Overview

A. A. Long presents fourteen essays on the themes of selfhood and rationality in ancient Greek philosophy. The discussion ranges over seven centuries of innovative thought, starting with Heraclitus' injunction to listen to the cosmic logos, and concluding with Plotinus' criticism of those who make embodiment essential to human identity. For the Greek philosophers the notion of a rational self was bound up with questions about divinity and happiness called eudaimonia, meaning a god-favoured life or a life of likeness to the divine. While these questions are remote from current thought, Long also situates the book's themes in modern discussions of the self and the self's normative relation to other people and the world at large. Ideas and behaviour attributed to Socrates and developed by Plato are at the book's centre. They are preceded by essays that explore general facets of the soul's rationality. Later chapters bring in salient contributions made by Aristotle and Stoic philosophers. All but one of these pieces has been previously published in periodicals or conference volumes, but the author has revised and updated everything. The book is written in a style that makes it accessible to many kinds of reader, not only professors and graduate students but also anyone interested in the history of our identity as rational animals.

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9780198803393

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Reviews

In Selfhood and Rationality in Ancient Greek Philosophy, a sequel to Greek Models of Mind and Self, the reader is given the privilege to peer into the laboratory of A. A. Long's scholarly life, in which he spent many years traveling the highways and byways of ancient Greek thought. This book gives the reader the opportunity to become acquainted with the author's hitherto unfinished project, the fruit of his personal, extended, and productive scholarly adventure in the vast Greek world. * Despina Vertzagia, Journal Of Philosophy * This is a most stimulating and enlightening volume, from the hand of an authority who has been giving much thought to these topics for some considerable time nowâas for instance, in Greek Models of Mind and Self (2015), but also in a host of articles over the last few decades. And in fact the present volume consists of a selection of these articles and talks, produced at intervals over the last thirty years, lightly re-worked to constitute a coherent book...Anthony Long has produced, in this very well constructed sequence of papers, a most instructive and comprehensive study of the concept of the rational self, and of rationality in general, in the Greek philosophical tradition. * John Dillon, Trinity College Dublin * This is a worthy collection of essays and contains an excellent bibliography. * Choice *

In Selfhood and Rationality in Ancient Greek Philosophy, a sequel to Greek Models of Mind and Self, the reader is given the privilege to peer into the laboratory of A. A. Long's scholarly life, in which he spent many years traveling the highways and byways of ancient Greek thought. This book gives the reader the opportunity to become acquainted with the author's hitherto unfinished project, the fruit of his personal, extended, and productive scholarly adventure in the vast Greek world. * Despina Vertzagia, Journal Of Philosophy *

In Selfhood and Rationality in Ancient Greek Philosophy, a sequel to Greek Models of Mind and Self, the reader is given the privilege to peer into the laboratory of A. A. Long's scholarly life, in which he spent many years traveling the highways and byways of ancient Greek thought. This book gives the reader the opportunity to become acquainted with the author's hitherto unfinished project, the fruit of his personal, extended, and productive scholarly adventure in the vast Greek world. * Despina Vertzagia, Journal Of Philosophy * This is a most stimulating and enlightening volume, from the hand of an authority who has been giving much thought to these topics for some considerable time nowâas for instance, in Greek Models of Mind and Self (2015), but also in a host of articles over the last few decades. And in fact the present volume consists of a selection of these articles and talks, produced at intervals over the last thirty years, lightly re-worked to constitute a coherent book...Anthony Long has produced, in this very well constructed sequence of papers, a most instructive and comprehensive study of the concept of the rational self, and of rationality in general, in the Greek philosophical tradition. * John Dillon, Trinity College Dublin *

Author Information

A. A. Long served as Professor of Classics at the University of California Berkeley from 1983-2013, where he continues to teach from time to time as an emeritus professor and affiliated professor of philosophy and rhetoric. Long's research is principally on ancient Greek, especially Hellenistic, philosophy. He is a fellow of the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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