Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Practice

Continental philosophers and contemporary artists transform the classics into living practices

• A volume of original essays, four previously untranslated articles, novel visual art and reproduced images, by an international lineup of today’s leading thinkers and practitioners
• Features non-expository or non-argumentative elements, such as exhortative, prescriptive or didactic dimensions (telling the reader to do something specific, such as, do an exercise, write something, etc.)
• Thinkers and art-practitioners collaborate to produce a combined written and visual contribution
• The book gathers new continental approaches to ancient philosophy outside of the dominant interpretive milieus of phenomenology, hermeneutics, historicism and analytic philosophy

This volume collects written and visual works that engage with opportunities of ancient practice from within the continental tradition. More than surveying ancient ethical or political ideas, the chapters develop divergent yet resonant approaches to concrete ways of living, acting, reflecting and being with others found in antiquity and its reception. The practices involve the habits, exercises, activities, philosophies and lives of today’s readers; and so most chapters encourage the reader to do something, to put the ideas into practice. Withstanding a temptation to simply theorise practice, it insists on the embodied and shared materiality of living in singular times and places. The practical encounters between this book and its readers range across antiquity and the contemporary world, from political theatre, casuistry and slavery to book production, friendship and our own mortality. Through thinker-practitioner collaborations, occasional pieces, exhortations to readers and recipes for action, this work strives to articulate and cultivate old and new practices for our lives.