Two Forms of the Common in Ancient Greece

2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (03) ◽  
pp. 441-469
Author(s):  
Arnaud Macé

Abstracts This paper argues that there were two fundamental conceptions of the “common” in Archaic Greece. This distinction is worth teasing from contemporary practices of distribution, such as the division of bounty between warriors after a military expedition. Within this context we can observe a difference between the “common” that is not distributed—the part that a community sets aside before portioning out individual shares—and the “common” that results from the way in which individual parts are distributed: for instance, a division according to equal measures gives individuals the sense of belonging to a sharing community. Identifying these two forms as “exclusive commons” and “inclusive commons,” the article provides an analysis of their properties. It also outlines the consequences of the fact that the ancient Greeks came to apply this distributive schema to the polis itself and to conceive its political structure as the result of a global distribution of goods and prerogatives. The duality outlined here should thus be understood as one of the core structuring principles of ancient Greek political practice and thought.

Author(s):  
Ruihui Han

Guanxi circle play a critical role in ancient China politics. Based on guanxi, two kinds of guanxi groups formed: formal guanxi circle and informal guanxi circle. The former refers to the group centered the emperor; the latter refers to the groups with the powerful and charismatic figures as the core, except for the emperor. In order to consolidate the political power, the emperors in different periods would try to prevent the informal guanxi circle in political structure. Besides, various scriptures also denounce the informal guanxi circle, deeming such circle as harmful. The judgement of informal guanxi circle appeals to research, as there is no previous researcher has address such problems. This study set out to examine whether the informal guanxi circle is harmful to the whole political structure. Results show that the informal guanxi circle, in the antecedent of satisfactory communication, can be extremely meaningful to the whole political structure. This study implies that the fact of informal guanxi circle is on the contrary of the common sense derived from the scriptures and the superficial ancient political activities, such as the emperor’s order to prevent the informal guanxi circle. The findings can contribute a better understanding of the ancient informal guanxi circle in ancient political structure in China.


Turyzm ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-19
Author(s):  
Vicky Katsoni ◽  
Anna Fyta

The key aim of this article is to provide an interdisciplinary look at tourism and its diachronic textual threads bequeathed by the ‘proto-tourist’ texts of the Greek travel author Pausanias. Using the periegetic, travel texts from his voluminous Description of Greece (2nd century CE) as a springboard for our presentation, we intend to show how the textual strategies employed by Pausanias have been received and still remain at the core of contemporary series of travel guides first authored by Karl Baedeker (in the 19th century). After Baedeker, Pausanias’ textual travel tropes, as we will show, still inform the epistemology of modern-day tourism; the interaction of travel texts with travel information and distribution channels produces generic hybrids, and the ancient Greek travel authors have paved the way for the construction of networks, digital storytelling and global tourist platforms.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Piotr Gawrysiak

Ancient Greek and Roman Numerical Notation and Counting AidsSummary The abilities to count and write down numbers are usually regarded as trivial, while in fact these skills are early technologies that significantly influenced the development of science, trade, culture and law. The lack of understanding of the way in which numerical information was conveyed among people and the ways in which daily computations - such as taxes, livestock accounts, prices etc. - were carried out, might lead to improper reasoning about the culture itself. It is, therefore, useful to know the basics of „daily” mathematics used by Greeks and Romans while studying – for example - Roman law.In this paper some basic information regarding the numerical notation used in ancient Greece and Rome is presented. This includes Roman numerals with examples of mathematical operations performed with their aid and two Greek numerical systems, namely herodianic and attic. Early aids to computation are also discussed, including finger reckoning and the abacus. 


Vox Patrum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 551-568
Author(s):  
Christos Terezis ◽  
Lydia Petridou

In this study, we are discussing the theory on “eide” and their relation to the “matter” according to Nicholas of Methone. This is a topic that shows the way in which God, as the supreme and only Principle, is connected to the natural world and human being. In this attempt of ours we move both historically and systemati­cally. Thus, we first point out the differences on this issue between the ancient Greek thought, which moves towards dualism, and Christianity, which accepts only monism; we then explain the monistic reconstruction of the ancient Greek ontology by the Neoplatonists. Nicholas of Methone’s views and the Christian readings of ontology constitute the core of our approaches, of which it is high­lighted that “eide” are the content of the divine Mind and that they are the good divine volitions. The question is also put in view of the unions and distinctions, since “eide” are a unified but internally differentiated whole in God. At the level of the sensible world, it is shown that “matter” is not considered independently from “eide”. The main conclusion that comes to the fore is that Nicholas of Methone makes a philosophical reading of the Christian theory on triune God’s energies, remaining consistent with Christian realism and rejecting the self-existent charac­ter of the “eide”.


2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 632-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric-Jan Wagenmakers ◽  
Ruud Wetzels ◽  
Denny Borsboom ◽  
Han L. J. van der Maas ◽  
Rogier A. Kievit

The veracity of substantive research claims hinges on the way experimental data are collected and analyzed. In this article, we discuss an uncomfortable fact that threatens the core of psychology’s academic enterprise: almost without exception, psychologists do not commit themselves to a method of data analysis before they see the actual data. It then becomes tempting to fine tune the analysis to the data in order to obtain a desired result—a procedure that invalidates the interpretation of the common statistical tests. The extent of the fine tuning varies widely across experiments and experimenters but is almost impossible for reviewers and readers to gauge. To remedy the situation, we propose that researchers preregister their studies and indicate in advance the analyses they intend to conduct. Only these analyses deserve the label “confirmatory,” and only for these analyses are the common statistical tests valid. Other analyses can be carried out but these should be labeled “exploratory.” We illustrate our proposal with a confirmatory replication attempt of a study on extrasensory perception.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu. Gridnev ◽  
Elena Maklakova

For a deep understanding of special terminology, it is not enough to find Russian correspondences of terms in the English-Russian dictionary. It is important not only to know what a particular term is called in Russian, but also to understand why it is called that. And for this you need to know what its constituent components are. If you know, for example, the meaning of a suffix or a prefix, then the meaning of not only this term, but also a number of other terms ending with the same suffix or beginning with the same prefix, becomes clearer. The question of the origin of technical or scientific terms is of great importance in the process of teaching a foreign language. Knowing the meaning of morpheme terms in source languages provides a clue to understanding modern terminology, because the languages of ancient Greece and Rome form the basis of Western languages. To explore the structure of a term, it is important to remember the difference between root and stem. The root is the common origin of all words of the same family, and the stem is the direct origin of a part of words, i.e. one branch of a given word family. The root is shorter and less complex than the stem; the root is primary, the base is secondary. The meaning of the roots of the English language should be studied in ancient Greek and Latin, from where a significant part of the components of the structure of English technical terminology is borrowed. The etymological understanding of the peculiarities of the terminological structure is intended to make it easier and more interesting for students to read and translate special texts.


Author(s):  
Michael Ruse

Can we live without the idea of purpose? Should we even try to? Kant thought we were stuck with it, and even Darwin, who profoundly shook the idea, was unable to kill it. Indeed, purpose seems to be making a comeback today, as both religious advocates of intelligent design and some prominent secular philosophers argue that any explanation of life without the idea of purpose is missing something essential. This book explores the history of purpose in philosophical, religious, scientific, and historical thought, from ancient Greece to the present. The book traces how Platonic, Aristotelian, and Kantian ideas of purpose continue to shape Western thought. Along the way, it also takes up tough questions about the purpose of life—and whether it's possible to have meaning without purpose.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 2523-2529
Author(s):  
Slobodan Marković ◽  
Zoran Momčilović ◽  
Vladimir Momčilović

This text is an attempt to see sport in different ways in the light of ancient philosophical themes. Philosophy of sports gets less attention than other areas of the discipline that examine the other major components of contemporary society: philosophy of religion, political philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of science. Talking about sports is often cheap, but it does not have to be that way. One of the reasons for this is insufficiently paid attention to the relation between sport and philosophy in Greek. That is it's important to talk about sports, just as important as we are talking about religion, politics, art and science. The argument of the present text is that we can try to get a handle philosophically on sports by examining it in light of several key idea from ancient Greek philosophy. The ancient Greeks, tended to be hylomorphists who gloried in both physical and mental achievement. Тhe key concepts from Greek philosophy that will provide the support to the present text are the following: arete, sophrosyne, dynamis and kalokagathia. These ideals never were parts of a realized utopia in the ancient world, but rather provided a horizon of meaning. We will claim that these ideals still provide worthy standards that can facilitate in us a better understanding of what sports is and what it could be. How can a constructive dialogue be developed which would discuss differences in understanding of sport in Ancient Greece and today? In this paper, the authors will try to answer this question from a historical and philosophical point of view. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section of the paper presents two principally different forms or models of focus in sport competitions – focus on physical excellence or focus on game. The dialectic discourse regarding these two approaches to physical activity is even more interesting due to the fact that these two models take precedence over one another depending on context. In the second section of the paper, the focus shifts to theendemic phenomenon of the Ancient Greek Olympic Games, where the topic is discussed from the perspective of philosophy with frequent historical reflections on the necessary specifics, which observeman as a physical-psychological-social-spiritual being. In the third section of this paper, the authors choose to use the thoughts and sayings of the great philosopher Plato to indicate how much this philosopher wasactually interested in the relationship between soul and body, mostly through physical exercise and sport, because it seems that philosophers who came after him have not seriously dealt with this topic in Plato’s way, although they could.


1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-177
Author(s):  
Karen Harding

Ate appearances deceiving? Do objects behave the way they do becauseGod wills it? Ate objects impetmanent and do they only exist becausethey ate continuously created by God? According to a1 Ghazlli, theanswers to all of these questions ate yes. Objects that appear to bepermanent are not. Those relationships commonly tefemed to as causalare a result of God’s habits rather than because one event inevitably leadsto another. God creates everything in the universe continuously; if Heceased to create it, it would no longer exist.These ideas seem oddly naive and unscientific to people living in thetwentieth century. They seem at odds with the common conception of thephysical world. Common sense says that the universe is made of tealobjects that persist in time. Furthermore, the behavior of these objects isreasonable, logical, and predictable. The belief that the univetse is understandablevia logic and reason harkens back to Newton’s mechanical viewof the universe and has provided one of the basic underpinnings ofscience for centuries. Although most people believe that the world is accutatelydescribed by this sort of mechanical model, the appropriatenessof such a model has been called into question by recent scientificadvances, and in particular, by quantum theory. This theory implies thatthe physical world is actually very different from what a mechanicalmodel would predit.Quantum theory seeks to explain the nature of physical entities andthe way that they interact. It atose in the early part of the twentieth centuryin response to new scientific data that could not be incorporated successfullyinto the ptevailing mechanical view of the universe. Due largely ...


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