In Dialogue with the Greeks

In Dialogue with the Greeks PDF

Author: Rush Rhees

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1351964542

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This second of two volumes on the Greeks by Rush Rhees takes up the questions bequeathed by the previous volume. If reality does not have the unity of a thing, can it have any kind of unity at all? The alternative seems to be that reality has the unity of a form. In this volume Rhees brings the perspective of a modern Wittgensteinian philosopher to bear on the dialogues of Plato. In his treatment of the Georgias and the Symposium Rhees emphasizes Socrates' claim that it is important to seek understanding although one cannot say, in the form of a theory or philosophical thesis, what that understanding amounts to. In considering the Phaedo, Theaetetus, Parmenides and Timaeus, Rhees pursues these questions in a way which relates them to live issues concerning the relation between logic and discourse. Rhees shows that Plato's Forms can neither be thought of by analogy with 'ultimate' particles in physics, nor as fixed concepts that determine what can and cannot be said. Finally, D. Z. Phillips includes two treatments by Rhees of the Republic separated by fifteen years. In the first he criticises Plato for a fixed view that an order predetermines and makes possible growth in understanding, showing how this is the very antithesis of growth. In the second he returns to the tension in Plato's thought between 'answerability to reality' and the view that understanding and growth can only be achieved through a seeking in dialogue. Rhees concludes that language is not a collection of isolated games, rather we speak in the course of lives that we lead and what we say has its meaning from the place it occupies in the course of a life.

In Dialogue with the Greeks: The presocratics and reality

In Dialogue with the Greeks: The presocratics and reality PDF

Author: Rush Rhees

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13:

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This first of two volumes on the Greeks by Rush Rhees addresses the central philosophical question: In what sense does philosophy investigate reality? In answering this question, Rhees brings the work of the Presocratics into close relation with contemporary philosophy. D.Z. Phillips's editorial commentary is particularly helpful in assisting the reader with their bearings as they approach the text and in elucidating the developments in Rhees's thinking. How is the philosophical investigation of reality different from that of science and can it be said that science investigates aspects of reality, whereas philosophy investigates reality as such? In this first volume Rhees affirms that most of the Presocratics seemed to be seeking a science of being qua being, looking for an essence of reality that simply is. Rhees asks, if the existence of reality cannot be denied, then how can it be asserted either? Does it make sense to say that reality exists? If we speak of something existing, we speak of the conditions of its existence that are independent of the 'something' in question, so how can this be said about reality? What conditions can be other than reality itself? Rhees argues that whatever unity reality has, it cannot be the unity of a thing. Rhees brings out how individual Presocratics are aware of their predecessors' difficulties, only to fall prey to new difficulties of their own. Rhees suggests that what is philosophically deep in their questionings can be found in discussing the relation of discourse and reality. Does what we say to each other depend on an underlying logic that determines what can and cannot be said, or on a system of unchanging meanings; or is the distinction between sense and nonsense rooted in our actual ways of thinking and acting? In discussing these Wittgensteinian themes, Rhees is not simply elucidating the Presocratics but is in dialogue with them.

In Dialogue with the Greeks

In Dialogue with the Greeks PDF

Author: Rush Rhees

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 9781138258891

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This first of two volumes on the Greeks by Rush Rhees addresses the central philosophical question: In what sense does philosophy investigate reality? In answering this question, Rhees brings the work of the Presocratics into close relation with contemporary philosophy. D.Z. Phillips's editorial commentary is particularly helpful in assisting the reader with their bearings as they approach the text and in elucidating the developments in Rhees's thinking. How is the philosophical investigation of reality different from that of science and can it be said that science investigates aspects of reality, whereas philosophy investigates reality as such? In this first volume Rhees affirms that most of the Presocratics seemed to be seeking a science of being qua being, looking for an essence of reality that simply is. Rhees asks, if the existence of reality cannot be denied, then how can it be asserted either? Does it make sense to say that reality exists? If we speak of something existing, we speak of the conditions of its existence that are independent of the 'something' in question, so how can this be said about reality? What conditions can be other than reality itself? Rhees argues that whatever unity reality has, it cannot be the unity of a thing. Rhees brings out how individual Presocratics are aware of their predecessors' difficulties, only to fall prey to new difficulties of their own. Rhees suggests that what is philosophically deep in their questionings can be found in discussing the relation of discourse and reality. Does what we say to each other depend on an underlying logic that determines what can and cannot be said, or on a system of unchanging meanings; or is the distinction between sense and nonsense rooted in our actual ways of thinking and acting? In discussing these Wittgensteinian themes, Rhees is not simply elucidating the Presocratics but is in dialogue with them.

Greek Dialogue in Antiquity

Greek Dialogue in Antiquity PDF

Author: Katarzyna Ja:zd:zewska

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0192893351

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Greek Dialogue in Antiquity reexamines evidence for Greek dialogue between the mid-fourth century BCE and the mid-first century CE - that is, roughly from Plato's death to the death of Philo of Alexandria. Although the genre of dialogue in antiquity has attracted a growing interest in the past two decades, the time covered in this book has remained overlooked and unresearched, with scholars believing that for much of this period the dialogue genre went through a period of decline and was revived only in the Roman times. The book carefully reassesses Post-Platonic and Hellenistic evidence, including papyri fragments, which have never been discussed in this context, and challenges the narrative of the dialogue's decline and subsequent revival, postulating, instead, the genre's unbroken continuity from the Classical period to the Roman Empire. It argues that dialogues and texts creatively interacting with dialogic conventions were composed throughout Hellenistic times, and proposes to reconceptualize the imperial period dialogue as evidence not of a resurgence, but of continuity in this literary tradition.

The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome

The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome PDF

Author: Tessa Rajak

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-12-10

Total Pages: 599

ISBN-13: 9047400194

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Twenty-seven interdisciplinary essays on aspects of Judaism in the Greco-Roman world, exemplifying a wide range of techniques, by a well-known scholar. Three are previously unpublished, including a reappraisal of the Judaism and Hellenism debate and a study of the Sardis synagogue. The book's overall coherence derives from the author's long-standing interests in the analysis of texts as documents of cultural and religious interaction, and in how Jewish communities were woven into the social fabric of Greek cities in the Hellenistic and Roman East. The four sections are: Greeks and Jews, Josephus, The Jewish Diaspora and Epigraphy, and finally Beyond the Greeks and Romans, essays which extend into Christian literature and on to the nineteenth century reception of the Judaism/Hellenism dichotomy. Scholars and students from a wide variety of backgrounds will benefit. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

Plutarch's Dialogue on love

Plutarch's Dialogue on love PDF

Author: Plutarch

Publisher: Faenum Publishing, Limited

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 9780983222811

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The aim of this book is to make Plutarch's Dialogue on Love accessible to intermediate students of Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page. The Dialogue on Love is a great intermediate Greek text. Its discussion of the merits and pitfalls of passion and desire is grounded in the philosophical tradition reaching back to Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus, but Plutarch's treatment of these themes includes a novel celebration of marriage and the love of women, reinforced by the dramatic setting and background action to the dialogue. It is thus a great example of the imperial period of Greek literature, when figures like Plutarch engaged in a lively dialogue with their classical cultural heritage.

Heidegger and the Greeks

Heidegger and the Greeks PDF

Author: Drew A. Hyland

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2006-08-10

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 9780253112279

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Martin Heidegger's sustained reflection on Greek thought has been increasingly recognized as a decisive feature of his own philosophical development. At the same time, this important philosophical meeting has generated considerable controversy and disagreement concerning the radical originality of Heidegger's view of the Greeks and their place in his groundbreaking thinking. In Heidegger and the Greeks, an international group of distinguished philosophers sheds light on the issues raised by Heidegger's encounter and engagement with the Greeks. The careful and nuanced essays brought together here shed light on how core philosophical concepts such as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, and ethics are understood today. For readers at all levels, this volume is an invitation to continue the important dialogue with Greek thinking that was started and stimulated by Heidegger. Contributors are Claudia Baracchi, Walter A. Brogan, GÃ1⁄4nter Figal, Gregory Fried, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Drew A. Hyland, John Panteleimon Manoussakis, William J. Richardson, John Sallis, Dennis J. Schmidt, and Peter Warnek.

Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue

Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue PDF

Author: Jason König

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-04-27

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1009035630

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Late Hellenistic Greek literature, both prose and poetry, stands out for its richness and diversity. Recent work has tended to take an author-by-author approach that underestimates the interconnectedness of the literary culture of the period. The chapters assembled here set out to change that by offering new readings of a wide range of late Hellenistic texts and genres, including historiography, geography, rhetoric and philosophy, together with many verse texts and inscriptions. In the process, they offer new insights into the various ways in which late Hellenistic literature engaged with its social, cultural and political contexts, while interrogating and revising some of the standard narratives of the relationship between late Hellenistic and imperial Greek literary culture, which are too often studied in isolation from each other. As a whole the book prompts us to rethink the place of late Hellenistic literature within the wider landscape of Greek and Roman literary history.

Finitude and Transcendence in the Platonic Dialogues

Finitude and Transcendence in the Platonic Dialogues PDF

Author: Drew A. Hyland

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1995-01-01

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780791425091

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This book explains how to read Plato, emphasizing the philosophic importance of the dramatic aspects of the dialogues, and showing that Plato is an ironic thinker and that his irony is deeply rooted in his philosophy.