The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas Mcevilley, Distinguished Lecturer of Art History at Rice University since 1969, is the author. The author is a classical philologist with a Ph.D. He is fluent in Latin and Greek, as well as Sanskrit. He has also taught courses in Indian culture, philosophy and history, and art. Numerous monographs on philosophy, religion, early Greek poetry, and contemporary art and culture have been published. He was a visiting professor at Yale University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and other institutions. In 1993, he was awarded a Fulbright Grant. He also received an NEA critic s grant as well as the Frank Jewett Mather Award of Distinction for Art Criticism from the College Art Association. He also wrote Sculpture in the Age of Doubt (Allworth Press). He lives in New York City.
The unique comparative study of Western and Eastern philosophy in the early days of civilization challenges all existing beliefs about its philosophical foundations. The author’s thirty-year-long intellectual inquiry and research has proven what many other scholars have not been able to empirically prove: that seemingly independent metaphysical schemes from Indian and Greek cultures have mutually influenced one another over a long time. To the extent that we can consider the Western world today as a product of both Eastern thought and Western philosophy. His groundbreaking research uncovers striking similarities in the metaphysical ideas that were central to both Eastern and Western philosophies. Thomas McEvilley examines the core philosophical paradigms in these cultures, including monism and the doctrine of reincarnation (India and Egypt), and early pluralism (Greece and India) to demonstrate how trade, imperialism, and migration currents have allowed them to freely circulate throughout India, Greece, and the Near East. Students and scholars in philosophy, cultural studies, and classics will love this inter-disciplinary study. They will be amazed at the newfound position their field is on.