The Golden Chain

The goal of the ancient philosophers was to understand how to live in harmony with nature and to transcend the limitations imposed by sense experience and discursive reasoning.

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This anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy promotes a new and fresh view of what Hellenic philosophy is and what kind of wisdom it offers us. The book demonstrates through excerpts from the great Pythagorean and Platonic writers that to these thinkers philosophy is a way of life and a means of spiritual realisation-not the dry rationalistic mental exercise philosophy has become in the modern world. The Golden Chain of the title refers to the ancient belief that such philosophy transmits a heritage of unitive knowledge through a succession of enlightened teachers and students. The editor Algis Uzdavinys is an author translator and scholar of remarkable scope who uses his scholarship and his own deep knowledge of the philosophia perennis to illustrate for us the timeless wisdom of these writings. The foreword is by John Finamore.