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A comparative investigation in the metaphysics of material objects in ancient philosophy, this book provides radically new insights into key themes and areas of ancient thought by drawing on Greek and Buddhist philosophies. Ugo Zilioli explicates the neglected tradition of philosophers who in different ways made material objects either redundant or ontologically dispensable in the ancient world. Chapters cover concepts such as nihilism, indeterminacy, solipsism and tropes, demonstrating how the philosophy of major thinkers Protagoras, Vasubandhu, Gorgias, Nagarjuna, Pyrrho, and the Cyrenaics advance our understanding of eliminativism. Zilioli''s historical and philosophical reconstruction challenges traditional readings of key moments and figures in the history of thought, both Eastern and Western, as well as providing conceptual tools that are of interest not only to historians of philosophy but also to contemporary metaphysicians.
List of contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction: Nothing For Us?
1. Protagoras' Secret Doctrine: An Exercise in Ancient Eliminativism
2. Twins and Dharmas. Protagoras and Vasubandhu on a Two-Tier Ontology of Tropes
3. Gorgias and Nagarjuna on Nihilism
4. On Things. The Origin and Genealogy of Pyrrho's Metaphysics
5. The Cyrenaics on Elusive Objects
6. The Cyrenaics on Solipsism and Privacy
Conclusion: Eliminativism, Indeterminacy and Nihilism Between East and West
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Ugo Zilioli is John Fell Fund Researcher at the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, UK. He has published widely on ancient Greek philosophy and, more recently, on Buddhist and comparative philosophy. His previous publications, as editor, include
Atomism in Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2020) and
From the Socratics to the Socratic Schools (2015).
