The Self in Premodern Thought reconfigures the historical study of the self, which has typically been treated in disciplinary silos. Bringing multiple disciplinary perspectives into conversation with each other, it broadens the discussion to include texts and forms of writing outside the standard philosophical/theological canon. A distinguished group of contributors, from philosophy, classics, theology, history, and comparative literature, explores a wide range of texts that greatly expand our understanding of how selfhood was conceived in the ancient, medieval, and early modern periods. The essays in this groundbreaking collection range from challenging new perspectives on well-known authors and texts, such as Plato and Augustine, to innovative explorations of forms of writing that have rarely been discussed in this context, such as drama, sermons, autobiographical writing, and liturgy.
Muu info
Reconfigures the historical study of the self as a fundamentally interdisciplinary enterprise based on an unusually wide range of texts.
The self in premodern thought: from antiquity to the renaissance in
Europe José Luis Bermúdez and Catherine Conybeare (eds.);
1. Introduction
José Luis Bermúdez and Catherine Conybeare;
2. Framing (some) self in the
Platonic dialogues M. M. McCabe;
3. Aristotle's multiple selves José Luis
Bermúdez;
4. Self-harm and the death drive Simon Goldhill;
5. Augustine and
the origins of the self Catherine Conybeare;
6. The Sinful self: formation
and transformation Abigail Firey;
7. Turning inward and outward: two medieval
approaches to the self Dominik Perler;
8. The Hesychast self: interiority and
embodied perfection in the anthropology of Gregory Palamas Alexis Torrance;
9. Renaissance individualism revisited: Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the
emergence of the humanist relational self Gur Zak;
10. Free will a fortress:
the self in Spanish renaissance drama Hilaire Kallendorf;
11. Beyond
consciousness: Locke's sources for the self Patrick J. Connolly;
12. A
Decaying Carcass? Mary Astell on the body Colin Chamberlain.
José Luis Bermúdez is Professor of Philosophy and Charles H. Gregory '64 Chair in Arts and Sciences at Texas A & M University. His many books include The Paradox of Self-Consciousness (2000), Understanding 'I': Language and Thought (2017), and The Bodily Self (2018). He has a longstanding interest in the history of philosophy, particularly classical, and his most recent book is Aristotle's De Anima: A Guide (2025). Catherine Conybeare is Leslie Clark Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies at Bryn Mawr College. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including from the Guggenheim Foundation. Her interest in interiority and the self led to a Guidebook to Augustine's Confessions (2016), while her most recent book is Augustine the African (2025).
Lisainfo e-raamatute kohta