In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy by Daniel Garber, Michael AyersDonald RutherfordDaniel Garber, Michael Ayers, editors. The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 1616. Cloth, $175.Over a decade in preparation, this latest addition to the Cambridge History of Philosophy is an enormous achievement—both in its size and the contribution it makes to redefining [End Page 165] the landscape of (...) seventeenth-century philosophy. The editors make no bones about their intention to rewrite the history of early modern philosophy, reversing the trend dominant through much of this century of reading seventeenth-century philosophers in the light of twentienth-century “interests and preconceptions” (4). As they note, the movement to historicize our understanding of seventeenth-century philosophy has been underway for some time in the English-speaking world, furthered in many cases by contributors to these volumes. From this perspective, the present work represents, if not the culmination, at least a progress report on these efforts and the success they have achieved.As in previous volumes of the Cambridge History, the subject matter is treated thematically. Consistent with their larger goal, the editors have further attempted to organize the volumes in a way that remains faithful to the expectations of the period. Part I sets the stage with chapters that establish the larger social and historical context: “The institutional setting” (Richard Tuck); “The intellectual setting” (Stephen Menn); and “European responses to non-European culture: China” (D.E. Mungello). For the rest, the editors write, “the structure of the collection corresponds to one way, at any rate, in which an educated European of the seventeenth century might have organized the domain of philosophy” (2). First comes logic (including method and general ontology); then, the primary categories of being (God, body, soul); finally, the basic operations of the soul (understanding, will, action), whose treatment comprehends the topics of epistemology and ethics.Part II, “Logic, Language, and Abstract Objects,” opens with three short chapters by Gabriel Nuchelmans that survey the terrain of seventeenth-century logic according to the traditional divisions of term, proposition/judgment, and argument. These are followed by contributions on “Method and the study of nature” (Peter Dear); “Universal, essences, and abstract entities” (Martha Bolton); and “Individuation” (Udo Thiel).The discussion of metaphysics proper begins in Part III with the most fundamental being: God. Included here are chapters that examine specific theological issues—“The idea of God” (Jean-Luc Marion); “Proofs of the existence of God” (Jean-Robert Armogathe); “The Cartesian dialectic of creation” (Thomas M. Lennon)—as well as ones that deal more broadly with the crucial connection between philosophy and religion: “The relation between theology and philosophy” (Nicholas Jolley) and “The religious background of seventeenth-century philosophy” (Richard Popkin).Part IV, “Body and the Physical World,” forms the single largest part of the book and its intellectual core. It opens with two chapters—“The scholastic background” (Roger Ariew and Alan Gabbey) and “The occultist tradition and its critics” (Brian Copenhaver)—that effectively mark out the boundaries of the “new philosophy” that emerges in conjunction with the development of seventeenth-century science. These are followed by a series of chapters that examine particular features of that philosophy: “Doctrines of explanation in late scholasticism and in the mechanical philosophy” (Steven Nadler); “New doctrines of body and its powers, place, and space” (Daniel Garber, John Henry, Lynn Joy, and Alan Gabbey); “Knowledge of the existence of body” (Charles McCracken); “New doctrines of motion” (Alan Gabbey); “Laws of nature” (J.R. Milton); and “The mathematical realm of nature” (Michael Mahoney). [End Page 166]The final section of Volume I takes up the third main category of being: “Spirit.” It begins with Daniel Garber’s overview of the positions of the major figures, “Soul and mind: Life and thought in the seventeenth century,” followed by chapters on “Knowledge of the soul” (Charles McCracken); “Mind-body problems” (Daniel Garber and Margaret Wilson); “Personal identity” (Udo Thiel); and “The passions in metaphysics and the theory of action” (Susan James).Volume II of the History is devoted to topics that, in one way or another, elaborate operations of the soul. Part V, “The... (shrink)

The first set in Routledge's new _Critical Reviews_ series focuses on the period from the founding of the _Edinburgh Review_ to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Exhibiting all the richness that characterises economic writing of the period, the 95 articles collected here include pieces by Brougham, Horner, Southey and James Mill. The subjects addressed include: * international trade * banking and currency questions * the poor laws * the national debt * population Unlike many other recently published collections (...) of economic articles this work includes appropriate explanatory notes and a long introduction placing the anthology within the context of the times. (shrink)

These hours of backward clearness come to all men and women, once at least, when they read the past in the light of the present, with the reasons of things, like unobserved finger-posts, protruding where they never saw them before. The journey behind them is mapped out, and figured with its false steps, its wrong observations, all its infatuated, deluded geography.Henry James,The Bostonians, ch. xxxixThis paper is intended to contribute to the study of both Homer and Greek tragedy, and (...) more particularly to the study of the influence of the epic upon the later poets. The current revival of interest among English scholars in the poetic qualities of the Homeric poems must be welcomed by all who care for the continuing survival and propagation of classical literature. The renewed emphasis on the validity of literary criticism as applied to presumably oral texts may encourage a more positive appreciation of the subtlety of Homeric narrative techniques, and of the coherent plan which unifies each poem. The aim of this paper is to focus attention on a number of elements in Greek tragedy which are already present in Homer, and especially on the way in which these poets exploit the theme of knowledge—knowledge of one's future, knowledge of one's circumstances, knowledge of oneself. Recent scholarship on tragedy has paid much more attention to literary criticism in general and to poetic irony in particular: these insights can also illuminate the epic. Conversely, the renewed interest in Homer's structural and thematic complexity should also enrich the study of the tragedians, his true heirs. (shrink)

I am the first to admit that my career has not followed a conventional path. But in talking to my colleagues, I am not sure that there is a conventional path to an academic career. This retrospective is both a look at how the profession has changed over the forty years since I began graduate school in the late 1970s, and a reflection on my own trajectory within that profession. Historiographical references reflect my own views and are not meant to (...) be comprehensive. I first discovered the history of science as an undergraduate history major at Connecticut College in the early 1970s. The course of physics for non-majors I took with David Fenton was based on Harvard Project Physics, which had been developed in the 1960s by two professors of science education, F. James Rutherford and Fletcher G. Watson, and the historian of science Gerald Holton. We actually wrote term papers for the class; mine was on the theory that Stonehenge was an astronomical observatory. (shrink)

Written in a jargon-free way, Body Matters provides a clear and accessible phenomenological critique of core assumptions in mainstream biomedicine and explores ways in which health and illness are experienced and interpreted differently in various socio-historical situations. By drawing on the disciplines of literature, cultural anthropology, sociology, medical history, and philosophy, the authors attempt to dismantle common presuppositions we have about human afflictions and examine how the methods of phenomenology open up new ways to interpret the body and to re-envision (...) therapy. (shrink)

This is the first volume of a two-volume set containing the most important secondary literature on Hume on Religion (Volume 2, to be published in August 1996, deals with general remarks on Hume and Natural Religion). Focusing on responses to the Essay on Miracles , the material included in this volume ranges from 1751 to 1883. Authors include: T. Rutherford, William Adams, John Leland, George Campbell, Revd. S. Vince, John Hollis, Revd. James Somerville, Dr. Wately, Revd. A. C. (...) L. D'Arblay, Revd. Francis Kilvert, Malthus, Joseph Napier, Joseph Mazzini Wheeler, Sir Edmund Beckett, James McCosh, and Huxley. (shrink)

The phenomenological movement begins in the Prolegomena to Husserl’s Logical Investigations as a philosophy of logic. Despite this, remarkably little attention has been paid to Husserl’s arguments in the Prolegomena in the contemporary philosophy of logic. In particular, the literature spawned by Gilbert Harman’s work on the normative status of logic is almost silent on Husserl’s contribution to this topic. I begin by raising a worry for Husserl’s conception of ‘pure logic’ similar to Harman’s challenge to explain the connection between (...) logic and reasoning. If logic is the study of the forms of all possible theories, it will include the study of many logical consequence relations; by what criteria, then, should we select one consequence relation as correct? I consider how Husserl might respond to this worry by looking to his late account of the ‘genealogy of logic’ in connection with Gurwitsch’s claim that ‘[i]t is to prepredicative perceptual experience … that one must return for a radical clarification and for the definitive justification of logic’. Drawing also on Sartre and Heidegger, I consider how prepredicative experience might constrain or guide our selection of a logical consequence relation and our understanding of connectives like implication and negation. (shrink)

Ethics appears early in the life of a culture. It is not the creation of philosophers. Many philosophers today think that their job is to take the ethics of their society in hand, analyse it into parts, purge the bad ideas, and organize the good into a systematic moral theory. The philosophers' ethics that results is likely to be very different from the culture's raw ethics and, they think, being better, should replace it. But few of us, even among philosophers, (...) settle real-life moral questions by consulting the Categorical Imperative or the Principle of Utility, largely because, if we do, we often do not trust the outcome or cannot even reliably enough decide what it is. By contrast, James Griffin explores the question what philosophers can reasonably expect to contribute to normative ethics or to the ethics of a culture. Griffin argues that moral philosophers must tailor their work to what ordinary humans' motivational capabilities, and he offers a new account of moral deliberation. (shrink)

This generous omnium-gatherum brings together all the writings William James published that have not appeared in previous volumes of this definitive edition of ...

Does traditional Christianity involve paradoxical doctrines, that is, doctrines that present the appearance (at least) of logical inconsistency? If so, what is the nature of these paradoxes and why do they arise? What is the relationship between "paradox" and "mystery" in theological theorizing? And what are the implications for the rationality, or otherwise, of orthodox Christian beliefs? In Paradox in Christian Theology, James Anderson argues that the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation, as derived from Scripture and formulated (...) in the ecumenical creeds, are indeed paradoxical. But this conclusion, he contends, need not imply that Christians who believe these doctrines are irrational in doing so. In support of this claim, Anderson develops and defends a model of understanding paradoxical Christian doctrines according to which the presence of such doctrines is unsurprising and adherence to paradoxical doctrines cannot be considered as a serious intellectual obstacle to belief in Christianity. The case presented in this book has significant implications for the practice of systematic theology, biblical exegesis, and Christian apologetics. (shrink)

This intriguing volume provides a thorough examination of the historical roots of global climate change as a field of inquiry, from the Enlightenment to the late twentieth century. Based on primary and archival sources, the book is filled with interesting perspectives on what people have understood, experienced, and feared about the climate and its changes in the past. Chapters explore climate and culture in Enlightenment thought; climate debates in early America; the development of international networks of observation; the scientific transformation (...) of climate discourse; and early contributions to understanding terrestrial temperature changes, infrared radiation, and the carbon dioxide theory of climate. But perhaps most important, this book shows what a study of the past has to offer the interdisciplinary investigation of current environmental problems. (shrink)

Kuhn closed the Introduction to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions with what was clearly intended as a rhetorical question: How could history of science fail to be a source of phenomena to which theories about knowledge may legitimately be asked to apply? (Kuhn 1970, 9) This paper argues that there is a more fruitful way of conceiving the relationship between a historical and philosophical study of science, which is dubbed the 'phylogenetic' approach. I sketch an example of this approach, and (...) take a first pass at an abstract characterization of the method. (shrink)

This article is an introduction to a special issue on ‘Contexts of Religious Tolerance: New Perspectives from Early Modern Britain and Beyond’, which contains essays on the contributions to the debates on tolerance by non-canonical philosophers and theologians, mainly from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scotland and England. Among the studied authors are the Aberdeen Doctors, Samuel Rutherford, James Dundas, John Finch, George Keith, John Simson, Archibald Campbell, Francis Hutcheson, George Turnbull and John Witherspoon. The introduction draws attention to several (...) methodological points connected to the decision to look at the debates on tolerance through the prism of rarely studied authors. It then presents the essays, which offer novel perspectives by analysing and contextualising political, religious and moral treatments of tolerance. These are tied especially to debates on the articles of faith and on their status, on confessions of faith and their role in the quest for orthodoxy, on liberty of conscience, and on the relation between church and state. (shrink)

Does Spinoza present philosophy as the preserve of an elite, while condemning the uneducated to a false though palliative form of ‘true religion’? Some commentators have thought so, but this contribution aims to show that they are mistaken. The form of religious life that Spinoza recommends creates the political and epistemological conditions for a gradual transition to philosophical understanding, so that true religion and philosophy are in practice inseparable.

The objectivity of Bayesian induction relies on the ability of evidence to produce a convergence to agreement among agents who initially disagree about the plausibilities of hypotheses. I will describe three sorts of Bayesian convergence. The first reduces the objectivity of inductions about simple "occurrent events" to the objectivity of posterior probabilities for theoretical hypotheses. The second reveals that evidence will generally induce converge to agreement among agents on the posterior probabilities of theories only if the convergence is 0 or (...) 1. The third establishes conditions under which evidence will very probably compel posterior probabilities of theories to converge to 0 or 1. (shrink)

That art historians have felt it necessary to emulate this effort to express personal input can be explained by our need to gain credibility in that aspect of our work that is indistinguishable in method from other historical research: the reconstruction, through documents and artifacts, of past events, conditions, and attitudes. Most of us simply ignore the ambivalence of our position; I cannot recall having heard or read discussions of it, but it is bound to creep out from under the (...) rug. If a student asks me why I think Rembrandt and Picasso are good artists—which most students are too well trained to do—and if I answer that judgments of value are not discussed by historians, I am within my rights, like a witness at a congressional hearing claiming the protection of the Fifth Amendment. But I ought to be found in contempt of the classroom. And if I try to answer seriously, I ought not begin by saying that I chose Rembrandt because he has been acknowledged by generations to have been a great artist but rather because I find more to think, feel, and speak about in his works than in those of, for example, Nicolaes Maes, and because I believe that the student stands to gain more by looking at them. I want the student to have the most rewarding experiences, and, as a result, perhaps to learn to make value discriminations of his own—even ones different from mine and from the so-called consensus of history—and ultimately to explain the grounds on which he makes them. This means having to know and to explain what I think is "rewarding." James S. Ackerman, professor of fine arts at Harvard University, is the author of, among other works, The Architecture of Michelangelo, Art and Archaeology, The Cortile del Belvedere, and Palladio. He is currently writing on Renaissance art, science, and naturalism and making a film on Andrea Palladio and his influence in America. "Transactions in Architectural Design," his previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, appeared in the Winter 1974 issue. (shrink)

An overview of the main areas of epistemological debate to which experimental philosophers have been contributing and the larger, philosophical challenges these contributions have raised.

Paul Oskar Kristeller famously argued that the modern ‘ system of the arts ’ did not emerge until the mid-eighteenth century, in the work of Charles Batteux. On this view, the modern conception of the fine arts had no parallel in the ancient world, the middle-ages or the modern period prior to Batteux. This paper argues that Kristeller was wrong. The ancient conception of the imitative arts completely overlaps with Batteux’s fine arts : poetry, painting, music, sculpture, and dance. Writers (...) from the sixteenth century on adopted the ancient conception of the imitative arts and anticipated the views of Batteux by 200 years. Batteux simply popularized the rubric ‘fine arts ’. (shrink)

Boredom has been characterized as a crisis of meaning, a failure of attention, and a call to action. Yet as a self-regulatory signal writ-large, we are still left with the question of what makes any given boredom episode meaningless, disengaging, or a prompt to act. We propose that boredom is an affective signal that we have deviated from an optimal (‘Goldilocks’) zone of cognitive engagement. Such deviations may be due to a perceived lack of meaning, arise as a consequence of (...) struggles we are experiencing in attending to a task, or be interpreted as a blunt call to find something different to engage with. Thus, the key to understanding boredom lies in its role in keeping us cognitively engaged. -/- . (shrink)

This book offers a systematic examination of the place of religion within Kant's major writings. Kant is often thought to be highly reductionistic with regard to religion - as though religion simply provides the unsophisticated with colourful representations of moral lessons that reason alone could grasp. James DiCenso's rich and innovative discussion shows how Kant's theory of religion in fact emerges directly from his epistemology, ethics and political theory, and how it serves his larger political and ethical projects of (...) restructuring institutions and modifying political attitudes towards greater autonomy. It also illustrates the continuing relevance of Kant's ideas for addressing issues of religion and politics that remain pressing in the contemporary world, such as just laws, transparency in the public sphere and other ethical and political concerns. The book will be valuable for a wide range of readers who are interested in Kant's thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kenneth Burke on Dialectical-Rhetorical TranscendenceJames P. ZappenKenneth Burke's concept of rhetoric is complex and elusive, increasingly so as it becomes intertwined and infused with dialectic in the long third part of A Rhetoric of Motives and in some essays published shortly thereafter (1951; 1955; 1969b [1950], 183–333).1 The connection between Burke's rhetoric and dialectic is well established (Brummett 1995; Crusius 1986; 1999, 120–21; Wess 1996, 136–216; Wolin 2001, 143–204), (...) and his concept of rhetoric as identification is widely recognized for its broadening of the traditional view of rhetoric as persuasion to include identification as a means of inducing cooperation and building communities (Crusius 1999, 120–21; Hauser 1986, 120–37; Henderson 1988, 33–34). Timothy W. Crusius establishes the fundamental relationship between A Grammar of Motives and A Rhetoric of Motives as dialectical and rhetorical counterparts and explains both the strengths and the limitations of identification as a means of inducing cooperation (1986). According to Crusius, dialectic explores the substance of a person or thing—all that "supports or 'substands'" it—from multiple and shifting perspectives, viewing human action dramatistically as act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose (24–28). Rhetoric complements dialectic and its multiple dramatistic perspectives by promoting "identification" and "cooperation," building "a community, a sense of oneness amid diversity of conflicting interests and values" (28–30). As Crusius and others observe, [End Page 279] however, identification as a means of inducing cooperation is inherently limited since any identification necessarily also entails a division: "Every 'us' requires a 'them'" (29; Biesecker 1997, 47–49; Wolin 2001, 177–78). Thus, for example, while Christianity provides a powerful instance of identification, it also provides an equally powerful illustration of its division from other peoples—"Satan and his counter-kingdom," "the Turk infidel," and "the pagan hordes of Asia" (28–29). For Burke, these divisions were largely political (George and Selzer 2007, 16–57, 110–32; Lentricchia 1983, 21–38). For us, they are differences of gender, culture, and economic and social class (Condit 1992), compounded by political, economic, and religious differences on a global scale. By this account, the first two parts of the Rhetoric offer at best a partial solution to the problem. The third part challenges and mystifies and in itself seems to offer little more than a utopian vision without purpose or outcome (Crusius 1999, 120–21; Wess 1996, 211–16; Wolin 2001, 201–3).2 Situated within the broader context of Burke's work, however, the third part seems rather to offer a bold and creative solution to the problem by merging dialectic and rhetoric with dialogue and poetic myth in a dialectical-rhetorical transcendence—a concept that merits a place alongside identification as a major contribution to rhetorical theory (1969b, 197–208, 221–33).3Burke's concept of dialectical-rhetorical transcendence developed over the course of more than twenty years, from the mid 1930s to the mid 1950s and beyond. Its sources are partly Hegelian and Marxist but increasingly Platonic,4 as Burke comes to perceive the Hegelian and Marxist concepts of history as part of the problem of competing ideologies and his version of Platonic transcendence as the solution—a solution that leads, on the one hand, toward "pure persuasion" and "ultimate identification" and, on the other, toward the pragmatics of a new rhetoric and a revolutionary program of lifelong education (1951; 1955; 1969b, 267–94, 328–33; Biesecker 1997, 43–47; Lee 2004; Wess 1996, 203–5, 211–16; Wolin 2001, 201–3). In the midst of the political divisiveness of the 1930s, Burke glimpsed in Hegel and even Marx the possibility of bridging conflicting ideologies via transcendence, but he turned to Plato in the Grammar and again in the Rhetoric to explain the processes by which opposing ideas and ideologies might merge in transcendent visions or myths that encompass what he perceived to be partial and partisan points of view. In the Grammar, his solution is dialectical—a merger of opposing ideas at higher levels of generalization through a process of linguistic abstraction and transformation that respects a diversity of individual interests, even as it seeks to transcend them in larger [End... (shrink)

Animals are usually considered to lack the status of autonomous agents. Nevertheless, they do appear to make ostensible choices. This article considers whether, and how, I should respect animals' choices. I propose a concept of volitionality which can be respected if, and insofar as, doing so is in the best interests of the animal. Applying that concept, I will argue that an animals' choices be respected when the relevant human decision maker's capacities to decide are potentially challenged or compromised. For (...) example, it will be best to respect the animals' choice when the human decision maker: lacks accurate knowledge of the animal's subjective experiences; does not know what will lead to desirable experiences or allow for the avoidance of undesirable ones; is biased; is less aware of the animal's specific situation; cannot appreciate all elements comprehensively, including considering any value to the animal being allowed to make and implement a choice, such as where a lack of control or liberty would be unpleasant or where an animal would usefully learn from the process of choice-making; and when the animal's choice is achievable. This additionally suggests that we may often beneficially choose to set up situations that empower animals to make better choices. (shrink)

Among the more significant developments of the twentieth century, the widespread attention given to 'rights issues' must surely justify ranking it somewhere near the top. Never before has the issue of rights attracted such a wide audience or stirred so much controversy. Until very recently 'rights' were traditionally recognized as attributable only to humans. Today, we increasingly are hearing a call to extend 'rights' to the nonhuman animal and, on occasion, to the environment. In this book, James B. Reichmann, (...) S.J., undertakes an investigation of the metaethical grounds of 'rights' theory, with special focus on the controversial issue of whether creatures other than humans can and should be considered true subjects of 'rights.' He contends that before assigning rights to this or that individual or group, whether human or not, we need to be very clear about what it is we are assigning, to whom, and why. The book argues forcefully that the various recent efforts to build a case supporting animal and environmental 'rights' fail in their quest, and that any such effort resting on a Darwinian evolutionary base is likewise condemned to fail. In furtherance of this claim the author first investigates life phenomena, followed by a detailed comparative study of knowing, communicating and doing, as these are observed in the human and the nonhuman animal. This in turn is followed by an overview of diverse views advanced by contemporary environmental ethicists and animal 'rights' advocates, including Peter Singer, Tom Regan, J. Baird Callicott, Laura Westra, and Don E. Marietta, Jr. Representative though doubtless provocative conclusions drawn from this study include the claims that: (1) Classic Darwinian theory provides no admissable premise from which to derive a theory of inherent, inalienable rights. (2) No satisfactory explanation of the origin of rights and obligation can derive save from within the context of natural law theory. (3) The human person alone unqualifiedly possesses rights. (4) The view that vegetarianism is an ethical mandate is neither compatible with the Christian world view, nor philosophically sound. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: James B. Reichmann, S.J., is professor emeritus of philosophy at Seattle University where he continues to teach. (shrink)

Most disciplines make use of thought experiments, but physics and philosophy lead the pack with heavy dependence upon them. Often this is for conceptual clarification, but occasionally they provide real theoretical advances. In spite of their importance, however, thought experirnents have received rather little attention as a topic in their own right until recently. The situation has improved in the past few years, but a mere generation ago the entire published literature on thought experiments could have been mastered in a (...) long weekend. Now the subject is beginning to flourish. Given the relative newness of the field, it might be useful to have several examples at one’s finger tips, so a number of great ones will be described. Attention will also be drawn outside physics and philosophy. In mathematics there is something analogous to thought experiments -- visual reasoning and picture proofs. I will look briefly at this class of thought experiments and try using them to make a case for possibly settling the continuum hypothesis. After this, I will return to thought experiments in the sciences and propose an account of how they work. Finally, I will end with a sketch of a topic I am currently working on, a kind of progress report which, I hope, will be an inducement to others. (shrink)

The Alexandrian emphasis on smallness, elegance, and slightness at the expense of grand themes in major poetic genres was not preciosity for its own sake: although the poetry was written by and for scholars, it had much larger sources than the bibliothecal context in which it was composed. Since the time of the classical poets, much had changed. Earlier Greek poetry was an intimate part of the life of the city-state, written for its religious occasions and performed by its citizens. (...) But eh conquests of Alexander had altered the structure and the boundaries of the Greek world to an astonishing degree. Alexandria, the center of the poetic culture of the new age, was a city that had not even existed at the time of Euripides; it was in Egypt, not in Greece, and was a huge, polyglot community. As immigrants immersed in a new, impersonal, and bureaucratic society, the poets not unreasonably sought out what was small, intimate, and personal in their verses. The heroes of early Greek poetry are larger than life; those of Alexandrian poetry are life-size. They are human, like us; they have a childhood and an old age; they are afraid or in love or caught in a rainstorm. It was simply one way of reducing the world to more manageable dimensions. At the same time, the new world of Alexandria needed a new poetry. To continue writing epics about a mythology that seemed very far away was senseless; it was impossible to recapture either the style or the immediacy of Homer, lyric poetry, or Attic tragedy. The scholar-poets of Alexandria admired the literature of classical Greece; for them Homer was incomparable and inimitable, to be studied—but not to be copied. Far better, then, to find a new voice on a more manageable scale: instead of oral epic, erudite epyllion; instead of lyric, epigram; instead of tragedy, mime. The poets of an urban and unheroic world might long for but could never re-create the grandeur of the past. James E. G. Zetzel is associate professor of classics at Princeton University and editor of the Transactions of the American Philological Association. He is the author of Latin Textual Criticism in Antiquity and, with Anthony T. Grafton and Glenn W. Most, has translated Friedrich August Wolf’s Prolegomena ad Homerum. (shrink)

A clear and compelling introduction to social phenomenology, this volume examines the experiential features of the basic things comprising our life-world.