Doing and Being confronts the problem of how to understand two central concepts of Aristotle's philosophy: energeia and dunamis. While these terms seem ambiguous between actuality/potentiality and activity/capacity, Aristotle did not intend them to be so. Through a careful and detailed reading of Metaphysics Theta, Beere argues that we can solve the problem by rejecting both "actuality" and "activity" as translations of energeia, and by working ...

First published in 1903, ‘The Science of Breath’ is the first of many titles on yoga and Hinduism by the mysterious Yogi Ramacharaka. There are no official records of this author and many scholars believe that he did not exist and the name is instead a pseudonym for the true writer, William Walker Atkinson, the famed occultist and pioneer of the American New Thought movement. This manual on the science of controlling your breathing includes chapters on both the spiritual aspect of yoga and...

The book is perhaps the most ambitious attempt to apply the method of Euclid in philosophy. Spinoza puts forward a small number of definitions and axioms from which he attempts to derive hundreds of propositions and corollaries, such as "When the Mind imagines its own lack of power, it is saddened by it", "A free man thinks of nothing less than of death", and "The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains which is eternal."

Metaphysics is one of the principal works of Aristotle and the first major work of the branch of philosophy with the same name. It is considered to be one of the greatest philosophical works and its influence on the Greeks, the Muslim philosophers, the scholastic philosophers and even writers such as Dante, was immense. It is essentially a reconciliation of Plato's theory of Forms that Aristotle acquired at the Academy in Athens, with the view of the world given by common sense and the obs...

Principles of Philosophy (Latin: Principia Philosophiæ) is a book by René Descartes. In essence it is a synthesis of the Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy It was written in Latin, published in 1644 and dedicated to Elisabeth of Bohemia, with whom Descartes had a long-standing friendship. A French version (Les Principes de la Philosophie) followed in 1647. It set forth the principles of nature—the Laws of Physics—as Descartes viewed them. Most notably, it set forth the...

For the Pre-Socratic philosophers the soul was the source of movement and sensation, while for Plato it was the seat of being, metaphysically distinct from the body that it was forced temporarily to inhabit. Plato's student Aristotle was determined to test the truth of both these beliefs against the emerging sciences of logic and biology. His examination of the huge variety of living organisms - the enormous range of their behaviour, their powers and their perceptual sophistication - convi...

Timaeus and Critias is a Socratic dialogue in two parts. A response to an account of an ideal state told by Socrates, it begins with Timaeus’s theoretical exposition of the cosmos and his story describing the creation of the universe, from its very beginning to the coming of man. Timaeus introduces the idea of a creator God and speculates on the structure and composition of the physical world. Critias, the second part of Plato’s dialogue, comprises an account of the rise ...

Plotinus has been so highly regarded as a mystic that his importance as a philosopher has sometimes been thrown into eclipse. Yet neoplatonic philosophy lives in and through his works; indeed, his original development of Platonic and Aristotelian themes stands as a kind of summation of Greek philosophy as it first came to be known in the Christian West. In Nature, Contemplation, and the One, Professor Deck has undertaken a reappraisal of Plotinus' thought from the standpoint of a ...

Explore the foundational ideas of Western philosophy through Plato's "Five Dialogues." This collection, translated by Benjamin Jowett, presents a series of engaging conversations that delve into ethics, justice, virtue, and the nature of the soul. From Socrates' compelling defense in the "Apology" to the profound discussions of "Phaedo" on the immortality of the soul, these dialogues offer timeless insights into human thought and the pursuit of truth. Ideal for both students of philosophy ...

Philoponus' On Aristotle Categories 1-5 discusses the nature of universals, preserving the views of Philoponus' teacher Ammonius, as well as presenting a Neoplatonist interpretation of Aristotle's Categories. Philoponus treats universals as concepts in the human mind produced by abstracting a form or nature from the material individual in which it has its being.The work is important for its own philosophical discussion and for the insight it sheds on its sources. ...

Proclus (412-485 A.D.) was one of the last official 'successors' of Plato at the head of the Academy in Athens at the end of Antiquity, before the school was finally closed down in 529. As a prolific author of systematic works on a wide range of topics and one of the most influential commentators on Plato of all times, the legacy of Proclus in the cultural history of the west can hardly be overestimated. This book introduces the reader to Proclus' life and works, his place in the Platonic ...

The controversy of flux and stasis as the groundwork of reality of Greek ancient philosophy reached its crux in the all encompassing doctrine of the logos by Heraclitus of Ephesus. It centers upon human soul in its role with the cosmos. Philosophy of the Occident corroborating Greek insights with the progress of culture in numerous interpretations (Kant, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur…), presented in this collection has neglected the cosmic sphere. While contemporary developm...