Joshua Billings
Biographic Data
| ID | 3832452 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joshua Billings |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joshua |
| FAMILY NAME | Billings |
| SIGNATURE | BILLINGS J |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Cambridge Companion to the Sophists
The Classical Greek sophists – Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, and Antiphon, among others – are some of the most important figures in the flourishing of linguistic, historical, and philosophical reflection at the time of Socrates. They are also some of the most controversial: what makes the sophists distinctive, and what they contributed to fifth-century intellectual culture, has been hotly debated since the time of Plato. They have often…
The Philosophical Stage
The Philosophical Stage
This book offers an innovative approach to ancient Greek literature and thought that places drama at the heart of intellectual history. Drawing on evidence from tragedy and comedy, the book shines new light on the development of early Greek philosophy, arguing that drama is our best source for understanding the intellectual culture of classical Athens. The book recasts classical Greek intellectual history as a conversation across discourses and d…
Philosophical Stage
"In this book, classicist Joshua Billings considers classical Greek drama as intellectual history. Developing an innovative approach to dramatic form as a mode of philosophical thought, Billings recasts early Greek intellectual history as a conversation across types of discourses and demonstrates the significance of dramatic reflections on widely-shared conceptual questions. He integrates evidence from tragedy, comedy, and satyr play into the dev…
Agōn and Authority
This chapter focuses on the agōn sophias . The term is used to describe a group of scenes that, despite differences in formal constitution, stage an opposition between two understandings of sophia and debate what it is to be sophos . These scenes are bound together not so much by their verbal or scenic form (insofar as it can be reconstructed) as by the agonistic setting and the central concern of sophia, which both figures seek to define and cla…
The Philosophical Stage
A bold new reconception of ancient Greek drama as a mode of philosophical thinkingThe Philosophical Stage offers an innovative approach to ancient Greek literature and thought that places drama at the heart of intellectual history. Drawing on evidence from tragedy and comedy, Joshua Billings shines new light on the development of early Greek philosophy, arguing that drama is our best source for understanding the intellectual culture of classical …
Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us
Who is the “us” of this book's title? A riddle, perhaps, for Oedipus. Tragedy is, in Critchley's most sweeping formulation, “a genealogy of who we are, an account of our origins and how the curse of the past can unknowingly take shape in the present, and we don't see it and we rage when we are told what it is.” The riddle only deepens. Tragedy shows us “who we are,” but who is “we”?Critchley's “we,” it emerges, has some clear coordinates. His vie…
Nietzsche's Philology of the Present
Nietzsche's Philology of the Present" discusses Nietzsche's views on philology as a critique of philological institutions and pedagogical practices. It argues that these dimensions have largely been ignored by scholars, who have instead focused on Nietzsche as a thinker concerning philological method. Nietzsche, however, understands philology and the philologist as fundamentally shaped by the discipline's pedagogical role, and both his criticisms…
The ‘Smiling Mask’ of Bacchae
In his commentary on Bacchae 439, lemma γελῶν, E.R. Dodds writes: ‘the actor who plays the Stranger no doubt wore a smiling mask throughout’. In addition to this passage, Dodds cites Bacch. 380 (γελάσαι) and Hymn. Hom. Bacch. 14 (μειδιάων). Referring to Bacch. 1021 (προσώπῳ γελῶντι), he expands: ‘it is an ambiguous smile—here the smile of a martyr, afterwards the smile of the destroyer.’ The idea seems to originate either from Dodds himself (whos…
Tragedy and the Idea of Modernity
From around 1800, particularly in Germany, Greek tragedy has been privileged in popular and scholarly discourse for its relation to apparently timeless metaphysical, existential, ethical, aesthetic, and psychological questions. As a major concern of modern philosophy, it has fascinated thinkers including Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger. Such theories have arguably had a more profound influence on modern understanding of the ge…
Genealogy of the Tragic
Why did Greek tragedy and “the tragic” come to be seen as essential to conceptions of modernity? And how has this belief affected modern understandings of Greek drama? This book answers these and related questions by tracing the emergence of the modern theory of the tragic, which was first developed around 1800 by thinkers associated with German Idealism. The book argues that the idea of the tragic arose in response to a new consciousness of hist…
Genealogy of the Tragic
Genealogy of the Tragic
Why did Greek tragedy and "the tragic" come to be seen as essential to conceptions of modernity? And how has this belief affected modern understandings of Greek drama? In Genealogy of the Tragic, Joshua Billings answers these and related questions by tracing the emergence of the modern theory of the tragic, which was first developed around 1800 by thinkers associated with German Idealism. The book argues that the idea of the tragic arose in respo…
Quarreling over Tragedy
This chapter begins with a consideration of the comparison of antiquity and modernity. From the Renaissance until around 1800, evaluative comparison of antiquity and modernity was an important mode of thought throughout Western Europe. These inquiries are often grouped under the name of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes . Towards the end of the eighteenth century, though, these comparisons began to disappear. They were replaced by an under…
Genealogy of the Tragic
Why did Greek tragedy and "the tragic" come to be seen as essential to conceptions of modernity? And how has this belief affected modern understandings of Greek drama? In Genealogy of the Tragic, Joshua Billings answers these and related questions by tracing the emergence of the modern theory of the tragic, which was first developed around 1800 by thinkers associated with German Idealism. The book argues that the idea of the tragic arose in respo…
Choruses, Ancient and Modern
Choruses, Ancient and Modern examines the ancient Greek chorus and its afterlives in western culture. Choruses, though absolutely central to the social, political, and religious life of classical Greece, no longer hold the same broad importance in modernity, yet the attraction of the Greek chorus has proved a strong impetus to reimagining. Artists and thinkers have continually appropriated Greek choruses to their own ends, and the body of these e…
Choruses, Ancient and Modern
The ancient singing and dancing chorus has exerted a powerful influence in the modern world. This is the first book to look systematically at the points of similarity and difference between ancient and modern choruses, across time and place, in their ancient contexts in modern theatre, opera, dance, musical theatre, and in political debate
Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy
This volume explores how the choruses of Greek tragedy creatively combined media and discourses to generate their own specific forms of meaning. The contributors analyse choruses as fictional, religious and civic performers; as combinations of text, song and dance; and as objects of reflection in themselves, in relation and contrast to the choruses of comedy and melic poetry. Drawing on earlier analyses of the social context of Greek drama, the n…
Epic and Tragic Music
Epic and Tragic Music: The Union of the Arts in the Eighteenth Century Joshua Billings I. The Union of the Arts in Weimar Around 1800 in Weimar, thought on Greek tragedy crystallized around the union of speech, music, and gesture—what Wagner would later call the Gesamtkunstwerk. Friedrich Schiller and Johann Gottfried Herder both found something lacking in modern spoken theater in comparison with ancient tragedy’s synthesis of the arts. Schiller’…
Misreading the Chorus
The Philosophical Stage
A bold new reconception of ancient Greek drama as a mode of philosophical thinkingThe Philosophical Stage offers an innovative approach to ancient Greek literature and thought that places drama at the heart of intellectual history. Drawing on evidence from tragedy and comedy, Joshua Billings shines new light on the development of early Greek philosophy, arguing that drama is our best source for understanding the intellectual culture of classical …
The ‘Smiling Mask’ of Bacchae
In his commentary on Bacchae 439, lemma γελῶν, E.R. Dodds writes: ‘the actor who plays the Stranger no doubt wore a smiling mask throughout’. In addition to this passage, Dodds cites Bacch. 380 (γελάσαι) and Hymn. Hom. Bacch. 14 (μειδιάων). Referring to Bacch. 1021 (προσώπῳ γελῶντι), he expands: ‘it is an ambiguous smile—here the smile of a martyr, afterwards the smile of the destroyer.’ The idea seems to originate either from Dodds himself (whos…
Misreading the Chorus
Epic and Tragic Music
Epic and Tragic Music: The Union of the Arts in the Eighteenth Century Joshua Billings I. The Union of the Arts in Weimar Around 1800 in Weimar, thought on Greek tragedy crystallized around the union of speech, music, and gesture—what Wagner would later call the Gesamtkunstwerk. Friedrich Schiller and Johann Gottfried Herder both found something lacking in modern spoken theater in comparison with ancient tragedy’s synthesis of the arts. Schiller’…
Choruses, Ancient and Modern
Choruses, Ancient and Modern examines the ancient Greek chorus and its afterlives in western culture. Choruses, though absolutely central to the social, political, and religious life of classical Greece, no longer hold the same broad importance in modernity, yet the attraction of the Greek chorus has proved a strong impetus to reimagining. Artists and thinkers have continually appropriated Greek choruses to their own ends, and the body of these e…
Choruses, Ancient and Modern
The ancient singing and dancing chorus has exerted a powerful influence in the modern world. This is the first book to look systematically at the points of similarity and difference between ancient and modern choruses, across time and place, in their ancient contexts in modern theatre, opera, dance, musical theatre, and in political debate
Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy
This volume explores how the choruses of Greek tragedy creatively combined media and discourses to generate their own specific forms of meaning. The contributors analyse choruses as fictional, religious and civic performers; as combinations of text, song and dance; and as objects of reflection in themselves, in relation and contrast to the choruses of comedy and melic poetry. Drawing on earlier analyses of the social context of Greek drama, the n…
Genealogy of the Tragic
Why did Greek tragedy and “the tragic” come to be seen as essential to conceptions of modernity? And how has this belief affected modern understandings of Greek drama? This book answers these and related questions by tracing the emergence of the modern theory of the tragic, which was first developed around 1800 by thinkers associated with German Idealism. The book argues that the idea of the tragic arose in response to a new consciousness of hist…
Genealogy of the Tragic
Genealogy of the Tragic
Why did Greek tragedy and "the tragic" come to be seen as essential to conceptions of modernity? And how has this belief affected modern understandings of Greek drama? In Genealogy of the Tragic, Joshua Billings answers these and related questions by tracing the emergence of the modern theory of the tragic, which was first developed around 1800 by thinkers associated with German Idealism. The book argues that the idea of the tragic arose in respo…
Quarreling over Tragedy
This chapter begins with a consideration of the comparison of antiquity and modernity. From the Renaissance until around 1800, evaluative comparison of antiquity and modernity was an important mode of thought throughout Western Europe. These inquiries are often grouped under the name of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes . Towards the end of the eighteenth century, though, these comparisons began to disappear. They were replaced by an under…
Genealogy of the Tragic
Why did Greek tragedy and "the tragic" come to be seen as essential to conceptions of modernity? And how has this belief affected modern understandings of Greek drama? In Genealogy of the Tragic, Joshua Billings answers these and related questions by tracing the emergence of the modern theory of the tragic, which was first developed around 1800 by thinkers associated with German Idealism. The book argues that the idea of the tragic arose in respo…
Tragedy and the Idea of Modernity
From around 1800, particularly in Germany, Greek tragedy has been privileged in popular and scholarly discourse for its relation to apparently timeless metaphysical, existential, ethical, aesthetic, and psychological questions. As a major concern of modern philosophy, it has fascinated thinkers including Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger. Such theories have arguably had a more profound influence on modern understanding of the ge…
The ‘Smiling Mask’ of Bacchae
In his commentary on Bacchae 439, lemma γελῶν, E.R. Dodds writes: ‘the actor who plays the Stranger no doubt wore a smiling mask throughout’. In addition to this passage, Dodds cites Bacch. 380 (γελάσαι) and Hymn. Hom. Bacch. 14 (μειδιάων). Referring to Bacch. 1021 (προσώπῳ γελῶντι), he expands: ‘it is an ambiguous smile—here the smile of a martyr, afterwards the smile of the destroyer.’ The idea seems to originate either from Dodds himself (whos…
Nietzsche's Philology of the Present
Nietzsche's Philology of the Present" discusses Nietzsche's views on philology as a critique of philological institutions and pedagogical practices. It argues that these dimensions have largely been ignored by scholars, who have instead focused on Nietzsche as a thinker concerning philological method. Nietzsche, however, understands philology and the philologist as fundamentally shaped by the discipline's pedagogical role, and both his criticisms…
The Philosophical Stage
The Philosophical Stage
This book offers an innovative approach to ancient Greek literature and thought that places drama at the heart of intellectual history. Drawing on evidence from tragedy and comedy, the book shines new light on the development of early Greek philosophy, arguing that drama is our best source for understanding the intellectual culture of classical Athens. The book recasts classical Greek intellectual history as a conversation across discourses and d…
Philosophical Stage
"In this book, classicist Joshua Billings considers classical Greek drama as intellectual history. Developing an innovative approach to dramatic form as a mode of philosophical thought, Billings recasts early Greek intellectual history as a conversation across types of discourses and demonstrates the significance of dramatic reflections on widely-shared conceptual questions. He integrates evidence from tragedy, comedy, and satyr play into the dev…
Agōn and Authority
This chapter focuses on the agōn sophias . The term is used to describe a group of scenes that, despite differences in formal constitution, stage an opposition between two understandings of sophia and debate what it is to be sophos . These scenes are bound together not so much by their verbal or scenic form (insofar as it can be reconstructed) as by the agonistic setting and the central concern of sophia, which both figures seek to define and cla…
The Philosophical Stage
A bold new reconception of ancient Greek drama as a mode of philosophical thinkingThe Philosophical Stage offers an innovative approach to ancient Greek literature and thought that places drama at the heart of intellectual history. Drawing on evidence from tragedy and comedy, Joshua Billings shines new light on the development of early Greek philosophy, arguing that drama is our best source for understanding the intellectual culture of classical …
Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us
Who is the “us” of this book's title? A riddle, perhaps, for Oedipus. Tragedy is, in Critchley's most sweeping formulation, “a genealogy of who we are, an account of our origins and how the curse of the past can unknowingly take shape in the present, and we don't see it and we rage when we are told what it is.” The riddle only deepens. Tragedy shows us “who we are,” but who is “we”?Critchley's “we,” it emerges, has some clear coordinates. His vie…
The Cambridge Companion to the Sophists
The Classical Greek sophists – Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, and Antiphon, among others – are some of the most important figures in the flourishing of linguistic, historical, and philosophical reflection at the time of Socrates. They are also some of the most controversial: what makes the sophists distinctive, and what they contributed to fifth-century intellectual culture, has been hotly debated since the time of Plato. They have often…
Philosophy (14 works) · Art (13 works) · Literature (13 works) · History (12 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (8 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Classics (6 works) · Greek drama (6 works) · Greek tragedy (6 works) · History and criticism (6 works)