INWOOD, B.,
Reading Seneca. Stoic Philosophy at Rome.
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2005. XVI,376p. Original blue cloth with dust wrps. Spine gilt titled. Signature and date on free endpaper. Some vague remains of pencil markings and annotations. 'Inwood has given us a serious Seneca, a deeply learned philosopher whose allegiance to the Stoic school amounts to unflagging devotion and yet has room for creative development. Seneca’s lighter and more literary side, his pumpkinification farce, his mythological tragedies, his stylistic flourishes and fondness for storytelling, have no place in the twelve essays that constitute Reading Seneca. Instead, we find the Seneca of the major treatises, De Ira, De Beneficiis, Natural Questions, and of the Moral Epistles, a man deeply committed to rational inquiry and deserving at least a modicum of the critical attention we give to Aristotle or Augustine. The volume collects under one cover a series of articles produced by the author over a period of fifteen years. Most have been published separately, although there are two new additions, together with a cumulative bibliography and indices. (...) A welcome result of having these essays brought together is the cumulative sense they give of Inwood’s characteristics as a reader not only of Seneca but of a wide range of philosophical authors. His way of working with a text is exemplary in the patience, even meekness, with which he traces the outlines of a lengthy discussion, endeavoring to make the main direction clear but refusing to flatten out interesting variations on an idea. It is his practice to combine philosophical with philological methods: an issue is presented and analyzed, then followed up with careful documentation via terminological study and reading of statements in context. Linguistic sensitivity is a major concern. (...) More specifically literary sensibilities are sometimes brought to bear, notably in the reading of metaphor and analogy. For Seneca studies, as for readings of Plato, it is essential to draw some distinctions among the various types and uses of metaphor in philosophical explanation. (...) In addition, the collection gives evidence of what subjects have most interested Inwood as a philosopher over recent years. (...) Finally, the collected essays reveal Inwood’s long-term commitment to dealing with the entirety of Seneca’s philosophical output.' (MARGARET GRAVER in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.06.45).
€ 100.00
(New)
(MD)