R. J. Hankinson traces the history of ancient Greek thinking about causation and explanation, from its earliest beginnings through more than a thousand years to the middle of the first millennium of the Christian era. He examines ways in which the Ancient Greeks dealt with questions about how and why things happen as and when they do, about the basic constitution and structure of things, about function and purpose, laws of nature, chance, coincidence, and responsibility.

This distinctive collection of original articles features contributions from many of the leading scholars of ancient Greek philosophy. They explore the concept of reason and the method of analysis and the central role they play in the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They engage with salient themes in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political theory, as well as tracing links between each thinker’s ideas on selected topics. The volume contains analyses of Plato’s Socrates, focusing on his views of moral psychology, the obligation to obey the law, the foundations of politics, justice and retribution, and Socratic virtue. On Plato’s Republic, the discussions cover the relationship between politics and philosophy, the primacy of reason over the soul’s non-rational capacities, the analogy of the city and the soul, and our responsibility for choosing how we live our own lives. The anthology also probes Plato’s analysis of logos (reason or language) which underlies his philosophy including the theory of forms. A quartet of reflections explores Aristotelian themes including the connections between knowledge and belief, the nature of essence and function, and his theories of virtue and grace. The volume concludes with an insightful intellectual memoir by David Keyt which charts the rise of analytic classical scholarship in the past century and along the way provides entertaining anecdotes involving major figures in modern academic philosophy. Blending academic authority with creative flair and demonstrating the continuing interest of ancient Greek philosophy, this book will be a valuable addition to the libraries of all those studying and researching the origins of Western philosophy.

This volume offers an updated analysis of the use, meaning, and scope of the classical notion of aitia. It clarifies philosophical and philological questions about aitia and offers bold and innovative interpretations of this key concept of ancient philosophy. The numerous meanings and nuances of aitia remain difficult to grasp. Ancient philosophers use aitia to explain the existence and activity of substances, bodies, souls, or gods. Paradoxically, its own definition remains difficult to establish. This book reconstructs some of the most important uses, variants, and scopes of the term aitia within different philosophical perspectives in antiquity, including early Greek philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, and Islamic philosophy. The chapters analyze metaphysical aspects, epistemological issues, and logical implications of aitia. They engage with the most relevant critical literature generated in several modern languages. In doing so, they offer an inclusive and overarching re-evaluation of our assumptions about causation and explanation in ancient philosophy. Cause and Explanation in Ancient Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Pre-Socratic philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, late antiquity, and medieval philosophy.

Hadot shows how the schools, trends, and ideas of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy strove to transform the individual's mode of perceiving and being in the world. For the ancients, philosophical theory and the philosophical way of life were inseparably linked. Hadot asks us to consider whether and how this connection might be reestablished today.

This text contains seventeen papers written by the author over the course of the last twelve years on the topic of philosophy.

Michael T. Ferejohn presents a new analysis of Aristotle's theory of explanation and scientific knowledge, in the context of its Socratic roots. Ferejohn shows how Aristotle resolves the tension between his commitment to the formal-case model of explanation and his recognition of the role of efficient causes in explaining natural phenomena.

The eminent German philosopher’s unique analysis of Ancient Greek philosophy and its relation to his own pioneering work. Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy presents a lecture course given by Martin Heidegger in 1926 at the University of Marburg. The book provides Heidegger’s most systematic history of Ancient philosophy beginning with Thales and ending with Aristotle. In this lecture, which coincides with the completion of his most important work, Being and Time, Heidegger is working out a way to sharply differentiate between beings and Being. Richard Rojcewicz’s clear and accurate translation offers English-speaking readers valuable insight into Heidegger’s views on Ancient thought and concepts such as principle, cause, nature, unity, multiplicity, Logos, truth, science, soul, category, and motion.

In this book Reale presents Plato and Aristotle. At the center of Reale's interpretation of Plato is the fulcrum of the supersensible, the metaphysical discovery that Plato presented as a result of the Second Voyage. This discovery of the supersensible is, in Reale's view, not only the fundamental phase of ancient thought, but it also constitutes a milestone on the path of western philosophy. Reale presents Plato in three different dimensions: the theoretic, the mystical-religious, and the political. Each of these components takes on meaning from the Second Voyage. In addition, Reale has shown that only in the light of the Unwritten Doctrines handed down through the indirect tradition, do these three components, and the Second Voyage itself, acquire their full meaning, and only in this way is a unitary conception of Plato's thought achieved. The interpretation of Aristotle that Reale proposes depends on his interpretation of Plato. Aristotle read without preconceptions is not the antithesis of Plato. Reale points out that Aristotle was unique among thinkers close to Plato, in being the one who developed, at least in part, his Second Voyage. The systematic-unitary interpretation of Aristotle which Reale has previously supported converges with the new systematic-unitary interpretation of Plato. Certain doctrinal positions which are usually reserved to treatments in monographs will be explored, because only in this way can the two distinctive traits of Aristotle's thought emerge: the way in which he tries to overcome and confirm the Socratic-Platonic positions, and the way in which he formally creates the system of philosophical knowledge.

Emerging as a hot topic in the mid-twentieth century, causality is one of the most frequently discussed issues in contemporary philosophy. Causality has been a central concept in philosophy as well as in the sciences, especially the natural sciences, dating back to its beginning in Greek thought. David Hume famously claimed that causality is the cement of the universe. In general terms, it links eventualities, predicts the consequences of action, and is the cognitive basis for the acquisition and the use of categories and concepts in the child. Indeed, how could one answer why-questions, around which early rational thought begins to revolve, without hitting on the relationships between reason and consequence, cause and effect, or without drawing these distinctions? But a comprehensive definition of causality has been notoriously hard to provide, and virtually every aspect of causation has been subject to much debate and analysis.Thinking About Causes brings together top philosophers from the United States and Europe to focus on causality as a major force in philosophical and scientific thought. Topics addressed include: ancient Stoicism and moral philosophy; the case of sacramental causality; traditional causal concepts in Descartes; Kant on transcendental laws; the influence of J. S. Mill's politics on his concept of causation; plurality in causality; causality in modern physics; causality in economics; and the concept of free will.Taken together, the essays in this collection from the Pittsburgh -Konstanz series provide the best current thinking about causality, especially as it relates to the philosophy of science.