Customer Reviews

Ancient Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Science (Ad Feminam: Women and Literature)

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This book is a commentary on three books (with a brief on a fourth) -- a dialogue (the brief one), a play, a discourse and a dialogue: Plato's Symposium, Sophocles' Ajax, Descartes' Discourse on Method and Plato's Meno, in that order. The bulk of the book concerns Descartes' Discourse, but what Davis has to say regarding the Symposium, the Ajax and the Meno puts things in perspective.

Briefly, what we as (Post)Moderns understand as science was, in its deepest meaning, understood and anticipated by Plato as Aristophanes' speech in the Symposium reveals. This, also, is anticipated in much of what the Greek tragedians bequeathed to us - Davis' brief discussion of Sophocles' Ajax here demonstrates as much. The book itself is crucial for those exploring the notion of Modernity and how it is to be both distinguished and criticized in light of the so-called Ancients.

The understanding of what is at stake in our notion of Modern science and its concomitant of Modern science takes center stage in Davis' analysis. The blending of Greek tragedy with Modern science at first seems almost idiosyncratic, but Davis' analysis makes such an understanding not only understandable but crucial for understanding both. With the notions of art and nature ("techne" and "physis") why was it that Plato and the Greek tragedians did not pursue a "conquest" of nature as the early Modern philosophers did, Bacon and Descartes being the most notable? In other words, what, if anything, was lost in going down the path laid out by Descartes in his "Discourse on Method"? Davis' analysis gets to the core of such questions, revealing the so-called "Theologico-Political" problem in both its Ancient and Modern manifestations. I cannot recommend this book enough, particularly since there are so few books out there which shed this kind of insight into precisely where we are as (Post)Moderns and how we got here. I should also note that Peter Ahrensdorf's book "Greek Tragedy and Political Philosophy" makes an excellent companion to Davis' book, further exploring not only the Modern turn from the Ancients but also the Postmodern turn from the Moderns.