Greek Philosophical Terms

Combining the convenience of a dictionary with the depth of a history of philosophy, this reference book fills a great need and should prove exceedingly useful to all students and scholars of classics, philosophy, theology and linguistics. The book defines and translates key terms used by pre-Christian philosophers up to the time of Proclus, with special references to the writings of the philosophers as they developed nuances and new meanings for the terms. Entries are arranged in dictionary style, but knowledge of Greek is not necessary to use the book, since an English-Greek index provides the reader with Greek equivalents of English terms, with cross-references to the main text. This is the first such handbook available in English and its great value is that it isolates terms and allows the reader to follow their individual careers, while at the same time offering an evolutionary history of the concept instead of a mere definition. In his introduction Francis Peters discusses the special qualities that enabled the ancient Greeks to develop their language as an unsurpassed set of symbols for the discussion of abstract ideas. Frances E. Peters is Professor of History and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at New York University. He is also the author of Jerusalem and Mecca: The typology of the Holy City in the Near East (NYU Press, 1986)