Contemporary encounters with ancient practice / edited by Abraham Jacob Greenstine, Ryan J. Johnson and Dave Mesing.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Greenstine, Abraham Jacob, editor.

Johnson, Ryan J., editor.

Mesing, Dave, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civilization, Modern--Ancient influences.

Civilization, Modern.

Philosophy, Ancient.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 374 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2025.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This volume collects written and visual works that engage with opportunities of ancient practice from within the continental tradition. More than surveying ancient ethical or political ideas, the chapters develop divergent yet resonant approaches to concrete ways of living, acting, reflecting and being with others found in antiquity and its reception. The practices involve the habits, exercises, activities, philosophies and lives of today's readers; and so most chapters encourage the reader to do something, to put the ideas into practice. Withstanding a temptation to simply theorise practice, it insists on the embodied and shared materiality of living in singular times and places. The practical encounters between this book and its readers range across antiquity and the contemporary world, from political theatre, casuistry and slavery to book production, friendship and our own mortality. Through thinker-practitioner collaborations, occasional pieces, exhortations to readers and recipes for action, this book strives to articulate and cultivate old and new practices for our lives.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Note on the Text

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: The Use and Abuse of Antiquity for Life

PART I. ENCOUNTERING ANCIENT PRACTICE

1. Situations

1 The Cosmology of Prudence

2 The Pleasures of the Problem: Path, Decision and Annulment in Parmenides and Badiou

3 The Strangeness of Reflexivity

4 The Stoic Toolbox for Ethical Mathematics: Stoic Ethics and Moral Calculation Rules

2. Conjunctions

5 Plato's Lysis: The Dilemma of Friendship and Love

6 Aristotle on the Praxis of Life

7 Theory and Politics in Plato's Republic

8 Aristophanic Comedy and Its Democratic Permutations: Fidelity in Spirit? Or in Content and Form?

PART II. PRACTICES OF ENCOUNTERING ANTIQUITY

3. Fragments

9 Forms of Memory

10 Anthropocene Fragments: A Sapphic Thought Collage

11 Exiles and Deserts

12 Black Dionysus

4. Accumulations

13 Photographing with the Muses

14 How to Read the Nature of Things

15 Eternal Recurrence and a History of Racism

16 On Lucretius

Index

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 17 Jul 2026).

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

ISBN:

9781399505338

1399505335