Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Calling Philosophers Names: On the Origin of a Discipline

Calling Philosophers Names: On the Origin of a Discipline

Moore, Christopher

Paperback

PhilosophyAncient Greece

ISBN10: 0691230226
ISBN13: 9780691230221
Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr
Published: Nov 23 2021
Pages: 440
Weight: 1.40
Height: 1.20 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

An original and provocative book that illuminates the origins of philosophy in ancient Greece by revealing the surprising early meanings of the word philosopher

Calling Philosophers Names provides a groundbreaking account of the origins of the term philosophos or philosopher in ancient Greece. Tracing the evolution of the word's meaning over its first two centuries, Christopher Moore shows how it first referred to aspiring political sages and advice-givers, then to avid conversationalists about virtue, and finally to investigators who focused on the scope and conditions of those conversations. Questioning the familiar view that philosophers from the beginning loved wisdom or merely cultivated their intellect, Moore shows that they were instead mocked as laughably unrealistic for thinking that their incessant talking and study would earn them social status or political and moral authority.

Taking a new approach to the history of early Greek philosophy, Calling Philosophers Names seeks to understand who were called philosophoi or philosophers and why, and how the use of and reflections on the word contributed to the rise of a discipline. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, the book demonstrates that a word that began in part as a wry reference to a far-flung political bloc came, hardly a century later, to mean a life of determined self-improvement based on research, reflection, and deliberation. Early philosophy dedicated itself to justifying its own dubious-seeming enterprise. And this original impulse to seek legitimacy holds novel implications for understanding the history of the discipline and its influence.

1 different editions

Also available

Also in

Philosophy

View All