BiblioVault - Books about Aristotle

Themes in Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic Philosophy

Keeling Lectures 2011-18

Edited by Fiona Leigh

University of London Press, 2020

The present volume collects together papers based on the annual Keeling Memorial Lecture in ancient philosophy given at University College London, over 2011-18 (and one from 2004, previously unpublished). It contains contributions to theoretical as well as practical ancient philosophy, and in some cases, to both. Susanne Bobzien argues that Frege plagiarised the Stoics in respect of logic, Gail Fine compares uses of doxa and epistêmê in the Phaedo to contemporary notions of belief and knowledge, David Sedley offers a novel interpretation of ‘safe’ causal explanation in the Phaedo, and Gábor Betegh understands the ingredients of the soul in the Timaeus as structuring thought and speech. Dorothea Frede presents new considerations against a ‘particularist’ reading of Aristotle’s ethics, Lesley Brown examines the role of agreement in establishing what is just and the correctness of names in Plato, and Gisela Striker gives an analysis of the role of Stoic therapy in the good life. A. A. Long details a new reading of divinity in the Republic that reveals the Good as the essence of the divine, and Malcolm Schofield explores the tension between unfettered theoretical debate and the demand of determinacy in practical philosophy in Cicero.

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The Thinker As Artist

From Homer To Plato and Aristotle

George Anastaplo

Ohio University Press, 1997

In an attempt to subject representative texts of a dozen ancient authors to a more or less Socratic inquiry, the noted scholar George Anastaplo suggests in The Thinker as Artist how one might usefully read as well as enjoy such texts, which illustrate the thinking done by the greatest artists and how they “talk” among themselves across the centuries. In doing so, he does not presume to repeat the many fine things said about these and like authors, but rather he discusses what he himself has noticed about them, text by text. Drawing upon a series of classical authors ranging from Homer and Sappho to Plato and Aristotle, Anastaplo examines issues relating to chance, art, nature, and divinity present in the artful works of philosophers and other thinkers. As he has done in his earlier work, Anastaplo mines the great texts to help us discover who we are and what we should be. Some of the works used are familiar, while others were once better known than they are now. The approach to all of them is fresh and provocative, demonstrating the value of such texts in showing the reader what to look for and how to talk about matters that have always engaged thoughtful human beings. These imaginative yet disciplined discussions of important texts of ancient Greek thought and of Raphael’s The School of Athens should appeal to both the specialist and the general reader.

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Three Arabic Treatises on Aristotle’s Rhetoric

The Commentaries of al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes

Translated, with introduction and notes, by Lahcen Elyazghi Ezzaher

Southern Illinois University Press, 2015

Winner, 2018 MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature

It is increasingly well documented that western rhetoric’s journey from pagan Athens to the medieval academies of Christian Europe was significantly influenced by the intellectual thought of the Muslim Near East. Lahcen Elyazghi Ezzaher contributes to the contemporary chronicling of this influence in Three Arabic Treatises on Aristotle’s Rhetoric: The Commentaries of al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, offering English translations of three landmark medieval Arabic commentaries on Aristotle's famous rhetorical treatise together in one volume for the first time. Elegant and practical, Elyazghi Ezzaher’s translations give English-speaking scholars and students of rhetoric access to key medieval Arabic rhetorical texts while elucidating the unique and important contribution of those texts to the revival of European interest in the rhetoric and logic of Aristotle, which in turn influenced the rise of universities and the shaping of Western intellectual life.

With a focus on Book I of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, the commentaries ofal-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes translated by Elyazghi Ezzaher are paramount examples of an extensive Arabic-Muslim tradition of textual commentary while also serving as rich corollaries to the medieval Greek and Latin rhetorical commentaries produced in Europe. Elyazghi Ezzaher’s translations are each accompanied by insightful scholarly introductions and notes that contextualize—both historically and culturally—these immensely significant works while highlighting a comparative, multidisciplinary approach to rhetorical scholarship that offers new perspectives on one of the field’s foundational texts.

A remarkable addition to rhetorical studies, Three Arabic Treatises on Aristotle’s Rhetoric: The Commentaries of al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes not only provides vibrant English translations of essential medieval Arabic rhetorical texts but also challenges scholars and students of rhetoric to consider their own historical, cultural, and linguistic relationships to the texts and objects they study.

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