We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The Meditations of the second-century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius is consistently one of the best-selling philosophy books among the general public. Over the years it has also attracted famous admirers, from the Prussian king Frederick the Great to US President Bill Clinton. It continues to attract large numbers of new readers, drawn to its reflections on life and death. Despite this, it is not the sort of text read much by professional philosophers or even, until recently, taken especially seriously by specialists in ancient philosophy. It is a highly personal, easily accessible, yet deceptively simple work. This volume, written by leading experts and aimed at non-specialists, examines the central philosophical ideas in the work and assesses the extent to which Marcus is committed to the philosophy of Stoicism. It also considers how we ought to read this unique work and explores its influence from its first printed publication to today.
In the late nineteenth century J.L.G. Mowat published a short note in the Journal of Philology pointing out that in the Bodleian's MS of the Dissertationes of Epictetus there is an ink smudge (on fol. 25r) where all the other MSS have lacunae in several lines, leading to the conclusion that the Bodleian MS is the archetype for all other surviving copies.
This study evaluated implications of increased bollworm problems in a 20-county area of the Texas High Plains relative to cotton yields and economic impact. Results did not indicate a serious effect of bollworms upon lint yield when insecticides were used for control. However, estimated annual reduction in farmer profit due to the bollworm for 1979-81 was over $30 million. Yields were estimated to decline about 300,000 bales without insecticide use and about 30,000 bales with insecticide use. This decline suggests potentially serious implications for the comparative economic position of cotton in this region if insecticide resistance were to develop among insect pests.
Stoicism was one of the most influential schools of philosophy in antiquity and its influence has persisted to the present day. Originating in Athens around 300 BCE, Stoicism flourished for some five hundred years and has remained a constant presence throughout the history of Western philosophy. As one of the most popular philosophies of the Roman world, its doctrines appealed to people from all strata of ancient society - from the slave Epictetus to the emperor Marcus Aurelius. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to this great philosophical school. As well as outlining the central philosophical ideas of Stoicism, it aims to introduce readers to the different ancient authors and sources that they will encounter when exploring Stoicism. The book begins by introducing the ancient Stoics and their works. It then considers how the Stoics themselves conceived philosophy and how they formulated their own philosophical system. The core chapters examine Stoic philosophical doctrines in depth, taking each division of Stoic theory in turn: logic, physics, and ethics. The final chapter provides a fascinating account of the Stoic legacy from later antiquity to the present. The book includes a glossary, chronology and guide to further reading, which, together with its accessible yet authoritative approach, make it an ideal introduction for students and general readers.
For the Stoics, physics is that part of philosophical discourse that deals with all questions concerning the physical world, from foundational ontology to the empirical sciences such as astronomy and meteorology. The fundamental assertion underpinning all of Stoic physics is the claim that only bodies exist, a claim that dates back to Zeno himself. This may be seen as a direct challenge to the Platonic claim that the material world that we experience is merely a shadow of another realm where real existence lies. Indeed, it echoes a position attributed to one of the parties in the discussion of the nature of existence in Plato's dialogue the Sophist (on this see Brunschwig 1988).
In the Sophist Plato mounts a famous attack on materialism as an ontological position (245e–249d). He refers to a battle between giants and gods over whether “being” pertains only to physical objects or whether it pertains to non-physical entities. The materialist giants insist that being is “the same as body”. Anything that they cannot touch or squeeze in their hands, as they can with bodies, does not exist at all. Thus they must deny the existence of non-bodily entities such as soul, intelligence, justice and virtue. For Plato, these conclusions are not only unpalatable but also probably disingenuous, for no one seriously denies the reality of these things. This extreme position is tempered, Plato suggests, by more moderate materialists who claim that the soul does exist but that in order to exist it must be a special kind of body.