{"title":"Series: Sather Classical Lectures","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cstrong\u003eSather Classical Lectures\u003c\/strong\u003e series presents a rich tapestry of thought-provoking works that explore key themes across \u003cem\u003ephilosophy, psychology, and culture\u003c\/em\u003e. Each lecture offers a distinctive perspective that invites readers to engage deeply with timeless questions and contemporary debates alike.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith selections spanning a diverse range of topics, this collection serves as an essential resource for those seeking intellectual stimulation and scholarly insight. Readers can expect essays and discourses that challenge assumptions and illuminate the human experience from multiple angles.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-poetry-of-being-and-the-prose-of-the-world-in-early-greek-philosophy-by-victoria-wohl-9780520413320","title":"The Poetry of Being and the Prose of the World in Early Greek Philosophy","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit \u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.luminosoa.org\"\u003ewww.luminosoa.org\u003c\/a\u003e to learn more.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Presocratic philosophers, writing in Greece in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, invented new ways of thinking about human life, the natural world, and structures of reality. They also developed novel ways of using language to express their thought. In \u003cem\u003eThe Poetry of Being and the Prose of the World in Early Greek Philosophy\u003c\/em\u003e, Victoria Wohl examines these innovations and the productive relation between them in the work of five figures: Parmenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBringing these thinkers into conversation with modern critical theorists on questions of shared concern, Wohl argues for the poetic sophistication of their work and the inextricable convergence of their aesthetic form and philosophical content. In addition to offering original readings of these fascinating figures and robust strategies for interpreting their fragmentary, rebarbative texts, this book invites readers to communicate across entrenched divisions between literature and philosophy and between antiquity and modernity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46795483119852,"sku":"9780520413320","price":66.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/7353533482373.jpg?v=1757032884"},{"product_id":"laughter-in-ancient-rome-by-mary-beard-9780520401495","title":"Laughter in Ancient Rome","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Superbly acute and unashamedly complex.\"—\u003cem\u003eThe Telegraph\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Rich and provocative.\"—\u003cem\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"An engaging exploration.\"—\u003cem\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"The phenomenal Ms. Beard has written another cracking book, one of her best.\"—\u003cem\u003eThe Independent\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhat made the Romans laugh? Was ancient Rome a carnival, filled with practical jokes and hearty chuckles? Or was it a carefully regulated culture in which the uncontrollable excess of laughter was a force to fear—a world of wit, irony, and knowing smiles? How did Romans make sense of laughter? What role did it play in the world of the law courts, the imperial palace, or the spectacles of the arena?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLaughter in Ancient Rome\u003c\/em\u003e explores one of the most intriguing, but also trickiest, of historical subjects. Drawing on a wide range of Roman writing—from essays on rhetoric to a surviving Roman joke book—Mary Beard tracks down the giggles, smirks, and guffaws of the ancient Romans themselves. From ancient \"monkey business\" to the role of a chuckle in a culture of tyranny, she explores Roman humour from the hilarious, to the momentous, to the surprising.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBut she also reflects on even bigger historical questions. What kind of history of laughter can we possibly tell? Can we ever really \"get\" the Romans' jokes?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46796391612652,"sku":"9780520401495","price":35.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/7235283482373.jpg?v=1757093903"},{"product_id":"a-greek-state-in-formation-by-jack-l-davis-9780520387249","title":"A Greek State in Formation","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Mycenaean civilisation of the Greek Bronze Age was identified 150 years ago, yet its origins remain obscure. Jack L. Davis, codirector of ongoing excavations at the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, takes readers on a tour of the beginnings of Mycenaean civilisation through a case study of this important site.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn collaboration with Sharon R. Stocker, Davis demonstrates that this ancient place was a major node for the exchange of ideas between the already established Minoan civilisation, centred on the island of Crete, and the Greek mainland. Davis and Stocker show how this adoption of Minoan culture created an ideology of power focused on a single individual, one that celebrated his military prowess and invested him with divine authority—a figure instantly recognisable to readers of Homer and students of Greek history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Greek State in Formation\u003c\/i\u003e makes the powerful case that a knowledge of the Greek Bronze Age is indispensable to the classics curriculum.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47000520753388,"sku":"9780520387249","price":66.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/7092823482373.jpg?v=1763280648"},{"product_id":"the-art-of-living-by-alexander-nehamas-9780520224902","title":"The Art of Living","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor much of its history, philosophy was not merely a theoretical discipline but a way of life, an \u003cem\u003e\"art of living.\"\u003c\/em\u003e This practical aspect of philosophy has been much less dominant in modernity than it was in ancient Greece and Rome, when philosophers of all stripes kept returning to Socrates as a model for living.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe idea of philosophy as an art of living has survived in the works of such major modern authors as Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Each of these writers has used philosophical discussion as a means of establishing what a person is and how a worthwhile life is to be lived.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn this wide-ranging, brilliantly written account, Alexander Nehamas provides an incisive reevaluation of Socrates' place in the Western philosophical tradition and shows the importance of Socrates for Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Why does each of these philosophers—each fundamentally concerned with his own originality—return to Socrates as a model? The answer lies in the irony that characterises the Socrates we know from the Platonic dialogues. Socratic irony creates a mask that prevents a view of what lies behind.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHow Socrates led the life he did, what enabled or inspired him, is never made evident. No tenets are proposed. Socrates remains a silent and ambiguous character, forcing readers to come to their own conclusions about the art of life. This, Nehamas shows, is what allowed Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault to return to Socrates as a model without thereby compelling them to imitate him.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis highly readable, erudite study argues for the importance of the tradition within Western philosophy that is best described as \u003cem\u003e\"the art of living\"\u003c\/em\u003e and casts Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault as the three major modern representatives of this tradition. Full of original ideas and challenging associations, this work will offer new ways of thinking about the philosophers Nehamas discusses and about the discipline of philosophy itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47000763760876,"sku":"9780520224902","price":60.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/61aMzKkI0GL._SL1360.jpg?v=1773002177"},{"product_id":"the-greeks-and-the-rational-by-josiah-ober-9780520380165","title":"The Greeks and the Rational","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis revisionist history traces an influential theory of practical reason from its origins in ancient Greece to its modern and contemporary permutations.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled performance of strategic thinking in public and private affairs, was an intellectual breakthrough that remains both a feature and a bug of our modern world. Countering arguments that rational choice-making is a contingent product of modernity, \u003cem\u003eThe Greeks and the Rational\u003c\/em\u003e traces the long history of theorizing rationality back to ancient Greece.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn this book, Josiah Ober explores how ancient Greek sophists, historians, and philosophers developed sophisticated and systematic ideas about practical reason. At the same time, they recognized its limits—that not every decision can be reduced to mechanistic calculations of optimal outcomes. We see contemporary echoes of this tradition in the application of game theory to political science, economics, and business management. \u003cem\u003eThe Greeks and the Rational\u003c\/em\u003e offers a striking revisionist history with widespread implications for the study of ancient Greek civilization, the history of thought, and human rationality itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47000785420524,"sku":"9780520380165","price":66.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/7021983482373.jpg?v=1763304589"},{"product_id":"polybius-by-f-w-walbank-9780520069817","title":"Polybius","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs a young man, the historian Polybius was an active politician in the Achaean Confederacy of the second century B.C., and later, during his detention at Rome, became a close friend of some leading Roman families.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHis \u003ci\u003eHistory\u003c\/i\u003e is our most important source for the momentous half-century during which the Romans weathered the war with Hannibal and became masters of the Mediterranean world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eF. W. Walbank describes the historical traditions within which Polybius wrote as well as his concept of history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47597523435756,"sku":"9780520069817","price":64.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/2848aaa69b8a0ce9ee6ef90a52a68171.jpg?v=1777958146"},{"product_id":"shame-and-necessity-second-edition-by-bernard-williams-9780520256439","title":"Shame and Necessity, Second Edition","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the centre of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWilliams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. In a new foreword, A.A. Long explores the impact of this volume in the context of Williams's stunning career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47603146916076,"sku":"9780520256439","price":56.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780520256439-shame-and-necessity-second-edition.jpg?v=1778056166"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/series-sather-classical-lectures.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}