Cause and Explanation in Ancient Philosophy
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- ISBN 9781032307459
- Weight: 620g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 05 May 2025
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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This volume offers an updated analysis of the use, meaning, and scope of the classical notion of aitia. It clarifies philosophical and philological questions about aitia and offers bold and innovative interpretations of this key concept of ancient philosophy.
The numerous meanings and nuances of aitia remain difficult to grasp. Ancient philosophers use aitia to explain the existence and activity of substances, bodies, souls, or gods. Paradoxically, its own definition remains difficult to establish. This book reconstructs some of the most important uses, variants, and scopes of the term aitia within different philosophical perspectives in antiquity, including early Greek philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, and Islamic philosophy. The chapters analyze metaphysical aspects, epistemological issues, and logical implications of aitia. They engage with the most relevant critical literature generated in several modern languages. In doing so, they offer an inclusive and overarching re-evaluation of our assumptions about causation and explanation in ancient philosophy.
Cause and Explanation in Ancient Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Pre-Socratic philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, late antiquity, and medieval philosophy.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license.
Alberto Ross is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Universidad Panamericana, Mexico. His works include The Causality of the Prime Mover in Metaphysics Λ (2016); Causality, Nature and Fate in Alexander of Aphrodisias (2016); The Causality of the Prime Mover in Simplicius (2020); and he coedited the volume Time and Cosmology in Plato and the Platonic Tradition (2022).
Daniel Vázquez is Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Philosophy at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. He is also a member of the Trinity Plato Centre. He has published in various areas of ancient philosophy, especially on Plato, the Stoics, and the skepticism of Sextus Empiricus. He is coeditor of Time and Cosmology in Plato and the Platonic Tradition (2022) and Plato on Time and the World (2023).
