Our Ancient Wars: Rethinking War through the Classics

Many famous texts from classical antiquity—by historians like Thucydides, tragedians like Sophocles and Euripides, the comic poet Aristophanes, the philosopher Plato, and, above all, Homer—present powerful and profound accounts of wartime experience, both on and off the battlefield. These texts also provide useful ways of thinking about the complexities and consequences of wars throughout history, and the concept of war broadly construed, providing vital new perspectives on conflict in our own era.Our Ancient Wars features essays by top scholars from across academic disciplines—classicists and historians, philosophers and political theorists, literary scholars, some with firsthand experience of war and some without—engaging with classical texts to understand how differently they were read in other times and places. Contributors articulate difficult but necessary questions about contemporary conceptions of war and conflict.Contributors include Victor Caston, Page duBois, Susanne Gödde, Peter Meineck, Sara Monoson, David Potter, Kurt Raaflaub, Arlene Saxonhouse, Seth Schein, Nancy Sherman, Hans van Wees, Silke-Maria Weineck, and Paul Woodruff.

Literature & Fiction

Caston, Victor

Weineck, Silke-Maria

History & Criticism

University of Michigan Press

Many famous texts from classical antiquity—by historians like Thucydides, tragedians like Sophocles and Euripides, the comic poet Aristophanes, the philosopher Plato, and, above all, Homer—present powerful and profound accounts of wartime experience, both on and off the battlefield. These texts also provide useful ways of thinking about the complexities and consequences of wars throughout history, and the concept of war broadly construed, providing vital new perspectives on conflict in our own era. Our Ancient Wars features essays by top scholars from across academic disciplines—classicists and historians, philosophers and political theorists, literary scholars, some with firsthand experience of war and some without—engaging with classical texts to understand how differently they were read in other times and places. Contributors articulate difficult but necessary questions about contemporary conceptions of war and conflict. Contributors include Victor Caston, Page duBois, Susanne Gödde, Peter Meineck, Sara Monoson, David Potter, Kurt Raaflaub, Arlene Saxonhouse, Seth Schein, Nancy Sherman, Hans van Wees, Silke-Maria Weineck, and Paul Woodruff.

The commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias on Aristotle's Prior Analytics 1.8-22 is the main ancient commentary, by the 'greatest' commentator, on the chapters of the Prior Analytics in which Aristotle invented modal logic - the logic of propositions about what is necessary or contingent (possible). In this volume, which covers chapters 1.8-13, Alexander of Aphrodisias reaches the chapter in which Aristotle discusses the notion of contingency. Also included in this volume is Alexander's commentary on that part of Prior Analytics 1.17 which explains the conversion of contingent propositions (the rest of 1.17 is included in the second volume of Mueller's translation). Aristotle also invented the syllogism, a style of argument involving two premises and a conclusion. Modal propositions can be deployed in syllogism, and in the chapters included in this volume Aristotle discusses syllogisms consisting of two necessary propositions as well as the more controversial ones containing one necessary and one non-modal premiss. The discussion of syllogisms containing contingent propositions is reserved for Volume 2. In each volume, Ian Mueller provides a comprehensive explanation of Alexander's commentary on modal logic as a whole.

Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotle Prior Analytics: 1.8-13 (with 1.17, 36b35-37a31) (Ancient Commentators on Aristotle)

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Bristol Classical Press

Around 200 AD, the greatest defender and interpreter of Aristotle within his school, Alexander of Aphrodisias, composed his own book On the Soul, partly following the pattern of Aristotle's.In the first half, translated in Part I, he discusses the soul as the form of the body, and the idea of parts or powers that constitute the soul of living things, including the two lowest powers: nutrition and perception. In the second half, to be translated in Part II, he discusses perception, representation, desire, understanding and - a notion emphasised by the Stoics - the governing part of the soul. He takes the soul to consist of these powers, which supervene on the mixture of the body's elemental ingredients, just as inanimate powers like buoyancy or lightness can supervene on other qualities. They are new, emergent causal powers of the living thing, which do not belong to the constituent ingredients of the body in themselves.Through his notion of emergence, he seeks to steer between the Platonic dualism of soul and body and the extreme materialism of his Stoic rivals.

Alexander of Aphrodisias: On the Soul: Part I: Soul as Form of the Body, Parts of the Soul, Nourishment, and Perception (Ancient Commentators on Aristotle)

Essays & Correspondence

Bloomsbury Academic

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Books by Caston, Victor

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Caston, Victor. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Our Ancient Wars: Rethinking War through the Classics

Our Ancient Wars: Rethinking War through the Classics

Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotle Prior Analytics: 1.8-13 (with 1.17, 36b35-37a31) (Ancient Commentators on Aristotle)

Alexander of Aphrodisias: On the Soul: Part I: Soul as Form of the Body, Parts of the Soul, Nourishment, and Perception (Ancient Commentators on Aristotle)

Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotle Prior Analytics: 1.8-13 (with 1.17, 36b35-37a31) (Ancient Commentators on Aristotle)