Table Of Contenta companion to ancient philosophy
Series Editor
John Russon
REREADING ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
A COMPANION
TO ANCIENT
PHILOSOPHY
Edited and with an
introduction by
Sean D. Kirkland
and Eric Sanday
northwestern university press • evanston, illinois
Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu
Copyright © 2018 by Northwestern University Press.
Published 2018. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Kirkland, Sean D., editor. | Sanday, Eric, editor.
Title: A companion to ancient philosophy / edited and with an
introduction by Sean D. Kirkland and Eric Sanday.
Other titles: Rereading ancient philosophy.
Description: Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press,
2018. | Series: Rereading ancient philosophy
Identifiers: LCCN 2018024921 | ISBN 9780810137868 (pbk. :
alk. paper) | ISBN 9780810137875 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN
9780810137882 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, Ancient.
Classification: LCC B171 .C67 2018 | DDC 180—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/201802492
contents
Introduction ix
Sean D. Kirkland and Eric Sanday
Time Line xx
Abbreviations xxiii
Early Greek Thinking: The Emergence of Philosophy
Physis in Pre- Socratic Thought: Seeking with Xenophanes 5
Robert Metcalf
Going with the Flow: Soul and Truth in Heraclitus 21
Drew A. Hyland
Justice, Change, and Knowledge: Aristotle, Parmenides,
and Melissus on Genesis and Natural Science 37
Rose Cherubin
“As He Says in His Poetical Way”: Anaximander and
Empedocles on the Motive Forces of Kosmos 53
Phil Hopkins
The Human as (W)hole: Aristophanes’s Contest with
Socrates in Clouds 67
Damian Stocking
Classical Greek Philosophy: Plato and Aristotle
Erōs and Eris: Love and Strife in Ancient Greek Thought
and Culture 83
John Russon
Plato and Aristotle: More Than a Question of
‘Separate Forms’ 97
Francisco J. Gonzalez
Measure, Excess, and the All: To Agathon in Plato 109
Claudia Baracchi
In the Wake of Socrates: Impossible Memory 123
Walter Brogan
The Origins of Political Life in Plato’s Republic and Laws 135
George Harvey
Being in Late Plato 147
Eric Sanday
Aristotle on Physis: Analyzing the Inner Ambiguities
and Transgression of Nature 161
Marjolein Oele
Human Logos in Aristotle 177
Ömer Aygün
Developing Emotions: Aristotle’s Rhetoric II.2– 11 191
Greg Recco
Hontina tropon gignetai philos: Genesis versus Alteration
in the Forming of Friendships 203
John McCumber
The Political Context for Virtue: Aristotle’s Politics 215
Eve Rabinoff
Mimēsis: Plato and Aristotle on the Political Power
of Tragedy 229
Patricia Fagan
The Hellenistic Schools
Ataraxia: Tranquility at the End 245
Pascal Massie
A Well- Ordered World: The Developing Idea of Kosmos
in Later Greek Philosophy 263
Gina Zavota
Searching for the ‘Why’: Plotinus on Being and the
One beyond Being 275
Michael Wiitala
Contributors 287
Index 293
introduction
Sean D. Kirkland and Eric Sanday
The essays collected in this volume are intended to grant the reader a certain
entrée into ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, from the Pre-S ocratics
(sixth and fifth centuries b.c.e.) through Plato (429–3 47 b.c.e.) and Aristo-
tle (384– 322 b.c.e.) up to and including the Hellenistic period (322 b.c.e. to
third century c.e.).1 This broad coverage and this introductory function are
precisely what one expects from a ‘companion’ volume. However, the specific
approach taken here to the performance of this function departs in sig-
nificant and self-c onscious ways from that of ostensibly similar collections.
Indeed, we editors see the volume’s unorthodox character as a radicalization
of the notion of companionship itself.
Companionship as Hermeneutic
From the very earliest stages of planning this collection, it seemed to us that
any ‘companion’ to ancient philosophy worthy of its name would have to,
in a sense, situate itself between its historically distant subject matter and
its audience, having as its organizing aim that of bringing together reader
and text. In this, its hermeneutic task seemed to us twofold. On the one
hand, and first and foremost, such a volume must accompany its readers back
toward the ancients, bringing the reader face to face with the concerns, con-
cepts, terminology, and arguments at work in these highly complex ancient
philosophical texts, as well as allowing the reader to appreciate the ways in
which each of these texts reflects its specific historical context. On the other
hand, this volume must in a sense accompany ancient works into the present,
insofar as it should allow the text, to the extent that the texts’ own form and
content permit, to speak meaningfully to us today, addressing and relating to
living philosophical questions and issues.
The task represented by such a double companionship entails, then,
that the authors of these essays maintain what we think of as a rigorous
openness, in two senses. First, in approaching the ancient texts our authors
read them closely and comprehensively. This task sounds easy enough, but
it requires remaining open and attentive especially to the unexpected and
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