Argues that outdated institutional structures and higher educational philosophies are negatively contrasting with significant changes in today's faculties and student bodies with a result that higher education is more competitive and less ...

Pragmatism has been called America's only major contribution to philosophy. But since its birth was announced a century ago in 1898 by William James, pragmatism has played a vital role in almost every area of American intellectual and cultural life, inspiring judges, educators, politicians, poets, and social prophets. Now the major texts of American pragmatism, from William James and John Dewey to Richard Rorty and Cornel West, have been brought together and reprinted unabridged. From the first generation of pragmatists, including (...) the Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and the founder of semiotics, Charles Sanders Peirce, to the leading figures in the contemporary pragmatist revival, including the philosopher Hilary Putnam, the jurist Richard Posner, and the literary critic Richard Poirier, all the contributors to this volume are remarkable for the wit and vigor of their prose and the mind-clearing force of their ideas. Edited and with an Introduction by Louis Menand, Pragmatism: A Reader will provide both the general reader and the student of American culture with excitement and pleasure. (shrink)

Doctorow, Denis Donoghue, Gerald Holton, and David Richards, America in Theory examines the extent to which our perceptions of the past have dictated, and should continue to dictate, the way we address the problems of the present. The essays consider general issues--can we base public policy on an "original intent" of the Framers? Is there an "American way"? How do you reconcile the tension between a fixed tradition and a pluralistic nation? How do our current concerns with theories of interpretation (...) shape our reading of the constitution and a reconsideration of the past? Norman Dorsen points out that many recent policy debates have reached an impasse because opposing forces base their arguments on contradictory interpretations of the American past. And John Brademas, former U.S. Representative and current President of New York University, traces the history of federal support for education and offers a penetrating critique of Reagan's attempts to curtail this support. (shrink)

The paper examines the surviving references to the setting of the rapes in New Comedy. It argues that the fact that rapes are commonly set in the course of nocturnal festival activities should not be seen merely as a convenient plot device. By using Menander's Epitrepontes as a case study, the paper suggests that there is a close relationship between the character of the festivals where rapes are set and a major theme in the plays themselves: namely, the maturation (...) of the young protagonists and their transition into adulthood. The paper also offers a reassessment of the evidence we have for the Tauropolia—the Attic festival where the rape is set in the Epitrepontes. (shrink)

Menander's lost comedyThaiswith its famous protagonist, thehetairalover of Ptolemy I Soter and perhaps Alexander himself, was plainly well known at Rome, and is alluded to several times in Latin poetry of the Augustan and later periods, as Ariana Traill has shown. My purpose here is to argue that the literary characterisation of Thais in Menander's play underlies certain aspects of Lesbia as presented in the poetry of Catullus; that Catullus' poetry uses the plays of Menander has been (...) demonstrated by Richard Thomas, arguing that Catullus 8 shows clear traces of Demea's monologue in theSamia(325–56). (shrink)

In Aristotle and Menander on the Ethics of Understanding , Valeria Cinaglia offers a parallel study of Menander’s New Comedy and Aristotle’s philosophy and she explores the depth and implications of their analogies in subjects ranging from epistemology and psychology to ethics.

‘Menander has set up a confrontation between this law [the law about epikleroi] and love… He wants the audience to regard the law as stupid and wrong… Surely one of Menander's purposes in writing this play was to make the Athenians consider seriously whether the law ought to be changed.’ Thus Professor D. M. MacDowell in the concluding paragraph of his article ‘Love versus the Law: an Essay on Menander's Aspis’. A similar view was already implicit in (...) E. Karabelias' treatment of the play as indicative of the general attitude to this law in Athens in Menander's day: ‘A n'en point douter, l'épiclérat est ressenti, á l'epoque de Ménandre, comme une anomalie intolérable pour les mceurs de la societe athénienne à la fin du ive s.av.n.è L'épiclérat est odieux et ridicule… L'hostilité envers l'épiclérat est done un signe des temps’. And Professor E. G. Turner has written: ‘it is hard to imagine that the institution of the epiclerate emerged in good standing from this derisory treatment’. (shrink)

‘Menander has set up a confrontation between this law [the law about epikleroi] and love… He wants the audience to regard the law as stupid and wrong… Surely one of Menander's purposes in writing this play was to make the Athenians consider seriously whether the law ought to be changed.’ Thus Professor D. M. MacDowell in the concluding paragraph of his article ‘Love versus the Law: an Essay on Menander's Aspis’. A similar view was already implicit in (...) E. Karabelias' treatment of the play as indicative of the general attitude to this law in Athens in Menander's day: ‘A n'en point douter, l'épiclérat est ressenti, á l'epoque de Ménandre, comme une anomalie intolérable pour les mceurs de la societe athénienne à la fin du ive s.av.n.è L'épiclérat est odieux et ridicule… L'hostilité envers l'épiclérat est done un signe des temps’. And Professor E. G. Turner has written: ‘it is hard to imagine that the institution of the epiclerate emerged in good standing from this derisory treatment’. (shrink)

This Oxford Classical Text contains all the extant fragments of Menander's work, including one complete play, the Dyskolos, and considerable fragments from fourteen other plays. It is fully up to date, with an appendix containing the latest discoveries.

In a recent article, I discussed vocative uses of οὗτος in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, showing that there are two types of vocatives: ‘calls’, which are utterance-initial and directed at one whose attention is turned elsewhere, and ‘addresses’, which are non-initial, employed by a speaker who is already conversing with a hearer, and typically indicate a speaker's annoyance at the hearer. Menander uses οὗτος as a vocative in the same ways as the other dramatic poets, (...) but there is one instance in Dyscolus that has been routinely misconstrued and merits clarification. (shrink)

In Dyskolos, produced in 316 B.C.E., Menander implied his support for Demetrios of Phaleron and the Macedonian-backed oligarchy Demetrios headed as Epimelētēs. The play's mixed-class marriages involved only families that remained enfranchised under the oligarchy's wealth requirement. Thus, they did not indicate support for democratic egalitarianism, but citizen solidarity under the oligarchy. The play's ethical theme, epimeleia, solicitous care of those in need, implied support for the Epimelētēs personally. Knemon's rage evoked the mob that had condemned the previous oligarch (...) Phokion in 318. Knemon's subsequent catastrophe warned the dēmos that they must acquiesce in Macedonian hegemony. (shrink)

DR. G. Zuntz's excellent paper on these verses in Proc. Brit. Acad. xlii , 209–46, deserves all our thanks for the clarity and good sense of its exposition, and for clearing away much unnecessary comment that has been encumbering the fragment, especially Bignone's theory that it derives its philosophy directly from Aristotle's Protreptikos, with Körte's supplement that it is indivisible—that there is no break at v. 7; see Körte's Menandri quae supersunt , ii. 147–8. There is, however, I think, room (...) for further comment on Zuntz's interpretation of the lines, and on his view that die fragment known as Papyrus Didotiana b may belong to the same play, Hypobolimaios. (shrink)