Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Metaphysics

18 essays breathe new life into the classic problems of ancient metaphysics using contemporary continental materialisms and realisms

In this volume, leading philosophers address the varied, volatile and novel encounters between contemporary and antique thought. They reconceive and redeploy the problems of ancient metaphysics: one and the many, the potential and the actual, the material and immaterial, the divine and the world itself. Alongside these essays are three original and previously unpublished translations of texts by Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Aubenque and Barbara Cassin.

Contents: Introduction1. A Thousand Antiquities - Abraham Jacob Greenstine & Ryan J. Johnson
I. Plato2. The Muses and Philosophy: Elements for a History of the "Pseudos" [1991] - Barbara Cassin, trans. Sam Galson
3. Odysseus' Changed Soul: A contemporary reading of the Myth of Er - Catherine Malabou
4. Plato's Protagoras: The Authority of Beginning an Education - Daniel Price
5. Univocity, Duality, and Ideal Genesis: Deleuze and Plato - John Bova & Paul Livingston
6. "Adjust your dread": Badiou's Metaphysical Disposition - A.J. Bartlett

II. Aristotle7. Science Regained [1962] - Pierre Aubenque, trans. Clayton Shoppa
8. Aristotle's Organism, and Ours - Emanuela Bianchi
9. Does it Matter? Material Nature and Vital Heat in Aristotle's Biology -Adriel M. Trott
10. The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi's Search for Truth against Nihilism -David Hoinski & Ron Polansky
11. Diverging Ways: The Trajectories of Ontology in Parmenides, Aristotle, and Deleuze - Abraham Jacob Greenstine
12. Object and Οὐσία: Harman and Aristotle on the Being of Things - Eric Salem

III. Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics, and Neo-Platonists13. Lucretius and Naturalism [1961] - Gilles Deleuze, trans. Jared Bly14. On Causality and Law in Lucretius and Contemporary Cosmology - David Webb
15. On the Surface: The Deleuze-Stoicism Encounter - Ryan J. Johnson
16. Contingency and Skepticism in Agamben's Thought - Gert-Jan van der Heiden
17. Plotinus' "Reverse" Platonism: A Deleuzian Response to the Problem of Emanation Imagery - Gina Zavota

IV. Postscript
18. From Metaphysics to Ethics (with Bernard Stiegler, Heraclitus, andAristotle) - Kurt Lampe