PHIL 331: Ancient Philosophy
Ancient Greek Culture and Thought Project

Books on Reserve [MS Word version of list]

1. Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece.
   Alcuin/Clemens General Collection HQ1134 .B58 1995  (Both libraries have a copy.)
   This is a fairly recent and seemingly balanced view of women in ancient Greece. In recent decades many feminist scholars have explored this question, through literature, through legal documents, etc. Blundell’s book provides a good overview.
    
2. Brann ,Eva. The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Paul Dry Books, 2004. Library does not own.
   Eva Brann is the former Dean of Saint John’s College (the Great Books school) in Annapolis, Maryland. This book is about more than Plato’s Republic: the “Republic” of the title is the republic of Athens. I have ordered the book myself.
    
3. Brisson, Luc. How Philosophers Saved Myths. BL727 .B7513 2004.
   A recent book by a French scholar with a slightly “post-modern” bent. Philosophers, Plato in particular, are generally thought to have disliked and attacked myths and mythology, so this has a surprising approach.
    
4. D’Etienne, Marcel & Vernant, Jean-Pierre—Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society. Alcuin General Collection Call #: DF78 .V4813 1982.
   Very interesting examination of a different (and earlier) kind of intelligence than the wisdom of the philosophers. These are two excellent and prolific French scholars. This book is out of print, but there are two paperbacks selling for $115.58 on the web. I have a paperback copy. Am I a moron for not putting mine up for sale? You read it and judge.
    
5. Dodds, E(ric). R(obertson). Greeks and the Irrational
   Alcuin General Collection Call #: BF1421 .D6: Being recalled.
   This book is a classic. It will provide a contrast to the Platonic and Aristotelian emphasis on reason , and primarily examines, if I recall correctly, Greek literature (e.g., Euripides’ Bacchae).
    
6. Dover, Kenneth J. Greek Homosexuality. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1978, 1989.
   Clemens General Collection HQ76.3.G8 D68 1978.
   This became a real classic once Michel Foucault sang it’s praises in the second volume of his History of Sexuality (see below). Foucault is more daring, but he knows Dover laid the groundwork for his own research and thinking.
    
7. Dover, K(enneth) J. Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle. Oxford: Blackwell, 1974. (Reprint by Hackett Publishing, 1994). Alcuin BJ182 .D68.
   This is broader that the book narrowly focused on Greek homosexuality, and very accessible to non-specialists. It might be better than the previous selection and is less intimidating than the Foucault (below).
    
8. Foucault, Michel, The Use of Pleasure (History of Sexuality, Volume 2).
   Clemens General Collection HQ12 .F6813 1980.
   When I was in graduate school, Foucault was all the rage—in every subject area, from literature to philosophy to history and sociology and political science—almost every field except engineering and the natural sciences (except medicine!) You’ll have to be patient with his emphasis on Greek terms, but he’s very careful and thorough and intentionally teaches his readers what the terms mean and why they are important, This book (the whole trilogy, but especially this volume) made a big splash when published.
    
9. Hadot, Pierre. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Clemens: B105.S66 H3313 1995.
   Hadot is a scholar’s scholar. He began as a scholar of early Christian thought, and was led back to the Neo-Platonists and this to Plato and Aristotle themselves. The main essays in this book examine “Philosophy as a spiritual exercise.” It’s a learned work but an important and extremely insightful approach. [This or the next; not both].
    
10. Hadot, Pierre. What is Ancient Philosophy? Alcuin B172 H33513 2002.
    This book takes Hadot’s thesis, laid out in the above work, and traces it through earlier thinkers, including the Pre-Socratics and Plato himself, then on to Aristotle and into Hellenistic and Neo-Platonic schools (late Greek and Roman period). It really expands his thesis of the earlier books to the whole ancient “period” and even leads on into medieval thought. Some question whether Hadot reads too much “backwards”—reading his legitimate insights into the Neoplatonics back into Plato and Aristotle—but he’s right that philosophy was for the ancients a live issue and not a scholarly game.
    
    
11. Hanson, Victor. The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece, 2nd edition. Alcuin General Collection Call #: U33 .H36 1989.
    A friend describes Hanson as “a conservative, but not as pretentious and vapid as William Bennett.” Hanson is the expert of Greek warfare and the history of warfare. And if one judges by what they did and not only what they said and wrote, war is right up there with philosophy and sculpture and drama as favorite pastimes in Ancient Greece.
    
    
12. Lloyd, G. E. R. Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle. New York: Norton, 1970.
    The libraries don’t have this either. They have a couple of other Lloyd books. I’ll order this from Amazon.com. Lloyd is the authority on the development of Greek science (as well as early Chinese science and the comparison between them).
    
    
13. Lloyd, Geoffrey Ernest Richard. Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Origins and Development of Greek Science. Clemens General Collection Q127.G7 L59.
    This may be too advanced and not as a good a choice as the previous volume, but if you are science-minded you might take a look.
    
    
14. Lloyd, G. E. R. The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science. Alcuin General Collection Q127.G7 L595 1987.
    Ditto on the above. This has the look of a collection of articles probably intended more for specialists in the field. But a group could find chapters of this and the previous that they could put together.
    
    
15. Loraux, Nicole. The Children of Athena. Clemens HQ1075.5.G8 L6713 1993.
    This woman is scary smart. She knows so much that you can get snowed under, and she’s a bit “post-modern” in her approach. She writes so much that I can’t imagine she has much of a social life, but for scholars, books are their social life. This book examines the paradoxical nature of the Athenian’s allegiance to a female goddess who nevertheless was not herself born of a mother, but sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus, the (male) head-honcho god.
     
16. Munn, Mark Henderson. The School of History: Athens in the Age of Socrates. Clemens General Collection DF277 .M86 2000.
    This book comes highly recommended by a young scholar (my age!) The author focuses on Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, which was the defining event of late 5th century Athens. Alcibiades, who we will meet in the Symposium, figures strongly in this exploration of the Athenians’ sense of their own history.
     
17. Nussbaum, Martha. The Fragility of Goodness : Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy,  Alcuin General Collection BJ192 .N87 1996. (2001 edition being recalled).
    This launched Martha Nussbaum’s career—one of the foremost scholars of ancient philosophy and law in the US today. (She’s also a personality who knows she’s a personality and milks it for what it’s worth. And she’s smart, smart, smart.) Maybe as much or more on tragedy as on philosophy.
     
18. Russo, Lucio. Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why it Had to Be Reborn, Berlin: Springer, 2004. Library does not own.
    Damn, why don’t the CSB/SJU libraries have this book!? Maybe because science, as taught in the contemporary USA, is completely ahistorical? I’ve ordered it for the libraries. We could interlibrary-loan the Winona State copy and photocopy the book if a group is interested.
     
19. Snell, Bruno. The Discovery of the Mind: in Greek Philosophy and Literature
    Alcuin: B173 .S6213 1982.
    This is very interesting—at least to someone like me. Didn’t people always know they had minds? Apparently not—at least not the way we think of the mind. And the way we think of the mind, like it or not (unless you’ve achieved Buddha-like enlightenment and detachment) is predicated on these discoveries that Snell traces. The period he covers is mostly up-to-Socrates-and-Plato. He’s a German scholar, so no stone is left unturned. (French scholars, by contrast, turn one stone, say Voilà! and assume the rest of the stones will follow suit; the Germans turn them all and show how precisely they do follow suit.)
     
20. Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece—not in CSB/SJU Libraries.
    The “not-in” status will soon be remedied. My own copy is underway from Amazon.com. I chose this over a couple other options because it’s more generally applicable to aspects of Greek culture. (I already have Vernant’s book on Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece and it’s great, but we’re not reading tragedies.)
     
21. Vernant, Jean-Pierre, The Origins of Greek Thought.  Alcuin Call #: DF78 .V4813 1982.
    In this book, Vernant turns his own analysis to the formation of modes of thought that produced what we call “classical Greece.” Currently this book has one review—Three stars=mediocre— on Amazon.com, by someone who signs herself “Tammy Jo Eckhart” and is from Bloomington, Indiana—clearly a grad student or faculty member at University of Indiana.  Vernant is hugely smart, and he’s given three stars by “Tammy Jo”: you decide who to believe. Whether you have enough background to process what Vernant is telling you is a different question.
     
22. Zaidman, Louise Bruit, Pauline Schmitt Pantel & Paul Cartledge, Religion in the Ancient Greek City. Alcuin General Collection BL785 .Z3513 1992.
    This book is a very good synthesis of much more dry and analytic scholarship that has gone on for centuries, but especially throughout the 20th century. I had to pry it out of the hands of Fr. Dale Launderville, who is returning it so I can put it on reserve. Not sure how soon it will get there, but it may be worth the wait.