Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times

Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times PDF

Author: William V. Harris

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-09-04

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 9004379509

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This book attempts to blaze a trail for the cross-disciplinary humanistic study of pain and pleasure, with literature scholars, historians and philosophers all setting out to understand how the Greeks and Romans experienced and reasoned about the sensations and experiences they felt as painful or pleasurable.

Pain Narratives in Greco-Roman Writings

Pain Narratives in Greco-Roman Writings PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-07-03

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9004677461

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Why is it so difficult to talk about pain? As we do today, the Greeks and Romans struggled to communicate their pain: this required a rich and subtle vocabulary which had to be developed over time. Pain Narratives traces the development of this language in literary, philosophical, and medical texts from across antiquity: poets, physicians, and philosophers contributed to an ever-growing lexicon to articulate their own and others’ feelings. The essays within this volume uncover the expanding Greco-Roman vocabulary of pain, analyse the medical discussions on pain symptoms, and explore the religious reinterpretations of pain concepts in late antiquity.

Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy

Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy PDF

Author: David Wolfsdorf

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0521761301

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An examination of ancient Greek philosophical conceptions of pleasure, which is the first book to compare them to contemporary conceptions.

The Imagination of the Mind in Classical Athens

The Imagination of the Mind in Classical Athens PDF

Author: Emily Clifford

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-07-14

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1000912671

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This book explores the imaginative processes at work in the artefacts of Classical Athens. When ancient Athenians strove to grasp ‘justice’ or ‘war’ or ‘death’, when they dreamt or deliberated, how did they do it? Did they think about what they were doing? Did they imagine an imagining mind? European histories of the imagination have often begun with thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. By contrast, this volume is premised upon the idea that imaginative activity, and especially efforts to articulate it, can take place in the absence of technical terminology. In exploring an ancient culture of imagination mediated by art and literature, the book scopes out the roots of later, more explicit, theoretical enquiry. Chapters hone in on a range of visual and verbal artefacts from the Classical period. Approaching the topic from different angles – philosophical, historical, philological, literary, and art historical – they also investigate how these artefacts stimulate affective, sensory, meditative – in short, ‘imaginative’ – encounters between imagining bodies and their world. The Imagination of the Mind in Classical Athens offers a ground-breaking reassessment of ‘imagination’ in ancient Greek culture and thought: it will be essential reading for those interested in not only philosophies of mind, but also ancient Greek image, text, and culture more broadly.

The Bureaucracy of Empathy

The Bureaucracy of Empathy PDF

Author: Shira Shmuely

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2023-07-15

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1501770411

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The Bureaucracy of Empathy revolves around two central questions: What is pain? And how do we recognize, understand, and ameliorate the pain of nonhuman animals? Shira Shmuely investigates these ethical issues through a close and careful history of the origins, implementation, and enforcement of the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act of Parliament, which for the first time imposed legal restrictions on animal experimentation and mandated official supervision of procedures "calculated to give pain" to animal subjects. Exploring how scientists, bureaucrats, and lawyers wrestled with the problem of animal pain and its perception, Shmuely traces in depth and detail how the Act was enforced, the medical establishment's initial resistance and then embrace of regulation, and the challenges from anti-vivisection advocates who deemed it insufficient protection against animal suffering. She shows how a "bureaucracy of empathy" emerged to support and administer the legislation, navigating incongruent interpretations of pain. This crucial moment in animal law and ethics continues to inform laws regulating the treatment of nonhuman animals in laboratories, farms, and homes around the worlds to the present.

The Oxford Handbook of Galen

The Oxford Handbook of Galen PDF

Author: Peter N. Singer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 761

ISBN-13: 0190913681

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The Oxford Handbook of Galen provides a comprehensive overview of the life, work, and legacy of Galen (129--c. 216 CE), arguably the most important medical figure of the Graeco-Roman world. It contains essays by thirty leading experts on Galen's life and background, his medical theories, his therapeutic and clinical practices, and his philosophical contributions in the areas of logic, epistemology, causation, scientific method, and ethics. The authors also discuss the most important pathways of the transmission of his texts and his intellectual legacy, from late antiquity to early modern times and from western Europe to Tibet and China.

Galen and the Arabic Reception of Plato's Timaeus

Galen and the Arabic Reception of Plato's Timaeus PDF

Author: Aileen R. Das

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-11-12

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1108602991

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This first full-length study of the Arabic reception of Plato's Timaeus considers the role of Galen of Pergamum (129–c. 216 CE) in shaping medieval perceptions of the text as transgressing disciplinary norms. It argues that Galen appealed to the entangled cosmological scheme of the dialogue, where different relations connect the body, soul, and cosmos, to expand the boundaries of medicine in his pursuit for epistemic authority – the right to define and explain natural reality. Aileen Das situates Galen's work on disciplinary boundaries in the context of medicine's ancient rivalry with philosophy, whose professionals were long seen as superior knowers of the cosmos vis-à-vis doctors. Her case studies show how Galen and four of the most important Christian, Muslim, and Jewish thinkers in the Arabic Middle Ages creatively interpreted key doctrines from the Timaeus to reimagine medicine and philosophy as well as their own intellectual identities.

Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature

Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature PDF

Author: Karel Thein

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-30

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 1000457419

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This volume takes a fresh look at ekphrasis as a textual practice closely connected to our embodied imagination and its verbal dimension; it offers the first detailed study of a large family of ancient ecphrastic shields, often studied separately, but never as an ensemble with its own development. The main objective consists of establishing a theoretical and historical framework that is applied to a series of famous ecphrastic shields starting with the Homeric shield of Achilles. The latter is reinterpreted as a paradigmatic "thing" whose echoing down the centuries is reinforced by the fundamental connection between ekphrasis and artefacts as its primary objects. The book demonstrates that although the ancient sources do not limit ekphrasis to artificial creations, the latter are most efficient in bringing out the intimate affinity between artefacts and vivid mental images as two kind of entities that lack a natural scale and are rightly understood as ontologically unstable. Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature: The World’s Forge should be read by those interested in ancient culture, art and philosophy, but also by those fascinated by the broader issue of imagination and by the interplay between the natural and the artificial.

Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato

Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato PDF

Author: Rana Saadi Liebert

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-04-07

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1316885615

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This book offers a resolution of the paradox posed by the pleasure of tragedy by returning to its earliest articulations in archaic Greek poetry and its subsequent emergence as a philosophical problem in Plato's Republic. Socrates' claim that tragic poetry satisfies our 'hunger for tears' hearkens back to archaic conceptions of both poetry and mourning that suggest a common source of pleasure in the human appetite for heightened forms of emotional distress. By unearthing a psychosomatic model of aesthetic engagement implicit in archaic poetry and philosophically elaborated by Plato, this volume not only sheds new light on the Republic's notorious indictment of poetry, but also identifies rationally and ethically disinterested sources of value in our pursuit of aesthetic states. In doing so the book resolves an intractable paradox in aesthetic theory and human psychology: the appeal of painful emotions.

Like a Captive Bird

Like a Captive Bird PDF

Author: Lunette Warren

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2023-04-17

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 1643150405

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The full extent of Plutarch’s moral educational program remains largely understudied, at least in those aspects pertaining to women and the gendered other. As a result, scholarship on his views on women have differed significantly in their conclusions, with some scholars suggesting that he is overwhelmingly positive towards women and marriage and perhaps even a “precursor to feminism,” and others arguing that he was rather negative on the issue. Like a Captive Bird: Gender and Virtue in Plutarch is an examination of these educational methods employed in Plutarch’s work to regulate the expression of gender identity in women and men. In six chapters, author Lunette Warren analyzes Plutarch’s ideas about women and gender in Moralia and Lives. The book examines the divergences between real and ideal, the aims and methods of moral philosophy and psychagogic practice as they relate to identity formation, and Plutarch’s theoretical philosophy and metaphysics. Warren argues that gender is a flexible mode of being that expresses a relation between body and soul, and that gender and virtue are inextricably entwined. Plutarch’s expression of gender is also an expression of a moral condition that signifies relationships of power, Warren claims, especially power relationships between the husband and wife. Uncovered in these texts is evidence of a redistribution of power, which allows some women to dominate other women and, in rare cases, men too. Like a Captive Bird offers a unique and fresh interpretation of Plutarch’s metaphysics which centers gender as one of the organizational principles of nature. It is aimed at scholars of Plutarch, ancient philosophy, and ancient gender studies, especially those who are interested in feminist studies of antiquity.