Parmenides publishing us (61 Ergebnisse)

Paperback. Zustand: New. Set in an era witness to some of the most avant-garde and scintillating scientific discoveries and artistic creations of the last century, this novel takes readers behind the scenes and into the lives of many of history's most fascinating and revolutionary minds, all while posing the question-could a mathematical discovery be so controversial and threatening as to drive one to kill?After the murder of his best friend lands Michael Igerinos in the center of the investigation as the prime suspect, he is transported back to the turn of the 20th Century, into the heart of Bohemian Paris and the sensual, hedonistic pursuits of the artists who haunted its infamous Moulin Rouge. There they are privy to the tormented genius of Toulouse-Lautrec, the twisted, visceral perspective of a young Picasso, and the wild exploits of les artistes de Montmartre.Michael and Stefanos meet at the groundbreaking Second International Congress of Mathematics in 1900, at which the greatest mathematical minds of the 20th Century-Hilbert, Poincaré, Bertrand Russell, Gödel-probed the depths of mathematical mystery and challenged the very foundations on which all of mathematical theory is based.Their mutual passion for uncovering the deepest, most elusive secrets of the universe unites them and their search for mathematical discovery draws them down a dark path whose tragic end neither man could possibly foresee.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. A secret concealed for centuries, shrouded in myth, silenced by stone.A secret that if unleashed threatens to shake the very foundation of Western civilization.A secret that can remain hidden no longer.The quest begins in Rome, where a grisly murder and a plundered tomb serve to ignite perhaps the most controversial conflict in human history. Inspector Domenico Conti is charged with the task of recovering the contents of the tomb, but as he delves deeper into the investigation, he is thrust into the center of a centuries-old struggle between truth and those who would stop at nothing to conceal it. But he is not alone.Dr. Dana McCarter, newly appointed director of the Advanced Institute for the Study of Antiquity, finds herself at the heart of the mystery when her considerable expertise in ancient Greek philosophy and her suspect involvement with the black market take her on a journey beginning in her New York University offices and sweeping around the globe-from the dark alleys of Moscow, to the rolling hills of the Italian countryside and the enigmatic relics of an ancient civilization, alive with long-kept secrets.As the search for answers leads them through a labyrinth of conspiracy and intrigue, Dana and Domenico must question everything they believe in and decide how much they are willing to sacrifice to know the truth.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. English and Romanian. This collection of Poems-offered as a dual-language English-Romanian edition-together with a critical Exposé by the translators, a Preface by the author, a Chronicle and Biography, conveys to the reader a very personal tale of a human tragedy of unspeakable horrors the author endured alongside tens of thousands of other political prisoners at forced labor camps, so-called ""Gulags"" at the Danube-Black Sea Canal (the ""Canal"") during Romania's Communist regime after WWII. This book is a Zeitzeugnis-a witness of the time-an account not only of a reprehensible past time but a very pertinent manifest for hope for younger generations everywhere in the world.This book is based on Moara Dracilor by Mircea Ionescu-Quintus, published in Romanian in 1999 by Editura Ion Creang? S.A., Romania. The new title is a dual-language (English-Romanian) edition, with a new Foreword, a new Preface by the author, a new About the Translators, seven additional Poems, three new Illustrations, and a new author Biography.It is a must-read for students and anyone interested in politics, political history, Eastern-European history, Communist regimes, Romania, Romanian history, Romanian politics, History of Political Oppression, Testimonial Literature, Poetry, Eastern-European poetry, Romanian poetry, and socio-political poetry.…

Hardback. Zustand: New. Set in an era witness to some of the most avant-garde and scintillating scientific discoveries and artistic creations of the last century, this novel takes readers behind the scenes and into the lives of many of history's most fascinating and revolutionary minds, all while posing the question-could a mathematical discovery be so controversial and threatening as to drive one to kill?After the murder of his best friend lands Michael Igerinos in the center of the investigation as the prime suspect, he is transported back to the turn of the 20th Century, into the heart of Bohemian Paris and the sensual, hedonistic pursuits of the artists who haunted its infamous Moulin Rouge. There they are privy to the tormented genius of Toulouse-Lautrec, the twisted, visceral perspective of a young Picasso, and the wild exploits of les artistes de Montmartre.Michael and Stefanos meet at the groundbreaking Second International Congress of Mathematics in 1900, at which the greatest mathematical minds of the 20th Century-Hilbert, Poincaré, Bertrand Russell, Gödel-probed the depths of mathematical mystery and challenged the very foundations on which all of mathematical theory is based.Their mutual passion for uncovering the deepest, most elusive secrets of the universe unites them and their search for mathematical discovery draws them down a dark path whose tragic end neither man could possibly foresee.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. A distinguished Platonic scholar discusses the impact of the Greek discovery of the ""cosmos"" on man's perception of his place in the universe, describes the problems this posed, and interprets Plato's response to this discovery.Starting with the Presocratics, Vlastos describes the intellectual revolution that began with the cosmogonies of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes in the sixth century B.C. and culminated a century later in the atomist system of Leucippus and Democritus. What united these men was that for all of them nature remained the inviolate, all-inclusive principle of explanation, precluding any appeal to a supernatural cause or ordering agency.In a detailed analysis of the astronomical and physical theories of the Timaeus, Vlastos demonstrates Plato's role in the reception and transmission of the discovery of the new conception of the universe. Plato gives us the chance to see that movement from a unique perspective: that of a fierce opponent of the revolution who was determined to wrest from its brilliant discovery, annex its cosmos, and redesign it on the pattern of his own idealistic and theistic metaphysics.This book is a reprint of the edition published in 1975 by the University of Washington Press. It includes a new Introduction by Luc Brisson.…

Hardback. Zustand: New. A secret concealed for centuries, shrouded in myth, silenced by stone.A secret that if unleashed threatens to shake the very foundation of Western civilization.A secret that can remain hidden no longer.The quest begins in Rome, where a grisly murder and a plundered tomb serve to ignite perhaps the most controversial conflict in human history. Inspector Domenico Conti is charged with the task of recovering the contents of the tomb, but as he delves deeper into the investigation, he is thrust into the center of a centuries-old struggle between truth and those who would stop at nothing to conceal it. But he is not alone.Dr. Dana McCarter, newly appointed director of the Advanced Institute for the Study of Antiquity, finds herself at the heart of the mystery when her considerable expertise in ancient Greek philosophy and her suspect involvement with the black market take her on a journey beginning in her New York University offices and sweeping around the globe-from the dark alleys of Moscow, to the rolling hills of the Italian countryside and the enigmatic relics of an ancient civilization, alive with long-kept secrets.As the search for answers leads them through a labyrinth of conspiracy and intrigue, Dana and Domenico must question everything they believe in and decide how much they are willing to sacrifice to know the truth.…

Hardback. Zustand: New. Parmenides and the History of Dialectic is a study of Greek philosophical method as it affects contemporary philosophical issues. What was distinctive about the method of Parmenides, the inventor of philosophical argument as we know it? How did Parmenides' method affect Plato's dialectic, which was supposed to provide the solution to all ultimate philosophical problems? How, in turn, did Plato influence Hegel and our subsequent tradition?There are many studies of Parmenides' text, its philosophical content, and its influence. This study aims to do something different, to look at the form of the argument, the scope of its positive and negative language, the balanced structure its author generates, and the clear parallels with Plato's Parmenides.Along the way, Austin considers issues like these: was Parmenides, an absolute monist, entitled to speak at all, and in many negative words at that? How did he think that his own language related to the reality that he was trying to describe? What was his notion of the use of metaphor? What logical techniques did he invent? Has his type of philosophy come to an end.…

Hardback. Zustand: New. Interpreting Plato's Dialogues introduces readers to some key problems in understanding Plato's writings, and explores in-depth and critically the various ways of approaching Plato. The problem of how to interpret Plato's dialogues dates back to Plato's Academy, and Plato's interpreters ought not to forego this important discussion. For how one approaches texts will inevitably influence how one interprets their contents. This is especially true of Plato's writings, as they are, with few exceptions, dialogues. For the sake of historical accuracy, then, it is crucial that the most plausible interpretation of Plato's works is articulated and well defended. And this is precisely what this book provides: an articulation and critical evaluation of the various ways to approach Plato's dialogues, along with the articulation and defense of a plausible new way to interpret Plato.This new way of approaching Plato neither sees Plato's words as doctrines according to which the dialogues are to be interpreted, nor does it reduce Plato's dialogues to dramatic literature. Rather, it seeks to interpret the aim of Plato's writings as being influenced primarily by Plato's respect for his teacher, Socrates, and the manner in which Socrates engaged others in philosophical discourse. It places the focus of philosophical investigation of Plato's dialogues on the content of the dialogues themselves, and on the Socratic way of doing philosophy.This book contains a comprehensive bibliography of philosophical sources on the interpretation of Plato's corpus of writings, as well as some important works in the field of classical studies and philology. Interpreting Plato's Dialogues provides both an analytical, scholarly, and thorough treatment of what is perhaps the most long-standing problem in Plato studies. The book serves quite well as a companion text to Plato's dialogues and is of special interest to philosophers, classicists, and philologists.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. Physics 7.3 is one of the crucial texts in Aristotle's theory of change, in which he deals with the question of what alteration is and what it is not. Aristotle discusses change in various parts of his writings, and seems to provide a broad range of notions: movement and change of place, alteration in aspect and form, temporal change, variation in the way a given being is perceived, the change in relationship between beings, qualitative and accidental alterations.This volume presents the results of the ESAP-HYELE conference on ""Aristotle, Physics 7.3: What is Alteration?"", which took place in Vitznau, Switzerland in 2007. The contributors are part of a team of Aristotelian scholars that first came together in 1995, and have since been meeting every spring. The purpose of their gatherings was to read and interpret line by line a short, but important chapter of Aristotle's works. In this way, attention was focused on key texts of particular exegetic and theoretical interest. Each session started with the presentation of a translation and a first analysis of the main problems; these then became the subject of an intense debate which illustrates the different schools of thought and methodological approaches.This volume sets out to provide the reader with new insights into Aristotle's: Physics 7.3.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. Platonists beginning in the Old Academy itself and up to and including Plotinus struggled to understand and articulate the relation between Plato's Demiurge and the Living Animal which served as the model for creation. The central question is whether "contents" of the Living Animal, the Forms, are internal to the mind of the Demiurge or external and independent. For Plotinus, the solution depends heavily on how the Intellect that is the Demiurge and the Forms or intelligibles are to be understood in relation to the first principle of all, the One or the Good. The treatise V.5 [32] sets out the case for the internality of Forms and argues for the necessary existence of an absolutely simple and transcendent first principle of all, the One or the Good. Not only Intellect and the Forms, but everything else depends on this principle for their being.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. The term dunamis (potentiality) entered into the philosophical vocabulary with Plato, but it was with Aristotle that it acquired, together with energeia (actuality), the strong technical meaning that the two terms have maintained, with variations, throughout subsequent philosophical tradition.The significance of the notions of actuality and potentiality in Plotinus' thought can hardly be overstated. Throughout the Enneads, they are crucial to understanding the specific causality of intelligible realities and the relation of participation between intelligible and sensible realms.In Ennead II.5, Plotinus for the first time provides a systematic clarification of his peculiar use of these terms, through a sustained revision of Aristotle's own elaboration of the topic and of his terminology. The treatise discusses the different meanings of potentiality and actuality as well as the way each of them applies or does not apply to the sensible realm, to the intelligible realm, and to matter.While the structure of the text unfolds in a coherent and cohesive manner, Plotinus' writing in this treatise is dense and at times dry in its technicality. The detailed commentary guides the reader step by step, making an otherwise particularly difficult text accessible.…

Hardback. Zustand: New. Sentience and Sensibility is a dialogue that engages a number of issues in moral theory in a rigorous and original manner, while remaining accessible to students and other nonspecialist readers. It accomplishes this by means of the time-honored (if presently dormant) medium of philosophical dialogue, in which its characters actively challenge each other to clarify their ideas and defend their reasoning. In this manner the conversation develops and weighs some proposed solutions, in largely non-technical language, to a number of current and traditional moral problems (including the nature and origin of moral value, the moral status of nonhuman animals, problems of partiality, and other vexed topics).Moral philosophy and theory can seem as remote and intimidating as everyday ethical matters and moral intuitions are pressing. Sentience and Sensibility proposes that these two should meet. The book's characters gently challenge each other to clarify their thinking and defend their reasoning, and in this rigorous yet personable manner explore traditional and fresh takes on morality. The conversation aims not only to discover thoughtful answers to such questions, but to do so while being respectful of both philosophical theory and ordinary moral intuitions.David Weissman of CCNY believes this "may be the best use of the very difficult medium of philosophical dialogue" he has read, and that the book "deserves a wide audience." Kay Mathiesen of the University of Arizona compares the appeal of the book to that of Jostein Gaarder's bestselling novel about the history of philosophy, with the difference that Sentience and Sensibility develops original ideas in moral thought: "It's like a Sophie's World for grownups.".…

Zustand: new.

Paperback. Zustand: New. In Ennead I.5 Plotinus attempts to navigate a well-trodden path of inquiry by directly responding to a wide spectrum of popular theories on human flourishing, and insisting emphatically that well-being belongs to the present moment. Indeed, Aristotle-with his insistence that well-being be measured by "a complete life" (Nicomachean Ethics 1098a16-20) or a life measured by virtue, a modus vivendi sustained via the development of appropriate habits (hexis) and the avoidance of misfortunes-is one of Plotinus' central targets. Nevertheless, it is also obvious that the Hellenistic schools, with their almost evangelical insistence that happiness is available to practitioners in the immediacy of the "now," take pride of place in Plotinus' short treatise on the subject. Layne analyzes in depth Plotinus' unique conception of the value of the present moment by highlighting his dialogue with Aristotle and Hellenistic conceptions of the soul, pleasure and pain, time and eternity, and so forth.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. This short, early treatise undertakes to explain the controversial thesis that all souls-this includes individual human souls and the world-soul-are in some sense just one soul. Plotinus considers a number of objections that can be raised against the thesis. For instance, if the thesis is true, it may seem to follow that that everything that holds for one soul also holds for every other soul. Plotinus seeks to explain that such objections are off the mark, which also shows that the thesis about the unity of soul is not a claim about strict identity of all souls. He then (chapter 5) considers and rejects two materialistic hypotheses about the relationship between individual souls and the world-soul. In the final chapter he presents his own solution: the individual souls and the world-soul are all the soul hypostasis. He likens the relationship between the hypostatic soul and the individual souls with that between a science and the theorems of the science: each theorem potentially contains the whole science and can in a sense be said to be it.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. Ennead VI.4-5, originally written as a single treatise, contains Plotinus' most general and sustained exposition of the relationship between the intelligible and sensible realms, addressing and coalescing two central issues in Platonism: the nature of the soul-body relationship and the nature of participation. Its main question is, How can soul animate bodies without sharing in their extension? The treatise seems to have had considerable impact: it is much reflected in Porphyry's important work, Sententiae, and the doctrine of reception according to the capacity of the recipient, for which this treatise is the main source, resonated in medieval thinkers.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. Ennead IV.7 is a very early treatise (second according to Porphyry's chronological table), and unlike the many treatises devoted to attempts at untangling various issues Plotinus found problematic in Plato's thinking, this one presents the teachings of the other main schools current in Plotinus' day: the Stoics, Epicureans, Pythagoreans, and Peripatetics, all of whom presented soul as something material or as contingent upon material soul, and so as being neither truly immortal nor imperishable.It includes observations on many mainly Stoic doctrines on perception, memory, sensation, thought, virtue, powers of material bodies, mixture and reproduction (Chapters 1-83); on Pythagorean attunement (84); and on Peripatetic entelechy (85). In Chapters 9-10 Plotinus presents, in broad terms, Plato's doctrines on soul's immortality-mainly that of the individual soul, but a fortiori that of the soul of the cosmos. These chapters offer some of Plotinus' most powerful prose.He is not concerned to prove the soul's immortality-that was an uncontroversial tenet of Platonism, to be taken for granted. In this treatise Plotinus is laying down the in­disputable foundations for his later writings.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. This book is a collection of dovetailing essays which together interpret and assess the chief arguments and texts which make up Plato's cosmology. Arguments in the Timaeus, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, and Laws X are analyzed with an eye to problems which affect the wider understanding of Plato's metaphysics, theology, epistemology, psychology, and physics. New interpretations are given to Plato's views on the role and characteristics of his craftsman God, the nature and status of Forms, the nature of time and eternity, the status and nature of space and the phenomenal realm, and the nature of and relations between reason, souls, bodies, and motion.The book is critically sympathetic to the Platonic project, at least to the extent that it argues that many (though not all) features of the Platonic cosmology are more intelligible and coherent than usually supposed by critics. It defends the view that for Plato God makes the world in the way that a carpenter cuts a board to be exactly a yard long - by applying a yard stick to the board and removing the excess wood. This view of a making requires that there be standards or measures that exist independently both of the agent who creates and the world on which he works. These standards are Plato's Forms. Transcendent Forms cannot be excised from the Platonic metaphysics as many modern critics have been trying to do in an attempt to make Plato respectable by today's criteria of philosophical decency.This work presents a revised and updated edition of the author's 1985 book The Platonic Cosmology (E.J. Brill, Leiden) together with four revised and updated essays by the author on Plato's metaphysics, and a wholly new essay, ""Extensions,"" which expands the themes of the book into wider philosophical contexts.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. On Our Allotted Guardian Spirit is a lively and at times perplexing text combining general reflections on the nature of the soul with a discussion of the phenomenon of a personal guardian spirit. Plotinus wants to interpret Plato, and aims to integrate Plato's various statements about daimones into one comprehensive theory. This leads to some views that are, if not exotic, then at least strange on first encounter. However, a closer reading reveals that Plotinus is not interested in demonology per se. Instead, the central concern of the treatise are ideas about the soul, the self, and self-consciousness. Plotinus' explorations produce a theory of the mind as the agent and activity responsible for a person's ethical choices and conduct of life. The demon emerges as a philosophical tool passed down from Plato, but adapted and rationalized to try to explain motivation to action, the impulse toward the ethical life, and even the various differences in human ethical and psychological constitution. This innovative theory is a response to a strong and ongoing current of thought in the philosophical tradition. The introduction offers an overview of ancient demonologies, starting with Homer and the Presocratics, and is followed by an in-depth examination of Plato, the Stoics, Plotinus, and later Neoplatonic developments. As such the book presents Plotinus' specific rationalizing response to the idea of a guardian spirit in the context of ancient philosophical demonologies.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. Ennead VI.8 gives us access to the living mind of a long dead sage as he tries to answer some of the most fundamental questions we in the modern world continue to ask: are we really free when most of the time we are overwhelmed by compulsions, addictions, and necessities, and how can we know that we are free? Can we trace this freedom through our own agency to the gods, to the Soul, Intellect, and the Good? How do we know that the world is meaningful and not simply the result of chance or randomness?Plotinus' On the Voluntary and on the Free Will of the One is a groundbreaking work that provides a new understanding of the importance and nature of free human agency. It articulates a creative idea of agency and radical freedom by showing how such terms as desire, will, self-dependence, and freedom in the human ethical sphere can be genuinely applied to Intellect and the One while preserving the radical inability of all metaphysical language to express anything about God or gods. …

Hardback. Zustand: New. The Sophist sets out to explain what the sophist does by defining his art. But the sophist has no art. Plato lays out a challenging puzzle in metaphysics, the nature of philosophy, and the limitation of philosophy that is unraveled in this new and unconventional interpretation.Here is a new translation of this important late Platonic dialogue, with a comprehensive commentary that reverses the dominant trends in the scholarship of the last fifty years. The Sophist is shown to be not a dry exposition of doctrine, but a rich exercise in dialectic, which reveals both the Eleatic roots of Platonic metaphysics and Plato's criticism of unrevised Eleaticism as a theoretical underpinning for sophistry.The Sophist is presented now not as an artefact of the intellectual past or precursor of late 20th century philosophical theories, but as living philosophy. In a new translation and interpretation, this late dialogue is shown to be a defense of not a departure from Plato's metaphysics.The book is intended to provide a complete interpretation of Plato's Sophist as a whole. Central to the methodology adopted is the assumption that all elements of the dialogue to be understood must be understood in the context of the dialogue as a whole and in its relation to other works in the Platonic corpus.Three main points are argued: 1) the dialogue does not present a definitive or positive doctrine of the late Plato, but has the structure of a reductio ad absurdum; 2) the figure of the sophist is employed to critically examining the metaphysics of Parmenides. While acknowledging a core of metaphysical insight in Parmenides, the argument implies that, by failing to account for resemblance, Eleaticism implies an inadequate theory of relations, which makes impossible an adequate understanding of essence. Consequently, Eleaticism unrevised can be taken as the philosophical underpinning for the antithesis of philosophy, lending legitimacy to sophistry; 3) the criticism constitutes an indirect argument for Platonic metaphysics, which has roots in Eleaticism, that is, for the Theory of Forms.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. The Statesman is a difficult and puzzling Platonic dialogue. In A Stranger's Knowledge Marquez argues that Plato abandons here the classic idea, prominent in the Republic, that the philosopher, qua philosopher, is qualified to rule. Instead, the dialogue presents the statesman as different from the philosopher, the possessor of a specialist expertise that cannot be reduced to philosophy. The expertise is of how to make a city resilient against internal and external conflict in light of the imperfect sociality of human beings and the poverty of their reason. This expertise, however, cannot be produced on demand: one cannot train statesmen like one might train carpenters. Worse, it cannot be made acceptable to the citizens, or operate in ways that are not deeply destructive to the city's stability. Even as the political community requires his knowledge for its preservation, the genuine statesman must remain a stranger to the city.Marquez shows how this impasse is the key to understanding the ambiguous reevaluation of the rule of law that is the most striking feature of the political philosophy of the Statesman. The law appears here as a mere approximation of the expertise of the inevitably absent statesman, dim images and static snapshots of the clear and dynamic expertise required to steer the ship of state across the storms of the political world. Yet such laws, even when they are not created by genuine statesmen, can often provide the city with a limited form of cognitive capital that enables it to preserve itself in the long run, so long as citizens, and especially leaders, retain a "philosophical" attitude towards them. It is only when rulers know that they do not know better than the laws what is just or good (and yet want to know what is just and good) that the city can be preserved. The dialogue is thus, in a sense, the vindication of the philosopher-king in the absence of genuine political knowledge.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. Providing a challenging new interpretation of the Second Alcibiades from the Platonic corpus, this treatment sees the dialogue not only as a work of philosophic ethics, but also as one steeped in ancient literature, particularly Euripidean tragedy. The dialogue's philosophy is underpinned by an epistemology paying special attention to one's personal viewpoint, as its language shows. Dramatically, it presents a Socrates who falls into a similar trap from the one he steers Alcibiades away from, facing the dangers of a tragic character thanks to their mutual attraction. Understood in this way the dialogue, here retranslated to bring out such features, is revealed as the work of an author with linguistic and literary gifts who is deeply conscious of the human condition. While reminiscent of the Academic Skeptic picture of Plato, it is the work of somebody still moving cautiously in that direction.…

Hardback. Zustand: New. Scholarly Fully-Annotated Edition. To Think Like God focuses on the emergence of philosophy as a speculative science, tracing its origins to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, from the late 6th century to mid-5th century B.C.E. Special attention is paid to the sage Pythagoras and his movement, the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, and the lawmaker Parmenides of Elea. In their own ways, each thinker held that true insight, whether as wisdom or certainty, belonged not to mortal human beings but to the gods.The Pythagoreans sought to approach this otherworldly knowledge by studying numerical relationships, believing them to govern the universe, and that those who know the number of a thing know its true nature. Yet their quest was a hopeless one, bogged down by cultism, numerology, political conspiracies, bloody uprisings, and exile. Above all, number did not turn out as the most reliable of mediums; it was certainly not a key to the realm of the divine. Thus, their contributions to philosophy's inception, while much better publicized, were not the most significant. That particular role was reserved for an unusual challenge and the elaborate reaction it provoked.The challenge came from Xenophanes, who had argued that reliable truth was beyond mortal reach, because even if by accident a human being should state what is exactly the case, he had no way of knowing that he did, all things being susceptible to opinion. This dilemma is sure to have bothered a legislative mind like that of Parmenides, and we find him introducing techniques for testing the veracity of statements. These methods were meant to be carried out by reasoning and argument alone, without relying on physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, which was deemed untrustworthy. Reason was that one faculty shared by gods and humans alike.In time, Parmenides' ingenious arguments have earned him the title of the first logician and metaphysician whose influence on subsequent thinkers was immeasurable. Parmenides taught us that philosophy was not about claims but about proof, which also makes him the father of theoretical science-which, curiously, began as a quest into the mind of God.…

Hardback. Zustand: New. The problem of the one and the many is central to ancient Greek philosophy, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to Aristotle's treatment of it in the Metaphysics. This omission is all the more surprising because the Metaphysics is one of our principal sources for thinking that the problem is central and for the views of other ancient philosophers on it.The Central Books of the Metaphysics are widely recognized as the most difficult portion of a most difficult work. Halper uses the problem of the one and the many as a lens through which to examine the Central Books. What he sees is an extraordinary degree of doctrinal cogency and argumentative coherence in a work that almost everyone else supposes to be some sort of patchwork. Rather than trying to elucidate Aristotle's doctrines-most of which have little explicitly to do with the problem, Halper holds that the problem of the one and the many, in various formulations, is the key problematic from which Aristotle begins and with which he constructs his arguments.Thus, exploring the problem of the one and the many turns out to be a way to reconstruct Aristotle's arguments in the Metaphysics. Armed with the arguments, Halper is able to see Aristotle's characteristic doctrines as conclusions. These latter are, for the most part, supported by showing that they resolve otherwise insoluble problems. Moreover, having Aristotle's arguments enables Halper to delimit those doctrines and to resolve the apparent contradiction in Aristotle's account of primary ousia, the classic problem of the Central Books. Although there is no way to make the Metaphysics easy, this very thorough treatment of the text succeeds in making it surprisingly intelligible.Halper's One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics: The Central Books was originally published in 1989 by Ohio State University Press. The reprint of this work includes a new Introduction by the author.Further, The Central Books is part of a Trilogy whose two other as of yet unpublished works Alpha-Delta and Iota-Nu will be released by Parmenides Publishing in 2008 and in 2014 respectively.…

Hardback. Zustand: New. This translation is the result of a collaboration between Arnold Hermann and Dr. Sylvana Chrysakopoulou. Heeding the challenge of balancing intelligibility with faithfulness-while maintaining sufficient consistency to allow the discernment of technical terms-great pains have been taken to secure both accuracy and accessibility. In his Foreword, Douglas Hedley gives an insightful account of the way the Parmenides was received by different cultures and philosophical schools throughout the centuries to the present day.Hermann's Introduction, aimed at first time readers and professional interpreters alike, offers an overview of the most noted philosophical problems addressed in the dialogue, and of its historical background. In view of the fact that certain individual issues have been exhaustively explored by generations of scholars, Hermann chooses to focus also on subjects that have at times been passed over, or trivialized: the debt the dialogue may owe to the works of earlier thinkers, or whether it constitutes a response to certain critics of the Theory of Forms; as for the Theory itself, whether it is bolstered or superseded by the dialogue's conclusions, or whether there is such a thing as a "simple," unparticipated Form, and if there is, why it cannot be the subject of an account; also, the issue of the "interweaving of Forms," (the Sophist) is discussed, in light of its possible relevance to the Second Part of the Parmenides. Finally, Hermann provides an overview with a listing and summaries of the individual conclusions to each of the eight central arguments of the dialgoue's Second Part (plus Coda).…

Hardback. Zustand: New. Fascinating illustrations contribute to this illuminating account of how and why philosophy emerged and make it a must-read for any inquisitive thinker unsatisfied with prevailing assumptions on this timely and highly relevant subject.By taking the reader back to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy more than 500 years B.C.E., the author, with unparalleled insight, tells the story of the Pythagorean quest for otherworldly knowledge-a tale of cultism, political conspiracies, and bloody uprisings that eventually culminate in tragic failure. The emerging hero is Parmenides, who introduces for the first time a technique for testing the truth of a statement that was not based on physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, but instead relied exclusively on the faculty we humans share with the gods: the ability to reason.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. Imperial Plato presents new translations of three introductions to Plato's thought from the second half of the second century CE: the Introduction to Plato by Albinus of Smyrna, Dissertation 11 of Maximus of Tyre, and On Plato and his Teaching by Apuleius of Madaurus. These three presentations of Plato's ideas-one a Greek dialectic introduction with a suggested reading order for Plato's dialogues, another a Greek speech in the sophistic style of the time, and one a lengthy doxological study in Latin-are examples by three distinct authors using divergent methods of the assorted ways in which Plato and Platonism were understood and discussed during the revival of Hellenism and Greek Philosophy, and the period of the Roman Empire often referred to as the Second Sophistic.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. In October of 2007, the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Argentina) hosted an International Symposium on the philosophy of Parmenides to celebrate the creation of the University's new Center for the Study of Ancient Philosophy. The event-co-organized by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies (Switzerland) and Parmenides Publishing-brought together scholars from around the world to present their latest work and participate in discussion. These Proceedings present the collected papers that were given-all fully translated into English-and edited by Néstor-Luis Cordero.During the two years leading up to the International Symposium, no fewer than seven books on Parmenides were published. This revival and resurgence of interest in Parmenides and the critical reviews of traditional interpretations of his poem made this the perfect time for a global conference dedicated to the renowned figure known as the true father of philosophy.The Symposium on Parmenides united the world's foremost Parmenidean scholars, with many participants having written one, if not several books on Parmenides. The proceedings volume therefore represents the most cutting-edge and in-depth scholarship on Parmenides available today, and will be a great and timely enrichment to the field of Presocratic Philosophy.…

Paperback. Zustand: New. This celebratory Festschrift dedicated to Charles Kahn comprises some 23 articles by friends, former students and colleagues, many of whom first presented their papers at the international "Presocratics and Plato" Symposium in his honor (European Cultural Center of Delphi, Greece, 3-7 June, 2009). The conference was organized and sponsored by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies, Parmenides Publishing, and Starcom AG, with endorsements from the International Plato Society, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. While Kahn's work reaches far beyond the Presocratics and Plato, it is in these subject areas that the distinction of his scholarship has come to be regarded as virtually unrivaled. The articles contributed to this volume are by some of the most renowned scholars working on these topics today, their breadth and depth bearing witness to his profound impact and influence on the discipline of Ancient Greek Philosophy. …