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Plutarch of Chaeronea was by no means an armchair philosopher. He believed in the necessity for a philosopher to affect the lives of his fellow citizens. That urge inspired many of his writings to meet what he considered people's true needs. Although these writings on practical ethics illustrate in various ways Plutarch's authorial talents and raise many challenging questions (regarding their overall structure, content, purpose, and underlying philosophical and social presuppositions), they have attracted only limited scholarly attention.Virtues for the People’s collected essays deal with these questions from different perspectives and throw a new light upon this multifaceted domain of Plutarch's thinking and writing. Special points of interest are the concept of ‘popular philosophy' itself and its implications, its dependence on a more theoretical philosophical background, and the importance of moral progress, the therapy of wickedness, and the common experiences of everyday life.

Classics --- Classical Greek philosophy --- intellectual history

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In his Quaestiones naturales, Plutarch unmistakably demonstrates a huge interest in the world of natural phenomena. The work of this famous intellectual and philosopher from Chaeronea consists of forty-one natural problems that address a wide variety of questions, sometimes rather peculiar ones, pertaining to ancient Greek physics, including problems related to the fields of zoology, botany, meteorology and their respective subdisciplines. By providing a thorough study of and commentary on this generally neglected text, written by one of the most influential and prolific writers from Antiquity, this book contributes to our better understanding of Plutarch’s natural scientific programme and the condition and role of ancient natural science in the Roman Imperial Era in general.

Classics --- Classical Greek philosophy --- Intellectual History

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Mythodologies challenges the implied methodology in contemporary studies in the humanities. We claim, at times, that we gather facts or what we will call evidence, and from that form hypotheses and conclusions. Of course, we recognize that the sum total of evidence for any argument is beyond comprehension; therefore, we construct, and we claim, preliminary hypotheses, perhaps to organize the chaos of evidence, or perhaps simply to find it; we might then see (we claim) whether that evidence challenges our tentative hypotheses. Ideally, we could work this way. Yet the history of scholarship and our own practices suggest we do nothing of the kind. Rather, we work the way we teach our composition students to write: choose or construct a thesis, then invent the evidence to support it. This book has three parts, examining such methods and pseudo-methods of invention in medieval studies, bibliography, and editing. Part One, “Noster Chaucer,” looks at examples in Chaucer studies, such as the notion that Chaucer wrote iambic pentameter, and the definition of a canon in Chaucer. “Our” Chaucer has, it seems, little to do with Chaucer himself, and in constructing this entity, Chaucerians are engaged largely in self-validation of their own tradition. Part Two, “Bibliography and Book History,” consists of three studies in the field of bibliography: the recent rise in studies of annotations; the implications of presumably neutral terminology in editing, a case-study in cataloguing. Part Three, “Cacophonies: A Bibliographical Rondo,” is a series of brief studies extending these critiques to other areas in the humanities. It seems not to matter what we talk about: meter, book history, the sex life of bonobos. In all of these discussions, we see the persistence of error, the intractability of uncritical assumptions, and the dominance of authority over evidence.

medieval studies, Chaucer, book history, intellectual history, bibliography

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"Anarchism and religion have historically had an uneasy relationship. Indeed, representatives of both sides have regularly insisted on the fundamental incompatibility of anarchist and religious ideas and practices. Yet, ever since the emergence of anarchism as an intellectual and political movement, a considerable number of religious anarchists have insisted that their religious tradition necessarily implies an anarchist political stance. Their stories are finally gaining increasing public and scholarly attention. Reflecting both a rise of interest in anarchist ideas and activism on the one hand, and the revival of religious ideas and movements in the political sphere on the other, this book examines a range of examples of overlaps and contestations between the two from a diverse range of academic perspectives.
The first pioneering volume of Essays in Anarchism & Religion comprises eight essays from leading international scholars on topics ranging from the anarchism of the historical Jesus to Zen Buddhism and the philosophies of Max Stirner and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
In a world where political ideas increasingly matter once more, and religion is an increasingly visible aspect of global political life, these essays offer scholarly analysis of overlooked activists, ideas and movements, and as such reveal the possibility of a powerful critique of contemporary global society.
This book series is being funded via a crowdfunding campaign. For more information, or to make a donation for the next volume, please visit the funding page. This scheme ensures that the content will remain fully open access. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/essays-in-anarchism-and-religion/#/"

anarchism --- theology --- world history --- intellectual history --- religious anarchism --- religion and politics

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When “The Clarion of Syria” was penned, between September 1860 and April 1861, its anonymous author—identified only as “a patriot”—had just witnessed his homeland undergo unprecedented violence in what many today consider Lebanon’s first civil war. Butrus al-Bustani, the author, wrote a series of pamphlets to his fellow Syrians that became a key text of the nineteenth-century literary revival movement known as the Nahda. They addressed an array of universally resonant and locally relevant themes that render the pamphlets pertinent beyond their immediate context. With a style oscillating between Paulinian sermon and Socratic dialogue, the author ponders the meaning of civil war in relation to religion, politics, morality, society, and civilization. Above all, the text was an anti-sectarian clarion call to build a cohesive and “civilized” Syrian society in place of what the author considered a community gripped by the most pernicious of conflicts, violent fanaticism and factionalism. Rereading the pamphlets in the context of today’s political violence in war-torn Syria and elsewhere in the Arab world helps us gain a critical and historical perspective on (anti-)sectarianism, conflict resolution, Western interventionism, and national reconciliation. This translation thereby makes an important historical document accessible for the first time to an English audience.

Butrus al-Bustani --- Syria --- Lebanon --- civil war --- Ottoman reform --- Arab Nahda --- sectarianism --- nationalism --- translation --- intellectual history