Birth of Critical Thinking in Republican Rome

This book analyses the developments in critical reasoning that transformed the conception of tradition, authority, knowledge and power in the late Republic.

List of contents

Foreword Malcolm Schofield; Preface; Introduction to the English edition; Roman culture in movement; 1. Crises and questionings; 2. Opening up the world: the birth of curiosity; 3. From disarray to erudition; 4. The experience of thought; 5. A discourse on the method, or the spirit of forms; 6. The construction of Roman universality; 7. Conclusion: the territories of reason.

About the author

Claudia Moatti is Professor of Ancient History at Université de Paris VIII and of Classics at the University of Southern California, with a courtesy joint appointment in Law. Recent projects include an international program on 'The Control of Human Mobility in the Mediterranean from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period', which culminated in three edited volumes: Le contrôle de la mobilité des personnes en Méditerranée, de l'antiquité à l'époque moderne (2004), Gens de passage en Méditerranée (2007), and Le monde de l'itinérance en Méditerranée (2009). She is currently studying the concept of res publica and the 'cosmopolitanisation' of the Roman Empire (a two-book project under the title Politics and Cosmopolitics).

Summary

A classic work arguing that the major social and political changes occurring during the last century of the Roman Republic were accompanied by major intellectual developments which saw a move away from traditional understandings of where consensus and authority were to be located to approaches to knowledge based on critical reasoning.

Product details

• Authors: Claude Moatti, Claudia Moatti, Claudia (University of Southern California Moatti, Moatti Claudia
• Assisted by: Malcolm Schofield (Foreword), Schofield Malcolm (Foreword), Janet Lloyd (Translation), Lloyd Janet (Translation)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 09.09.2015
• EAN: 9780521895781
• ISBN: 978-0-521-89578-1
• No. of pages: 410
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: antiquity to present day; History of Ideas, European History, HISTORY / Ancient / Rome, HISTORY / Europe / General, HISTORY / Social History, Ancient Rome, Ancient History, Classical history / classical civilisation, BCE to c 500 CE, BCE period – Protohistory