Trousson, Raymond / Vercruysse, Jeroom (dir.), Dictionnaire general de Voltaire. (Champion classiques, references et dictionnaires 18) 1272 p. 2020:10 (Champion, FR) <670-9>
ISBN 978-2-38096-016-7 paper ¥7,064.- (税込) EUR 38.00

Ashe, Laura, Chaucer's Ethical Philosophy. 240 pp. 2025:2 (Oxford U. Pr., UK) <731-9>
ISBN 978-0-19-889496-4 hard ¥7,122.- (税込) GB￡ 25.00

Chaucer's Ethical Philosophy argues that Chaucer's fictions engage with the most urgent questions of modern political and moral philosophy. Close analysis of Troilus and Criseyde, the Canterbury Tales, and the Book of the Duchess reveals the ways in which Chaucer anticipates modern philosophical debates, using his fictions to explore the ethics of subjectivity and recognition, agency and moral responsibility; concerns that Chaucer experimentally formulated and discomposed across his works are amongst those that most animate and trouble contemporary ethical philosophy. This book places Chaucer in close dialogue not only with medieval philosophy and theology, and his great European literary sources (Boccaccio, Dante, Guillaume de Machaut), but with major figures and concepts of modern philosophical thought (Hegel, Levinas, Wittgenstein, Butler; recognition, subjectivity, gender). It illuminates his use of distinctively medieval forms of narrative to explore ideas and develop philosophies that we have been conditioned to think of as exclusively modern. In this he reveals both the essential nature of the questions, and the contingent, socially--and culturally--conditioned nature of our answers; and he shows us that medieval structures of thought remain central to our understandings of the world. In response to the fundamental ethical question-how should I treat another person?--Chaucer's fictional experiments are shown to be as philosophically complex and ethically powerful as anything in current thought.

プラトンの『ヒッピアス（小）』－分析、テクスト、翻訳、コメンタリー
Sharma, Ravi, Plato's Hippias Minor: Analysis, Text, Translation, and Commentary. 288 pp. 2025:4 (Oxford U. Pr., UK) <731-13>
ISBN 978-0-19-289523-3 hard ¥40,740.- (税込) GB￡ 143.00

Plato's Hippias Minor has long been considered puzzling in its philosophical purpose, its characterization of Socrates, and its overall design. Departing from a tradition of scholarship that largely relegates the dialogue to the fringes of the Platonic corpus, this volume offers a fresh translation into English and a comprehensive re-evaluation of the dialogue's philosophical content and literary construction. Ravi Sharma argues that Hippias Minor contributes significantly to our understanding of Plato's conception of intentional action and that the dialogue's ideas form the basis for reflections in moral psychology that may be found elsewhere in the Platonic corpus. The portrait of Socrates in the dialogue is one of Plato's more subtle explorations of his epistemic complexity: Socrates is shown to be wedded to the arguments he makes despite understanding that they entail significant difficulties for the development of a broader theory of intentional action. The overall literary design of Hippias Minor is revealed to be fully appropriate to Plato as a writer of dialogue, a master of character-portrayal, and an innovative commentator on his intellectual and cultural milieu. The commentary engages expansively with the history of scholarship in the major linguistic and methodological traditions, supporting an interpretation of the dialogue that fully integrates its philosophical and literary dimensions, and that draws on neglected historical evidence concerning the sophist Hippias to explain Plato's portrayal of him. The volume also provides a fresh examination of the relationship of Hippias Minor to relevant works by Xenophon and Antisthenes, offering a case study of the literary and intellectual relationships among first-generation Socratic authors.

Vazquez, Daniel, Suspension of Belief. (Elements in Ancient Philosophy) 78 pp. 2024:5 (Cambridge U. Pr., UK) <731-14>
ISBN 978-1-00-950073-9 hard ¥14,241.- (税込) GB￡ 49.99
ISBN 978-1-00-901399-4 paper ¥4,843.- (税込) GB￡ 17.00

This Element offers a systematic outline of ancient conceptions and uses of suspension of belief (understood broadly) while engaging with contemporary philosophy. It discusses the notion of epoche ('suspension of judgement') and other related terms, like aporia, aphasia, paradox, hypothesis, agnosticism, and Socratic wisdom. It examines the Academic and Pyrrhonian sceptics and some of their arguments and strategies for suspension. It also includes the use and conditions for suspension of belief in other philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus, Protagoras, and Democritus. The Element is divided into four thematic sections, each addressing one of the following questions: What is suspension of belief? When does it arise? What could its scope be? And what are its practical and moral implications?

Corcilius, Klaus / Falcon, Andrea / Roreitner, Robert, Aristotle on the Essence of Human Thought. (Oxford Aristotle Studies Series) 352 pp. 2025:1 (Oxford U. Pr., UK) <731-10>
ISBN 978-0-19-892179-0 hard ¥32,193.- (税込) GB￡ 113.00

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Aristotle on the Essence of Human Thought offers a novel reading of one of the most difficult stretches of text in the whole Aristotelian corpus, De anima III 4-8, showing that this stretch of text contains a unitary and coherent account of the essence of the human capacity for thought. Aristotle gives this capacity the name nous. Nous is the first principle, and ultimate explanans, of human thinking. The volume argues for four key claims. The first claim is rationalism: humans come to know the world around us via two fundamentally different cognitive powers: nous and perception. They are fundamentally different cognitive powers because the nature of their corresponding objects is fundamentally different. The second claim is essentialism: the human capacity for thought is defined as a capacity for directly grasping essences of everything there is. It is this very capacity that Aristotle shows to be the principle of all human thinking. According to the third claim, separatism, human nous is a very special kind of power. It is unmixed with the body, has no dedicated bodily organ, and is separable from the body. As a result, it cannot be assimilated to any of the other parts of the soul. While nous belongs to our essence as human beings, it is not part of the natural world. Finally, the volume argues for embeddedness in the cognitive soul: human nous is always embedded in a cognitive soul, which among other things means that the distinctive activity of human nous--thinking--can only take place in the context of a larger set of activities which are common to the body and the soul.

Danesi, Marcel, Alcuin's Recreational Mathematics: River Crossings and other Timeless Puzzles. 288 pp. 2024:11 (Oxford U. Pr., UK) <731-11>
ISBN 978-0-19-892530-9 hard ¥7,122.- (税込) GB￡ 25.00 *

Propositiones ad acuendos juvenes ("Problems to Sharpen the Young") is a ninth-century book written by medieval teacher and scholar Alcuin of York. Today, it has become one of the foundational texts in what is commonly called recreational mathematics. The book has been translated in many languages and analysed from various mathematical angles and perspectives, from contemporary arithmetic and geometry to the nature of sequences. It is not only a collection of ingenious and challenging puzzles, but the core ideas collected in this book have become major themes and branches of mathematics. Here, Marcel Danesi revisits all fifty-three problems in Alcuin's original text, providing detailed solutions and analyses. Alcuin's Recreational Mathematics examines the problems in the Propositiones in easy-to-follow language, extracting from them the notions and techniques that today constitute basic mathematics. Each chapter discusses Alcuin's problems more broadly, and ends with ten exploratory puzzles based on Alcuin's original problems and related themes. Answers and detailed solutions are included at the back. Alcuin's Recreational Mathematics demonstrates how Alcuin's Propositiones puts basic mathematical thinking on display via ingenious problems that often require outside-of-the-box thinking, constituting an original and imaginative investigation of mathematics in its essence.

Nielsen, Karen Margrethe, Vice in Ancient Philosophy: Plato and Aristotle on Moral Ignorance and Corruption of Character. (Elements in Ancient Philosophy) 74 pp. 2024:2 (Cambridge U. Pr., UK) <731-12>
ISBN 978-1-009-46803-9 hard ¥14,241.- (税込) GB￡ 49.99 *
ISBN 978-1-108-71343-6 paper ¥4,843.- (税込) GB￡ 17.00 *

Ancient philosophers offer intriguing accounts of vice - virtue's bad twin. This Element considers injustice and lawlessness in Plato and Aristotle. Starting with Socrates' paradoxical claim that 'tyrants and orators do just about nothing they want to do' (Gorgias 466d-e), it examines discussions of moral ignorance and corruption of character in Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle's account of vice is indebted to Plato's. But his claims have confounded critics. Why is the vicious agent full of regrets when he acts in accordance with his wish? To what extent is vice a form of moral ignorance? Why will the unjust man never get what he wants? These and other questions yield new insights into ancient Greek ethics and moral psychology, as well as surprising perspectives on contemporary debates.