In this important and highly original book, place, commonality and judgment provide the framework within which works central to the Greek philosophical and literary tradition are usefully located and reinterpreted. Greek life, it can be argued, was defined by the interconnection of place, commonality and judgment. Similarly within the Continental philosophical tradition topics such as place, judgment, law and commonality have had a pervasive centrality. Works by Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben amongst others attest to the current exigency of these topics. Yet the ways in which they are interrelated has been barely discussed within the context of Ancient Philosophy. The conjecture of this book is that not only are these terms of genuine philosophical importance in their own right, but they are also central to Ancient Philosophy. Andrew Benjamin ultimately therefore aims to underscore the relevance of Ancient Philosophy for contemporary debates in Continental Philosophy.

Author Biography

Andrew Benjamin is Professor of Critical Theory and Philosophical Aesthetics at Monash University, Australia. His previous publications include Style and Time: Essays on the Politics of Appearance (Northwestern UP, 2006), Disclosing Spaces: On Painting (Clinamen Press, 2004), Philosophy's Literature (Clinamen Press, 2001) and Present Hope: Philosophy, Aesthetics, Judaism (Routledge, 1997). He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2005.