Contents:

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

The Rest and Motion of Soul Chapter 4: Soul as Same and Other Chapter 6: The Duplicity of Identity in the Helen Chapter 7: Euripides among the Athenians: The Soul of the Law: Gyges in Herodotus and in Plato Chapter 9: The Subject of Justice: The Object of Tyranny: The Grammar of Soul: The Soul of Socrates Index.

On the basis of a series of careful readings of selections from Aristotle, Herodotus, Euripides, and Plato, Davis argues that the question cannot be approached or answered directly, because soul is characterized by a certain kind of duality. It cannot know itself without seeing itself as somehow other, nor can it achieve its desire to become one and immortal without destroying itself. The first chapter on Aristotle serves as an excellent introduction to "De Anima", while the second displays the harmony in "Nicomachean Ethics" by using its treatment of soul as the bridge between the two sections commonly intuited by modern commentators.

From this foundation, his treatments of Herodotus, Euripedes and Plato. Davis's last chapter on Plato is fascinating, but deals with a thorny feature of Greek grammar--the middle voice. Davis actually provides an admirable introduction to this grammatical feature in the chapter, one I will come back to if ever I find myself in the position of teaching others Greek.

I will certainly be recommending it to some friends who have mentioned struggling with the concept.

An Inquiry

While the very fact of its being a chapter on a grammatical feature of a foreign language would suggest it is only for those who have some knowledge of the language, I believe that Davis's framing makes the essay worth it for those with patience. A constant theme of Davis's book is "doubleness": A double nature of the soul, double treatment, double meaning, double power, double object. Such doubleness is bound up not only in the subject, but oftentimes in the polysemic character of the Greek tongue itself.

The book itself also walks this doubled line: It is both a series of sharp exegetical essays and a serious attempt to recapture the question of soul for modern readers of philosophy. Even Davis's conclusion continues down the exegetical path, leaving the introduction as the only real source of statement for the book. Readers may wish to read Davis's introduction both before and after the book. If Davis has not given his readers any answers, he will certainly clarify their questions. In this, the book fulfills its purpose.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

While I normally would have purchased a book like this in a print edition, I wanted to read it on vacation, and decided to get the Kindle version for ease. While the book looks fine in the Kindle edition, and the transfer is not marred by the all-too-usual mistakes, there are a couple of real problems.

One is the special font used throughout, which sometimes creates awkward renderings on screen and will be "off-sized" compared to the majority of your books. The other is the way footnotes are treated a common problem with academic presses , each with its own separate page at the back of the book.

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

The book The Soul of the Greeks: An Inquiry, Michael Davis is published by University of Chicago Press. The Soul of the Greeks: An Inquiry [Michael Davis] on bahana-line.com *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The understanding of the soul in the West has been .

Some of the footnotes in the book are quite important, and a more compact footnote format would allow a reader to quickly "glance ahead" and make sure any coming footnotes contained non-bibliographic information. It also artificially inflates the page-count, but that is a minor nuisance. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Insightful and very important for further work on the subject. The book also offers intriguing discussions on aspects and relationship theme in Aristotelian thinking which allows a differentiated basis of metaphysical context from Plato.

Finally an excellent read on the topic of Soul classics. One person found this helpful.

Editorial Reviews

But, far from being a historical survey, it is instead a brilliant meditation on what lies at the heart of being human. Read more Read less. When Patroclus dies, however, with what is Achilles in love? I think it is in tune with this volume to say there are no correct conclusions. Perhaps the main point he establishes here is that the nature of soul is to go outside of itself in order to affirm itself. As what initiates, it is what makes us morally responsible agents, and so worthy of punishment and reward. In this final version of his m enis Achilles the exemplar of heroic action gives way to Achilles the exemplar of human mourning.

See all 3 reviews. Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway.

The City in Roman and Byzantine Egypt.
Volume 66, Issue 1, September 2012.
The Soul of the Greeks: An Inquiry, Davis.
The Logical Opossum.

The Soul of the Greeks: Set up a giveaway. Pages with related products. See and discover other items: Second, consider that the main topic of the book is the soul. Is not soul that which defies summary and explanation by its own very nature? The Greeks themselves had a hard time to place psyche in any category.

In line with this thought, he treats soul by focusing on the tension between the desire to objectify the world outside and the instability of the world within. To be sure, this feature of the book renders any attempt to summarize it futile—and this applies to the present review as well. In what follows, my main purpose is to offer, as much as possible, a taste of this volume.

In the introduction, Davis writes about Homer. One can see from the beginning that the author is not interested in a historical approach.

For Aristotle, Davis nicely avoids the traditional questions of Aristotelian scholarship and states from the beginning that one of the most peculiar characteristics of psyche is that it appears to be double: As a principle of awareness, it is again double, for it senses changing things and it cognates unchanging things.

This doubleness of soul does not stop here.

The Soul of the Greeks

In fact, Davis finds the same approach even in Aristotle's distinctive approach to plants. All living things, including plants, have a nutritive soul.

In the process of nutrition, living things take something from the outside in order to maintain themselves as what they are. Davis now introduces a new kind of dualism: The awareness of the outside is explained by the need ensouled beings have of the outside. And so Davis comes back to the doubleness of soul. Granted, Aristotle himself may do so when he says that the only way natural beings can participate in immortality is by begetting other natural things according to their kind.

Such a claim focuses too much on individual ensouled beings —all individual ensouled beings, even plants. Beings that are more aware of their individuality are less likely to reproduce themselves toward immortality. If immortality is of the species, individuals which perceive themselves as individuals become aware also of their individual death.

Why do we love? A philosophical inquiry - Skye C. Cleary

So, Davis says, in the case of species in which particulars are clearly individuated—his example compares a dog with a begonia—the longing for being always is less fulfilled.