Ancient Greece and China Compared

Editors:
G. E. R. Lloyd and‎ Jingyi Jenny Zhao

Publisher: 
Cambridge University Press

Publication Date:
February 28, 2018

Abstract:

Ancient Greece and China Compared is a pioneering, methodologically sophisticated set of studies, bringing together scholars who all share the conviction that the sustained critical comparison and contrast between ancient societies can bring to light significant aspects of each that would be missed by focusing on just one of them. The topics tackled include key issues in philosophy and religion, in art and literature, in mathematics and the life sciences (including gender studies), in agriculture, city planning and institutions. The volume also analyses how to go about the task of comparing, including finding viable comparanda and avoiding the trap of interpreting one culture in terms appropriate only to another. The book is set to provide a model for future collaborative and interdisciplinary work exploring what is common between ancient civilisations, what is distinctive of particular ones, and what may help to account for the latter.

Table of Contents:

Introduction G. E. R. Lloyd;
Part I. Methodological Issues and Goals:

1. Why some comparisons make more difference than others 
Nathan Sivin;

2. Comparing comparisons 
Walter Scheidel;

3. On the very idea of (philosophical?) translation 
Robert Wardy

Part II. Philosophy and Religion:

4. Freedom in parts of the Zhuangzi and Epictetus 
R. A. H. King;

5. Shame and moral education in Aristotle and Xunzi 
Jingyi Jenny Zhao;

6. Human and animal in early China and Greece 
Lisa Raphals;

7. Genealogies of ghosts, gods and humans: the capriciousness of the Divine in early Greece and China  Michael Puett

Part III. Art and Literature:

8. Visual art and historical representation in Ancient Greece and China  
Jeremy Tanner;

9. Helen and Chinese femmes fatales  Yiqun Zhou

Part IV. Mathematics and Life Sciences:

10. Divisions, big and small: comparing Archimedes and Liu Hui  
Reviel Netz;

11. Abstraction as a value in the historiography of mathematics in Ancient Greece and China  
Karine Chemla;

12. Recipes for love in the ancient world  
Vivienne Lo and Eleanor Re'em

Part V. Agriculture, Planning and Institutions:

13. From the harvest to the meal in prehistoric China and Greece: a comparative approach to the social context of food 
Xinyi Liu, Evi Margaritis and Martin Jones;

14. On libraries and manuscript culture in Western Han Chang'an and Alexandria Michael Nylan

Afterword by Michael Loewe