Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy

✍ Scribed by Myles Burnyeat

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 460
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Myles Burnyeat (1939-2019) was a major figure in the study of ancient Greek philosophy during the last decades of the twentieth century and the first of this. After teaching positions in London and Cambridge, where he became Laurence Professor, in 1996 he took up a Senior Research Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, from which he retired in 2006. In 2012 he published two volumes collecting essays dating from before the move to Oxford. Two new posthumously published volumes bring together essays from his years at All Souls and his retirement. The main body of Volume 3 presents studies written for a wide readership, first on Plato's Republic and then on the reading and interpretation of Plato in subsequent periods, particularly in nineteenth-century Britain. The volume also includes hitherto unpublished lectures, 'The Archaeology of Feeling', on the ancient origins of some key modern philosophical and psychological concepts.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half-title
Title Page
Copyright Information
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I The Republic
Chapter 1 Plato on why mathematics is good for the soul
1 The question
2 Outline of the answer
3 By-products
4 Formal rigour
5 Unqualified being
6 Abstract objects
7 The metaphysics of mathematical objects
8 Controversial interlude
9 Values in the Cave
10 Harmonics
11 The ethical value of concord and attunement
12 An astronomy of the invisible
13 The relationship of the Republic and Timaeus
14 The synoptic view
15 Unity
16 On the Good
Chapter 2 Long walk to wisdom
Chapter 3 The truth of tripartition
i
ii
iii
iv
Chapter 4 Plato and the dairy-maids: the distribution of happiness inside and outside the ideal city of the Republic
Appendix: Law in Republic VIII-IX
Chapter 5 Justice writ large and small in Republic IV
Justice in the city defined
Justice in the city: the definition confirmed
Justice in the individual: the status quaestionis
Justice in the individual defined
Justice in the individual: the definition confirmed
Chapter 6 Fathers and sons in Plato's Republic and Philebus
i
ii
iii
Chapter 7 By the Dog
Chapter 8 Culture and Society in Plato's Republic
Chapter 8a Lecture I. Couches, song, and civic tradition
The total culture: material, moral, musical
First glance ahead: the divided soul in book X
A tale of two cities
Historical interlude: Greek couches
Self-reflections in the cave
Two types of imitator
Second glance ahead: the form of couch in book X
Modern analogies
Chapter 8b Lecture II. Art and the menace of mimesis
Plato's programme
Stage 1 of the reform: content
Stage 2 of the reform: mimesis and the manner of performance
Poetry and politics
Stage 3 of the reform: musical technique
Stage 4 of the reform: the material and social setting
Retrospect on the reform in books II-III
Chapter 8c Lecture III. Farewell to Homer and the honeyed muse
The reform resumed in book x: Homer as the first tragedian
Does book X ban more mimesis than book III?
Understanding mimesis
Is book X's concept of mimesis different from book III's?
The painted carpenter
The poet's knowledge
The poet as maker
The poet as painter
The honeyed muse
Back to the divided soul
Part II The past in the present
Chapter 9 Plato
Chapter 10 James Mill on Thomas Taylor's Plato: Introduction
Chapter 11 What was 'the common arrangement'? An Inquiry into John Stuart Mill's boyhood reading of Plato
i
ii
iii
Appendix I
Appendix II
Chapter 12 The past in the present: Plato as educator of nineteenth-century Britain
Addendum
Appendix: The archaeology of
feeling
Appendix I Ancient freedoms
i
ii
iii
iv
v
vi
vii
viii
ix
Appendix II Anger and revenge
Appendix III Happiness and tranquillity
Appendix IV Other minds, other faces: philosophy and physiognomics in the ancient world
Note to Appendix IV
Bibliography
Index locorum