Deaths of Famous Philosophers is inspired by Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, a third-century CE anthology of biographical sketches of Greek philosophers. Each of its twenty-three chapters is a fictionalized depiction of the protagonists when they are near death and are taking stock of their lives. Written in contemporary vernacular, Deaths of Famous Philosophers will offer an overview of Greek philosophy--from Thales to Epicurus--in an engaging, sometimes humorous, b...

Why do you call yourself Jewish when you haven't stepped into a synagogue for years? Gina asks. David responds: Your questions about being Jewish make me shudder. Gina Crandell and David Roochnik have published many books in their academic fields but in Struggling with Israel in a Marriage, they dig into their memories to ask where their sometimes conflicting views about Israel came from. In alternating chapters Gina and David access their youth, marriage, and the present. They dive into t...

First Published in 1991. This book attempts to defend a conception of reason—or to use the Greek word "logos"—that I contend can be extracted from the dialogues of Plato. The very notion of defending Plato may seem strange. Why would a philosopher enshrined for centuries as "classic" need a defense? A defense against whom and what charge? What does it mean to defend an author so long dead? Can he somehow be revived? In other words, what significance can a defense of Plato possibly attain f...

The classical conception of reason (or logos) has been repeatedly attacked in the modern era. Its enemies range from Descartes, who complains that logos is not sufficiently useful or precise, to Derrida who hopes to liberate Western thought from its bondage to "logocentrism."At least since the time of Nietzsche, Plato has been damned as the chief architect of the classical conception of logos. He is accused of overvaluing reason and thereby devaluing the ...

It had been thought that theCleitophon was a spurious dialogue. Its brevity and the fact that Socrates does not respond to accusations from Cleitophon suggested to scholars that it was only a fragment. However, in the last fifteen years, the complete and authentic dialogue was rediscovered. Upon its discovery, scholars have almost universally agreed that the Cleitophon is the introduction to Plato'sRepublic. In Plato's Cleitophon*: On Socrates and the Mo...

What role does food play in the shaping of humanity? Is sharing a good meal with friends and family an experience of life at its best, or is food merely a burdensome necessity? David Roochnik explores these questions by discussing classical works of Greek literature and philosophy in which food and drink play an important role.With thoughts on Homer's The Odyssey, Euripides' Bacchae, Plato's philosopher kings and Dionysian intoxication, Roochnik shows how foregrou...

An urgent, contemporary defense of AristotleIn 1935 Edmund Husserl delivered his now famous lecture "Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity," in which he argued that the "misguided rationalism" of modern Western science, dominated by the model of mathematical physics, can tell us nothing about the "meaning" of our lives. Today Husserl's conviction that the West faces a crisis is no longer an abstraction. With the ever-present threat of nuclear explosion, th...

Readers of Plato have often neglected the Laws because of its length and density. In this set of interpretive essays, notable scholars of the Laws from the fields of classics, history, philosophy, and political science offer a collective close reading of the dialogue "book by book" and reflect on the work as a whole. In their introduction, editors Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday explore the connections among the essays and the dramatic and productive exchanges between the contributors. This ...