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A view into the sophisticated and highly advanced civilization that preceded the world of the pharaohs

• Presents historical evidence of the civilization ruled by the “gods” that the Egyptians claimed preceded their own

• Explains who these prehistoric people were, what happened to them, and why they built a series of pyramids along the west bank of the Nile River

Traditional Egyptologists have long resisted the notion that the architectural achievements of the Ancient Egyptians required the existence of a much more sophisticated technology than would have existed at that time. Yet, no records exist explaining how, why, or who built Egypt’s megalithic monuments and statues. The ancient Egyptians did, however, record that their civilization resided in the shadow of a kingdom of “gods” whose reign ended many thousands of years before their first dynasty. What was this Civilization X that antiquity’s most accomplished people revered as gods?

The recent discovery of a large stone at one of Egypt’s oldest ruins presents physical evidence that clearly and distinctly shows the markings of a machining process far beyond the capabilities of the Ancient Egyptians. Likewise, experimental modeling of the Great Pyramid’s subterranean chambers and passageways gives scientific evidence to further support the theory that the civilization responsible for such magnificent monuments is much older than presently believed. Ancient Egypt 39,000 BCE examines this evidence from historical and technical points of view, explaining who these prehistoric people were, what happened to them, why they built their civilization out of granite, and why they built a series of pyramids along the west bank of the Nile River.
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Customer Reviews (2)

Ancient Need Not Be Supernatural
This book is a very welcome look at ancient Egypt.Some of what Malkowski investigates is great:he exposes archaeological problems, strange artifacts, new evidence and enigmas, shines the light on weak or contradictory evidence and theories.All well and good and necessary.I love open-minded investigations and science can only benefit from removing blinders and digging deeper.This book is in the inquisitive nature of Von Daniken, to always question and remain open to the new.

However, Malkowski also suffers a bit from the same "wild speculations" disorder that many of the members of "fringe" historians/scientists do.He can't seem to relax into the proposal that, yes, quite probably Egyptian civilization or its precursors are far older and more advanced than we give them credit for being.He almost crosses that Sitchen-line from inquisitiveness into well maybe it was ancient gods or extraterrestrials who did it?Not necessary.He goes up and maybe peeks over, but should stay well on this side of the fence.My fear is that this book is misunderstood and lumped in with the kooky trash rather than being read on its own merits.But basically, Malkowski does a great service and should be commented for it.

Ancient Egypt 39,000 BCE is a fact-filled, fascinating read that raises many important questions.

Interesting Title!!
Malkowski's contention is that the traditional Egyptologists ignore idea that the existence of a much more advanced technology built the monuments and statues of ancient Egypt. He mentions that a kingdom of "gods" built a civilization that ended many years before this building. Hmmm!

This is a title that should bring you into shallow thought. While his notions are welcome, the belief in them needs more convincing. I don't buy it all at this time... ... Read more

Product Description
The work of Aristotle (384-322 BC) is considered to be one of the great achievements of the ancient world, and is a foundation of both Western and Middle Eastern philosophy and science. Although Aristotle left significant material on almost all branches of learning, what has survived is a somewhat disorganized collection of notes and lectures. Moreover, the centuries of interpretation across various epochs and cultures tend to cloud our understanding of him. Thomas Kiefer breaks through this cloud of interpretation and provides an organized account of one key part of Aristotle's philosophy, namely his theory of knowledge. This theory concerns what is knowledge, what we can know, and how we can do so. Kiefer's book is the first work that takes this theory as its sole focus and reconstructs it systematically. Kiefer's work throughout provides many new interpretations of key parts of Aristotle's philosophy, including an unnoticed -but crucial- distinction between knowledge in general and knowledge for us, the differences between his semantic and psychological requirements for knowledge, and 'nous', which is perhaps the most obscure notion in Aristotle's work. He also concludes with a summary of Aristotle's theory in the terms and style of contemporary epistemology. Kiefer's work should be of interest to anyone involved in the history of philosophy or contemporary epistemology. ... Read more

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From its beginnings, philosophy's language, concepts, and imaginative growth have been heavily influenced by poetry and poets.Drawing on the work of a wide range of thinkers throughout the history of western philosophy, Raymond Barfiled explores the pervasiveness of poetry's impact on philosophy and, conversely, how philosophy has sometimes resisted or denied poetry's influence.Although some thinkers, like Giambatista Vico and Nietzsche, praised the wisdom of poets, and saw poetry and philosophy as mutually beneficial pursuits, others resented, diminished or eliminated the importance of poetry in philosophy.Beginning with the famous the passage in Plato's Republic in which Socrates exiles the poets from the city, this book traces the history of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry through the works of thinkers in the Western tradition ranging from Plato to the work of the contemporary thinker Mikhail Bakhtin. This new persepctive provides an illuminating way of reading philosophy that can be extended and applied to other philosophers. ... Read more

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The Western tradition of philosophy began in Greece with a cluster of thinkers often called the Presocratics, whose influence has been incalculable. All these thinkers are discussed in this volume both as individuals and collectively in chapters on rational theology, epistemology, psychology, rhetoric and relativism, justice, and poetics. Assuming no knowledge of Greek or prior knowledge of the subject, this volume provides new readers with the most convenient and accessible guide to early Greek philosophy available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of early Greek thought. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A bit bland
This mix of the views of modern professors on the first steps into a field which started growing wild explanations when writing was not common, covering some authors who are known mainly for what Aristotle and Plato thought of them, though Diogenes Laertius was the source of 65 passages also considered, now available in English with little need for study of the original language in which a love of wisdom seemed to be a high ideal proper for those who would like to teach, attempts to locate the major ideas which started growing in this field up to and beyond the time of Socrates without trying to define the meaning of philosophy for that particular individual.The scholarly division of labor makes it easy to suppose that knowledge in this field is sufficiently broad and diffuse enough to allow any student who specializes to become more of an expert than his teachers on some particular questions.The Index of Passages on pages 399-413 includes a range of authors, in addition to the listings for Plato and Aristotle which were so numerous I didn't count them.Undoubtedly this information will be helpful to students who are primarily concerned with learning what the professors of philosophy generally think about the Greek aspect of the roots of this tradition.Those who are more interested in lively questions about the nature of Socrates as an individual devoted to a more public practice of philosophy might be disappointed in the slight treatment he receives, compared to the more scholarly Greeks considered in this book.

The summary section, Lives and Writings of the Early Greek Philosophers on pages xvii-xxviii includes twenty major names, but not Aristotle, Plato, or Socrates.The twenty have life timelines on the Chronology on page xxix, but ten others, not all of whom were as late as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, are shown on page xxx.The reason for the split between those now considered truly great and the topics considered in this book was made explicit in the first chapter:

"Given the sources at our disposal and Socrates' remarkable afterlife, it would be irresponsible to treat him simply as one among other thinkers of the fifth century B.C.He must be viewed in association with Plato, and hence he is scarcely discussed in this book (but see Chapters 14-15)."(p. 6).

Just to acknowledge that some major figures are included in this book, the chapter titles mention the Pythagorean tradition, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles, and the atomists.Professors from a number of countries have contributed to this book, but each seemed to be preoccupied with searching for explanations that might seem valid.Evidence that we have now learned a bit more about chaos than Aristotle could admit in his time is provided in the observation, "Aristotle (Phys. II.8) criticizes Empedocles for assigning too great a role to chance in the production of natural kinds, but in this Empedocles is closer to modern science than is Aristotle."(p. 161).

There is not much emphasis in this book on individual character of a kind that make Heraclitus, Socrates, Nietzsche, and Freud such monumental thinkers among Germans who wanted to attempt something great in poetry or philosophy.Perhaps the most psychological point is a note on Empedocles' claim that he has been treated like a god as "the claim so bizarre that he feels driven to assume that Empedocles is ironically criticizing those who adulate him excessively."(p. 361, n. 30, citing `Hermes' III (1983) pp. 170-79, with a title that appears to be in German.)Since thousands of years have passed, "To what extent Empedocles' claim that he is honoured as a god is realistic, to what extent wishful thinking, we may never know (though the former is likely to have been larger than some modern readers might expect); in any case, there is a lack of embarrassment in his acknowledgment of his divinity which no parallel hitherto cited from epic or mystery cults makes less remarkable.Not only does Empedocles tell us he is a god but he also explains elsewhere why he has been temporarily exiled from the gods so that he might come to speak to us . . ."(p. 355).A fragment designated DK 31 B112 in the Diels/Kranz numbering system used in the book, which was the beginning of the poem "Purifications" by Empedocles, clearly claims, "They follow me in their thousands, asking where lies the road to profit, some desiring prophecies, while others ask to hear the word of healing for every kind of illness, long transfixed by harsh pains."(p. 355).

As inspiring as some of the things in this book are, much seems odd.Those who believed in atoms were quick to argue, "for instance that the number of atomic shapes must be infinite, because there is no more reason for an atom to have one shape than another (Simplicius, In phys. 28.9-10)."(p. 183).Soon enough, philosophy produced "the distinction that Sextus immediately attributes to Democritus between `bastard' knowledge provided by the senses and the `genuine' knowledge provided by the intellect (B11)."(pp. 191-192)."As a result, if the senses are altogether unreliable, there are no reliable data on which to base the theory, so, as the senses say to the mind in B125, `Our overthrow is a fall for you.'"(p. 192).The attempt by Aristotle to sort out claims by Democritus "that either nothing is true, or it is unclear to us" (p. 194) is called "a very puzzling passage, for a number of reasons."(p. 194).Perhaps people with a higher level of expertise than mine can maintain an interest in these problems indefinitely.

Philosophy before Plato
In common with so many of the other superb volumes in the Cambridge University "Companion" series, the latest addition to the line up contains scholarly information about philosophy before Plato that is both engaging and thorough. The editor has selected contributors whose names are well known within the field about which they write. Their articles neither patronize the neophyte, nor disappoint those whose learning is more advanced. After a survey of the field,discussions why the term "pre-Socratics" most often used with reference to the thinkers covered by this book is misleading and distorting, and a review of the sources of the writings (none of the original writings of these folk have survived the 2500 years that have intervened between their activity and the present) the book reviews the major fields of inquiry for the writers, and the writers themselves. Each of the articles brings new slants on old knowledge from which all but global experts will gain valuable information. There is also a superb listing of most of the literature about the period and about the scholarship on which our present understandings are based. There is no uniformity here: even at the beginning, perhaps especially at the beginning of the new endeavor that became philosophy there is a sense of excitement and discovery which the writers in this book enhance. Any student of Greek philosophy,even the most elementary survey course, will gain a lot of important knowledge from this book.... ... Read more

Product Description
Hatab's work is more than an interpretative study, inspired by Neitzsche and Heidegger of the historical relationship between myth and philosophy in ancient Greece. Its conclusions go beyond the historical case study, and amount to a defence of the intelligibility of myth against an exclusively rational or objective view of the world. Hatab pleads for a pluralistic notion of truth, one which permits different forms of understanding and surrenders the supposed need for a uniform or even hierarchical conception of truth. The historical displacement of myth by philosopy in ancient Greece is the point of departure. According to Hatab, rationality and science emerged as a revolutionary overthrow of myth - but that revolution is not beyond criticism, for myth presents a meaningful expression of the world, different from, and not always commensurate with, the kind of understanding sought by philosophers. The idea that philosophy has corrected the ignorance of the past is unwarranted; furthermore philosophy continues to exhibit elements of the mythic world from which it emerged. Hatab offers a general analysis of myth and a specific analysis of Greek myth.He distinguishes the different senses of truth found in mytho-poetic and rational-scientific disclosures, and presents an original treatment of Plato and Aristotle, challenging their criticisms of traditional myth. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

myth and philosophy by l. hatab
Excellent, this book by Lawrence Hatab demonstrates a profound understanding of the topic, both from the standpoint of ancient philosophy and of ancient culture.Perhaps, equally as important the writing is extremely clear on a subject that might normally seem arcane for the non-specialist. Finally, and perhaps most of all, MYTH AND PHILOSOPHY combines two topics which should be, in fact, inseparably connected. As the author demonstrates, an understanding of one may be necessary for our understanding of the other. JPG ... Read more

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This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / American / General; ... Read more

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Boethius composed De Consolation Philosophiae in the sixth century A.D. while awaiting death by torture, condemned on a charge of plotting against Gothic rule, which he protested as manifestly unjust. Though a Christian, Boethius details the true end of life as the soul's knowledge of God, and consoles himself with the tenets of Greek philosophy, not with Christian precepts.Written in a form called Meippean Satire that alternates between prose and verse, Boethius' work often consists of a story told by Ovid or Horace to illustrate the philosophy being expounded.The Consolation of Philosophy dominated the intellectual world of the Middle Ages; it inspired writers as diverse Thomas Aquinas, Jean de Meun, and Dante.In England it was rendered into Old English by Alfred the Great, into Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer, and later Queen Elizabeth I made her own translation. The circumstances of composition, the heroic demeanor of the author, and the Meippean texture of part prose, part verse have been a fascination for students of philosophy, literature, and religion ever since. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The One and the Good
_Here you find the unequivocal declaration that not riches, not high position, not fame, not physical pleasure are worth pursuing in-and-of themselves. Such things are of value only if they are obtained in the pursuit of the highest Good. This highest Good is demonstrated to be God. Moreover, Boethius points out that when evil men succeed in obtaining such goals over the righteous, then they cease to truly be men- they are beasts and subhuman. This is a refreshing reminder in the modern world, a world not unlike that of late Roman times.

_All happiness, all worth, all reason for being, lies in the One and the Good. Even when we commit immoral acts, it is a result of ignorance on our part in seeking this ultimate goal. Indeed, to turn from the quest of finding the One is to cease to exist at any meaningful level. There is no "fire and brimstone", or talk of eternal torment in hell here. There doesn't need to be. As long as you willfully or ignorantly stray from the Path then you are in hell. And to not find reconnection with the One and the Good is to cease to exist. All of our earthly existence is for the purpose of reawakening to our true nature. This truth lies within all of us and it is only reached by personal introspection (Know thyself.) Only in this way will we return to the eternal Source that lies beyond time itself.

_The consolation of the Consolatio lies in the fact that suffering serves a purpose if it puts us back on the true Path. Moreover, earthly recognition of virtue is irrelevent. God always recognises the man of virtue if the masses do not.

The Consolation of Philosophy
A classic 6th century philosophical argument between a man sentenced to death and the female spirit Philosophy.It was standard reading during the Middle Ages. ... Read more

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"The Ideas of Socrates" offers a unique interpretation of the ideas (forms, eide) in Plato's writings. In this concise and accessible study, Matthew S. Linck makes four major claims. Firstly, the ideas as Socrates discusses them in the "Phaedo", "Parmenides", and "Symposium" are shown to be integral to the person of Socrates as presented in Plato's dialogues. Secondly, Linck argues that if we take Plato's dialogues as an integrated set of writings, then we must acknowledge that the mature Socrates is perfectly aware of the difficulties entailed in the positing of ideas. Thirdly, the book shows that Socrates' recourse to the ideas is not simply an epistemological issue but one of self-transformation. And finally Linck examines how Socrates relates to the ideas in two ways, one practical, the other speculative. As the only group of Plato's narrated dialogues that are not narrated by Socrates, the "Phaedo", "Parmenides", and "Symposium" constitute a unique collection. These three dialogues also contain accounts of Socrates as a young man, and all of these accounts explicitly discuss the ideas."The Ideas of Socrates" serves as a commentary on the relevant passages of these dialogues and goes on to build up an explicit series of arguments about the ideas that will transform the way in which we approach these key texts. This important new book will be of interest to anyone involved in the study of Ancient Philosophy. ... Read more

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An accessible companion to one of Plato's most important works now in a welcome updated second edition. It leads the reader through Plato's life, the background to the Republic, its text and ideas and its continuing influence on Western thought.
In this second edition of the highly successfulRoutledge Philosophy GuideBook to Plato and the Republic, Nickolas Pappas extends his exploration of the text to include substantial revisions and new material. In addition to the existing text, the chapters on Plato's ethics and politics have been revised and enlarged to include two brand new sections. There is further discussion of Plato on aesthetics including a section of Aristotle's criticism of Plato on beauty.
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Customer Reviews (4)

A must for Plato readers
Nickolas Pappas' book on Plato's Republic adds a unique perspective to the collection of books on Plato and his major political work. Pappas presents this ancient masterpiece with an eye on the modern reader and "present interest." We not only fit the Republic into political thought and practice of the Fifth Century B.C. We also perceive its relevance to today's world.
Instead of a dry, "academic" discussion, the author presents a lively and trenchant analysis that investigates every concept of Plato's work. The book's exhaustive index is an additional aid to the reader. So is the author's concluding section titled "Fundamental Premises in the Republic's Argument." As a teacher of philosophy myself, I consider Pappas' work to be indispensable for my students' comprehension of some of the most intriguing and challenging ideas on government and citizenship ever developed in political thought. Pappas shows clearly why Plato's Republic has endured for over 2,000 years as a blueprint for the critique of politics in any age.

For the busy student
Although Pappas' book on the Republic is well written and fairly detailed, I feel that it adds little to the two standard texts: Julia Annas' and Nicholas White's. In fact Pappas admits in his introduction that he has drawn a lot from these. Pappas' study can be a good choice for the student in a rush, but it is not the best for an in-depth study of the text.

Extremely Useful Tool
I must agree with the reviewers below:this commentary has greatly enhanced my understanding of The Republic.Even when I think I get it on my own, there is always some nuance or other perspective brought to light; sometimes my own ideas are reinforced, which is very reassuring!I will look for books in this series that discuss other philosophical works -- the extra reading is worth the effort.

The best book available for understanding this text
Professor Pappas has written the best book of its kind on this important and often difficult work.To coin a phrase, it really is the Republic "in large letters."I would not try to tackle the forms withoutit. ... Read more

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Generations of philosophers, both ancient and modern, have traced their inspiration back to the Presocratics. Part of the fascination stems from the fact that little of what they wrote survives. Here Osborne invites her readers to dip their toes into the fragmentary remains of thinkers from Thales to Pythagoras, Heraclitus to Protagoras, and to try to reconstruct the moves that they were making, to support stories that Western philosophers and historians of philosophy like to tell about their past.This book covers the invention of western philosophy: introducing to us the first thinkers to explore ideas about the nature of reality, time, and the origin of the universe. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A thought-provoking introduction to the Presocratics
If you want to understand the origins of Western thought, whether science, philosophy or theology, then you must start with the Presocratics.Something very remarkable happened in the Greek world 2,600 years ago; the emergence of speculative intellectual enquiry and reasoned argument.Catherine Osborne provides a readable and lively introduction to these pioneer thinkers.She starts with an account of a discovery of a fragment written by Empedocles, to give the reader an insight into how scholars investigate these early philosophers and the difficulties they face interpreting such scant evidence.Then she proceeds to specific, selected topics and thinkers.So it is not a conventional, chronological account, although she incidentally provides that along the way.To this end, the map, timeline and pronunciation guide at the beginning of the book are extremely useful.If you want a more conventional - and more thorough - introduction, then try Early Greek Philosophy, by J Barnes.

Osborne's tone is occasionally very didactic, and she will sometimes ask a question and leave the reader to think of an answer, so that it feels very much like being in class.Her account of the Sophists is rather partisan (she doesn't seem to like them very much) and the reader should take it as a point of view rather than the last word.But overall, this is a great book, with an informative text and well-chosen illustrations.For many readers, this short account will tell them all they want to know about the beginnings of the Western intellectual tradition.Your next step is Plato and Aristotle.

Approaching the Presocratics from a Different Angle
General Review of Book Series:I have to admit it: I am a fan of these little books. It's my dirty little secret. These short introductions provide one with a pocketsize, portable introduction to a wide variety of topics. With a light tone and a surface skim of the issues, these little guides provide one with the general overview one might expect in a small survey course. Naturally, there are downsides. Are these guides comprehensive? Heavens no! Do they take time to dig deeply into the issues? Not generally. But are they a good resource to use if you want to get your feet wet before you dive in? Yes. When used properly, these little guidebooks can allow what might start out as a casual curiosity to develop into a more in-depth research project. In fact, all of these introductions provide references and suggestions for further reading.

Catherine Osborne's _A Very Short Introduction to Presocratic Philosophy_ is another work, like Julia Annas's _Very Short Introduction to Ancient Philosophy_, that examines its subject matter topically rather than through a chronological account of the various thinkers who fall under this category.Osborne manages to pull it off splendidly, while still providing enough of a timeline in order to develop a sense for the history.Readers who were looking more for "thought summaries" in Annas's work will find it in this introduction, as her focused topic allows for this sort of interpretation.

Osborne's first chapter is dedicated to the process of finding fragmentary evidence and how it is assembled and interpreted by scholars.I found this chapter particularly helpful, especially since it manages to communicate the difficulties that surround Presocratic scholarship.Chapter two addresses what might be called the main thesis of her entire introduction.For a long time now, scholars have organized Presocratic thinkers into a timeline according to Aristotle's observation that they were all striving after first principles (early attempts at cosmology) until Parmenides.However, if we follow this line of reasoning, we become locked into only examining certain thinkers and dismissing much of what they have to say regarding their other philosophical interests.Thus, Osborne vows to chuck the "first principles story" out the window and to examine what other stories are lurking in the fragments of these ancient thinkers.

What follows are a series of topically based chapters, each essentially covering the diverse thought of various thinkers: Zeno; the examination of reality and appearance through Xenophanes, Melissus, and Anaxagoras; Heraclitus; Pythagora; and finally the sophists Protagoras and Gorgias.Osborne's writing is clear and she manages to provide engaging summaries of these thinkers and the wide range of their thought.Additionally, she has provided an excellent bibliography for anyone interested in following up on any one of these topics or thinkers.If you have an interest in Presocratic philosophy, or just want a refresher on what these thinkers had to say, you've come to the right place. ... Read more

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Bridging the gap between political theory, comparative history and government, and constitutional prudence, Rahe challenges prevailing interpretations of ancient Greek republicanism, early modern political thought, and the founding of the American republic. He focuses on the practical consequences of affirming and denying the presumption that humans are political animals able to reason together concerning justice and common good. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An intellectual tour de force
"The Ancien Regime" by Paul A. Rahe is a remarkably astute, compelling and thought-provoking analysis of the political economy of ancient Greece. Written as the first of three volumes about the development of Western political thought and practice, Mr. Rahe's assiduously researched book is intended for educated readers interested in an in-depth, comparative study of ancient and modern republics.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Mr. Rahe's book is how alien ancient Greece was from today's world. Mr. Rahe explains how the Greeks wanted war, not peace; fanaticism, not religious freedom and moderation; consensus, not political expression; insularity (xenophobia), not cultural exchange; poetry, not business; mathematics, not technology; slavery, not human rights; and so on. Mr. Rahe emphasizes how ancient Greece represented a stage in human development where the ethos of the warrior society, as exemplified by Sparta, reigned supreme.

Mr. Rahe explains how the sublimation of the individual to the social needs of the Greek city-state was not theoretical; it was a matter of life and death at a time when the threat of war constantly loomed. In that context, the Aristotlian concept of education as a lived experience is crucial to understanding how the public sphere was defined. Mr. Rahe writes that direct participation in the democratic process was central to the life of Athens' free citizen, who as a 'political animal' could exercise logos and contemplate 'the advantageous, the just, and the good' for the society in which he lived.

Therein lies the rub. Whereas Mr. Rahe rejects class struggle as a tool for assessing an ancient society so unlike our own, is it really that difficult to see how the Augustinian 'concord concerning loved things held in common' that Mr. Rahe cites as the central premise for defining a community might not have been shared in equal measure by the women and slaves of the ancient republic? Indeed, the freedom to engage in politics was made possible only through the unrewarded labors of the oppressed classes who provided for the Athenian and Spartan city-state's material needs. It seems to this reader, at least, that Mr. Rahe could profit by including the struggles of the majority population (as hinted at in Aristophenes' comic play Lysistrata) into his analysis.

Setting this minor concern aside, on the whole Mr. Rahe is an intellectual tour de force. He possesses a deep knowledge of the Western tradition that has few peers. The subsequent volumes in the series build upon the first to present a progressively fascinating story that will introduce you to key insights and ideas from the many dozens of thinkers and philosophers who have shaped the world as we know it today. Whether or not you agree with Mr. Rahe that our modern democracy has been corrupted by a "drift toward a species of soft, administrative despotism", you will be richly rewarded for taking the journey with him.

I highly recommend this book as well as the exceptional Republics Ancient and Modern, Volume II: New Modes and Orders in Early Modern Political Thought andRepublics Ancient and Modern, Volume III: Inventions of Prudence: Constituting the American Regime to everyone.

To Strauss or not to Strauss, part 1
Paul Rahe's Republics Ancient and Modern was originally published in hardback in one volume. For the paperback version published in 1994, he has chosen to split his work into three volumes. Each volume deals with one of the three major time periods on which his work focuses. The first volume deals with the classical Greece city states.
Rahe has two main purposes in these books. His first purpose is to debunk the idea that the American founders were heavily influenced by the classical republican tradition. In fact, Rahe argues that the Constitution was designed in opposition to classical republican ideas.
His second purpose is a methodological one. Rahe is heavily influenced by Leo Struass. It shows in his basic thesis of the war between the ancients and the moderns and it shows in his attempts to reveal the esoteric in many of the writers he discusses.
It also shows in his rejection of historicism and other modern historical methods. Which brings me to one thing that I admire about Rahe. He obviously has methodological bones to pick with Quinton Skinner and the Cambridge School, and with the Marxist approach of, say, the early Eugene Genovese. But he has also read deeply of these and many other writers with whom he disagrees and has learned from them all. Rahe is at one and the same time a very generous and opinionated scholar. And he is phenomenally learned.
In this volume he discusses Homer, Hesiod, Xenophon, Lycurgus, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Polybius, Thucydidus, Euripides, Cicero, Plutarch, Aeschylus, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Isocrates, Pericles, Pindar, ad infinitum. He has read them all, absorbed them all and compared them all.
He then seems to have absorbed anything ever written about all of them. It is overwhelming.
Rahe wants to argue that life in classical Greece was the result of two main influences. The Greeks believed that human beings are political animals possessed of a capacity for logos. In other words, we can reason together and come to agree on what we feel to be "the good, the just and the advantageous". To the Greeks of the democratic city-states, politics was about the communal discourse sustaining the "concord regarding loved things held in common" (Augustine's phrase which is a leitmotif for Rahe). This concord has to be seen as an end in itself, it is not some sort of false consciousness used to legitimate the hegemony of a ruling group.
The other main influence on the Greek city states was the fact that they were nearly always in a state of war (with each other or those pesky Persians) or preparing for war. Thus the Greeks had to foster "homonoia" or "like-mindedness" or solidarity. The way that they came to do this was through both a paideia (education or character formation) and a systemof dispersing honor or recognitions.
Rahe takes Sparta as his case study for his argument. He does so because up until the last century or so, most students of ancient Greece recognized Sparta as being the most representative of the city-states. In many ways, it was what the other city states like Athens or Cornith hoped to achieve.
The end result was an obsession with honor, virtue and with largeness of soul. Everything was subordinate to the requirements of the city. This included family and personal liberty. Liberty for the Greeks was the right to participate in the politics of the city state and to vie for glory. They would never consider allowing someone who was opposed to war to not serve in the ranks of the army. Two of the consequences which Rahe explores was the subjugation of women and the embrace of slavery. Slavery freed the citizen from having to be involved in the making of money.
The personal property of the citizen was not personal. It was expected that it would be used for the good of the city. A man who came from a wealthy family might earn the gratitude of other citizens by providing them with the necessary armaments of the hoplite (foot soldier). They strove to minimize civil strife and to make sure that everyone within the city thought as much alike as was possible. They used pederastry as a means to indoctrinate young men into armed service. As those young men grew older they then would come to take younger men as lovers and so on.
These relationships would then be abandoned in their thirties for married life. But even after marriage, the men were expected to spend most of their time with their hoplite units.
Rahe explains how all this helped to generate the Greek disregard for commerce and for technical innovation. He also talks about the importance of their religion in maintaining the community. He brings out the underlying irony of the basic Greek presumption of humans as being rational political animals. This presumption encourage the development of philosophy which served to critically undermine many of the institutions of the city state. Socrates was executed for good reason. Or so the Athenians believed.
Throughout this volume, Rahe is throwing in Hamilton, Adam Smith and many others into the mix. In fact, I started to notate some of my underlinings with "DBAM" to indicate a passage that noted a difference between the ancients and the moderns. For example,in discussing the attitude of the Greeks toward technological progress, Rahe notes that they viewed it "with a jaundiced eye" because a science pledged to make life easier was a science that would make "soft men" (p.74). To someone like Adam Smith or James Madison, that was exactly the argument in favor of such a science.
I am not a student of ancient Greece. I came to read Rahe to understand more about the founding fathers of this country. But I think that what he has achieved in this first volume of this work is altogether brilliant.
In fact, my major complaint is that it isn't long enough or detailed enough. He sometimes states that he disagrees with another scholar (in his very extensive notes) without going into the dispute thoroughly enough. Another complaint (more of an annoyance)is that he seems to expect the reader to have a rich classical library close to hand. In many of his notes, he will say something like "Consider this passage from Plato's Republic in light of what Cicero had to say here and don't forget that Polybius said something in this book that must be compared with what Xenophon had to say in that passage. After absorbing all that, read what Augustine had to say in this part of The City of God. And then you will see that I am right." Okay, he doesn't ever really say anything like that last part but it is there sometimes between the lines. (See, I am turning into a little Straussian).
But seriously folks, I cannot imagine that anyone has done a better job of explicating how their knowledge of the Ancient Greeks effected the founding fathers. Rahe has given us something strong and rich- not only a good look at what life was like in ancient Sparta but how that effected the men and women who created this country.
In my review of volume 2, I will speak a little more to Rahe's method.


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Gregory Vlastos (1907-1991) was one of the twentieth century's most influential scholars of ancient philosophy. Over a span of more than fifty years, he published essays and book reviews that established his place as a leading authority on early Greek philosophy. The two volumes that comprise Studies in Greek Philosophy include nearly forty contributions by this acknowledged master of the philosophical essay. Many of these pieces are now considered to be classics in the field. Perhaps more than any other modern scholar, Gregory Vlastos was responsible for raising standards of research, analysis, and exposition in classical philosophy to new levels of excellence. His essays have served as paradigms of scholarship for several generations. Available for the first time in a comprehensive collection, these contributions reveal the author's ability to combine the skills of a philosopher, philologist, and historian of ideas in addressing some of the most difficult problems of ancient philosophy. Volume I collects Vlastos's essays on Presocratic philosophy. Wide-ranging concept studies link Greek science, religion, and politics with philosophy. Individual studies illuminate the thought of major philosophers such as Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and Democritus. A magisterial series of studies on Zeno of Elea reveals the author's power in source criticism and logical analysis. Volume II contains essays on the thought of Socrates, Plato, and later thinkers and essays dealing with ethical, social, and political issues as well as metaphysics, science, and the foundations of mathematics. ... Read more

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Plato's repugnant ideas & Vlastos' creative exegesis
Vlastos' book is an example of selective blindness and what I call "creative exegesis," something like reading "I hate democracy!" and concluding, after two or three paragraphs, that the line expresses a deep love for and commitment to democracy. Although Vlastos admits that Plato attacks democracy with cheap shots (coinciding with Popper) he alleges that Plato "knows his own mind well and manages to speak it forcefully in spite of a defective vocabulary," [pp 84-5]. Plato, a great writer and stylist, who could take chap shots at democracy and Pericles because he hated both, needs Vlastos to defend him and argue that he really, really meant something different from what he wrote. Thus, Vlastos manages to wrench, out of sheer inventiveness, Plato's "reference" (inexistent throughout) to equality in Republic, conjuring a great exegetical trick: going to the writer's mind and ignoring the text! So, Vlastos argues that Plato is interested in "impartiality," and equality simply disappears. Vlastos' example of Plato's impartiality? Well, since the Guardians in Plato's city are to be deprived of certain goodies (wealth, women for a while), and the Guardians were to come from the upper echelons of the city and Plato belonged to the upper class, the man is impartial: he was willing to let his group suffer some deprivations, therefore he was impartial.

The entire section on Plato is like that. In order to refute one of Popper's attacks against Plato, Vlastos notes that Popper ignores the term "to one another" in the following sentences: "harmonizing citizens by persuasion and compulsion, making them impart to one another the benefit which each of them can bring to the community." He then goes on for several paragraphs protesting Popper's omission, when Popper clearly identifies "by persuasion AND COMPULSION" as the truly revolting part. And, really, "to one another" in this context does not add or subtract much to the dictatorial ideas that Plato put in Socrates' mouth.

Like so many other scholars, Vlastos simply refused to see what Plato wrote. He translated him, analyzed his texts, and completely misunderstood the deep hatred that Plato felt for most other men, for democracy, for the lower classes, for Pericles, and for the society (Athens) that could produce a system that took his uncle Critias' life (for being a Spartan collaborator and one of the worst of the Thirty Tyrants) and made an uneducated stonemason, a sailor, and Plato himself, equal before the law. Karl Popper nailed Plato dead center. Read Republic, Laws, Statesman, and understand what no amount of creative exegesis or scholarly interpretation can hide: Plato was a horrible thinker with truly frightening ideas (Night Councils, eugenics and racialism, class privileges, destruction of the family, each class in its own station under penalty of death, Justice for a few, etc). This book by Vlastos doesn't add anything to our understanding of Plato, although it is one more brick in the wall that so many intellectuals have erected in adoration of thinkers with absolutely repugnant ideas.

Nonsense on Review
Gibberish, in the nonsense meaning of the word. ... Read more

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Traditional Plato scholarship, in the English-speaking world, has assumed that Platonic dialogues are merely collections of arguments. Inevitably, the question arises: if Plato wanted to present collections of arguments, why did he write dialogues instead of treatises? Concerned about this question, some scholars have been experimenting with other, more contextualized ways of reading the dialogues. This anthology is among the first to present these new approaches as pursued by a variety of scholars. As such, it offers new perspectives on Plato as well as a suggestive view of Plato scholarship as something of a laboratory for historians of philosophy generally. The essays gathered here each examine vital aspects of Plato's many methods, considering his dialogues in relation to Thucydides and Homer, narrative strategies and medical practice, images and metaphors. They offer surprising new research into such much-studied works as "The Republic" as well as revealing views of lesser-known dialogues like the Cratylus and Philebus. With reference to thinkers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, and Sartre, the authors place the Platonic dialogues in an illuminating historical context.Together, their essays should reinvigorate the scholarly examination of the way Plato's dialogues "work" - and should prompt a reconsideration of how the form of Plato's philosophical writing bears on the Platonic conception of philosophy. ... Read more

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Long neglected and unappreciated, the philosophy of the Greek and Roman worlds--from the last days of Aristotle (c. 320 BC) until 100 B.C.--has over the last decade received a considerable amount of renewed scholarly attention. This history is organized by subject, rather than chronologically or by philosophical school, with sections on logic, epistemology, physics and metaphysics, ethics and politics. Written by specialists, it is intended to be a reference for any student of ancient philosophy. Greek and Latin are used sparingly and always translated in the main text. ... Read more

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Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy
An impressive volume in terms of the depth and scope.A "must have" for anybody interested in the subject, and based upon the surge of books on Hellenistic philosophy in the last decade there will be a goodnumber of people among those "must haves."Even though it isprimarily a reference book, many will want to read it from cover to cover. One disappointment, however: the editors seem to disply the usual academicprejudices against the more "wayward" Hellenistic thinkers, suchas those who gave serious consideration to astrology and magic. One wouldexpect a fuller accounting of Hellenistic astronomy, at least, if theastrology is too much for them. The volume is also surprisingly neglectful(a mere five pages) toward mathematics and its relationship to the amplytreated subjects of Logic, Ethics, and Physics. ... Read more

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Examines and evaluates Socrates' role as an educator in Plato's dialogues.

Despite his ceaseless efforts to purge his fellow citizens of their unfounded opinions and to bring them to care for what he believes to be the most important things, Plato's Socrates rarely succeeds in his pedagogical project with the characters he encounters. This is in striking contrast to the historical Socrates, who spawned the careers of Plato, Xenophon, and other authors of Socratic dialogues. Through an examination of Socratic pedagogy under its most propitious conditions, focusing on a narrow class of dialogues featuring Lysis and Alcibiades, this book answers the question: "why does Plato portray his divinely appointed gadfly as such a dramatic failure?" ... Read more

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"Desjardins' conclusion, that the Theaetetus really doespoint to a particular theory of knowledge, certainly will becontroversial, since for many people the idea that the Theaetetusfails to define knowledge is the cornerstone of their interpretationof Plato's later philosophical thought. But whatever one thinks aboutthe conclusion, it must be agreed that the manner in which it isdefended is intrinsically important. Desjardins starts from theunassailable premise that the dialogues are internally unified, andthat everything in the dialogues is there for a reason. Her method,then, is to show how some of the features of the dialogue that areusually not taken very seriously actually are very important. Ofcourse, she is not the only scholar taking this sort of tack, but whatshe makes of the various elements of the Theaetetus is a mostimpressive construction. ... Read more