The Technology of Happiness: Philosophy, the Body, and Ghaz?l?’s K?m?y?-yi sa??dat

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-139
Author(s):  
Robert Landau Ames
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy

This article suggests a repositioning of philosophy’s disciplinary boundaries in terms of the analyses of ancient Greek philosophy carried out late in the career of Michel Foucault, which, under the influence of Pierre Hadot’s conception of philosophy as a way of life, set out to highlight "the care of the self" as the practical core of the Ancient philosophical enterprise. In light of this shift in disciplinary boundaries, the article seeks to deepen the ongoing reconsideration of Ab? H?mid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghaz?l?’s position vis-à-vis philosophy by highlighting the role of the body and self-care in his ethical writing. Though recent scholarship has come to reject the notion that Ghaz?l? simply did away with philosophy in Islam, even the studies of his constructive incorporation of Avicennan thought have stopped short of highlighting bodily discipline as a central feature of spiritual exercise across these categories.

The Birth of Hedonism

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt Lampe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Walter Pater ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
And Behavior

According to Xenophon, Socrates tried to persuade his associate Aristippus to moderate his excessive indulgence in wine, women, and food, arguing that only hard work can bring happiness. Aristippus wasn't convinced. Instead, he and his followers espoused the most radical form of hedonism in ancient Western philosophy. Before the rise of the better known but comparatively ascetic Epicureans, the Cyrenaics pursued a way of life in which moments of pleasure, particularly bodily pleasure, held the highest value. This book provides the most comprehensive account in any language of Cyrenaic ideas and behavior, revolutionizing the understanding of this neglected but important school of philosophy. The book reconstructs the doctrines and practices of the Cyrenaics, who were active between the fourth and third centuries BCE. The book examines not only Aristippus and the mainstream Cyrenaics, but also Hegesias, Anniceris, and Theodorus. Contrary to recent scholarship, the book shows that the Cyrenaics, despite giving primary value to discrete pleasurable experiences, accepted the dominant Greek philosophical belief that life-long happiness and the virtues that sustain it are the principal concerns of ethics. The book also offers the first in-depth effort to understand Theodorus' atheism and Hegesias' pessimism, both of which are extremely unusual in ancient Greek philosophy and which raise the interesting question of hedonism's relationship to pessimism and atheism. Finally, the book explores the “new Cyrenaicism” of the nineteenth-century writer and classicist Walter Pater, who drew out the enduring philosophical interest of Cyrenaic hedonism more than any other modern thinker.

scholarly journals EMOTION AS A FEATURE OF ARISTOTELIAN EUDAIMONIA AND AFRICAN COMMUNITARIANISM

Phronimon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-61
Author(s):  
Bernard Matolino
Keyword(s):  
African Philosophy ◽  
Interesting Aspect ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
Emotional Basis

Taking it to be the case that there are reasonable grounds to compare African communitarianism and Aristotle’s eudaimonia, or any aspect of African philosophy with some ancient Greek philosophy,1;2 I suggest that it is worthwhile to revisit an interesting aspect of interpreting Aristotelian virtue and how that sort of interpretation may rehabilitate the role of emotion in African communitarianism. There has been debate on whether Aristotle’s ethic is exclusively committed to an intellectualist version or a combination of intellectualism and emotion. There are good arguments for holding either view. The same has not quite been attempted with African communitarianism. This paper seeks to work out whether African communitarianism can be viewed on an exclusively emotional basis or a combination of emotion and intellect.

The Body of Western Embodiment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Interior Space ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
The Relationship

Much of western philosophy, especially ancient Greek philosophy, addresses the problems posed by embodiment. This chapter argues that to grasp the early history of embodiment is to see the category of the body itself as historically emergent. Bruno Snell argued that Homer lacked a concept of the body (sōma), but it is the emergence of body in the fifth century BCE rather than the appearance of mind or soul that is most consequential for the shape of ancient dualisms. The body takes shape in Hippocratic medical writing as largely hidden and unconscious interior space governed by impersonal forces. But Plato’s corpus demonstrates that while Plato’s reputation as a somatophobe is well grounded and may arise in part from the way the body takes shape in medical and other physiological writing, the Dialogues represent a more complex position on the relationship between body and soul than Plato’s reputation suggests.

scholarly journals Formation and development of the concept of "emotional intelligence": a historically conditioned philosophical analysis

2018 ◽  
pp. 36-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyudmyla Rakityanska
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Intelligence ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
World Outlook ◽  
Primitive Society ◽  
Primitive People ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
First Time

The article deals with the historically conditioned philosophical aspect of the formation and the development of the concept of «emotional intelligence» from the pre-Christian times to the Antiquity. This concept, as a complex of mental properties of an individual, was first formulated and introduced into the psychological theory by the US scholars P. Salovey and J. Mayer in 1990. However, the origins of ideas on the problem of the unity of the emotional and the rational can be found in religious and philosophical teachings. The Bible contains examples that testify to the role of intelligence in emotional self-regulation of a human being and confirm the existential, «emotional wisdom of mankind». Our research has proven that the idea of the relationship between emotions and the reason as the essential manifestations of an individual is recurrent at all stages of the history of mankind, its roots date back to the time of the primitive society. In various periods of history, that problem was interpreted differently depending on cultural-historical, religious and philosophical traditions, world outlook views regarding the role of human emotions and human reason in the cognizance of the surrounding world, the nature of their interconnection, and attributing parity or priority features to them. The mythical and pagan views of primitive people, their animistic beliefs testified to the undivided nature of their thinking, and were embodied in various visual-sensory forms of collective creativity that combined intellectual, emotional and volitional attitude to the world. As the human civilization developed and the social relationships changed, also changed mythological and philosophical views of primitive people that were opposed by the naive-spontaneous philosophical world outlook of ancient thinkers. The image and the symbol of the primitive society were supplanted by the Logos, i. e. the reason, by means of which the naive-spontaneous philosophy tried to solve world outlook problems. Still, the representatives of the Pythagorean philosophical school can claim the credit for using, for the first time, emotions as the basis for the comprehension of aesthetic phenomena. During that period, for the first time within the ancient Greek philosophy, aesthetic knowledge was formed, to which the notion of «sensuality» was central. The classical period of the ancient Greek philosophy testifies to the priority of the «rationalized world outlook» of the ancient philosophers, who approached the solution of the world outlook issues from the standpoint of reason.

Causality, Agency, and the Limits of Medicine

Apeiron ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 302-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Holmes
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Automatic Behavior ◽  
Medicine And Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
Causal Force ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Limits Of Medicine ◽  
Ancient Greek Medicine

Abstract The difference between ancient Greek medicine and ancient Greek philosophy has often been seen by scholars in terms of two targets of expertise: the body and the soul. In this paper, I argue that we can better understand the boundaries between medicine and philosophy in antiquity by focusing instead on the difference between causes and motivations (or causes and desires). The reason is this. It is not the case that the writers of the Hippocratic Corpus are uninterested in the soul (psychē). They are, however, reluctant to address their therapies to expressions of the patient’s own agency, despite tacitly acknowledging such agency as a causal force that cannot be reduced to the automatic behavior of the body. I go on to show how thinkers like Plato and Democritus zero in on the problem of perverted desires as part of a strategy of establishing a new domain of therapy, a domain that comes to be classified as the therapy of the soul.

Materialism in Ancient Greek Philosophy and in the Writings of the Young Marx

2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Burns
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
De Anima ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractWhat is the young Marx's attitude towards questions of psychology? More precisely, what is his attitude towards the human mind and its relationship to the body? To deal adequately with this issue requires a consideration of the relationship between Marx and Feuerbach. It also requires some discussion of the thought of Aristotle. For the views of Feuerbach and the young Marx are (in some respects) not at all original. Rather, they represent a continuation of a long tradition which derives ultimately from ancient Greek philosophy, and especially from the philosophy of Aristotle. As is well known, Aristotle's thought with respect to questions of psychology are mostly presented, by way of a critique of the doctrines of the other philosophers of his day, in his De Anima. W.H. Walsh has made the perceptive observation that Aristotle's views might be seen as an attempt to develop a third approach which avoids the pitfalls usually associated with the idealism of Plato, on the one hand, and the materialism of Democritus on the other. It might be argued that there is an analogy between the situation in which Aristotle found himself in relation to the idealists and materialists of his own day and that which confronted Marx in the very early 1840s. For, like Aristotle, Marx also might be seen as attempting to develop such a third approach. The difference is simply that, in the case of Marx, the idealism in question is that of Hegel rather than that of Plato, and the materialism is the ‘mechanical materialism’ of the eighteenth century rather than that of Democritus. This obvious parallel might well explain why Marx took such a great interest in Aristotle's De Anima both during and shortly after doing the preparatory work for his doctoral dissertation – the subject matter of which, of course, is precisely the materialist philosophy of the ancient Greek atomists Democritus and Epicurus.

scholarly journals Genesis of Spatiology. •

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
László Daragó
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Main Role ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Unified Framework ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Second World

We can find the sprouts of the architectural approach of space in ancient Greek Philosophy. The process lasts from the Pythagorean notion (kenon) – which is the emptiness between the numbers – to the definition of space by St Augustine, where he determines the forming of space as the main role of architecture. The enquiry regarding architectural approach of space intensified after the Second World War – Hajnóczi joined into this discourse with his works on the field of spatial theory in the 1960’s. He intended to create a unified framework for the different approaches of space from different fields of science. This common range of interpretation is deriving from the analytic understanding of space – that is Spatiology. Overviewing Hajnóczi’s theoretical works we will try to show the evolution of his thoughts and will try to identify the antecedents of his theoretical structures in the works of contemporary thinkers. In his academic doctorate dissertation in 1977 with the analytic approach he subdivided the architectural space into its elemental spatial relations generated by the constructional objects and then he has attempted to give the quantitative and also the qualitative understanding of them. In his Genesis – as the last accord of his oeuvre – he tried to understand the particular elements of this system and also build an intelligent whole of them again.A tér építészeti értelmezésének megalapozását az európai kultúrában már a görög bölcseletben megleljük. A püthegóreusok számok közötti ürességétől (kenon) az építészeti tér Szt. Ágoston általi meghatározásáig tart a folyamat, melyben végül az építészet legfőbb feladataként a tér alakítását határozták meg. Ezen értelmezések körüli érdeklődés felizzott a második világháborút követő időben – ebbe a diskurzusba kapcsolódott be Hajnóczi Gyula térelméleti munkássága az 1960-as években. Azzal a szándékkal lépett fel, hogy egységes keretet adjon a sok tudományág felől érkező építészeti tér-értelmezéseknek. Ez a közös értelmezési tartomány a tér analitikus értelmezéséből sarjad – ezt a tértudományt nevezte el spaciológiának. Végigtekintve Hajnóczi Gyula térelméleti műveit igyekszünk bemutatni a gondolatok kifejlődésének folyamatát, valamint kísérletet teszünk arra, hogy felmutassuk a kortárs kutatók munkásságában Hajnóczi Gyula gondolati rendszerének előzményeit. Az 1977-ben megjelent akadémiai doktori értekezésében az építészeti tér analitikus értelmezésével szétbontotta az építészeti teret az azt meghatározó konstruktív közegek elemi térviszonylataira, és ezek mennyiségi és minőségi értelmezését kísérelte meg. Az életmű végső akkordjaként írt, Az építészeti tér genezise c. műve az analitikusan szétbontott és egyenként értelmezett térelemek rendszerének megértésére, az elemek újbóli összeépítésére tett kísérletet.

Hellenism

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-67
Author(s):  
Averil Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Greek Literature ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
Great Idea ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores the persistent idea of Byzantium as a repository of Christianized Hellenism. The interpretation of Byzantium is especially fraught for Greek scholars. One of the most contentious aspects of this problem is the question of historical continuity, especially as it has been posed in relation to the modern Greek state. The idea of Constantinople/Istanbul as the capital of a modern Greek state may seem counterintuitive today. The “great idea” also conflates two conceptions of Byzantium: as the seat of Orthodoxy and as an imperial power. Yet Byzantium still occupies a privileged place in the consciousness of many Greeks. Nor is it surprising—given the role of Greek as the language of government and culture throughout the history of Byzantium, the dependence of its educational system on classical Greek literature and rhetoric, and the ambivalence of Byzantine attitudes to ancient Greek philosophy—to find that “Hellenism” is as fraught a concept within Byzantine studies as the Byzantine tradition is to Greeks today.

Teleology Without Tears: Aristotle and the Role of Mechanistic Conceptions of Organisms

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Berryman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Perceived Similarity ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
History Of

In this paper I outline a role for mechanistic conceptions of organisms in ancient Greek natural philosophy, especially the study of organisms. By ‘mechanistic conceptions’ I mean the use of ideas and techniques drawn from the field of mechanics to investigate the natural world. ‘Mechanistic conceptions’ of organisms in ancient Greek philosophy, then, are those that draw on the ancient understanding of the field called ‘mechanics’ — hê mêchanikê technê—to investigate living things, rather than those bearing some perceived similarity to modern notions of ‘the mechanical.’ I have argued elsewhere that evidence of mechanistic conceptions of the natural world can be found, not only among seventeenth and eighteenth century ‘mechanical philosophers,’ but also—albeit in vestigial form — in some ancient Greek texts. Unfortunately, these reports are slight, often by detractors of this approach, and offer only clues as to the motivational context for employing these mechanical conceptions. Here, my purpose is to suggest what role they might have played in the history of natural philosophy.

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