The Greek Concept of Nature

The Greek Concept of Nature
Author: Gerard Naddaf
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0791483673

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In The Greek Concept of Nature, Gerard Naddaf utilizes historical, mythological, and linguistic perspectives to reconstruct the origin and evolution of the Greek concept of phusis. Usually translated as nature, phusis has been decisive both for the early history of philosophy and for its subsequent development. However, there is a considerable amount of controversy on what the earliest philosophers—Anaximander, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus—actually had in mind when they spoke of phusis or nature. Naddaf demonstrates that the fundamental and etymological meaning of the word refers to the whole process of birth to maturity. He argues that the use of phusis in the famous expression Peri phuseos or historia peri phuseos refers to the origin and the growth of the universe from beginning to end. Naddaf's bold and original theory for the genesis of Greek philosophy demonstrates that archaic and mythological schemes were at the origin of the philosophical representations, but also that cosmogony, anthropogony, and politogony were never totally separated in early Greek philosophy.

The Greek Concept of Nature

The Greek Concept of Nature
Author: Gerard Naddaf
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2005-04-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791463734

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In The Greek Concept of Nature, Gerard Naddaf utilizes historical, mythological, and linguistic perspectives to reconstruct the origin and evolution of the Greek concept of phusis. Usually translated as nature, phusis has been decisive both for the early history of philosophy and for its subsequent development. However, there is a considerable amount of controversy on what the earliest philosophers-Anaximander, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus-actually had in mind when they spoke of phusis or nature. Naddaf demonstrates that the fundamental and etymological meaning of the word refers to the whole process of birth to maturity. He argues that the use of phusis in the famous expression Peri phuseos or historia peri phuseos refers to the origin and the growth of the universe from beginning to end. Naddaf's bold and original theory for the genesis of Greek philosophy demonstrates that archaic and mythological schemes were at the origin of the philosophical representations, but also that cosmogony, anthropogony, and politogony were never totally separated in early Greek philosophy. Book jacket.

The Greek Concept of Nature

The Greek Concept of Nature
Author: Gerard Naddaf
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791463741

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Explores the origin and evolution of the Greek concept of nature up until the time of Plato.

Anaximander in Context

Anaximander in Context
Author: Dirk L. Couprie
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0791487784

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Promoting a new, broadly interdisciplinary horizon for future studies in early Greek philosophy, Dirk L. Couprie, Robert Hahn, and Gerard Naddaf establish the cultural context in which Anaximander's thought developed and in which the origins of Greek philosophy unfolded in its earliest stages. In order to better understand Anaximander's achievement, the authors call our attention to the historical, social, political, technological, cosmological, astronomical, and observational contexts of his thought. Anaximander in Context brings to the forefront of modern debates the importance of cultural context, and the indispensability of images to clarify ancient ideologies.

Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics

Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics
Author: Michael James Bennett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2017-07-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 147428468X

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In 1988 the philosopher Gilles Deleuze remarked that, throughout his career, he had always been 'circling around' a concept of nature. Providing critical analysis of his highly original readings of Stoicism, Aristotle, and Epicurus, this book shows that it is Deleuze's interpretations of ancient Greek physics that provide the key to understanding his conception of nature. Using the works of Aristotle, Plato, Chrysippus, and Epicurus, Michael Bennett traces the development of Deleuze's key concepts of event, difference, and problem. Arguing that it is difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand these ideas without an appreciation of Deleuze's Hellenistic influences, Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics situates his commentaries in the context of contemporary scholarship on ancient Greek philosophy. Delving into the original Greek and Latin texts, this book shows that Deleuze's readings are more complex and controversial than they first appear, simultaneously advancing Deleuze as a new voice in interpretations of ancient Greek philosophy. Generating both new critical analyses of Deleuze and a new appreciation for his classical erudition, Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in ancient Greek philosophy, Deleuze's philosophical project or his unique methodology in the history of philosophy.

The Greeks and the Environment

The Greeks and the Environment
Author: Laura Westra
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1997
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780847684465

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Environmental ethicists have frequently criticized ancient Greek philosophy as anti-environmental for a view of philosophy that is counterproductive to environmental ethics and a view of the world that puts nature at the disposal of people. This provocative collection of original essays reexamines the views of nature and ecology found in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Plotinus. Recognizing that these thinkers were not confronted with the environmental degradation that threatens contemporary philosophers, the contributors to this book find that the Greeks nevertheless provide an excellent foundation for a sound theory of environmentalism.

Early Greek Philosophies of Nature

Early Greek Philosophies of Nature
Author: Andrew Gregory
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2020-10-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350080977

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This book examines the philosophies of nature of the early Greek thinkers and argues that a significant and thoroughgoing shift is required in our understanding of them. In contrast with the natural world of the earliest Greek literature, often the result of arbitrary divine causation, in the work of early Ionian philosophers we see the idea of a cosmos: ordered worlds where there is complete regularity. How was this order generated and maintained and what underpinned those regularities? What analogies or models were used for the order of the cosmos? What did they think about causation and explanatory structure? How did they frame natural laws? Andrew Gregory draws on recent work on mechanistic philosophy and its history, on the historiography of the relation of science to art, religion and magic, and on the fragments and doxography of the early Greek thinkers to argue that there has been a tendency to overestimate the extent to which these early Greek philosophies of nature can be described as 'mechanistic'. We have underestimated how far they were committed to other modes of explanation and ontologies, and we have underestimated, underappreciated and indeed underexplored how plausible and good these philosophies would have been in context.

Aristotle and Natural Law

Aristotle and Natural Law
Author: Tony Burns
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2011-10-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441107169

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Aristotle and Natural Law lays out a new theoretical approach which distinguishes between the notions of 'interpretation,' 'appropriation,' 'negotiation' and 'reconstruction' of the meaning of texts and their component concepts. These categories are then deployed in an examination of the role which the concept of natural law is used by Aristotle in a number of key texts. The book argues that Aristotle appropriated the concept of natural law, first formulated by the defenders of naturalism in the 'nature versus convention debate' in classical Athens. Thereby he contributed to the emergence and historical evolution of the meaning of one of the most important concept in the lexicon of Western political thought. Aristotle and Natural Law argues that Aristotle's ethics is best seen as a certain type of natural law theory which does not allow for the possibility that individuals might appeal to natural law in order to criticize existing laws and institutions. Rather its function is to provide them with a philosophical justification from the standpoint of Aristotle's metaphysics.

The Figure of Nature

The Figure of Nature
Author: John Sallis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2016
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780253022882

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Broaching an understanding of nature in Platonic thought, John Sallis goes beyond modern conceptions and provides a strategy to have recourse to the profound sense of nature operative in ancient Greek philosophy. In a rigorous and textually based account, Sallis traces the complex development of the Greek concept of nature. Beginning with the mythical vision embodied in the figure of the goddess Artemis, he reanimates the sense of nature that informs the fragmentary discourses of Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles and shows how Plato takes up pre-Socratic conceptions critically while also being transformed. Through Sallis's close reading of the Theaetetus and the Phaedo, he recovers the profound and comprehensive concept of nature in Plato's thought.

Other Natures

Other Natures
Author: Clara Bosak-Schroeder
Publisher:
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2020
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520343484

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Sources and methods -- Rulers and rivers -- Female feck -- Dietary entanglements -- Resisting luxury -- After the encounter -- Transformation in the natural history museum.