Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Stoicism in the Philosophical Tradition
- 2 Early Modern Uses of Hellenistic Philosophy
- 3 Locke's Offices
- 4 Patience sans Espérance: Leibniz's Critique of Stoicism
- 5 Epicureanism in Early Modern Philosophy
- 6 Stoics, Grotius, and Spinoza on Moral Deliberation
- 7 The Discourse on the Method and the Tradition of Intellectual Autobiography
- 8 Subjectivity, Ancient and Modern
- 9 Spinoza and Philo
- 10 Hume's Scepticism and Ancient Scepticisms
- 11 Stoic Naturalism in Butler
- Bibliography of Primary Sources
- Bibliography of Secondary Sources
- Index (general)
- Index (of selected text passages)
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Stoicism in the Philosophical Tradition
- 2 Early Modern Uses of Hellenistic Philosophy
- 3 Locke's Offices
- 4 Patience sans Espérance: Leibniz's Critique of Stoicism
- 5 Epicureanism in Early Modern Philosophy
- 6 Stoics, Grotius, and Spinoza on Moral Deliberation
- 7 The Discourse on the Method and the Tradition of Intellectual Autobiography
- 8 Subjectivity, Ancient and Modern
- 9 Spinoza and Philo
- 10 Hume's Scepticism and Ancient Scepticisms
- 11 Stoic Naturalism in Butler
- Bibliography of Primary Sources
- Bibliography of Secondary Sources
- Index (general)
- Index (of selected text passages)
Summary
The great covered cisterns of Istanbul were built during the sixth century of the common era. Their roofs are held up by row upon row of stone pillars. Many of these pillars were made specially for the cisterns, but others seem to have been pieced together from whatever broken bits of column were available to the builders: a pediment of one style or period, a capital of another, a shaft from yet a third. The provenance of the parts did not matter. It sufficed that this material from the past served the present purpose.
Architects have other ways of using the past. Consider New York City's old Pennsylvania Station: it was meant to look like a Roman bath, perhaps in order to transfer the grandeur of the ancient empire to the modern railroad company that was displaying its wealth and glory. Or consider some of the post-modern buildings now on display in our cities: Gothic arches atop glass-fronted skyscrapers after Corbusier or Mies, with additional odd bits and pieces of whatever style it amused the architect to incorporate. The elements are meant to recall the past, if only to dismiss it, even while they are intended to function in a striking new structure.
This volume shows that philosophers have as many ways of using the past as architects have. The chapters here assembled were written for a conference on the role of Hellenistic philosophy in the early modern period.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy , pp. 1 - 6Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003