Reveals monstrosity to be a central conceptual challenge in every ancient Greek and Roman philosophical system
Reconstructs
the concept of monstrosity in classic thought from its earliest
beginnings, through pre-Platonic and Attic philosophy to the Hellenistic
systems and finally arriving at Neapolitanism
Covers all the major figures: from Hesiod to Augustine, through Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Lucretius
Addresses questions of time, causality, necessity, finality, order, justice and anomaly
Shows the diverse aspects of reflections on monstrosity and the problems related to its interpretation
Amazons
and giants, snakes and gorgons, centaurs and gryphons: monsters
abounded in ancient culture. They raise enduring philosophical
questions: about chaos and order; about divinity and perversion; about
meaning and purpose; about the hierarchy of nature or its absence. Del
Lucchese grapples with the concept of monstrosity, showing how ancient
philosophers explored metaphysics, ontology, theology and politics to
respond to the challenge of radical otherness in nature and in thought.
Each
chapter explores the emergence of monstrosity in a set of authors and
theories. In chapter 1, monsters rise as the challenging adversaries of
the new gods of the early cosmogonies. But they can also be powerful
productive forces that support building the new order or ambiguous
characters that catalyse the unfolding of the tragic universe. In
chapter 2, the Pre-Platonic systems of Anaxagoras, Empedocle and
Democritus pave the way for the recognition of the philosophical status
of monstrosity.
This status becomes central in Attic philosophy,
first with Plato’s mythological monstrosities and then with the
construction of a hierarchical structure of the universe – taken up in
chapter 3. Chapter 4 focuses on Aristotle’s study of physical
monstrosity and its role within his metaphysical and aetiological
framework.
Chapters 5–7 deal with the extraordinarily elaborate
responses to Attic philosophy by the major Hellenistic systems:
Epicureanism, Stoicism and Scepticism. The final chapter looks at the
Middle and Neoplatonist response to Hellenism and explores the richness
of late-antiquity’s reflection on monstrosity up to its absorption and
reworking by early Christian thought.
The AWOL Index: The bibliographic data presented herein has been programmatically extracted from the content of AWOL - The Ancient World Online (ISSN 2156-2253) and formatted in accordance with a structured data model.
AWOL is a project of Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Penn State University
AWOL began with a series of entries under the heading AWOL on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog. I moved it to its own space here beginning in 2009.
The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.
The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.
AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.
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