Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds: A History of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 2 1st Edition by Peter Adamson (PDF)

Description

Peter Adamson’s History of Philosophy without any gaps series of podcasts is one of the most ambitious educational works on the web. It aims to do nothing less than take listeners through the entire history of philosophy ‘without any gaps’. It assumes no prior knowledge making it ideal for beginners. This is the second volume to make these witty, and highly accessible, podcasts available in book form. Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds offers a tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed. From the counter-cultural witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic to the political philosophy of Augustine, the book gathers together all aspects of later ancient thought in a way that is a pleasure to read.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Adamson considers a large period of history but the chapters never seem intimidating or lacking in depth. Any reader with an interest in philosophy will find this work both entertaining and educational.” — Library Journal”…Adamson’s attempt to fill in the gaps provides greater context to understand the ongoing conflicts between hedonism and orthodox Abrahamic traditions that animate so much of Western thought.” — First Things “A volume that is both a perfect introductory work and will also help to plug some of the gaps that most of us have in our knowledge of the long span of ancient philosophical history.” — James Warren, Phronesis About the Author Peter Adamson took his doctorate from the University of Notre Dame and first worked at King’s College London. In 2012 he moved to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen, where he is Professor of Late Ancient and Arabic Philosophy. He has published widely in ancient and medieval philosophy, especially on Neoplatonism and on philosophy in the Islamic world.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐An immense block of philosophical time remains fairly neglected not only in academia but also in general readership. Spanning approximately from the death of Aristotle to the rise of the Renaissance and the so-called “age of reason,” many in a highly scientific and economic age dismiss this lost era as nothing more than religion, self-help and superstition “disguised” as philosophy. As such, many philosophy curricula and histories leap from ancient Greece to somewhere around the Enlightenment era with maybe a few very brief stops in these “inconvenient flyover” regions known as “Hellenistic and Roman” and “Medieval” philosophy. Though these eras did definitely see a preponderance of religious and theological thinking, either Pagan or Christian, they also produced some truly innovative philosophy, some of which even anticipated modern thought. Not to mention that anyone truly interested in the human history of ideas cannot just glance over this roughly 1,000 year timespan. It contains plenty that will seem strange and ineffable to contemporary minds, but, like it or not, it remains an indubitable part of human heritage. As such, knowledge of these often disparaged times can help understand the “human project” as a whole. Where did we come from? Why do we think as we do? Can we really shed the past? What have we missed or lost? After all, many alive today have long forgotten ancestors that encountered such thought, either directly or indirectly, depending on their circumstances. The past, even the parts we don’t particularly like, probably shapes us more than we care to admit. Thankfully, no one needs to read the complete works of Saint Augustine to become acquainted with these mostly unfamiliar and sometimes inscrutable epochs. A series called “The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps” has taken upon itself, perhaps Quixotically, to relate the whole of philosophy – and not just “western philosophy” – in a series of podcasts that have gradually transformed into a series of books. Volume 1, “Classical Philosophy,” covered the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle and a short amount of time following Aristotle’s death in 323 BC. Volume 2 delves into the now murky eras of “Hellenistic and Roman” philosophy, a time when Roman Paganism found itself slowly swallowed and appropriated by Roman Christianity. Even those who have previously studied philosophy may not recognize all of the names that pass in these pages, though a few “giants” do appear, such as Plotinus and Augustine. If nothing else, the author has spared the recklessly curious from actually reading Martianus Capella’s “The Marriage of Mercury and Philology.”Except for the acknowledgements section, Volume 2 somewhat downplays the book’s podcast connection. In any case, the format follows that of Volume 1’s exactly and each section, corresponding to a past podcast episode, has a nearly equal number of pages, which allows for a very consistent and reliable reading schedule. Though handy from a timing perspective, this approach means that information on the “bigger names” gets spread throughout multiple sections, such as three for Epicurus, four for Plotinus and five for Augustine. But other prolific thinkers, such as Seneca and Boethius, only receive a single chapter. Tradeoffs inevitably occur when dealing with such massive spans of time. The book’s first part of three begins around the death of Alexander III of Macedon, or Alexander the Great, in 323 BC – conveniently the same year as Aristotle’s passing – and also after his conquests spread Greek culture from the eastern Mediterranean, to Lower Egypt and to the borders of northwest India. Artistotle’s influence greatly diminished, but Plato’s Socrates, the quintessential Greek philosophical hero, became a focal point as various schools attempted to either emulate or outdo his example. Diogenes of Sinope, one of the most memorable figures in all of philosophy, helped solidify the Cynic viewpoint, a school proudly named after dogs. Raging against the excesses, pleasures and hypocrisies of “unnatural society,” Diogenes lived in a washtub and sought virtue by possessing almost nothing. Living with nature, the Cynics found that “refraining from pleasure is itself pleasant.” The lesser known and short-lived Cyrenaics also sought “total freedom,” but completely embraced hedonism only in the immediate present. Epicureanism and its anti-skeptical attitude toward sense perception eventually won out over the Cyrenaic’s more myopic hedonism. The atomist Epicurus allowed pleasure up to a point, but he emphasized moderation and a “lack of disturbance.” Neither should we fear death, he claimed, because it will merely return us to the state we possessed before our birth. Lucretius extolled the virtues of Epicureanism in “De Rerum Natura,” which rendered the popular and influential philosophy and cosmology into verse.Another major force emerged during this time, one that seems to have made a strong comeback today: Stoicism. The book actually dedicates seven entire chapters to Stoicism, including discussions on logic, epistemology, nature and ethics. Following Socrates, their founder Zeno taught close to the marketplace. His materialist school urged others to seek wisdom and to avoid pleasure and other things that “non-philosophers” value. This flexible philosophy evolved throughout the 3rd century BC and made great strives in physics, logic and ethics. Stoics, contrary to their rivals the Skeptics, claimed that humans could attain certainty, though both schools agreed in suspending judgement when uncertainty prevailed on a topic. Famously, they espoused determinism through “eternal recurrence.” This conflicted with ethics, but early Stoics insisted that ethical actions still counted through character and logic even in a deterministic world. As the Roman Empire dawned, Stoics increasingly focused on ethics as exemplified by Seneca, Epictetus and Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Some credit Epictetus as the first philosopher to posit “a will.” Part One winds up with discussions on Pyrrhonists, the takeover of Skeptics at Plato’s Academy, Cicero, Skeptic extraordinaire Sextus Empircus and an overview of ancient medicine that culminates with the excessively influential Galen. A lot of this fascinating material never appears in philosophical histories, but this one aims to “fill gaps.”Many more often ignored gaps get filled in Part Two, “Pagan Philosophy in the Roman Empire.” This far more obscure section revolves around topics often delegated to the realm of specialists, such as Neoplatonism, theurgy, the gradual dominance of Christianity over Pagan thought and the appropriation of Neoplatonism and Pagan thought into Christianity. Though popular histories often depict these two religions as in direct and violent conflict, they actually co-existed and overlapped, though not always peacefully, for a few centuries until the relatively more exclusive Christianity rooted out the relatively more inclusive Paganism. The final blow came with Constantine’s fourth century conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. Plato and Aristotle also re-emerged during this period and many philosophers and theologians, such as Philo, Plutarch and Alexander of Aphrodisias, used their work, or what remained available, to support religious arguments or for scriptural exegesis. The problem of evil, the soul, eternity, metaphysics and astrology all came under their scrutiny. In the second century, Eudorus, drawing on earlier metaphysical debates around unity and multiplicity, renamed a “principle,” one positioned over the realm of Platonic forms, as “The One,” or the “principle of all things.” Plotinus, who the book suggests as “the most influential philosopher apart from Plato and Aristotle,” makes this “One” the basis of an unknowable free unity. “The more unity something has, the more reality it has, and vice versa.” “The One,” as such, remains beyond all multiplicity. And, “the One is all things, and no one of them.” Porphyry, a follower and biographer of Plotinus, built off Aristotelian logic and popularized the “problem of universals.” He also called Christianity “an abomination” and argued passionately against eating animals. Iamblichus kept Paganism alive and practiced theurgy, a ritual that allowed gods to reveal themselves. On women, as the author says, the ancients “are not known for feminism.” One philosopher even states that “a virtuous woman must be satisfied with being a domestic goddess.” Next to no women appear in this section, excepting a brief mention of Hypatia, a Neoplatonist accused of witchcraft and murdered by a Christian mob. A Pagan revival swiftly dissolved after Emperor Julian the Apostate died while battling Persia in 363. Figures such as Proclus and John Philoponus carried on with religious interpretations of classical philosophical texts through the 6th century. By that time Paganism had pretty much gone extinct.Christianity became the unquestionable dominant religion in late antiquity and Part Three, “Christian Philosophy in the Roman Empire,” tracks its rise. Philosophers and theologians, attempting to outdo the philosophical sophistication of Paganism, merged philosophy and religion into a synthesis that would last throughout the medieval period. As Paganism faded, conflict between differing interpretations of Christianity increased, sometimes to violent extremes. In the second century, Irenaeus refuted the Gnostics who thought a “lower deity” had created the world. Clement of Alexandria used Hellenistic philosophy as a tool both to understand Christianity and to recruit new converts. Origen, who died in 250 under the persecutions of Decius, created an overwhelming work called “Hexapla” that juxtaposed six versions of the Hebrew Bible, including Greek translations. He considered scripture largely allegorical and claimed that it sometimes defied interpretation. Debates around resolving the metaphysical issues that arose from the Trinity became fierce, culminating in the 325 Council of Nicea’s decision that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit comprised “the same substance.” A very influential work, now known as the “Pseudo-Dionysus,” heavily influenced the early Church, including the notion of “hierarchy,” and its author claimed to have personally witnessed multiple Biblical events, but later scholars dated the work to the late fifth century. It borrowed heavily from Proclus and Porphyry and depicted God as mostly unknowable. Another debate led to the violent and gruesome death of Maximus the Confessor in 662, who claimed that Christ contained two natures in one person. Others, such as Apollinaris, Gregory of Nyssa and the Nestorians, ferociously argued over how the human and the divine merged in the person of Christ. The quarrel even apparently distracted the Byzantine Empire enough to weaken it against outside invasion. Inspired by Aristotle, the Cynics and the Stoics, ascetics sought to “imitate God” by sacrificing bodily desires for spiritual goals. Some, such as Antony, lived in tombs while others, such as Symeon the Stylite, lived on pillars. Many women followed ascetic practice, though none of their works survive, including Eudocia, Syncletica, Melania the Elder, Macrina and Gorgonia. Some believed that asceticism could restore equality between men and women. Evagrius of Pontius set up hermetic communities to escape temptation and wrote ascetic works, including the foundations for the “seven deadly sins.” Using Origen’s Hexapla, Jerome translated the Bible into Latin in the fourth century, then a controversial move since many considered the Greek Septuagint as “divinely inspired.” Lactantius and Tertullian attacked philosophy, the former asking “what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Politically, by 380 Christianity had come so far that Bishop Ambrose possessed more power than the Emperor Valentinian.One of the enormous figures not only of Roman Christian philosophy, but of the entire history of philosophy itself, appears toward the end of Part Three. Saint Augustine arguably invented the confessional autobiography, anticipated Descartes by a millennium with his “si fallor, sum” or “If I err, then I exist,” wrote unforgettable quotes such as “make me chaste and temperate, but not yet,” thought eloquently on language, free will, time and knowledge and his influence continues to the present. “The Confessions” dealt with his twelve year sinner to saint conversion though Cicero, Plotinus and Ambrose, his philosopher mother Monica, the ethical tale of the pear tree and his struggle with lust. It also includes his understanding of persistence through time, “as long as nobody asks me, I know,” and memory. He also waxed on the indeterminateness of meaning and signs, how scripture leads us to “charity” and love of our neighbor and God, a Platonic reading of Genesis, the many ways to interpret scripture and the human “natural state of sin,” which requires God to absolve. Also, God, despite His omniscience, has given us the power to will so we can learn to turn away from earthly things and toward eternal goods. Augustine’s epic “City of God” refutes Pagan claims that Goths sacked Rome in 410 as “divine justice” for adopting Christianity. The massive work covers just about everything then imaginable, but ultimately blames Rome’s fall on pride and its desire for earthly things, such as power and wealth. On mind, Augustine sees an “enduring self-awareness,” such that “you are remembering yourself right now” and, paradoxically, “nothing remains closer to the mind than itself, but the mind also seems to fail to understand itself.” In the end, if we can’t comprehend our own minds, how do we ever hope to comprehend “the divine mind?” Part Three ends with a summary of some now obscure “Latin Platonists,” who produced some of the most esoteric works mentioned in the entire book, such as Macrobius’s “Commentary on the Dream of Scipio” and Martianus Capella’s “The Marriage of Mercury and Philology.” One final closing chapter covers the end of antiquity with Boethius, author of the famous “Consolation of Philosophy” written in prison as he awaited execution in 526. Before his sentence under Emperor Theodoric, he planned to translate all of the works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin, but he only lived long enough to complete Aristotle’s logical works. The book adds that “Theodoric has a lot to answer for.” Boethius had a tremendous influence on the medieval age.By the end of Volume 2 of “A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps,” some readers may understand just why some of this material has remained in the “skip” category for so long. With some notable exceptions, much of it does not line up with modern sensibilities and it does cover numerous religious and metaphysical disputes that no longer seem relevant to today’s scientific and “rational” age. Yet humanity had to pass through these now seemingly bizarre and forgotten ages to reach the present. Sometimes a mere awareness of the different attitudes and intellectual perspectives of distant ages can greatly illuminate one’s own. So people thought about such things contained in this book 1,000 years ago, so, assuming that all goes well, what will today’s thought look like 1,000 years from now? Will current thought seem just as “strange” to people of the future as our philosophical heritage of 1,000 years ago looks now? How much will remain? How much will get lost? What can we really extrapolate about the past from its remaining fragments? Regardless of how much one “agrees” or “disagrees” with the ancient thought contained in this volume, its distance and general unfamiliarity contain lessons about the passage of time, the wiles of fate and circumstance and the sometimes almost random anti-progression of historical epochs. One can argue that, given this example, we really have absolutely no idea what the world will look like a millennium from now. It could look just as awry as 1,000 years ago seems to look now. The history of philosophy in particular allows for a big-picture view of the possibilities, limitations and potential boundaries of human cognition itself. For that alone a trip through the entire story remains a worthwhile effort. So far, “A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps” provides one of the most complete and accessible paths through the often incomprehensible and sometimes intimidating morass of human thought. Volume 3 awaits.

⭐This is closer to a dictionary version than an encyclopedia of philosophy from 4C BCE to 5C CE. That is an enormous range to cover, which Adamson does competently if rather lightly.The period begins with Hellenism, the time of Alexander’s 3 successor empires that marks the decisive end of the splendidly creative chaos that was Classical Greece. Hedged into massive autocratic states, philosophers turned from theories of government and being to more mundane ways to improve one’s life. Of course, there was a wonderful proliferation of distinct schools, from the Cynics and Cyrenaics to the Stoics and Epicurians, each espousing some variation on how to get on with things (e.g. Cynics flouting all societal norms, Epicurians seeking extreme moderation). Interestingly, as the philosopher who questioned everything, Socrates was still the exemplar for many of them.This world was largely absorbed into Rome, with some variations as to rhetoricians and the tutors of the elite. Meanwhile, in Greece, the neo-Platonists sought to synthesize Plato and Aristotle, kind of subordinating the latter as compatible with the former’s “ideal forms”. I was hugely disappointed that there was very little about the absorption of these movements into Christianity, which was why I wanted to read this volume.The Christians introduced all sorts of logical complexities (i.e., Christology) that were violently debated and never resolved. Many of the Greek notions of God (e.g. the Prime Mover, the One and the Many) were integral to Christian scholars, but Adamson only mentions this and does not go into it in any depth. Instead, the reader is treated to endless descriptions of the various ascetics and preachers that fought to promote their views. It makes for dry reading that is descriptive rather than analytic.Perhaps it isn’t fair, but I didn’t find what I was looking for in this book. Of course, you bring your expectations to a book. Its tone is also supposed to be playful, but I found it insipid, however clear the descriptions of each school, and completely without the anchor of a clear point of view.I would not recommend this book except to high school students or college freshmen who want a simplified history of philosophy form this period. I’m afraid it’s just a bore.

⭐Well written chronologically. Clear, concise, and joyfully penned by a well researched writer. I have almost finish the first two volumes and will buy the next two. Short 6-8 page chapters dynamically cross referenced throughout. There are also audio podcasts.

⭐I used this second volume of the “History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps” series as a textbook, together with the first volume, to teach a course on practical ancient philosophy. It worked marvelously. After the course, which stopped at the Hellenistic philosophies, I kept going and read the rest of the book, on early Christian philosophy. Despite not being a fan of the latter, I thoroughly enjoyed Adamson’s lively prose, quirky jokes about giraffes, Buster Keaton, and almond croissants, and – more importantly – his very lucid exposition of complex thinkers like Plutarch, Plotinus, Augustine, and all the rest. Looking forward to reading the third entry in the series, on Islamic philosophy.

⭐While I haven’t finished this book as of yet, I wanted to go ahead and give a big thumbs up to the material. Peter Adamson does a marvelous job of making both his books and his wonderful podcast series, The History of Philosophy without Any Gaps, engaging for the active student and just entertaining enough to add a punch of fun for the general reader. I’m glad to have all the books in this series.

⭐Everything confusing becomes clear, with humor and benevolence.

⭐Adamson has a wonderful way of unfolding major philosophical ideas in their contexts and over time that is instructive, insightful and often entertaining. I found this volume particularly helpful on Augustine.

⭐Excellent except for Peter’s bad sense of humor ; )

⭐I admire the attempt to write on philosophy without gap, however is bit elementary. It also exist as a Podcast. Better listen and spend your money on a better philosophy book.

⭐I bought this book along with the first volume (Classical Philosophy) and finding them both wonderful reads. Brilliant for getting a history of this period or, as I’m doing, simply dipping into them to learn about these great thinkers.I hope you find my review helpful.

⭐We were given links to Peter Adamson’s podcasts online by our professor to aid our studies. I have the first book Classical Philosophy and it’s excellent. These books contain everything in the podcasts. They are an accessible and excellent study guide for students.

⭐This is a great podcast and is turning into a great series of books. Makes the subject accessible and fun and the podcast have guest who he discusses the subject in more detail.Would thoroughly recommend podcast and book to any one interested in the subject.

⭐Essential addition to the libraries of philosophy lovers and/or Peters Podcasts

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