Companions to Ancient Thought - Böcker

This volume deals with Epistemology. The period from the sixth century BC to the second and third centuries AD was one of the most fertile for the theory of knowledge, and the range of 'epistemic states' explored in the ancient texts is much wider than those to be found in contemporary discussions of epistemology or cognition. Greek philosophers approached these problems in a great variety of ways, from the extreme relativism of Protagoras to the scepticism of the Pyrrhonists, and the contributors demonstrate both the familiarity and novelty of this range of views in their critical essays.

This second Companion deals with the ancient theories of the psyche. The essays range over more than eight hundred years of psychological enquiry and provide critical analyses not only of the ancient discussions of the nature of the psyche and its states, but of such central topics as perception, subjectivity, the explanation of action, and what it is to be a person. In examining the wide variety of the different psychological theories offered by the ancient thinkers, from the increasingly complex materialism of the Presocratics and Hellenistics to the dualism of Plato and Plotinus, the collection demonstrates that psychology had become a wide-ranging and sophisticated discipline long before Descartes. The essays will be of interest not only to ancient philosophers but also to all those studying psychology and its history.

This third Companion To Ancient Thought is devoted to ancient theories of language. The chapters range over more than eight hundred years of philosophical enquiry, and provide critical analyses of all the principal accounts of how it is that language can have meaning and how we can come to acquire linguistic understanding. The discussions move from the naturalism examined in Plato's Cratylus to the sophisticated theories of the Hellenistic schools and the work of St Augustine. The relations between thought about language and metaphysics, philosophy of mind and the development of grammar are also explored.

This second Companion deals with the ancient theories of the psyche. The essays range over more than eight hundred years of psychological enquiry and provide critical analyses not only of the ancient discussions of the nature of the psyche and its states, but of such central topics as perception, subjectivity, the explanation of action, and what it is to be a person. In examining the wide variety of the different psychological theories offered by the ancient thinkers, from the increasingly complex materialism of the Presocratics and Hellenistics to the dualism of Plato and Plotinus, the collection demonstrates that psychology had become a wide-ranging and sophisticated discipline long before Descartes. The essays will be of interest not only to ancient philosophers but also to all those studying psychology and its history.