the best English translation I have read. His commentary on catharsis is profound, resolving what has often been a stumbling block for many critics and theorists. His interpretation is well in line with the rest of Aristotle's philosophy and makes Aristotle's analysis even more useful for both students of literature and contemporary writers. Janko's reconstruction of Aristotle's lost book on comedy is splendid, a contribution to the history of ideas and comic theory.

Tragedy Teaches Us Something About Life 5 out of 5 stars.
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I read these works for a graduate seminar on Aristotle.
Poetry appeals to human passions and emotions. Powerful beautiful language and metaphor really appeal to emotion. This idea really disturbed Plato, who takes on Homer in the Republic. Plato thought that early Greek poetry portrays a dark world; humans are checked by negative limits like death. Tragedy has in it a character of high status brought down through no fault of his own. Plato says this is unjust. Republic is about ethical life and justice. It starts with the premises that might makes right and then moves onto the idea much like modern religions that justice comes in the afterlife. Plato hates the idea that in tragedy bad things can happen to good people. He wanted to ban tragedy because he found it demoralizing.

Aristotle's Poetics is a defense against Plato's appeal to ban tragedy. Tragedy was very popular in Greek world so Aristotle asks can it be wrong to ban it? Yes, it is wrong thus he decides to study it. Plato says Poetry is not a technç because the poets are divinely inspired. Aristotle disagrees Poetics is a handbook for playwrights. Mimçsis= "representation or imitation." Plato uses it in speaking of painting, thus art is imitation. Another meaning is to mimic, like actors mimicking another person. Plato and Aristotle use it to mean psychological identification like how we get absorbed in a movie as if the action were real, eliciting emotions from us. We suspend reality for a while. Aristotle says this is natural in humans; we do this as children, we mimic. If imitation is important for humans then tragic poetry is worthwhile for Aristotle to study.

Definition of tragedy- "Through pity and fear it achieves purification from such feelings. This is a famous controversial line. Katharsis= "pity and fear" thus the purpose of tragedy is to purge katharsis. Katharsis can also mean purification or clean. There is a debate if it means clarification, through which we can come to understand katharsis. Aristotle thinks tragedy teaches us something about life. Tragedy is an elaboration on Aristotle's idea that good or virtuous people sometimes get unlucky and in the end, they get screwed. Tragedy shows this so we can learn to get by when life screws us. The whole point of tragedy is action over character. Action is the full story of the poem like the Iliad. Character is only part of the action.
Aristotle distinguishes between poetry and history. Poetry is concerned with universals, history is concerned with particulars.

I recommend Aristotle's works to anyone interested in obtaining a classical education, and those interested in philosophy. Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and the standard that all others must be judged by.

The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius

Mark Forstater

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In the life of man, his time is but an instant, his substance ceaselessly changing, his senses degraded, the flesh of his body subject to decay, his soul a confusion.... How can a man find a sensible way to live? While camped by the frozen Danube River in the second century, Marcus Aurelius wrote down his thoughts in the midst of an eight-year war. These "meditations", as they have been traditionally called, were not written for publication or posterity, yet the Golden Emperor's, insights on anger, death, self-improvement, beauty, good, evil, and the difficulties of living a virtuous hie have provided inspiration and guidance for nearly two millennia. Now, for the first time, Mark Forstater has selected the key meditations or "teachings" as he prefers to think of them, reinterpreted them for a contemporary audience, and arranged them thematically into eight sections -- readers can easily locate their favorite passages or look for inspiration on specific subjects. This book is a must for anyone looking for enlightenment in today's frantic world, and makes the perfect gift for any occasion.

Aristotle in 90 Minutes (Philosophers in 90 Minutes)

Paul Strathern

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Misleading customers with selected reviews 1 out of 5 stars.
6 of 19 people found this review helpful.

I wrote a review about this book but apparently you only display positive ones. How sad. I have purchased a number of products from Amazon,often using the reviews as a guide. I will know better next time(if there is a next time).

A feel of Aristotle still present 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Strathern briefly gives a background of Aristotle's life and teaching. Strathern uses his search for evidence of Aristotle at his birthplace in Stagira, Greece as a vehicle for pointing out the continued poignancy of Aristotle. The inclusion of quotes from Thomas Kuhn and Nietzsche, (whether you agree with their viewpoints or not), highlight that Aristotle is still a relevant topic of discussion. The importance of the rediscovery of Aristotle by Islamic Spain was welcome. I was glad also to see a quote from Aristotle where he didn't get it right: "people who have sharp-ended noses are easily angered, much like dogs".

Editorial Review:

These concise and enlightening explorations of our greatest thinkers bring their ideas to life in an entertaining and accessible fashion. Philosophical thought is deciphered and made comprehensible and interesting to almost everyone. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the philosopher and his work, authoritative and clearly presented.

A History of Greek Philosophy: Volume 4, Plato: The Man and his Dialogues: Earlier Period (Plato - The Man & His Dialogues - Earlier Period)

W. C. K. Guthrie

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Readable study of 1/2 the Platonic dialogs 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Guthrie covers all of the earlier Platonic dialogues in this volume, up to and including THE REPUBLIC. The next volume in the series (THE LATER PLATO AND THE ACADEMY) covers the rest. Each chapter covers one or two dialogues. Guthrie mentions work published by previous philosophers, and indicates where he agrees and disagrees. The book has a particular emphasis on the development of Plato's theory of the Forms and the influence of the Pythagoreans and Parmenides on Plato's thought. It's very reader-friendly yet packed with information. I can recommend both volumes to casual Plato fans.

Editorial Review:

All volumes of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek philosophy have won their due acclaim. The most striking merits of Guthrie's work are his mastery of a tremendous range of ancient literature and modern scholarship, his fairness and balance of judgement and the lucidity and precision of his English prose. He has achieved clarity and comprehensiveness.

An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America

Benjamin R. Barber

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In a book that fundamentally alters the terms of the current debate over education in America, Barber argues that rather than pursuing a debate defined by controversy over who should be taught, what should be taught, and how it should be paid for, Americans must address education for what it is: the well-spring of democracy in the United States. With such an education young Americans will gain nothing less than an apprenticeship in liberty--one grounded in a renewed commitment to community service--an idea that Barber put into practice at Rutgers University, and one which President Clinton has enbraced as the key to a revitalized America. This approach will provide Americans the literacy to live in a civil society and the competence to participate in democratic communities, while promoting an educational excellence that will maintain America's economic, technical, and political preeminence in a rapidly changing world.

An Aristocracy of Everyone shows that education offers the only path toward rebuilding and reinvigorating the United States, and that this is a path we must begin to follow now.