scholarly journals Hegel and the Ancient World

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
Will D. Desmond
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Classical Scholarship ◽  
The Core ◽  
Lecture Series ◽  
Life Education

Hegel is one of the most influential thinkers of modernity. Less recognized, but equally significant is his life-long engagement with ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. As a student of the Stuttgart Gymnasium, sometime headmaster of the Nürnberg Gymnasium, contemporary of philhellenes like Goethe and Hölderlin as well as seminal classical scholars like August Wolf and Niebuhr, Hegel developed his encyclopedic system at a time when classical scholarship was being institutionalized as Altertumswissenschaft, and when Hellenic studies in particular were experiencing a ‘renaissance’, especially in Germany. This chapter surveys Hegel’s life, education, publications, and persistent ideas, placing these in their immediate context in the revolutionary era after 1776. Hegel’s persistent and many-faceted return to antiquity—to the Romans as well as the Greeks—is clear in his Berlin lecture series on politics, art, religion, philosophy, and history. These themes form the core of Hegel’s philosophy of ‘spirit’, and are here outlined as the focus of subsequent chapters.

Introduction and Brief History of the Issue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Standard View ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
Classical Scholarship ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Models Of Development ◽  
History Of

This book presents a case for radically reassessing our picture of ancient Greek slavery in its contemporary Mediterranean context. The standard view in classical scholarship holds that Greece (by which Athens is usually meant) and Rome were the only ‘genuine slave societies’ of the ancient world. Failing to attain to this dubious honour, other ancient slave systems (often labelled ‘societies with slaves’) thus recede into the background, with twofold consequences: first, a stark, black-and-white picture emerges, with Greece and Rome as apparently stand-alone exempla of slavery practised on a large scale in antiquity; second, this picture provides historians with a ready-made excuse to ignore what went on among the neighbouring ‘societies with slaves’. Greece and Rome are presented as historical rarities, ranking among only a handful of societies in which slaves made up a noticeable proportion of the overall population and whose labour underpinned the dominant position of elites. Such rarities, of course, are usually more interesting to the historian than the comparatively prosaic ‘societies with slaves’: the former require models of development and elaborate theories to explain why they evolved so differently from the norm, whereas the latter, as historically commonplace, require no explanation at all. Greece and Rome can thus be conceptually detached and studied in isolation from their broader historical contexts....

scholarly journals The Social Oikos

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Michael Lee Humphrey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Core Points

In one of the foundational articles of persona studies, Marshall and Barbour (2015) look to Hannah Arendt for development of a key concept within the larger persona framework: “Arendt saw the need to construct clear and separate public and private identities. What can be discerned from this understanding of the public and the private is a nuanced sense of the significance of persona: the presentation of the self for public comportment and expression” (2015, p. 3). But as far back as the ancient world from which Arendt draws her insights, the affordance of persona was not evenly distributed. As Gines (2014) argues, the realm of the household, oikos, was a space of subjugation of those who were forced to be “private,” tending to the necessities of life, while others were privileged with life in the public at their expense. To demonstrate the core points of this essay, I use textual analysis of a YouTube family vlog, featuring a Black mother in the United States, whose persona rapidly changed after she and her White husband divorced. By critically examining Arendt’s concepts around public, private, and social, a more nuanced understanding of how personas are formed in unjust cultures can help us theorize persona studies in more egalitarian and robust ways.

scholarly journals From Pausanias to Baedeker and Trip Advisor: Textual proto-tourism and the engendering of tourism distribution channels

Turyzm ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-19
Author(s):  
Vicky Katsoni ◽  
Anna Fyta
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Digital Storytelling ◽  
Distribution Channels ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Travel Information ◽  
The Core ◽  
Textual Strategies ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
The Way

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.

The Physical Cosmos: Aristotelian Dialectics

2018 ◽  
pp. 76-109
Author(s):  
Anthony Cordingley
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
Creative Transformation ◽  
Cosmic Order ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores the impact of the dialectics of the Ancient world after Plato upon Beckett’s French novels and the peculiar set of relations between characters and their physical environment in How It Is. It accounts for the presence of Aristotelian ideas of cosmic order, syllogism, space and time. Beckett’s study of formal logic as a student at Trinity College, Dublin and his private study of philosophy in 1932 is examined in this light; particularly his “Philosophy Notes,” along with further sources for his knowledge. The Aristotelian world view of his “I” is shown to be confronted with a set of relations resembling those of the Ancient Greek Stoics. The materiality of spatio-temporal relations in How It Is and the metaphysical coordinates between the “I”, its cosmos and any transcendent other are interrogated. The dialectic between Aristotelian and Stoic physics and metaphysics in How It Is emerges as a conceptual framework for exploring many of the novel’s contradictions, as well as the many confusions and digressions of its narrator/narrated. Beckett’s creative transformation of this ancient dialectic is shown, furthermore, to lead him to formal innovations, such as the novel’s continuous present tense and its complex narrative structure.

The Werewolf, Inside and Out

2020 ◽  
pp. 82-108
Author(s):  
Daniel Ogden
Keyword(s):  
Inner Core ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Human Element ◽  
The Core ◽  
Opposite Process ◽  
Human Flesh

Ancient werewolf thinking was strongly articulated in accordance with an axis between an inside and an outside, in three ways. First, the werewolf was often understood as a combination of an outer carapace and an inner core: more often the human element formed the carapace, and the lupine element the core, but the opposite arrangement could also obtain. Usually the humanoid carapace was identified, awkwardly, with the werewolf’s human clothing, and the wolf was revealed once this was shed; but sometimes, perhaps, the wolf could be more deeply buried within, as in the cases of those, like Aristomenes, that boasted a hairy heart. The inner and outer form could be pinned together, as it were, by an identifying wound; it is also possible that the belief that a wound could force a werewolf back into human form existed already in the ancient world. Secondly, a werewolf transformation, in either direction, could be effected by the taking of a foodstuff within the body: a man could be transformed into a werewolf by eating an (enchanted?) piece of bread, or the food most appropriate to a wolf, human flesh; he could be transformed back into a man either by abstinence from human flesh or by the equal-and-opposite process of eating a wolf’s heart. And, thirdly, it was the impulse of the werewolf, when transformed from man to wolf, to make a bolt from the inner places of humanity and civilisation for the outer places of the wilderness and the forest.

A Discussion of Josiah Ober’s The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1142-1143
Author(s):  
Arlene W. Saxonhouse
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Classical Greece ◽  
Theoretical Account ◽  
Political Inquiry ◽  
Greek World

Ancient Greece has long exercised a powerful hold on the imagination of modern political science. But until fairly recently, this influence has largely been philosophical, related to the origins of many theoretical concepts—including the concept of politics itself—in the ancient world. In The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece, Josiah Ober offers a synoptic and ambitious social theoretical account of the ancient Greek world, the sources of its power, the causes of its decline, and the lessons that can be drawn from this story for contemporary social and political science. We have thus invited a range of political scientists to comment on Ober’s account of classical Greece and its relevance to contemporary political inquiry.

Deciphering and Appeasing the Heavens: The History and Fate of an Ancient Greek Computer

Leonardo ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 250-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evaggelos Vallianatos
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Technological Infrastructure ◽  
Aegean Island

In 1900, Greek sponge divers discovered an ancient Greek treasure in the waters of the Aegean island of Antikythera: a device with gears dubbed the Antikythera Mechanism. Scientists studied it for almost a century and eventually declared it the most advanced machine preserved from the ancient world. This device predicted solar and lunar eclipses and harmonized the Greeks' sacrifices to their gods with their Panhellenic games and agriculture. This geared computer from the 2nd century BCE is now said to mirror the philosophy of Aristotle and the science of Archimedes. It was the product of an advanced Greek technological infrastructure that early Christians destroyed.

scholarly journals Woman-character and woman-author in ancient Greek and Roman literature: an attempt at the typology

2021 ◽  
Vol IX(253) (45) ◽  
pp. 20-24
Author(s):  
O. Halchuk
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
Literary Discourse ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Female Images ◽  
Woman Character ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
Ancient Literature ◽  
Woman Author

The article proposes a typology of female characters of ancient literature. The typology is based on the dominant categories of «moral» (expressed by the dichotomy of «moral – immoral»), «heroic» («achievement – offence») and «aesthetic» («beautiful – ugly»). Through the prism of mythology, the semantics of the figurative gallery «woman-character» and «woman-author» reflects the specifics of the position of women in the ancient world. Misogyny is typical for the male world of antiquity. This determined the emphasis in the interpretation of women's masks, which were mainly given the role of the object of erotic posing. This, however, does not diminish the reception potential of female images of ancient origin in the subsequent world literary discourse.

scholarly journals Capturing The Ancient Animal: Human/Animal Studies and the Classics

2017 ◽  
Vol 137 ◽  
pp. 213-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Kindt
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Classical Scholarship ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article reviews several books published since the turn of the millennium that explore the role and representation of animals in different areas of ancient Greek and Roman culture. Despite differences in focus and outlook, these books herald the arrival within classical studies of the questions, concepts and methods of human/animal studies as an emerging field of enquiry. This article takes their publication as an opportunity to take stock and to outline the relationship between these disciplines. I explore how current research on ancient animals resonates both in existing debates in classical scholarship and within the context of the larger interdisciplinary debate. I also suggest how this debate can point to productive avenues for further enquiry in classical studies. More specifically, I argue that the interdisciplinary debate sets an important agenda, which should be embraced more fully by classical studies. Classical scholarship on the role, function and perception of animals in different areas of ancient Greek and Roman life can provide important insights into one aspect of the heritage – Western conceptions of humanity and the place of the animal within it – which has not yet received the attention it deserves. I conclude that classical scholarship can make a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debate, helping it deliver on its stated goal of examining and challenging Western concepts of self, as well as the ideologies of ‘the other’ underpinning them.

Dares Printed and Philologized

2020 ◽  
pp. 211-250
Author(s):  
Frederic Clark
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Classical Scholarship ◽  
Jean Bodin ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Europe

Chapter 5 looks in closer depth at just why Dares remained a source of debate in early modern Europe, even after some critics had seemingly demolished him once and for all. The first part of the chapter examines phenomena traditionally associated with the rise of criticism and the downfall of forgeries, including print culture, the recuperation of ancient Greek texts, and scientific empiricism. It argues that these phenomena actually bolstered the reputation and credibility of Dares Phrygius. From the Elizabethan Philip Sidney’s neo-Aristotelian poetics to the proliferation of printed reference works by Conrad Gessner, Jean Bodin, and others, Dares remained a canonical first in the history of history. The second part of the chapter examines how, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, both the increasingly professionalized world of classical scholarship and the confessional polemics engendered by the Reformation and Counter–Reformation responded to this perpetuation of Dares’ longevity with renewed attacks.

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