Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Practice

As Contemporary Encounters on Ancient Metaphysics engaged with ancient theory from the perspective of contemporary continental metaphysics, this companion volume collects written and visual works that engage with opportunities of ancient practice from within the continental tradition. More than surveying ancient ethical or political ideas, the chapters develop divergent yet resonant approaches to concrete ways of living, acting, reflecting, and being with others found in antiquity and its reception. The practices involve the habits, exercises, activities, philosophies, and lives of today’s readers; so, like an ancient enchiridion, most of the chapters encourage the reader to do something, to put the ideas into practice . Withstanding a temptation to simply theorize practice, it insists on the embodied and shared materiality of living in singular times and places. The practical encounters between this book and its readers range across antiquity and the contemporary world, from political theater, casuistry, and slavery to book production, friendship, and our own mortality. Through thinker-practitioner collaborations, occasional pieces, exhortations to readers, and recipes for action, this work strives to articulate and cultivate old and new practices for our lives.

Classical antiquity · Embodied cognition · Materiality (auditing) · Perspective (graphical) · Politics · Temptation · Classical Antiquity Studies · Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art · Foucault, Power, and Ethics