Anthony Long

This paper addresses two interrelated questions. The first question is our relation, as the modern westerners that we are, to Greek philosophy in its historical context. The second question is the relation between Greek philosophical conceptions of the self and what we moderns take ourselves to be when we try to think about the world objectively. My inquiry is motivated by the belief that what a philosopher of the distant past can say to us is influenced by our own independent viewpoint, a viewpoint which may enable us to use that philosopher as a contributor to debates of which he himself had no inkling. Greek philosophers were innocent of the Cartesian tradition and the problems it has generated concerning the connection, if any, between an individual subject of consciousness and the so-called 'external world'. However, I argue that early Greek speculation about the physical world was inward as well as outward looking. Their attempts to think about the world objectively raised issues about the nature of the self — the inquiring (or non-inquiring) subject — issues that, in the case of Heraclitus, are quite explicit. Following up my earlier point about linking modern viewpoints to ancient insights, I make a comparison beween parts of Thomas Nagel's book, The View from Nowhere, and the philosophy of Heraclitus. In particular, I argue that Heraclitus adumbrates a concept analogous to Nagel's 'objective self and shares some of Nagel's interests in integrating that perspective with the practice of being a person in the everyday world. In the final part of the paper I comment briefly on Plato's and Aristotle's criticism of Heraclitus, a criticism that, from a modern perspective, seems to me misconceived. I also offer the Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was influenced by Heraclitus, as an excellent example of what it could mean to combine an objective viewpoint with one's ordinary humanity. More generally, the paper may be read as a defence of objectivity — not in the sense that we can hope to understand the world independently of our own concepts or culture (I sidestep any questions about objective truth), but in the sense, rather, that trying to get beyond an irreducibly personal view of things is a basic human propensity (property of the self) even though our use of it seems bound to be (and perhaps should be) selective

This comprehensive sourcebook makes available in the original Latin and Greek the principal extant texts required for the study of the Stoic, Epicurean and sceptical schools of philosophy. The material is organised by schools, and within each school topics are treated thematically. The volume presents the same texts as are translated in The Hellenistic Philosophers, Volume 1. The authors provide their own critical apparatus, and also supply detailed notes on the more difficult texts. This volume is equipped with a large annotated bibliography.

This volume captures the individuality, the national and personal identity, the cultural exchange, and the self-consciousness that have long been sensed as peculiarly potent in the Hellenistic world. The fields of history, literature, art, philosophy, and religion are each presented using the format of two essays followed by a response. Conveying the direction and focus of Hellenistic learning, eighteen leading scholars discuss issues of liberty versus domination, appropriation versus accommodation, the increasing diversity of citizen roles and the dress and gesture appropriate to them, and the accompanying religious and philosophical ferment. The result is an arresting view of the incredible and unprecedented diversity of the Hellenistic world.

Where does the notion of free will come from? How and when did it develop, and what did that development involve? In Michael Frede's radically new account of the history of this idea, the notion of a free will emerged from powerful assumptions about the relation between divine providence, correctness of individual choice, and self-enslavement due to incorrect choice. Anchoring his discussion in Stoicism, Frede begins with Aristotle--who, he argues, had no notion of a free will--and ends with Augustine. Frede shows that Augustine, far from originating the idea, derived most of his thinking about it from the Stoicism developed by Epictetus.