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The Enduring Significance of Parmenides by Raymond Tallis Pdf
Parmenides of Elea is widely regarded as the most important of the Presocratic philosophers and one of the most influential thinkers of all time. He is famous, or notorious, for asserting that change, movement, generation and perishing are illusions arising from our senses, that past and future do not exist, and that the universe is a single, homogeneous, static sphere. This picture of the world is not only contrary to the experience of every conscious moment of our lives, it is also unthinkable, since thoughts themselves are events that come into being and pass away. In this important new book, Raymond Tallis critically examines Parmenides' conclusions and argues that, although his views have had a huge influence, they are in fact the result of a failure to allow for possibility, for what-might-be, which neither is nor is not. Without possibility, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Tallis explores the limits of Parmenides ideas, his influence on Plato and, through him, Aristotle and finally, why Parmenides is still relevant today.
The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss by Laurence Lampert Pdf
The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss takes on the crucial task of separating what is truly important in the work of Leo Strauss from the ephemeral politics associated with his school. Laurence Lampert focuses on exotericism: the use of artful rhetoric to simultaneously communicate a socially responsible message to the public at large and a more radical message of philosophic truth to a smaller, more intellectually inclined audience. Largely forgotten after the Enlightenment, exotericism, he shows, deeply informed Strauss both as a reader and as a philosophic writer—indeed, Lampert argues, Strauss learned from the finest practitioners of exoteric writing how to become one himself. Examining some of Strauss’s most important books and essays through this exoteric lens, Lampert reevaluates not only Strauss but the philosophers—from Plato to Halevi to Nietzsche—with whom Strauss most deeply engaged. Ultimately Lampert shows that Strauss’s famous distinction between ancient and modern thinkers is primarily rhetorical, one of the great examples of Strauss’s exoteric craft. Celebrating Strauss’s achievements while recognizing one main shortcoming—unlike Nietzsche, he failed to appreciate the ramifications of modern natural science for philosophy and its public presentation—Lampert illuminates Strauss as having even greater philosophic importance than we have thought before.
Parmenides is one of Plato's dialogues. It is widely considered to be one of the most challenging and enigmatic of Plato's dialogues. The Parmenides purports to be an account of a meeting between the two great philosophers of the Eleatic school, Parmenides and Zeno of Elea, and a young Socrates. The occasion of the meeting was the reading by Zeno of his treatise defending Parmenidean monism against those partisans of plurality who asserted that Parmenides' supposition that there is one gives rise to intolerable absurdities and contradictions.
Parmenides, Plato and Mortal Philosophy by Vishwa Adluri Pdf
In a new interpretation of Parmenides' philosophical poem On Nature, Vishwa Adluri considers Parmenides as a thinker of mortal singularity, a thinker who is concerned with the fate of irreducibly unique individuals. Adluri argues that the tripartite division of Parmenides' poem allows the thinker to brilliantly hold together the paradox of speaking about being in time and articulates a tragic knowing: mortals may aspire to the transcendence of metaphysics, but are inescapably returned to their mortal condition. Hence, Parmenides' poem articulates a "tragic return", i.e., a turn away from metaphysics to the community of mortals. In this interpretation, Parmenides' philosophy resonates with post-metaphysical and contemporary thought. The themes of human finitude, mortality, love, and singularity echo in thinkers such as Arendt, and Schürmann as well. Plato, Parmenides and Mortal Philosophy also includes a complete new translation of 'On Nature' and a substantial overview and bibliography of contemporary scholarship on Parmenides.
The politics of wellbeing and the new science of happiness have shot up the agenda since Martin Seligman coined the phrase "positive psychology". After all, who does not want to live the good life? So ten years on, why is it that much of this otherwise welcome debate sounds like as much apple-pie - "work less", "earn enough", "keep fit", "find meaning", "enjoy freedoms"? The reason is not, ultimately, cynicism. Rather, it is because a central, tricky question is being glossed over: just what is wellbeing? Mark Vernon argues that positive psychology has overlooked and sidelined the ancient wisdom on wellbeing, notably from the Greek philosophers. Now is the time to pay it proper attention.Vernon shows, surprisingly, that wellbeing is not found in a focus on pleasure, or even the pursuit of happiness itself. Rather, it is a question of meaning and responding to the great challenge of our day: the search for transcendence. For at root, the life that is going well cultivates a way of life based upon love: it is that which draws you out of yourself - in friends, hopes and ultimately the contemplation of mystery - and orientates a life towards that which is good.
Parmenides of Elea was the most important and influential philosopher before Plato. He rejected as impossible the scientific inquiry practiced by the earlier Presocratic philosophers and held that generation, destruction, and change are unreal and that only one thing exists. In this book, Patricia Curd argues that Parmenides sought to reform rather than to reject scientific inquiry, and she offers a more coherent account of his influence on later philosophers.The Legacy of Parmenides examines Parmenides' arguments, considering his connection to earlier Greek thought and how his account of what-is could have served as a model for later philosophers. Curd also explores the theories of his successors, including the Pluralists (Anaxagoras and Empedocles), the Atomists (Leucippus and Democritus), the later Eleatics (Zeno and Melissus), and the later Presocratics (Philolaus of Croton and Diogenes of Apollonia). She concludes with a discussion of the importance of Parmenides' work to Plato's Theory of Forms.The Legacy of Parmenides challenges traditional views of early Greek philosophy and provides new insights into the work of Parmenides.
Among Plato's later dialogues, the Parmenides is one of the most significant. Not only a document of profound philosophical importance in its own right, it also contributes to the understanding of Platonic dialogues that followed it, and it exhibits the foundations of the physics and ontology that Aristotle offered in his Physics and Metaphysics VII. In this book, R. E. Allen provides a superb translation of the Parmenides along with a structural analysis that procedes on the assumption that formal elements, logical and dramatic, are important to its interpretation and that the argument of the Parmenides is aporetic, a statement of metaphysical perplexities. Allen has revised his original translation of and commentary on the Parmenides, which were published in 1983 to great acclaim.
Early Greek Thought calls into question a longstanding mythology - operative in both the Analytic and Continental traditions - that the 'Pre-Socratics had the grandiose audacity to break with all traditional forms of knowledge' (Badiou). Each of the variants of this mythology is dismantled in an attempt to not only retrieve an 'indigenous' interpretation of early Greek thought, but also to expose the mythological character of our own contemporary meta-narratives regarding the 'origins' of 'Western', 'Occidental' philosophy. Using an original hermeneutical approach, James Luchte excavates the context of emergence of early Greek thought through an exploration of the mytho-poetic horizons of the archaic world, in relation to which, as Plato testifies, the Greeks were merely 'children'. Luchte discloses 'philosophy in the tragic age' as a creative response to a 'contestation' of mytho-poetic narratives and 'ways of being'. The tragic character of early Greek thought is unfolded through a cultivation of a conversation between its basic thinkers, one which would remain incomprehensible, with Bataille, in the 'absence of myth' and the exile of poetry.
Neuroscience has made astounding progress in the understanding of the brain. What should we make of its claims to go beyond the brain and explain consciousness, behaviour and culture? Where should we draw the line? In this brilliant critique Raymond Tallis dismantles "Neuromania", arising out of the idea that we are reducible to our brains and "Darwinitis" according to which, since the brain is an evolved organ, we are entirely explicable within an evolutionary framework. With precision and acuity he argues that the belief that human beings can be understood in biological terms is a serious obstacle to clear thinking about what we are and what we might become. Neuromania and Darwinitis deny human uniqueness, minimise the differences between us and our nearest animal kin and offer a grotesquely simplified account of humanity. We are, argues Tallis, infinitely more interesting and complex than we appear in the mirror of biology. Combative, fearless and thought-provoking, Aping Mankind is an important book and one that scientists, cultural commentators and policy-makers cannot ignore. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by the Author.
Like its ancient rivals, Stoic ethics was a form of virtue ethics, yet while the concept of virtue was clearly central to Stoic ethics, the concept of Stoic virtue has not yet been fully explored. Instead, the existing literature tends to impose on the Stoic material philosophically quite alien non-Aristotelian interpretations of virtue. According to Christoph Jedan, however, a thorough examination of the Stoic concept of virtue leads to a reassessment of our understanding of Stoic ethics. This book emphasises in particular the theological underpinning of Stoic ethics, which Jedan contends has been underestimated in current accounts of Stoic ethics. Jedan argues that the theological motifs in Stoic ethics are in fact pivotal to a complete understanding of Stoic ethics. The book focuses on Chrysippus, the most important of the early Stoic thinkers, suggesting that his contribution, and in particular its religious aspect, remained a key point of reference for later Stoics. This fascinating book makes a crucial contribution to the field of ancient ethics.
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is devoted to the topic of human happiness. Yet, although Aristotle's conception of happiness is central to his whole philosophical project, there is much controversy surrounding it. Hope May offers a new interpretation of Aristotle's account of happiness - one which incorporates Aristotle's views about the biological development of human beings. May argues that the relationship amongst the moral virtues, the intellectual virtues, and happiness, is best understood through the lens of developmentalism. On this view, happiness emerges from the cultivation of a number of virtues that are developmentally related. May goes on to show how contemporary scholarship in psychology, ethical theory and legal philosophy signals a return to Aristotelian ethics. Specifically, May shows how a theory of motivation known as Self-Determination Theory and recent research on goal attainment have deep affinities to Aristotle's ethical theory. May argues that this recent work can ground a contemporary virtue theory that acknowledges the centrality of autonomy in a way that captures the fundamental tenets of Aristotle's ethics.
Pythagoras and the Doctrine of Transmigration by James Luchte Pdf
The mythical narrative of transmigration tells the story of myriad wandering souls, each migrating from body to body along a path of recurrence amid the becoming of the All. In this highly original study, James Luchte explores the ways in which the concept of transmigration is a central motif in Pythagoras' philosophy, representing its fundamental meaning. Luchte argues that the many strands of the tale of transmigration come together in the Pythagorean philosophical movement, revealing a unity in which, for Pythagoreans, existence and eschatology are separated only by forgetfulness. Such an interpretation that seeks to retrieve the unity of Pythagorean thought goes against the grain of a long-standing tradition of interpretation that projects upon Pythagoras the segregation of 'mysticism' and 'science'. Luchte lays out an alternative interpretation of Pythagorean philosophy as magical in the sense that it orchestrates a holistic harmonization of theoria and praxis and through this reading discloses the radical character of Pythagorean philosophy.