Ancient Views on the Quality of Life
This monograph describes the contributions to our current understanding of quality of life made by the most important ancient philosophers in the Western Tradition. It does so from the point of view of a contemporary researcher in quality of life or human
- PDF / 2,669,390 Bytes
- 101 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 26 Downloads / 237 Views
Alex C. Michalos
Ancient Views on the Quality of Life
123
SpringerBriefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10150
Alex C. Michalos
Ancient Views on the Quality of Life
13
Prof. Emeritus Alex C. Michalos Department of Political Science University of Northern British Columbia Prince George, BC Canada Present Address Ottawa, ON Canada
ISSN 2211-7644 ISSN 2211-7652 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research ISBN 978-3-319-16524-0 ISBN 978-3-319-16525-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16525-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015934221 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © The Author(s) 2015 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To Deborah, with love
Preface
This little monograph is the result of some years of reading about the lives and views of ancient philosophers largely for pleasure and generally rounding out my early education in the field of philosophy. Like all students specializing or majoring in philosophy, I had to study the classics to build at least a modest foundation for understanding and creating more contemporary works. Specializing in logic and the philosophy of science as I did, I was never very enthusiastic about texts written over 2000 years ago. They had their place in history, but my place was far removed in time and topics, and it did not seem likely that I would find much of interest or use in them. As my interests moved from theoretical or speculative philosophy to measuring the quality of life in sufficiently rigorous ways to produce information useful for guiding my own and others’ personal decision-making as well as public policy making, I took to reading and re-reading ancient texts as a kind of diversion from my routine empirical investigations. To my surprise and d
Data Loading...
