Essays in Later Ancient Philosophy is a collection of Michael Frede's papers on topics in later ancient philosophy. They centre on pagan and Christian philosophers including Celsus, Numenius, Longinus, Syrianus, Origen, Eusebius, Gregory of Nyssa, and John of Damascus. In the essays, Frede shows how these figures are significant thinkers in their own right, and testimony to the vitality of philosophical thought of later antiquity. Topics covered in the volume include ethics, theol...

The Historiography of Philosophy is the text, virtually unchanged, of the Nellie Wallace lectures, which Michael Frede gave in Oxford in 1989-90. In these lectures, Frede is largely concerned with how the history of philosophy has been studied and how it should be studied, that is, how we ought to conceive of and explain what historians of philosophy have been doing and should be doing. He distinguishes three systematical approaches to the history of philosophy, which run under th...

Where does the notion of free will come from? How and when did it develop, and what did that development involve? In Michael Frede's radically new account of the history of this idea, the notion of a free will emerged from powerful assumptions about the relation between divine providence, correctness of individual choice, and self-enslavement due to incorrect choice. Anchoring his discussion in Stoicism, Frede begins with Aristotle--who, he argues, had no notion of a free will--and ends wi...

This book is no less than a guide to the whole of Western philosophy -- the ideas that have undergirded our civilization for two-and-a-half thousand years. Anthony Kenny tells the story of philosophy from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment into the modern world. He introduces us to the great thinkers and their ideas, starting with Plato, Aristotle, and the other founders of Western thought. In the second part of the book he takes us through a thousand years of med...

Sir Anthony Kenny tells the fascinating story of the birth of philosophy and its remarkable flourishing in the ancient Mediterranean world. This is the first of four volumes in which he will unfold a magisterial new history of Western philosophy. Specially written for a broad popular readership, but serious and deep enough to offer a genuine understanding of the great philosophers, Kenny's lucid and stimulating history will become the definitive work for anyone interested in the people and...

A Short History of Ethics has over the past thirty years become a key philosophical contribution to studies on morality and ethics. Alasdair MacIntyre writes a new preface for this second edition which looks at the book 'thirty years on' and considers its impact. A Short History of Ethics guides the reader through the history of moral philosophy from the Greeks to contemporary times. MacIntyre emphasises the importance of a historical context to moral concepts and ideas s...

For the Pre-Socratic philosophers the soul was the source of movement and sensation, while for Plato it was the seat of being, metaphysically distinct from the body that it was forced temporarily to inhabit. Plato's student Aristotle was determined to test the truth of both these beliefs against the emerging sciences of logic and biology. His examination of the huge variety of living organisms - the enormous range of their behaviour, their powers and their perceptual sophistication - convi...

THIS BOOK WILL HELP YOU• to appreciate the revolution in thinking brought about by the Ancient Greek philosophers, who sought to make sense of the world through analysis, reasoning and argument • to recognize the key ideas of the most significant philosophers and their contribution to Western thought• to learn about the philosophers' lives, and their impact on society• to appreciate the value of questioning received wisdom and submitting it to rigorous analysis To live...

In his reflections on Christianity, Saint Thomas Aquinas forged a unique synthesis of ancient philosophy and medieval theology.Preoccupied with the relationship between faith and reason, he was influenced both by Aristotle's rational world view and by the powerful belief that wisdom and truth can ultimately only be reached through divine revelation. Thomas's writings, which contain highly influential statements of fundamental Christian doctrine, as well as observations on topics as ...

'Courage is knowing what not to fear' Plato'One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors'Without the work of Plato, western thought is, quite literally, unthinkable. No single influence has been greater, in every age and in every philosophic field. Even those thinkers who have rejected Plato's views have found themselves working to an agenda he set.Yet between the n...

This is a major reinterpretation of ancient philosophy that recovers the long Greek and Roman tradition of philosophy as a complete way of life--and not simply an intellectual discipline. Distinguished philosopher John Cooper traces how, for many ancient thinkers, philosophy was not just to be studied or even used to solve particular practical problems. Rather, philosophy--not just ethics but even logic and physical theory--was literally to be lived. Yet there was great disagreement about ...

Part of the GREAT PHILOSOPHERS series.Democritus c. 460-c. 370BCThe Renaissance's 'Laughing Philosopher'; our own age's 'Prophet of Quark': throughout the modern philosophical tradition, Democritus has been a man little known beyond his labels.Yet if the image of the cheerful ironist understates his true seriousness, that of father of modern nuclear physics - though by no means entirely unfounded - loses sign of the man in the hyperbole. Flattering ...