Essays on Plato’s Epistemology

Essays on Plato’s Epistemology

Franco Trabattoni

 

An Innovating approach to Plato’s philosophy. Through a careful survey of several significant Platonic texts, mainly focussing on the nature of knowledge, Essays on Plato’s Epistemology offers the reader a fresh and promising approach to Plato’s philosophy as a whole. From the very earliest reception of Plato’s philosophy, there has been a conflict between a dogmatic and a sceptical interpretation of his work and thought. Moreover, the two sides are often associated, respectively, with a metaphysical and an anti-metaphysical approach. This book, continuing a line of thought that is nowadays strongly present in the secondary literature – and also followed by the author in over thirty years of research –, maintains that a third way of thinking is required. Against the widespread view that an anti-dogmatic philosophy must go together with an anti-metaphysical stance, Trabattoni shows that for Plato, on the contrary, a sober and reasonable assessment of both the powers and limits of human reason relies on a proper metaphysical outlook. Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content). 

 

DOI	https://doi.org/10.11116/EPE_AMP
Landing page	https://chooser.crossref.org/?doi=10.11116%2FEPE_AMP
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode
Publisher	Leuven University Press
Publication place	Leuven, BE
Published on	2016-03-21
Series	Ancient and Medieval Philosophy - Series 1 vol. 1 ISSN Print: ISSN Digital:
ISBN	978-94-6270-059-8 (Hardback)
	978-94-6166-195-1 (PDF)

Reading: Performance and Materiality in Hebrew and Aramaic Traditions

Reading: Performance and Materiality in Hebrew and Aramaic Traditions

Hector M. Patmore (editor)

Hindy Najman(editor)

Stefan Schorch(editor)

Jeroen Verrijssen(editor)

Hanneke van der Schoor(editor)

 

This volume contains the proceedings the 'Reading: Performance and Materiality in Hebrew and Aramaic Traditions' colloquium, hosted at the University of Oxford in 2023, and jointly sponsored by the Oriel Centre for the Study of the Bible and the European Research Council project, 'TEXTEVOLVE.' The aim of the colloquium was to investigate Jewish approaches to the reading of texts, with a focus on reading practices that were applied to Hebrew and Aramaic texts in antiquity and the early Middle Ages. It explored, in particular, how these were shaped by material and non-textual aspects (oral traditions, performative context, philological values, etc). Among the questions it addressed were: How did non-textual components determine reading? To what extent did materiality shape or limit readings? How did reading practices shape the texts themselves? What values guided how texts were modified and variant texts evaluated? What determined which form or version of a text was read and according to what conventions? The responses to these questions collected in this volume highlight the tensions between authority and creativity, preservation and innovation, understanding and misapprehension, knowledge and ignorance, which shaped Jewish practices of reading. 

 

DOI	https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0457
Landing page	https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/OBP.0457
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Copyright	Hector M. Patmore; Hindy Najman; Stefan Schorch; Jeroen Verrijssen; Hanneke van der Schoor. Copyright of individual chapters are maintained by the chapter author(s).
Publisher	Open Book Publishers
Publication place	Cambridge, UK
Published on	2025-07-21
Series	Semitic Languages and Cultures vol. 36 ISSN Print: 2632-6906 ISSN Digital: 2632-6914
ISBN	978-1-80511-548-9 (Paperback)
	978-1-80511-549-6 (Hardback)
	978-1-80511-550-2 (PDF)

Un monde partagé : la Sicile du premier siècle av. J.-C. entre Diodore et Cicéron

Un monde partagé : la Sicile du premier siècle av. J.-C. entre Diodore et Cicéron

Stefania De Vido(editor)

Cécile Durvye(editor)

 

This volume is the result of a scientific collaboration between the research centres of the Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme in Aix-en-Provence and the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, whose study interests converged in a joint experimental project. A detailed comparison between Cicero and Diodorus has never been proposed until now, probably because of the obvious disparity between their works. There is, on the one hand, an illustrious orator at the centre of the political and cultural experience of Rome, and on the other hand, a minor Greek historian whose intellectual profile has only recently been enhanced by critics. Yet, they have quite a lot in common: they both lived in the turbulent late Republican age, both came from wealthy families without any political role; both received rhetorical training, travelled and frequented cultured circles. The area where the comparison between the two authors is most instructive is undoubtedly Sicily, the homeland of Diodorus and the scene of the beginnings of Cicero’s political career. The two writers shared a deep personal knowledge of the island: Sicily is constantly present in Diodorus’ Bibliotheca and is the focus of the judicial and political case exposed in the Verrinae. Aspects of the island’s history and culture emerging from the work of each author have already been extensively considered. This study, however, aims to offer a more analytical comparison of the representation of Sicily in both works, examining how the same geographical, historical and religious information, originating from a shared cultural background and from personal knowledge, is reinterpreted by the two authors according to their different rhetorical and intellectual projects. We defined four major categories of information relating to the island: geography, history of great men, religious traditions and practices, artistic and monumental heritage. For each of these categories, we conducted parallel analyses on each work, focusing on the selection of data, the way they were presented and their function in the overall economy of Diodorus’ and Cicero’s works. These parallel analyses highlight similarities and dissimilarities between the two authors: the affinities show the existence of a codified representation of Sicily, its history and its specificity in the context of the first century BC; the discrepancies result both from the divergences in method and aims of the two authors and, more deeply, from their differences in terms of personal, cultural and linguistic backgrounds and perspectives.

DOI	https://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-742-5
Landing page	https://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-743-2/
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright	Stefania De Vido, Cécile Durvye
Publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari – Venice University Press
Publication place	Venice, Italy
Published on	2023-12-19
Series	Antiquity Studies vol. 37 ISSN Print: 2610-9344 ISSN Digital: 2610-9344
ISBN	978-88-6969-742-5 (PDF)

 

150 Years of Oriental Studies at Ca’ Foscari

150 Years of Oriental Studies at Ca’ Foscari

Federico Greselin, Laura De Giorgi (eds.) 

 

 Since its establishment in 1868, Ca’ Foscari University’s educational vocation has been marked by its attention to the study and teaching of Oriental languages. Inheriting the legacy of Venice as a commercial and cultural gateway to the East, the development of Oriental studies has been envisioned as one of the most important and peculiar missions of this University as a national educational institution. This volume revisits the history of the teaching and research on Middle, Central, South-Asian and East Asian languages and civilisations at Ca’ Foscari, and of this University’s relationships with the East, offering some insights and information about the evolution of these disciplines, the main protagonists and the multiple connections that have tied and still tie Ca’ Foscari with the Oriental world.

DOI	https://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-252-9
Landing page	https://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-253-6/
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright	Federico Greselin, Laura De Giorgi
Publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari – Venice University Press
Publication place	Venice, Italy
Published on	2018-10-21
Series	I libri di Ca’ Foscari vol. 8 ISSN Print: 2610-9506 ISSN Digital: 2610-9506

Sappho: ]fragments

Sappho: ]fragments

Jonathan Goldberg

 

In Sappho, Jonathan Goldberg takes as his model the fragmentary state in which this sublime poet’s writing survives, a set of compositional and theoretical resources for living and thinking in more fully erotic ways in the present and the future. This book thus offers fragmentary commentary on disparate (Sapphic) works, such as the comics of Alison Bechdel, the paintings and cartoons of Leonardo da Vinci, Robert Reid-Pharr’s “Living as a Lesbian,” Madeleine de Scudéry’s Histoire de Sapho, John Donne’s “Sapho to Philaenis,” Todd Haynes and Patricia Highsmith’s Carol, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, writings by Willa Cather, and the paintings and writings of Simeon Solomon, among other works. Goldberg challenges readers to imagine and experience what Sarah Orne Jewett named the “country of our friendship,” a love both exceedingly strange and compellingly familiar. Just as Sappho’s coinage “bitter-sweet” describes eros as inextricably contradictory — two things at once, one thing after another, each interrupting, complicating, each other — the juxtapositions in this book mean to continually call into question categories of identity and identification in the wake of a quintessential woman writer from Lesbos. Over and over again, Goldberg’s Sappho: ]fragments inquires into how race, sexuality, and gender cross each other. The theoretical genius of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick presides over this set of meditations and mediations on likeness and desire. Rather than homogenizing its many subjects, it invites the reader to explore and inhabit new transits within and through what Audre Lorde called “the very house of difference.”

DOI	https://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0238.1.00
Landing page	https://punctumbooks.com/titles/sappho-fragments/
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Copyright	Goldberg, Jonathan
Publisher	punctum books
Publication place	Earth, Milky Way
Published on	2018-12-31
ISBN	978-1-947447-97-4 (Paperback)
	978-1-947447-98-1 (PDF)

 

La legatura dei libri antichi: Storia e conservazione

La legatura dei libri antichi: Storia e conservazione

Melania Zanetti (editor)

 

Bookbinding has always been a fundamental component of the book in codex form, a system for assembling the sheets containing the text and protecting them from the wounds of time and the manipulations associated with book use. In addition to their functionality, historical bookbindings can be considered mines of non-textual information. In their multi-materiality, they reveal the complexity of craftsmanship, technological advancement, usage, trade, and even the faith of the human community that produced them. However, the interest in more than just decorating the covers in these objects is quite recent and it is related to the gradual understanding that books are artefacts to be safeguarded in their entirety as material historical evidence and part of our cultural heritage. The essays collected in this volume reflect different approaches to the study of historical bookbindings in the Western Mediterranean basin as well as in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, including projects for the census of bindings, the study of written sources, the direct examination of book collections and the application of the methods of the archaeology of the book to analyse materials and structures involved in bookbinding manufacture. Terminologycal issues in their description are also addressed. Many different approaches help to place the book artefact in the historical context in which it was produced and to learn in detail about the technical characteristics of its production. 

 

DOI	https://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-820-0
Landing page	https://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-820-0/
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright	Melania Zanetti
Publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari – Venice University Press
Publication place	Venice, Italy
Published on	2024-10-29
Series	Studi di archivistica, bibliografia, paleografia vol. 7 ISSN Print: 2610-9093 ISSN Digital: 2610-9093
ISBN	978-88-6969-820-0 (Paperback)

Christian Palestinian Aramaic: New Perspectives on Language and Texts

Christian Palestinian Aramaic: New Perspectives on Language and Texts

Emiliano Fiori (editor)

Mara Nicosia (editor)

 At the time of its discovery, Christian Palestinian Aramaic suffered from its proximity to Syriac and from the fact that its literary production encompassed mostly translations from Greek. Spanning inscriptions, magical texts, and many literary genres, the Christian Palestinian Aramaic corpus has recently gained scholarly attention and is now recognised for its historical value. This shift has fostered a deeper understanding of the linguistic, textual, and cultural history of Melkite Christians in Syria and Sinai. This volume presents a selection of studies in Christian Palestinian Aramaic linguistics, epigraphy, and literature, complemented by a comprehensive bibliography of the field.

DOI	https://doi.org/10.30687/979-12-5742-018-5
Landing page	https://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/979-12-5742-018-5/
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari – Venice University Press
Published on	2026-05-13
Series	Syriaca vol. 1 ISSN Print: ISSN Digital:
ISBN	979-12-5742-018-5 (PDF)