Abstract

Ancient Evenings is a study of consciousness presented as a series of fictional philosophical dialogues set at the height of the Roman Empire. These dialogues—on good and evil, truth and falsehood, life and death—are historical reenactments of what persons representing the major Hellenistic schools of philosophy might actually have said to one another in informal but serious discussion and debate. The result is a powerful unique view of the secular Hellenistic schools of antiquity, and of their continued importance to modern secular thinking about how to live in a world without divine intervention. Ancient Evenings is in the spirit of great dialogues from Plato to Cicero, and Berkeley to Hume. It brings back to life the neglected literary form of the philosophical dialogue as a potent and unique instrument of philosophical inquiry.