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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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The book presents Chinese historical thinking by four articles. It is covered the ancient origin and the development to modernity and is commented by seven international experts. Presentation and comments find ›second thought‹ by three other international scholars, and at the end the whole discussion find an answer by the authors of the first presentations. The complex structure of argumentation documents not only various ideas and interpretations of Chinese historical thinking, but represent the possibilities and problems of intercultural comparison at the same time.

Philosophy --- chinese --- intellectual history --- theory of history --- humanism

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In this far-reaching essay, historian Michael Edward Moore examines modernity as an historical epoch following the end of the medieval period — and as a “messianic concept of time.” In the early twentieth century, a debate over the meaning and origins of modernity unfolded among the philosophers Ernst Cassirer, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hans Blumenberg. These thinkers tried to resolve the puzzle of the fifteenth-century master Nicholas of Cusa. Was Cusanus the last great medieval thinker, his ideas a summa of medieval tradition? Or was he a mysterious epochal figure, seated at one end of the bridge leading to modern thought? Nicholas of Cusa lived during a time of historical and existential crisis, or kairos, when medieval governments and cherished sources of unity were shaken. Likewise, the debate over his significance took place during a later phase of crisis for Europe, in the decades before and after the Second World War, when the collapse of European civilization was witnessed. Moore argues that modernity, so intently examined as an historical and spiritual problem, has significance for our contemporary sense of crisis.

Middle Ages --- modernity --- Nicholas of Cusa --- intellectual history --- philosophy

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This collection of essays aims to trace the exchanges, responses, affinities and fissures between the worlds of Sanskrit and Tamil literary cultures in the medieval period. The literati who produced the works in these languages moved freely between domains that earlier Indological scholarship has tended to compartmentalise. The eleven studies presented in this volume strive to move beyond this narrow perspective and thus do justice to the richness and complexity of the cultural synthesis that took shape in South India in this period. By looking at the articulation of identities, practices, and discourses in texts of a range of genres composed in Tamil and Sanskrit (as well as Prakrit and Malayalam), these essays supply a picture of South India in the medieval period that is unique in its historical depth and conceptual complexity and demonstrate innovative ways to investigate and problematise cross-cultural phenomena, while suggesting how much work yet remains to be done.

Sanskrit --- Tamil --- medieval period --- cultural history --- intellectual history --- transculturation