Download Free Ancient Epistemology Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Ancient Epistemology and write the review.

This book explores ancient accounts of the nature of knowledge and belief from Socrates' predecessors up to the Platonists of late antiquity.
This is the first title in the Key Themes in Ancient Philosophy series, which provides concise books, written by major scholars and accessible to non-specialists, on important themes in ancient philosophy which remain of philosophical interest today. In this book, Professor Gerson explores ancient accounts of the nature of knowledge and belief from the Presocratics up to the Platonists of late antiquity. He argues that ancient philosophers generally held a naturalistic view of knowledge as well as of belief. Hence, knowledge was not viewed as a stipulated or semantically determined type of belief but was rather a real or objectively determinable achievement. In fact, its attainment was identical with the highest possible cognitive achievement, namely wisdom. It was this naturalistic view of knowledge at which the ancient Skeptics took aim. The book concludes by comparing the ancient naturalistic epistemology with some contemporary versions.
This volume draws together a series of thirteen essays on ancient epistemology by Gail Fine. She discusses knowledge, belief, subjectivity, and scepticism in Plato, Aristotle, and the Pyrrhonian sceptics. They consider such questions as: is episteme knowledge? Is doxa belief? Do the ancientshave the notion of subjectivity? Do any of them countenance external world scepticism? Several essays compare these philosophers with one another, as well as with more recent discussions of knowledge, belief, subjectivity, and scepticism, asking how if at all the ancient discussions of these topicsdiffer from more recent ones. In exploring these issues, the essays often make use of the distinction between concepts and conceptions, between an abstract account of something, and more determinate ways of filling it in. Together they compose a rich set of investigations, illuminating ancientperspectives on the central questions in epistemology.
A Companion to Ancient Philosophy provides a comprehensive and current overview of the history of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy from its origins until late antiquity. Comprises an extensive collection of original essays, featuring contributions from both rising stars and senior scholars of ancient philosophy Integrates analytic and continental traditions Explores the development of various disciplines, such as mathematics, logic, grammar, physics, and medicine, in relation to ancient philosophy Includes an illuminating introduction, bibliography, chronology, maps and an index
Translated into English for the first time, A History of Ancient Philosophy charts the origins and development of ancient philosophical thought.
This book encourages renewed attention by contemporary epistemologists to an area most of them overlook: ancient philosophy. Readers are invited to revisit writings by Plato, Aristotle, Pyrrho, and others, and to ask what new insights might be gained from those philosophical ancestors. Are there ideas, questions, or lines of thought that were present in some ancient philosophy and that have subsequently been overlooked? Are there contemporary epistemological ideas, questions, or lines of thought that can be deepened by gazing back upon some ancient philosophy? The answers are 'yes' and 'yes', according to this book’s 13 chapters, written by philosophers seeking to enrich contemporary epistemology through engaging with ancient epistemology. Key features: Blends ancient epistemology with contemporary epistemology, each reciprocally enriching each. Conceptually sensitive chapters by scholars of ancient epistemology. Historically sensitive chapters by scholars of contemporary epistemology. Clearly written chapters, guiding readers at once through central elements both of ancient and of contemporary epistemology.
A broad range of epistemological views, from the extreme relativism of Protagoras to the skepticism of the Pyrrhonists, is explored in critical essays that span sixth century B.C. to the second and third centuries A.D.
In Ancient Philosophy (2012), Christopher Shields expanded on the coverage of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in his earlier book, Classical Philosophy (2003), to include the philosophy of the Hellenistic era. In this new edition (2023), Shields reaches even further to include material on Neoplatonism and on Augustine and Proclus, capturing—from Thales of Miletus to the end of the sixth century CE—all of what might be called ancient philosophy. It traces the important connections between the periods and individuals of more than 1,200 years of philosophy’s history without losing sight of the novelties and dynamics unique to each. The coverage of the Presocratics, Sophists, Plato, and Stoicism has also been expanded so as to highlight Plato’s responses to the Sophistic movement in the development of his Theory of Forms. And, finally, a valuable companion volume, with Shields’s focused translations of the important sources referred to in Ancient Philosophy, Second Edition, will soon be published, obviating the need for a massive anthology of discordant voices. Ancient Philosophy, Second Edition, retains its helpful structure: each philosophical position receives: (1) a brief introduction, (2) a sympathetic review of its principal motivations and primary supporting arguments, and (3) a short assessment, inviting readers to evaluate its plausibility. The result is a book that brings the ancient arguments to life, making the introduction truly contemporary. It continues to serve as both a first stop and a well-visited resource for any student of the subject. Key updates in the second edition Extends the range of coverage well into the sixth century CE by offering a new chapter on Neoplatonism and early Christian philosophy, featuring discussions of Proclus and Augustine. Explains the conflicts between Plato and the Sophists by highlighting their approaches to rhetoric as an instrument of persuasion, offering a helpful explanation of two senses of argument. Includes new coverage of Plato’s argument from the Simplicity of the Soul, Argument from Affinity, and Argument against Rhetoric. Includes coverage of Aristotle’s political naturalism . May be used with a soon-to-be-published companion volume of primary source material, all of it translated by Christopher Shields specifically for the reader of this Second Edition.
There is a growing recognition that philosophy isn't unique to the West, that it didn't begin only with the classical Greeks, and that Greek philosophy was influenced by Near Eastern traditions. Yet even today there is a widespread assumption that what came before the Greeks was "before philosophy." In Philosophy before the Greeks, Marc Van De Mieroop, an acclaimed historian of the ancient Near East, presents a groundbreaking argument that, for three millennia before the Greeks, one Near Eastern people had a rich and sophisticated tradition of philosophy fully worthy of the name. In the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily praised the Babylonians for their devotion to philosophy. Showing the justice of Diodorus's comment, this is the first book to argue that there were Babylonian philosophers and that they studied knowledge systematically using a coherent system of logic rooted in the practices of cuneiform script. Van De Mieroop uncovers Babylonian approaches to knowledge in three areas: the study of language, which in its analysis of the written word formed the basis of all logic; the art of divination, which interpreted communications between gods and humans; and the rules of law, which confirmed that royal justice was founded on truth. The result is an innovative intellectual history of the ancient Near Eastern world during the many centuries in which Babylonian philosophers inspired scholars throughout the region—until the first millennium BC, when the breakdown of this cosmopolitan system enabled others, including the Greeks, to develop alternative methods of philosophical reasoning.
This distinctive collection of original articles features contributions from many of the leading scholars of ancient Greek philosophy. They explore the concept of reason and the method of analysis and the central role they play in the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They engage with salient themes in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political theory, as well as tracing links between each thinker’s ideas on selected topics. The volume contains analyses of Plato’s Socrates, focusing on his views of moral psychology, the obligation to obey the law, the foundations of politics, justice and retribution, and Socratic virtue. On Plato’s Republic, the discussions cover the relationship between politics and philosophy, the primacy of reason over the soul’s non-rational capacities, the analogy of the city and the soul, and our responsibility for choosing how we live our own lives. The anthology also probes Plato’s analysis of logos (reason or language) which underlies his philosophy including the theory of forms. A quartet of reflections explores Aristotelian themes including the connections between knowledge and belief, the nature of essence and function, and his theories of virtue and grace. The volume concludes with an insightful intellectual memoir by David Keyt which charts the rise of analytic classical scholarship in the past century and along the way provides entertaining anecdotes involving major figures in modern academic philosophy. Blending academic authority with creative flair and demonstrating the continuing interest of ancient Greek philosophy, this book will be a valuable addition to the libraries of all those studying and researching the origins of Western philosophy.