Method and Metaphysics Essays in Ancient Philosophy I [Hardcover]

Method and Metaphysicspresents twenty-six essays in ancient philosophy by Jonathan Barnes, one of the most admired and influential scholars of his generation. The essays span four decades of his career, and are drawn from a wide variety of sources: many of them will be relatively unknown even to specialists in ancient philosophy. Several essays are now translated from the original French and made available in English for the first time; others have been substantially revised for republication here.

The volume opens with eight essays about the interpretation of ancient philosophical texts, and about the relationship between philosophy and its history. The next five essays examine the methods of ancient philosophers. The third section comprises thirteen essays about metaphysical topics, from the Presocratics to the late Platonists. This collection will be a rich feast for students and scholars of ancient philosophy.
Preface
1. Ancient philosophers
2. The history of philosophy
3. Philosophy within quotation marks?
4. Anglophone attitudes
5. Brentano's Aristotle
6. Heidegger in the cave
7. 'There was an old person from Tyre'
8. The Presocratics in context
9. Argument in ancient philosophy
10. Philosophy and dialectic
11. Aristotle and the methods of ethics
12. Metacommentary
13. An introduction to Aspasius
14. Parmenides and the Eleatic One
15. Reason and necessity in Leucippus
16. Plato's cyclical argument
17. Death and the philosopher
18. Aristotelian arithmetic
19. The principle of plenitude
20. 'Aristotle's opinion concerning destiny and what is up to us'
21. 'Belief is up to us'
22. The same again: the Stoics and eternal recurrence
23. Bits and pieces
24. Partial wholes
25. 'Drei Sonnen sahe ich': Syrianus and astronomy
26. Immaterial causes
Bibliography
Indexes

Jonathan Barneswas educated at the City of London School and at Balliol Collel£~