Greek Thought

A Guide to Classical Knowledge

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Edited by Jacques Brunschwig and G. E. R. Lloyd

Harvard University Press

Due/Published October 2000, 1024 pages, cloth

ISBN 067400261x

Ancient Greek thought is the essential wellspring from which the intellectual, ethical, and political civilization of the West draws and to which, even today, we repeatedly return. In more than sixty essays by an international team of scholars, this volume explores the full breadth and reach of Greek thought--investigating what the Greeks knew as well as what they thought about what they knew, and what they believed, invented, and understood about the conditions and possibilities of knowing. Calling attention to the characteristic reflexivity of Greek thought, the analysis in this book reminds us of what our own reflections owe to theirs.

In sections devoted to philosophy, politics, the pursuit of knowledge, major thinkers, and schools of thought, this work shows us the Greeks looking at themselves, establishing the terms for understanding life, language, production, and action. The authors evoke not history, but the stories the Greeks told themselves about history; not their poetry, but their poetics; not their speeches, but their rhetoric. Essays that survey political, scientific, and philosophical ideas, such as those on Utopia and the Critique of Politics, Observation and Research, and Ethics; others on specific fields from Astronomy and History to Mathematics and Medicine; new perspectives on major figures, from Anaxagoras to Zeno of Elea; studies of core traditions from the Milesians to the various versions of Platonism: together these offer a sense of the unquenchable thirst for knowledge that marked Greek civilization--and that Aristotle considered a natural and universal trait of humankind. With thirty-two pages of color illustrations, this work conveys the splendor and vitality of the Greek intellectual adventure.

Review

What truly distinguishes Greek thought, the contributors to this collection suggest, is its reflexivity. Greek thinkers from all fields were constantly critiquing and building upon the work of their predecessors and questioning their own practices. Thus, they were not content to simply create a democracy: they explored the nature of political life and the theoretical justifications of their institutions. In this ambitious collection, a group of international scholars discusses the full breadth and reach of Greek thinkers and how they thought about what they knew. The opening section looks at philosophy, and specifically, the role carved out for the philosopher, the various fields within the discipline (epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, etc.). The contributors also discuss the legacy of Greek philosophy throughout history. In other sections the essays turn to writings on politics and how the Greeks viewed the pursuit of knowledge in astronomy, logic, poetics, rhetoric, religion, and other fields. Greek Thought concludes with essays on some of the major thinkers and schools of thought from the period: Archimedes. Aristotle, Euclid, Glaen, Plutarch, Thucydides, Stoicism, the Skeptics, and more. This very impressive book is much more than an overview of classical knowledge, rather, it provides a fascinating assessment of the entire project of Greek thought.

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