Studies how religious and ethical concerns are an integral and structuring part of the physical system of Empedocles.

Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study in the philosophy of perception written in the medium of historiography. He considers the phenomenology and metaphysics of sensory presentation through the examination of an ancient aporia. Specifically, he argues that a puzzle about perception at a distance is behind Empedocles' theory of vision. Empedocles conceives of perception as a mode of material assimilation, but this raises a puzzle about color vision, since color vision seems to present colors that inhere in distant objects. But if the colors inhere in distant objects how can they be taken in by the organ of sight and so be palpable to sense? Aristotle purports to resolve this puzzle in his definition of perception as the assimilation of sensible form without the matter of the perceived particular. Aristotle explicitly criticizes Empedocles, though he is keen to retain the idea that perception is a mode of assimilation, if not a material mode. Aristotle's notorious definition has long puzzled commentators. Kalderon shows how, read in light of Empedoclean puzzlement about the sensory presentation of remote objects, Aristotle's definition of perception can be better understood. Moreover, when so read, the resulting conception of perception is both attractive and defensible.

The essays in this volume treat a wide variety of fundamental topics and problems in ancient Greek philosophy. The scope of the section on pre-Socratic thought ranges over the views which these thinkers have on such areas of concern as religion, natural philosophy and science, cosmic periods, the nature of elements, theory of names, the concept of plurality, and the philosophy of mind. The essays dealing with the Platonic dialogues examine with unusual care a great number of central themes and discuss them in considerable depth: problems in language and logic, myth, reason, hypothesis, eros, friendship, reason, morality, society, art, the nature of soul, and immortality. In addition, they offer fresh discussions on a number of basic morphological, methodological, and philological issues related to philosophical arguments and introduce new aspects for a critical reexamination of controversies surrounding the doctrines and the authenticity of certain Platonic works. The essays on the philosophy of Aristotle are closely reasoned analyses of such basic themes as the universality of the sensible, the nature of kinesis, the problem of future contingencies, the meaning of qualitative change, the doctrine of phantasia, the essence of intelligence, and the metaphysical foundations for the ethical life. The essays on post-Aristotelian developments in ancient philosophy offer challenging and well-documented discussions on topics in the history of ancient logic, categorical thought, the ethical doctrines of ancient Scepticism, epistemological issues in the physical theory of the Epicureans, and basic concepts in the metaphysics of the neo-platonists.

Although the fifth century B.C. marks the beginning of Greek historiography, the Greek historians claimed the ability to cite dates for events occurring and personages living before the fifth century B.C. as well as to correct each others' dates in detail. Their work was summarized in the Chronicle of Eusebius, and, through translations, became part of the accepted historic body of knowledge in Europe and the Near East. How did the Greek historians arrive at precise year-dates for events to which there were no contemporary witnesses? Why did different historians arrive at different dates for the same event? Dr. Miller, in this carefully organized and highly readable work, demonstrates remarkable knowledge of the primary sources in a difficult area of Greek history in her attempt to penetrate beyond extant source to the original--now lost--material from which the historians of antiquity derived their records. This is a model of the art of historiographic discussion of demographic data--a major step forward in scholarship dealing with generations in antiquity. Her work has major implications not only for the study of the wide ranges of ancient history treated in this book, but also for examinations of demographical data available from other periods. Another volume by the same author continuing her studies in chronography, The Thalassocracies, is now in preparation.

This revised edition of The Poem of Empedocles (1992) integrates substantial new material from a recently discovered papyrus containing evidence of over seventy lines or part lines of poetry, of which more than fifty are both new and usable.