From Descartes to the present, there has been a call for a new beginning in philosophy. Contemporary continental philosophy and American pragmatism continue to proclaim the end of one philosophic tradition and the beginning of another. The basis for many of these developments is the repudiation of metaphysics. The purpose of this book is to rethink the metaphysical traditions in terms of the continental and pragmatist critiques, rejecting a single view. The major works in the tradition are viewed as heretical. Philosophy has recurrently acknowledged aporia: "moments in the movement of thought in which it finds itself faced with unconquerable obstacles resulting from conflicts in its understanding of its own intelligibility." A chapter is devoted to each of the eight major philosophers and movements in the Western canonical tradition: the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Leibniz, empiricism, Kant, and Hegel. The last three chapters are devoted to contemporary discussions of the end of metaphysics, including the development of a "local" metaphysics that is able to express its own locality and aporia.

While nineteenth-century scholars debated whether the fragmentary Satyrica of Petronius should be regarded as a traditional or an original work in ancient literary history, twentieth-century Petronian scholarship tended to take for granted that the author was a unique innovator and his work a synthetic composition with respect to genre. The consequence of this was an excessive emphasis on authorial intention as well as a focus on parts of the text taken out of the larger context, which has increased the already severe state of fragmentation in which today's reader finds the Satyrica. The present study offers a reading of the Satyrica as the mimetic performance of its fictional auctor Encolpius; as an ancient road novel told from memory by a Greek exile who relates how on his travels through Italy he had dealings with people who told stories, gave speeches, recited poetry and made other statements, which he then weaves into his own story and retells through the performance technique of vocal impersonation. The result is a skillfully made narrative fabric, a travelogue carried by a desultory narrative voice that switches identity from time to time to deliver discursively varied and often longish statements in the personae of encountered characters.This study also makes a renewed effort to reconstruct the story told in the Satyrica and to explain how it relates to the identity and origin of its fictional auctor, a poor young scholar who volunteered to act the scapegoat in his Greek home city, Massalia (ancient Marseille), and was driven into exile in a bizarre archaic ritual. Besides relating his erotic suffering on account of his love for the beautiful boy Giton, Encolpius intertwines the various discourses and character statements of his narrative into a subtle brand of satire and social criticism (e.g. a critique of ancient capitalism) in the style of Cynic popular philosophy. Finally, it is argued that Petronius' Satyrica is a Roman remake of a lost Greek text of the same title and belongs - together with Apuleius' Metamorphoses - to the oldest type of Greco-Roman novel, known to antiquity as Milesian fiction. Supplementum 2 in Ancient Narrative

Why do major historical events such as the Holocaust occupy the forefront of the collective consciousness, while profound moments such as the Armenian genocide, the McCarthy era, and France's role in North Africa stand distantly behind? Is it possible that history "overly remembers" some events at the expense of others? A landmark work in philosophy, Paul Ricoeur's Memory, History, Forgetting examines this reciprocal relationship between remembering and forgetting, showing how it affects both the perception of historical experience and the production of historical narrative. Memory, History, Forgetting, like its title, is divided into three major sections. Ricoeur first takes a phenomenological approach to memory and mnemonical devices. The underlying question here is how a memory of present can be of something absent, the past. The second section addresses recent work by historians by reopening the question of the nature and truth of historical knowledge. Ricoeur explores whether historians, who can write a history of memory, can truly break with all dependence on memory, including memories that resist representation. The third and final section is a profound meditation on the necessity of forgetting as a condition for the possibility of remembering, and whether there can be something like happy forgetting in parallel to happy memory. Throughout the book there are careful and close readings of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Kant, and of Halbwachs and Pierre Nora. A momentous achievement in the career of one of the most significant philosophers of our age, Memory, History, Forgetting provides the crucial link between Ricoeur's Time and Narrative and Oneself as Another and his recent reflections on ethics and the problems of responsibility and representation. “His success in revealing the internal relations between recalling and forgetting, and how this dynamic becomes problematic in light of events once present but now past, will inspire academic dialogue and response but also holds great appeal to educated general readers in search of both method for and insight from considering the ethical ramifications of modern events. . . . It is indeed a master work, not only in Ricoeur’s own vita but also in contemporary European philosophy.”—Library Journal “Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear.”— New York Times Book Review

Plato's philosophical dialogues can be seen as his creation of a new genre. Plato borrows from, as well as rejects, earlier and contemporary authors, and he is constantly in conversation with established genres, such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, and rhetoric in a variety of ways. This intertextuality reinforces the relevance of material from other types of literary works, as well as a general knowledge of classical culture in Plato's time, and the political and moral environment that Plato addressed, when reading his dramatic dialogues. The authors of Philosophy as Drama show that any interpretation of these works must include the literary and narrative dimensions of each text, as much as serious the attention given to the progression of the argument in each piece. Each dialogue is read on its own merit, and critical comparisons of several dialogues explore the differences and likenesses between them on a dramatic as well as on a logical level. This collection of essays moves debates in Plato scholarship forward when it comes to understanding both particular aspects of Plato's dialogues and the approach itself. Containing 11 chapters of close readings of individual dialogues, with 2 chapters discussing specific themes running through them, such as music and sensuousness, pleasure, perception, and images, this book displays the range and diversity within Plato's corpus.

Volume 16 of Transaction's acclaimed Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities series, continues the work of Project Theophrastus on the School of Aristotle. The subject of this volume is Strato of Lampsacus in Mysia on the Hellespont. Strato was the third head of the Peripatetic School after Aristotle and Theophrastus. He succeeded the latter in c. 286 BCE and was in turn succeeded by Lyco of Troas in c. 268. Diogenes Laertius describes Strato as a distinguished person who became known as "the physicist," because more than anyone else he devoted himself to the careful study of nature. Strato's concern with the physical world is well attested by the titles of his books: On the Void, On the Heaven, and On the Wind. His other books point to a keen interest in human physiology, animal life and diseases. But it would be a mistake to think that Strato was uninterested in other areas of philosophic concern. Indeed, he wrote works on logic, first principles, theology, politics and ethics. None of this work survives intact, but the reports that have come down to us reveal much of present-day interest. Included is a new and complete edition of the ancient sources, together with a critical apparatus to the ancient texts, an English translation, and notes to the translation.

Volume 16 of Transaction’s acclaimed Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities series, continues the work of Project Theophrastus on the School of Aristotle. The subject of this volume is Strato of Lampsacus in Mysia on the Hellespont. Strato was the third head of the Peripatetic School after Aristotle and Theophrastus. He succeeded the latter in c. 286 BCE and was in turn succeeded by Lyco of Troas in c. 268. Diogenes Laertius describes Strato as a distinguished person who became known as "the physicist," because more than anyone else he devoted himself to the careful study of nature. Strato’s concern with the physical world is well attested by the titles of his books: On the Void, On the Heaven, and On the Wind. His other books point to a keen interest in human physiology, animal life and diseases. But it would be a mistake to think that Strato was uninterested in other areas of philosophic concern. Indeed, he wrote works on logic, first principles, theology, politics and ethics. None of this work survives intact, but the reports that have come down to us reveal much of present-day interest. Included is a new and complete edition of the ancient sources, together with a critical apparatus to the ancient texts, an English translation, and notes to the translation.

Modern literary theory is increasingly looking to philosophy for its inspiration. After a wave of structural analysis, the growing influence of deconstruction and hermeneutic readings continues to bear witness to this. This exciting and important collection, first published in 1988, reveals the diversity of approaches that mark the post-structuralist endeavour, and provides a challenge to the conventional practice of classical studies and ancient philosophy. This book will be of interest to students of ancient philosophy, classical studies and literary theory.

In Opining Beauty Itself, Naomi Reshotko examines Plato's discussions of epistemological states that fall short of knowledge. Wary that interpretations of Plato's epistemology often omit a detailed analysis of the way he deploys the epistemological concepts that are inferior to, but often prerequisites for, knowledge, Reshotko argues that we must understand these inferior prerequisite states, especially belief (doxa), before we can understand what Plato thought about knowledge. Examining how recollection provides what is required for inquiry, Reshotko argues that recollection does not afford doxa—let alone what contemporary philosophers call 'true belief.' Rather, recollection is responsible for an ability to refer that is a condition for every kind of doxa and for knowledge. Reshotko concludes that Plato regards doxa as the fabric of all the other epistemic states that fall short of knowledge, and develops a comprehensive view of Plato's deployment of doxa that can serve as a foundation for further interpretation of Plato's epistemology. In the process, Reshotko shows that, for Plato, ordinary people do opine the Forms and can make progress toward knowledge of them, even if that knowledge is never achieved.