Can Atoms Make You Happy?
The Greek philosopher Epicurus established his school in Athens in 306 BCE. He was a prolific writer; the one biography that survives, that of Diogenes Laertius, claims that the full body of his writings occupied around 300 books…
The Closure of Herodotus' Histories
On the other hand, during the past five or six decades a number of observations have accumulated to suggest that the ending of the Histories presents a paradox: While the book is open-ended as a strictly historical narrative, as a work of archaic art it is perfectly and unambiguously closed.
Thucydides and the invention of political science
Thucydides self-consciously invented a new form of inquiry, which can reasonably be called “social and political science.” His intellectual goal was a new understanding of power and its relationship to human agency and the deep structures of human society. His understanding of agency and structure is in some ways reminiscent of the reflexivity theory developed by Anthony Giddens.
The dating of Pheidon in antiquity
The dating of the Argive tyrant (or king) Pheidon, a central figure of early Greek history according to the ancients, has long been one of the most disputed questions in the history of Archaic Greece. The reason is obvious – even in antiquity there was no agreement on this point.