Listening to the Philosophers
Notes on Notes

Raffaella Cribiore (Author)

9781501774751

Hardback, published 15 May 2024

300 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.907 kg

[This book] provides definitive scholarly evidence for what little we can know about the experience of ancient students of philosophy.

Listening to the Philosophers offers the first comprehensive look into how philosophy was taught in antiquity through a stimulating study of lectures by ancient philosophers that were recorded by their students. Raffaella Cribiore shows how the study of notes—whether Philodemus of Gadara's notes of Zeno's lectures in the first century BCE, or Arrian recording the Discourses of Epictetus in the second century CE, or the students of Didymus the Blind in the fourth century and Olympiodorus in the sixth century—can enable us to understand the methods and practices of what was an orally conducted education. By considering the pedagogical and mnemonic role of notetaking in ancient education, Listening to the Philosophers demonstrates how in antiquity the written and the spoken worlds were intimately intertwined.

Introduction: Orality and Note-Taking
1. Notes and Notetakers
2. Taking Notes in Class
3. Students' Annotations in Philosophy
4. Notae of Stenographers
5. Epictetus as an Educatorand a Man
6. Epictetus and the World of Culture
7. Introduction: AncientCommentaries
8. Notes from Athens: Philodemus On Frank Criticism
9. Taking Notes in the School ofDidymus the Blind
10. Listening to Olympiodorus
Conclusion: The Authentic Philosopher's Voice