Sunday, August 12, 2007

Michael Frede RIP

According to Leiter Reports, Michael Frede has died. Frede was a scholar of ancient philosophy, and probably the first to get me to see how the debates in that area could be directly relevant to the present. He didn't lean on the tired we-are-all-merely-footnotes-to-Plato line, or look down his nose at rootless moderns who abandon the Eternal Philosophical Problems because they're too hard or not fashionable enough. He simply discussed the issues in a way which brought out the continuing relevance of classical texts. I'm not extensively familiar with his work, but one of my favorite books is Burnyeat & Frede, The Original Sceptics: A Controversy (available used from Amazon for a mere pittance). I also have this one, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

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