Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics

By Gisela Striker

Book Overview

The doctrines of the Hellenistic Schools - Epicureans, Stoics, and Sceptics - are known to have had a formative influence on later thought, but because the primary sources are lost, they have to be reconstructed from later reports. This important collection of essays by one of the foremost interpreters of Hellenistic philosophy focuses on key questions in epistemology and ethics debated by Greek and Roman philosophers of the Hellenistic period. There is currently a new awareness of the great interest and influence of Hellenistic philosophy. In bringing together a major collection of scholarly and interpretative studies by a leading figure in the field, this volume is a boon to philosophers and classicists who work on the Hellenistic period, but also to students keen to enrich their understanding of the history of epistemology and ethics.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521476410
• ISBN13: 9780521476416
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 356 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A genuine goldmine

This collection of essays is a goldmine for the student of Ancient philosophy, indeed for all students of either Classics or Philosophy. Here you will find important essays on the ancient sceptics, Epicurus, and the Stoics by one of the world's leading authorities on Hellenistic philosophy. As Strikes explains in the preface, no work of Hellenistic philosophy survives intact today. Our sources are mere fragments in addition to the reports of later writers. For this reason, there is more guesswork involved in reconstructing the theories of the Hellenistic philosophers than for example interpreting Plato (whose works have all survived as far as we know). And this guesswork, Striker explains, will force the scholar of Hellenistic philosophy to treat the philosophers not in isolation from their social, political or literary context. Nevertheless, the essays in this book are written by a philosopher as philosophy. They focus on philosophical theories and the arguments of the philosophers. But, moreover, as Striker axplains, they also discuss "the merits and weaknesses of the Hellenistic theories". While sensitive to the literary and social context of Hellenistic philosophy, Striker attempts "to find the most plausible or coherent way of fitting them together" from the point of view of a modern philosoper. This is a work of philosophy as well as being a work on philosophy. This is scholarship on Ancient philosophy at its finest, erudite and meticulous but not lacking in philosophical rigour and depth in the least. A veritable treasure.