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The Greek Praise of Poverty by William Desmond
£24.99
Out of stock
Product Ref. (e.g. ISBN, SKU)
9780268025823
Published:
30 Jan 2006
Format:
Paperback
Number of pages:
256 pages
Dimensions:
229x152x14mm
Weight:
0.349kgs
Author:
Explains Cynicism's rise in popularity in the ancient world by exploring the set of attitudes that collectively formed the Greek praise of poverty. The author argues that economic, military, and philosophical thought contains explicit criticisms of wealth and praise of poverty. This is a work of ancient Cynicism and its classical environment.
William Desmond, taking issue with typical assessments of the ancient Cynics, contends that figures such as Antisthenes and Diogenes were not cultural outcasts or marginal voices in the classical culture of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. Rather, the Cynic movement had deep and significant roots in what Desmond calls "the Greek praise of poverty." Desmond demonstrates that classical attitudes toward wealth were complex and ambivalent, and allowed for an implicit praise of poverty and the virtues it could inspire. From an economic and political point of view, the poor majority at Athens and elsewhere were natural democrats who distrusted great concentrations of wealth as potentially oligarchical or tyrannical. Hence, the poor could be praised in contemporary literature for their industry, honesty, frugality, and temperance. The rich, on the other hand, were often criticized as idle, unjust, arrogant, and profligate. These perspectives were reinforced by typical Greek experiences of war, and the belief that poverty fostered the virtues of courage and endurance. Finally, from an early date, Greek philosophers associated wisdom with the transcendence of sense experience and of such worldly values as wealth and honor. The Cynics, Desmond asserts, assimilated all of these ideas in creating their distinctive and radical brand of asceticism. Theirs was a startling and paradoxical outlook, but it had broad appeal and would persist to exert a manifold influence in the Hellenistic period and beyond.
About the Author: William Desmond is the David R. Cook Chair in Philosophy at Villanova University, the Thomas A. F. Kelly Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Maynooth University, Ireland, and professor emeritus of philosophy at KU Leuven, Belgium. He is the author, editor, and co-editor of more than twenty-five books, including The Voiding of Being: The Doing and Undoing of Metaphysics in Modernity.
| Number of pages | 256 |
|---|
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