Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Practice

About the Book

This volume collects written and visual works that engage with opportunities of ancient practice from within the continental tradition. More than surveying ancient ethical or political ideas, the chapters develop divergent yet resonant approaches to concrete ways of living, acting, reflecting and being with others found in antiquity and its reception. The practices involve the habits, exercises, activities, philosophies and lives of today's readers; and so most chapters encourage the reader to do something, to put the ideas into practice. Withstanding a temptation to simply theorise practice, it insists on the embodied and shared materiality of living in singular times and places. The practical encounters between this book and its readers range across antiquity and the contemporary world, from political theatre, casuistry and slavery to book production, friendship and our own mortality. Through thinkerpractitioner collaborations, occasional pieces, exhortations to readers and recipes for action, this book strives to articulate and cultivate old and new practices for our lives.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures Acknowledgements Note on the Text Notes on Contributors Introduction: The Use and Abuse of Antiquity for Life Part I. Encountering Ancient Practice 1. Situations 1. The Cosmology of Prudence/Cosmologie de la prudence Pierre Aubenque, translated by Cameron F. Coates and Khafiz Kerimov 2. The Pleasures of the Problem: Parmenides, Badiou, and Mathematics Becky Vartabedian 3. Foucault, Plato, Aristotle, and the Strangeness of Reflexivity Frederique Ildefonse 4. Stoicism and a Matter of Conscience Christelle Veillard 2. Conjunctions 5. Plato’s Lysis: The Dilemma of Friendship and Love Pierre Macherey, translated by David Maruzzella 6. Aristotle on the Practice of Life Sara Brill 7. Theory and Politics in Plato’s Republic Adriana Caverero, translated by Paula Landerreche Cardillo 8. Aristophanic Comedy and Its Democratic Permutations: Fidelity in Spirit? Or in Content and Form? Michael Weinman Part II. Practices of Encountering Antiquity 3. Fragments 9. Forms of Memory Vlad Basarab 10. Sapphic Foucault: Fragments of an Anthropocene Archive Lynne Huffer 11. Exiles and Deserts Casey Ford 12. Black Dionysius Andrés Fabián Henao Castro 4. Accumulations 13. Photographing (with) the Muses Lauren Guilmette and Rob Leib 14. How to Read the Nature of Things Thomas Nail 15. Eternal Recurrence and Racist Histories Ryan J. Johnson (in collaboration with Keshia Wall) 16. On Lucretius Brooke Holmes & Isabel Lewis

About the Author :
Abraham Jacob Greenstine is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University. Ryan J. Johnson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Elon University in North Carolina. He is the author of Deleuze, A Stoic (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) and The Deleuze-Lucretius Encounter (EUP, 2017). He is co-editor of Nietzsche and Epicurus (Bloomsbury, 2020), Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Metaphysics (EUP, 2017) and The Movement of Nothingness (Davies Group Publishers, 2012). Dave Mesing is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University

Review :
Ancient Greek philosophy is not merely doctrine. It prods and provokes. It aims to change its adherents in their thoughts, habits, and souls. Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Practice, a broad, learned collection from distinguished hands, takes this observation seriously in the best possible way—itself practicing and performing philosophical and artistic thought. The idea that guides this magnificent collection is to establish a virtuous circle between ancient and contemporary philosophy. To this end, it succeeds in providing a selective reading of ancient authors guided by a choice of contemporary lenses which bring into focus the profound link between philosophy and its historical-social conditions. These texts make visible, here and now, the very essence of philosophy as an intervention in a conjuncture whose enjeu is always ethical-political.