Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Metaphysics
Abraham Jacob Greenstine and Ryan J. Johnson
Abstract
This volume is the world’s first exploration of a series of encounters between ancient philosophical texts and contemporary continental metaphysics. The ancient texts under consideration originated in the greater Mediterranean, and in particular the Greek and Roman worlds, from the 6th-century B.C.E. to the end of antiquity, around the 4th-century C.E. More specifically, our volume is organized by three sites of engagement with the ancient world: (1) Plato and the Academy, (2) Aristotle and the Lyceum, and (3) and the schools of the Epicureans, Skeptics, Stoics, and Neo-Platonists. On the othe ... More
This volume is the world’s first exploration of a series of encounters between ancient philosophical texts and contemporary continental metaphysics. The ancient texts under consideration originated in the greater Mediterranean, and in particular the Greek and Roman worlds, from the 6th-century B.C.E. to the end of antiquity, around the 4th-century C.E. More specifically, our volume is organized by three sites of engagement with the ancient world: (1) Plato and the Academy, (2) Aristotle and the Lyceum, and (3) and the schools of the Epicureans, Skeptics, Stoics, and Neo-Platonists. On the other side of the engagement, the tradition of contemporary continental metaphysics stretches from Deleuze’s self-nomination as a “pur métaphysicien,” through the renewed attention to ontology in thinkers such as Agamben and Badiou, up to the various New Materialisms and Speculative Realisms that populate the 21st-century continental landscape.
Through this collection of resonating voices and interlocking ideas, this volume expresses the profusion of new continental approaches to classic problems of metaphysics. These essays do not merely rehearse overlooked contemporary interpretations of the ancients, but do something entirely original: to reconsider what it means to think, with the ancients, about the nature of things. At their most ambitious, these essays even “do metaphysics,” using ancient philosophers as collaborators to make new contributions to contemporary problems. The questions of metaphysics persist through changing cultural tastes, and they remain because they constantly demand our response. This volume confronts this demand and responds with a new collection of classically-informed yet progressive-minded philosophical encounters.
Keywords:
Ancient Philosophy,
Metaphysics,
Continental Philosophy,
Plato,
Aristotle,
Hellenism
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781474412094 |
Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online: January 2018 |
DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9781474412094.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Abraham Jacob Greenstine, editor
Duquesne University
Ryan J. Johnson, editor
Elon University
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