Moira. Fate, Good, and Evil in Greek Thought.

From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical radition (IJCT). - Discolored spine, slightly rubbed binding, dedication on endpaper, otherwise very good and clean. / Verf�ter R�cken, leicht beriebener Einband, Widmung auf Vorsatzblatt, sonst sehr gut und sauber. - Contents: I. Fate, Good, and Evil -- II. Early Greek Poetry -- III. Orthodoxy and Mysticism -- IV. The Idea of Tragedy -- V. Aeschylus -- VI. Sophocles -- VII. Euripides -- VIII. Socrates and his Predecessors -- IX. Plato -- X. Aristotle -- XI. Fate and Providence -- Appendices -- Select Bibliography -- Index of Names and Subjects -- Index of Greek words and phrases. - Fate, good, and evil; the relation of power to goodness, and the origin and nature of evil: here is a group of fundamental ideas and problems that challenges inquiry, even if it defies any complete answer. The Greek word Moira, with its fringe of associations, comes perhaps nearer than any other single word to suggesting this group of ideas, and may serve as a title for such an inquiry. The present study began a number of years ago when I attempted to interpret, so far as I was able, various works in Greek literature, both in poetry and in prose, which express these ideas. Naturally I found that one problem leads to another, so that eventually I must consider most of the literature of the classical period; indeed, since it proved impossible to set any arbitrary limit in antiquity, I felt free to follow single threads of Greek thought as far as Milton. In the course of my investigations I have profited by reading a multitude of works by modern scholars, as will appear from a glance at the footnotes; in the Select Bibliography I have indicated a few of the works that have seemed to me most valuable or that bear most directly on phases of the general problem. But since I could find no single work that undertakes to deal with the group of questions that confronted me, what I have set down for my own enlightenment may prove helpful also to others. If centuries of Greek thought did not solve all the questions that it raised, if indeed some of them are likely to remain forever unsolved, nevertheless they are necessary questions both for ancient Greeks and for modern men to ask. I trust that I have been able at least to throw into relief the character of the Greeks� inquiries, the extent of their success, and the extent to which they had recourse to poetry or myth as the appropriate approach toward certain baffling fields of experience. The reader who is curious to discover at once the argument of the book will find in the brief introductory chapter an attempt in rather abstract terms, without detail and without discussion of any individual thinker, to indicate the nature of the problem and the direction of the most important Greek thought about it; this is not only an introduction but something like an outline and an index of much that follows. The remaining chapters deal first with poetry and its next of kin, and then chiefly with prose; this is in general the chronological order of Greek literature, if allowance be made for a certain amount of overlapping, especially in the fifth century b.c.