Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy

The first of two volumes collecting the published work up to 2000 of one of the greatest living scholars of ancient philosophy alive today.

M. F. Burnyeat (Author)

9780521750721, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 June 2012

408 pages
23.4 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.76 kg

M. F. Burnyeat taught for 14 years in the Philosophy Department of University College London, then for 18 years in the Classics Faculty at Cambridge, 12 of them as the Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy, before migrating to Oxford in 1996 to become a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at All Souls College. The studies, articles and reviews collected in these two volumes of Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy were all written, and all but two published, before that decisive change. Whether designed for a scholarly audience or for a wider public, they range from the Presocratics to Augustine, from Descartes and Bishop Berkeley to Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore. Their subject-matter falls under four main headings: 'Logic and Dialectic' and 'Scepticism Ancient and Modern', which are contained in this first volume; 'Knowledge' and 'Philosophy and the Good Life' make up the second volume. The title 'Explorations' well expresses Burnyeat's ability to discover new aspects of familiar texts, new ways of solving old problems. In his hands the history of philosophy becomes itself a philosophical activity.

Preface
Introduction
Part I. Logic and Dialectic: 1. Protagoras and self-refutation in later Greek philosophy
2. Protagoras and self-refutation in Plato's Theaetetus
3. The upside-down back-to-front sceptic of Lucretius IV.472
4. Antipater and self-refutation: elusive arguments in Cicero's Academica
5. Gods and heaps
6. The origins of non-deductive inference
7. Enthymeme: Aristotle on the logic of persuasion
Part II. Scepticism Ancient and Modern: 8. Can the sceptic live his scepticism?
9. Tranquillity without a stop: Timon, frag. 68
10. Idealism and Greek philosophy: what Descartes saw and Berkeley missed
11. Conflicting appearances
12. The sceptic in his place and time
13. Dissoi logoi
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]