Given its brevity, Plato's Meno covers an astonishingly wide array of topics: politics, education, virtue, definition, philosophical method, mathematics, the nature and acquisition of knowledge and immortality. Its treatment of these, though profound, is tantalisingly short, leaving the reader with many unresolved questions. This book confronts the dialogue's many enigmas and attempts to solve them in a way that is both lucid and sympathetic to Plato's philosophy. Reading the dialogue as a whole, it explains how different arguments are related to (...) one another and how the interplay between characters is connected to the philosophical content of the work. In a new departure, this book's exploration focuses primarily on the content and coherence of the dialogue in its own right and not merely in the context of other dialogues, making it required reading for all students of Plato, be they from the world of classics or philosophy. (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of these parts is now available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. The Sophists assesses the contribution of individuals like Protagoras, Gorgias and Hippias to (...) the extraordinary intellectual and moral fermant in fifth-century Athens. They questioned the bases of morality, religion and organized society itself and the nature of knowledge and language; they initiated a whole series of important and continuing debates, and they provoked Socrates and Plato to a major restatement and defence of traditional values. (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of the two parts is available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. Socrates dominated the controversies of this period, as he has dominated the subsequent (...) history of western philosophy. He was the first to identify and grapple with some of the most intractable and persistent logical and philosophical problems; but he was also and has remained a highly controversial figure because of his extraordinary personal qualities and his remarkable career. Professor Guthrie offers a balanced and comprehensive picture of the man, his life, and his thought. (shrink)

The work of Professor Jaeger on the Aristotelian metaphysics, and its modification by the late Hans von Arnim, have raised many new points of the greatest interest, and may, I hope, be considered as having opened up a large and fascinating new field for discussion rather than as having closed the matter. It is a subject which must be considered as a whole. There would be little profit in writing short notes on isolated points in the arguments of the two (...) scholars. Anyone who, possessed of some previous acquaintance with the Aristotelian corpus, reads their work is inevitably stimulated to return to Aristotle with his mind full of fresh ideas. If after a re-examination of the texts he feels he has a different story to tell, he must tell it for himself. That is my excuse for an account which must include much which was always known and much which has arisen out of the work of Jaeger and von Arnim. My conclusions are not the same as theirs, and the argument must stand or fall as a consistent whole. (shrink)

All volumes of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek philosophy have won their due acclaim. The most striking merits of Guthrie's work are his mastery of a tremendous range of ancient literature and modern scholarship, his fairness and balance of judgement and the lucidity and precision of his English prose. He has achieved clarity and comprehensiveness.

The work of Professor Jaeger on the Aristotelian metaphysics, and its modification by the late Hans von Arnim, have raised many new points of the greatest interest, and may, I hope, be considered as having opened up a large and fascinating new field for discussion rather than as having closed the matter. It is a subject which must be considered as a whole. There would be little profit in writing short notes on isolated points in the arguments of the two (...) scholars. Anyone who, possessed of some previous acquaintance with the Aristotelian corpus, reads their work is inevitably stimulated to return to Aristotle with his mind full of fresh ideas. If after a re-examination of the texts he feels he has a different story to tell, he must tell it for himself. That is my excuse for an account which must include much which was always known and much which has arisen out of the work of Jaeger and von Arnim. My conclusions are not the same as theirs, and the argument must stand or fall as a consistent whole. (shrink)

All volumes of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek philosophy have won their due acclaim. The most striking merits of Guthrie's work are his mastery of a tremendous range of ancient literature and modern scholarship, his fairness and balance of judgement and the lucidity and precision of his English prose. He has achieved clarity and comprehensiveness.

The fourth volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought deals exclusively with Plato. Plato, however, so prolific a writer, so profoundly original in his thought, and so colossal an influence on the later history of philosophy, that it has not been possible to confine him to one volume. Volume IV therefore offers a general introduction to his life and writings, and covers the so-called 'early' and 'middle' periods of his philosophical development.

The following remarks are frankly speculative, and their subject one on which certainty is unlikely to be attained. It seems worth offering them because, though the conclusions are only tentative, they were reached by way of some observations which have a certain interest of their own. Anaximenes, we are told, said that the sun is flat like a leaf, and that it and the other heavenly bodies ‘ride upon’ the air owing to their flat shape, as does the earth also.

With an new foreword by James Warren Long renowned as one of the clearest and best introductions to ancient Greek philosophy for non-specialists, W.K.C Guthrie s The Greek Philosophers offers us a brilliant insight into the hidden foundations of Greek philosophy foundations that underpin Western thought today. Guthrie explores the great age of Greek Philosophy from Thales to Aristotle whilst combining comprehensiveness with brevity. He unpacks the ideas and arguments of Plato and Aristotle in the light of their (...) predecessors rather than their successors and describes the characteristic features of the Greek way of thinking, emphasising what he calls the cultural soil of their ideas. He also highlights the achievements of thinkers such as Pythagoras, who in contemporary accounts of Greek philosophy are frequently overlooked. Combining philosophical insight and historical sensitivity, The Greek Philosophers offers newcomers a brilliant introduction to the greatest thinkers in ancient Greek philosophy and the very origins of Western thought. ". (shrink)

All volumes of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek philosophy have won their due acclaim. The most striking merits of Guthrie's work are his mastery of a tremendous range of ancient literature and modern scholarship, his fairness and balance of judgement and the lucidity and precision of his English prose. He has achieved clarity and comprehensiveness.

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of the two parts is available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. Socrates dominated the controversies of this period, as he has dominated the subsequent (...) history of western philosophy. He was the first to identify and grapple with some of the most intractable and persistent logical and philosophical problems; but he was also and has remained a highly controversial figure because of his extraordinary personal qualities and his remarkable career. Professor Guthrie offers a balanced and comprehensive picture of the man, his life, and his thought. (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of these parts is now available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. The Sophists assesses the contribution of individuals like Protagoras, Gorgias and Hippias to (...) the extraordinary intellectual and moral fermant in fifth-century Athens. They questioned the bases of morality, religion and organized society itself and the nature of knowledge and language; they initiated a whole series of important and continuing debates, and they provoked Socrates and Plato to a major restatement and defence of traditional values. (shrink)