Collected Papers – serie

For about a decade Nicholas Rescher directed the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Philosophy of Science and he has published instructive studies in this field since the 1950’s. Some dozen of the contributions to the field are published in the present volume, and they combine to illustrate his characteristic approach of blending empirical data with philosophical theorizing.

This volume contains the collected papers of Albert Henrichs on numerous subjects in ancient Greek myth and religion.What was ancient Greek religion really like? What is the reality of belief and action that lies behind the unwieldy sources, which stem from vast areas and epochs of the ancient world? What is the meaning, intended and otherwise, of religious action and speech in ancient Greece? Who were the Greek gods, how were they worshipped, and how were they viewed by those who worshipped them?One of the leading students of ancient Greek religion over the past five decades, Albert Henrichs, the Eliot Professor of Greek Literature at Harvard University, combines wide and deep learning, a pragmatic, incisive approach to the sources, and an apt use of comparative perspectives. Henrichs breaks new ground in discussing sacrifice, libation, cultic identity, religious action and speech, epiphany, and the personalities of the gods. Special attention is devoted to ancient Greek sources on the ancient Persian prophet Mani, founder of Manichaeism.As a group, Albert Henrichs’ papers on Greek religion offer a basic education on Greek myth and religion and constitute a blueprint for serious study of the subject.

Albert Henrichs’ important and wide-ranging work on the Greek god Dionysos is well known to classical philologists and to all those interested in Greek culture and its modern reception. Fifteen fundamental studies of the most fascinating and compelling of Greek gods are reprinted in this third volume of his Collected Papers, together with a comprehensive index making the riches of Henrichs’ scholarship more readily accessible. The volume will thus become a basic work of reference. The papers are organised in four groups dealing with the identity and nature of Dionysos; his myths, cults, and iconography; maenads and maenadic ritual; and modern reception and understanding of Dionysos and the Dionysiac. Among the papers included are “Changing Dionysiac Identities,” “Myth Visualised: Dionysos and His Circle in Sixth-Century Attic Vase-Painting,” “Between Country and City: Cultic Dimensions of Dionysos in Athens and Attica,” “Der rasende Gott: Zur Psychologie des Dionysos and des Dionysischen in Mythos und Literatur,” “Dionysische Imaginationswelten: Wein, Tanz, Erotik,” “Greek Maenadism from Olympias to Messalina,” and “Loss of Self, Suffering, Violence: The Modern View of Dionysos from Nietsche to Girard.”