A companion for visitors to Greece and Rome, and for armchair travelers as well. John Gaskin unfolds the thinking about nature, life, death, and other worlds that informed the culture and society of the classical world―still visible in today’s cityscapes and archaeological sites―and draws out its relevance and interest for the modern reader. It was the Greeks who first asked and discussed in a rational way two fundamental questions that never cease to concern thinking human beings: what is the nature of the universe, and what can I make of my brief time in it? Their answers, developed between the eighth century BC and the fourth century AD, are still relevant to the modern reader and traveler. The author associates each philosopher and his ideas with a particular tourist destination, and a gazetteer describes the sites and notes the people and ideas connected with them. 25 black-and-white illustrations

The Traveler's Guide to Classical Philosophy

Politics & Social Sciences

Gaskin, John

Philosophy

Thames&Hudson

In this clear and evocative account, John Gaskin unfolds the thinking about nature, life, death and other worlds that informed the culture and society of the Classical world, drawing out its interest for modern readers. Witty sketches and diagrams enliven the story, which runs from Homeric Greece to the banning of pagan religions in ad 391. The book concludes with a gazetteer describing notable sites and the people and ideas connected with them, making it an ideal companion for visitors to Classical ruins and for all armchair travellers curious to explore life’s big questions. Table of Contents Part I – The Idea of Hellenism: What the Greeks Created: 1. The Scheme of Things Entire • 2. The Idea of Hellenism • 3. Wine, Sex and the Symposium • 4. Theatres: Festivals, Entertainments and Meetings • 5. Temples: Gods, Feasts and Safe Deposits • Part II – The Ideal of Homer and the Ideas of the Philosophers: • 1. Troy: The Legend and the Book • 2. Troy: The Book and the Ideals • 3. Miletus: The Nature of the Universe • 4 Ionia and Western Greece: Laws, Numbers and Reality • 5. Athens: Socrates, Plato and Other Worlds • 6. Aristotle and this World: Nature, Life and Ethics • 7. Epicurus: The Garden and the Wilderness • 8. Stoicism: Duty and the Laws of Nature • 9. Neoplatonism: The Last Protest • 10. The End of Classical Antiquity • Part III – Cities and Citizens: A Gazetteer

The Traveller's Guide to Classical Philosophy (Paperback) /anglais

History

Ancient Civilizations

Breathing (Your Body)

Describes the structure of the lungs, explains why humans cough and sneeze, and tells how pollution and cigarette smoking can damage the lungs

Children's Books

Franklin Watts

An introduction to the human skeleton discusses the interaction of bones and muscles, the importance of exercise, and health problems and injuries affecting bones

Movement (Your Body)

The ten atmospheric 'Tales of Twilight and Borderlands' which make up The Long Retreating Day are the stuff of things flickering at the edge of experience. We witness a student quarrel which long afterwards brings forth its own bitter harvest; ancient gods that live in human nature and are denied or worshipped at fearful cost; the power of the mind to create what it most dreads; hubris at its darkest in academic life; malevolence that can linger from the past; and the shadows cast by future events.Variously sardonic, dramatic, urbane and sinister, these stories are grounded in real landscapes and informed by the strengths and failings of the human spirit.

The Long Retreating Day

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Independently published

The twelve ‘Tales of Twilight and Borderlands’ that make up The Master of the House are in the classic tradition of English ghost stories and tales of the unknown. They are recounted with a powerful sense of place: winter on an unfrequented moor, Oxford railway station in the 1950s, high summer near a legendary Roman camp, a Victorian suburb in London, a college VIII rowing home on a December evening, a railway journey delayed by frost and snow into endless night. The narratives are touched with sardonic humour and a feeling for things past and to come that make the unexpected a sometimes terrible reality.

The Master of the House

These tales of twilight and borderlands depart from an oral tradition developed through the writings of Beckford, Mary Shelley, Le Fanu, and M.R. James. They are concerned with the life of the mind and imagination, fear and the supernatural, and they attest to the demands of the unconscious in the twenty-first century. The eleven stories incarnate shadow worlds where the past and present interpenetrate, where common life is touched by deeper, less pleasant purposes. They are set variously in Ireland, Scotland and England, and are permeated by a powerful sense of place: the empty moor, the garden at the edge of the wild, the abandoned railway, the enclosed privacy of an ancient college. Absorbing, haunting narratives, they are related with the skill and precision of a master storyteller. John Gaskin is a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. ""John Gaskin's stories are genuinely unsettling, and the reader leaves the collection with a pervasive sense of something other, of forces existing on the periphery of our reality.""-Times Literary Supplement

The Dark Companion: Ghost Stories

Contemporary

The Lilliput Press

Master of the House

Tartarus

Guía para viajeros a la filosofía clásica

Ediciones Akal

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Books by Gaskin, John