Showing titles in Greek & Roman

Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wonder, and the first Western philosophers developed theories of the world which express simultaneously their sense of wonder and their intuition that the world should be comprehensible. But their enterprise was by no means limited to this proto-scientific task. Through, for instance, Heraclitus's enigmatic sayings, the poetry of Parmenides and Empedocles, and Zeno's paradoxes, the Western world was introduced to metaphysics, rationalist theology, ethics, and logic.

What is at stake is far from insignificant: it is how one should live one's life. Plato's The Republic is widely acknowledged as the cornerstone of Western philosophy. Presented in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and three different interlocutors, it is an inquiry into the notion of a perfect community and the ideal individual within it. During the conversation, other questions are raised: What is goodness? What is reality? What is knowledge?

How to Win an Election is an ancient Roman guide for campaigning that is as up-to-date as tomorrow's headlines. In 64 BC when idealist Marcus Cicero, Rome's greatest orator, ran for consul (the highest office in the Republic), his practical brother Quintus decided he needed some no-nonsense advice on running a successful campaign.

Before the Greeks, the idea of the world was dominated by god-kings and their priests, in a life ruled by imagined metaphysical monsters. 2,500 years ago, in a succession of small eastern Mediterranean harbour-cities, that way of thinking began to change. Men (and some women) decided to cast off mental subservience and apply their own worrying and thinking minds to the conundrums of life. These great innovators shaped the beginnings of philosophy. Adam Nicolson travels through this transforming world and asks what light these ancient thinkers can throw on our deepest preconceptions.

In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, Christopher Taylor explores the life of Socrates and his philosophical activity, before looking to the responses his philosophical doctrines have evoked in the centuries since his betrayal and execution at fellow Athenian hands.

Tackling a key theme each month, from Happiness and Health to Money and Politics, Everyday Stoicism guides you through the calendar year to build a toolkit of simple exercises and practical ideas for how to live these values every day. So, harness the collective wisdom of the ancient Stoic philosophers today and discover the joy of everyday stoicism.

In a dissatisfied world, looking back to ancient wisdom can shed light on fresh solutions. For years, many of us have upheld the Stoic concept of ‘no pain, no gain.’ But in a time when we are burdened by the fear of failure and outsize ambitions, perhaps we should stop skirting around the edges of our problems via punishing exercise regimes, productivity apps and early morning starts. According to the pleasure-centric philosophy of Epicureanism, life can be good without great sacrifice, and temptation isn’t always the enemy.

The "Republic" poses questions that endure: What is justice? What form of community fosters the best possible life for human beings? What is the nature and destiny of the soul? What form of education provides the best leaders for a good republic? What are the various forms of poetry and the other arts, which ones should be fostered, and which ones should be discouraged? How does knowing differ from believing? Several characters in the dialogue present a variety of tempting answers to those questions. Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, and Glaucon all offer definitions of justice.

"It takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die", wrote the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC-65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death always", and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca's remarkable meditations on death and dying. Edited and translated by James S. Romm, How to Die reveals a provocative thinker who speaks with a startling frankness about the need to accept death or even, under certain conditions, to seek it out.

Hermeticism or Hermetism is a philosophical system based on the purported teachings of Hermes Trismegistus (a legendary Hellenistic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth). These teachings are contained in the various writings attributed to Hermes (the Hermetica), which were produced over a period spanning many centuries (c. 300 BCE — 1200 CE) and may be very different in content and scope.

In The Republic, Plato tackles the big issues of the state and the individual: how the state should be ruled, and by whom; and the way the individual should lead his life - and why. The lively quality of the dialogue can be clearly appreciated in this new translation by Tom Griffith.

In the Nicomachean Ethics (so called after their first editor, Aristotle's son Nicomachus) Aristotle sets out to discover the good life for man: the life of happiness or eudaimonia. Happiness for Aristotle is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. Virtue is shown in the deliberate choice of actions as part of a worked-out plan of life, a plan which takes a middle course between excess and deficiency.

In Aristotle's Rhetoric, the philosopher identifies rhetoric as one of the three key elements of philosophy, along with logic and dialectic. According to Aristotle, logic is concerned with reasoning to reach scientific certainty while dialectic and rhetoric - because they are concerned with probability - are the branches of philosophy best suited to human affairs. Rhetoric is a tool for practical debate, a means for persuading a general audience to resolve practical issues using probable knowledge.

More than two thousand years ago Stoicism revealed a way of living with less suffering and more happiness. Even though the Ancient Stoics lived a long time ago they had startling insights into the human condition which have lasted until this day. Stoicism sought answers to questions such as "how can I be more happy?" or "what is the purpose of life?" and much more. Stoicism can help us put things into perspective, let go of worry, overcome adversity, and improve our overall experience of life.

Ancient Greece first coined the concept of democracy, yet almost every major ancient Greek thinker - from Plato and Aristotle onward - was ambivalent toward or even hostile to democracy in any form. The explanation for this is quite simple: The elite perceived majority power as tantamount to a dictatorship of the proletariat. In ancient Greece, there can be traced not only the rudiments of modern democratic society but the entire Western tradition of antidemocratic thought.

This book intends to reintroduce pleasure as an innate guide to living a healthy and happy life—a simple yet powerful assertion based on empirical data, which stands up to the strictest scrutiny.

Marcus Cicero, Rome's greatest statesman and orator, was elected to the Roman Republic's highest office at a time when his beloved country was threatened by power-hungry politicians, dire economic troubles, foreign turmoil, and political parties that refused to work together. Sound familiar? Cicero's letters, speeches, and other writings are filled with timeless wisdom and practical insight about how to solve these and other problems of leadership and politics. How to Run a Country collects the best of these writings to provide an entertaining, common-sense guide for modern leaders and citizens

This collection brings together three of Plato's most enduring classics: the "Symposium", the "Apology", and the famous "Allegory of the Cave" from the Republic.

Cicero sets out the three major Greek philosophies: Epicureanism, Stoicism and Aristotelianism (or Peripateticism), by recounting his conversations with Lucius Torquatus, Marcus Cato, and Piso.

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Aristotle in just one hour. The philosophy of Aristotle dominated Western thought for over a thousand years. He had a mind that mastered all disciplines from mathematics to politics and had a continuing impact on every sphere of knowledge he touched. Above all, Aristotle is credited with the founding of logic.