"The Declaration of Independence identified "the pursuit of happiness" as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, profiles six of the most influential founders--Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton--to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives, and to give us the "best and most readable introduction to the ideas of the Founders that we have" (Gordon Wood, author of Power and Liberty). By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired the Founders, Rosen shows us how they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good--the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity, which the Founders viewed as part of a daily struggle for self-improvement, character development, and calm self-mastery. They believed that political self-government required personal self-government. For all six Founders, the pursuit of virtue was incompatible with enslavement of African Americans, although the Virginians betrayed their own principles." -- From the publisher's website.

Product Description The mutual interaction of philosophy and Roman political and cultural life has aroused more and more interest in recent years among students of classical literature, Roman history, and ancient philosophy. In this volume, which gathers together some of the papers originally delivered at aseries of seminars in the University of Oxford, scholars from all three disciplines explore the role of Platonism and Aristotelianism in Roman intellectual, cultural, and political life from the second century BC to the third century AD. Review Praise for Philosophia Togata I: "An invaluable contribution to the long-overdue exploration of an important but neglected area".--Greece & Rome About the Author Miriam Griffin, Tutorial Fellow in Ancient History, Somerville College, Oxford.

6. Review of M. Pohlenz, Hippokrates und die Begründung der wissenschaftlichen Medizin. American Journal of Philosophy 61 (1940). -- 7. ""The Function of the Myth in Plato's Philosophy."" Journal of the History of Ideas 10 (1949). -- 8. ""Platonic Anonymity."" American Journal of Philology 83 (1962). -- 9. ""The Role of Eryximachus in Plato's Symposium."" Transactions of the American Philological Association 76 (1945). -- 10. ""Randall on Aristotle, a Review."" Journal of Philosophy 59 (1962). -- 11. ""Aristotle and the Concept of Evolution."" Classical Weekly (now Classical World) 37 (1944)

"The book is carefully organized and provides a clear, well-structured, and lucid expression of its theses." -- Dr. Marvin Fox, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University The Mishnah is the first canonical writing of Judaism after the Hebrew Scriptures of ancient Israel (the Old Testament) and the foundation of the two Talmuds and of all Judaism thereafter. According to eminent religion scholar Jacob Neusner, the key to understanding the Mishnah is to read it as philosophy, in accord with the generally accepted understanding of philosophy in its time and place. In Judaism as Philosophy, Neusner studies a large sample of evidence, meticulously translated and carefully explained, and identifies the philosophical side of the Mishnah's system, method, and message alike. The philosophical tradition in which the Mishnah takes its place, Neusner explains, utilizes the Aristotelian method of hierarchical classification to demonstrate the proposition (important to Middle Platonism and profoundly expressed by Plotinus) that many things really form a single thing: many species, a single genus; many genera, an encompassing, well-crafted and cogent whole. Through the systematic and orderly hierarchical classification of the things of nature, the framers of the Mishnah illustrate the ultimate unity of all being emanating from the One on high. Arguing that the document's writers chose a legal form for a philosophical proposition, this book completely changes a centuries-old way of reading the Mishnah. Judaism emerges as a sustained demonstration of the unity of all being under one God. "What is the next phase in this ongoing history of the formation of Judaism in theclassical period[?]... The analysis of the philosophical character of the Mishnah places into perspective what I believe to be the character of the first phase, and therefore points toward the development of the second and third phases, of the Judaism of the Dual Torah. The entire characterization of the first phase of the Judaism of the Dual Torah, that is, the system attested by the Mishnah in particular, rests upon the results of this book and its two companions, on economics and politics respectively."--from the Preface