Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast brought to

with the support of Kings College London and the Lever Hume Trust online at

www History of Philosophy. net.

Today's episode will be an interview about ancient aesthetics with Anne Sheppard,

who is professor of ancient philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London.

Hi Anne, thanks for coming.

Hi, Anne.

So I'd like to start by asking you about ancient aesthetics in general.

The word aesthetics actually comes from a Greek word,

is thesis, which means perception or something like that.

And I guess that raises the question of whether the notion of aesthetics itself also comes

from the ancient Greeks, did they actually recognize any of the I mean there's actually quite a lot of dispute about this. Some people would say that it's

anachronistic to talk about ancient aesthetics. Other people disagree. I think what you do find,

I mean aesthetics and modern philosophical discipline covers both

philosophical questions about the arts and philosophical questions about

beauty and those are all questions are addressed by ancient philosophers

but very often in other contexts so in context to do with morality or education or

indeed metaphysics rather than on their own.

And do they think of those things as somehow relating to each other then?

Or if they're thinking about, say, education, would they think, well, that's one thing,

and then say this question about metaphysics is something completely different.

Because for example, Plato and the Republic, he does seem to bring these things together more or less, doesn't he?

...