Description
Book SynopsisMethod and Metaphysics presents twenty-six essays in ancient philosophy by Jonathan Barnes, one of the most admired and influential scholars of his generation. The essays span four decades of his career, and are drawn from a wide variety of sources: many of them will be relatively unknown even to specialists in ancient philosophy. Several essays are now translated from the original French and made available in English for the first time; others have been substantially revised for republication.The volume opens with eight essays about the interpretation of ancient philosophical texts, and about the relationship between philosophy and its history. The next five essays examine the methods of ancient philosophers. The third section comprises thirteen essays about metaphysical topics, from the Presocratics to the late Platonists. This collection will be a rich feast for students and scholars of ancient philosophy.
Trade ReviewThis volume collects several invaluable essays not only for the specialist or those interested in ancient philosophy or the history of philosophy. It is also a source of exegetical and conceptual riches in the form of rigorous discussions of crucial philosophical problems, theses, and arguments. Even the papers which are reviews of other theorists' works are characterized not only by astute critical spirit but also by a wealth of positive proposals ... Barnes's volume of collected papers on method and metaphysics is indispensable: it contains works of scholarly excellence, advances arguments of admirable clarity and cogency, and raises all the crucial questions growing out of the fields it examines. The volume itself is beautifully presented, includes new footnotes with helpful citations of most of the original Greek texts discussed, and retains (in brackets) the pagination of the papers in their original place of publication. * Michail Peramatzis, Mind *
Table of ContentsPreface ; 1. Ancient philosophers ; 2. The history of philosophy ; 3. Philosophy within quotation marks? ; 4. Anglophone attitudes ; 5. Brentano's Aristotle ; 6. Heidegger in the cave ; 7. 'There was an old person from Tyre' ; 8. The Presocratics in context ; 9. Argument in ancient philosophy ; 10. Philosophy and dialectic ; 11. Aristotle and the methods of ethics ; 12. Metacommentary ; 13. An introduction to Aspasius ; 14. Parmenides and the Eleatic One ; 15. Reason and necessity in Leucippus ; 16. Plato's cyclical argument ; 17. Death and the philosopher ; 18. Aristotelian arithmetic ; 19. The principle of plenitude ; 20. 'Aristotle's opinion concerning destiny and what is up to us' ; 21. 'Belief is up to us' ; 22. The same again: the Stoics and eternal recurrence ; 23. Bits and pieces ; 24. Partial wholes ; 25. 'Drei Sonnen sahe ich': Syrianus and astronomy ; 26. Immaterial causes ; Bibliography ; Indexes
