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Porphyry And Plotinus On The Reality Of Relations, Dirk Baltzly

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Both Plotinus and Porphyry contribute in their own ways to the tradition of neoplatonic commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories. In 6.1-2, Plotinus argues that Aristotle’s ten categories are not adequate as an account of the genera of Being and that for this purpose they ought to be supplanted by the five greatest kinds from Plato’s Sophist. In 6.3, he acknowledges that it would be desirable to have a system of categories, not genera, for the sensible realm. He proposes several reductions of Aristotle’s ten categories to more compact schemes and finally seems to settle on the number five: composite, relative, quantity, …

Second Cause In Posterior Analytics Ii.11, Evelyn Barker

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I contend that the second cause of Posterior Analytics II.11 expresses Aristotle's doctrine of material cause as hypothetical necessity in Physics II. Aristotle presents two formulations of the second cause in Posterior Analytics II. 11, which he "clearly" means to be equivalent. These two formulations of the second cause, taken literally without reference to the definition of the syllogism, fit Aristotle's description of a material cause being "hypothetical necessity" in Physics II - that is, a necessary means to produce a goal. In Physics II.9 Aristotle's thesis that an elementary mathematical definition is a "hypothetical necessity" for the proof of …

Ousia In Metaphysics Vii And Viii: A Syntactic Study, Christopher Shields

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The submitted paper IS the original abstract.

Energeia And Entelecheia: Their Conception, Development And Relation, Thomas Olshewsky

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Stephen Menn, in his recent article on energeia and dynamis, has stirred the coals of recent controversy about understandings of Aristotle’s terms 'energeia' and ‘entelecheia', controversy about which he himself seemed totally oblivious. While he offered us careful explorations of Aristotle’s texts, he took no note of similar studies from over a quarter century ago by Chen Chuang-Hwan and by George Blair, nor of the more recent works by Blair, Daniel Graham and John Rist. So much the worse for his efforts, since these cover much of the same territory with conclusions rather divergent from his own. He has been …

Sagp-Ssips 1997, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Program of the 1997 SAGP-SSIPS Conference

Macdonald On Aristotle On The Good, Jurgis Brakas

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

There is a passage in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) that holds out the promise of giving us a profound insight into Aristotle’s view of the good. The problem is that the passage, A.6: 1096a23-29, has proved remarkably resistant to satisfactory interpretation, defying the efforts of scholars over the last eight decades. It argues, contra Plato, that the good cannot be one thing and, according to Irwin’s translation, reads as follows:

Further, good is spoken of in as many ways as being is spoken of. For it is spoken of in [the category of] what-it-is, as god and mind; in quality, …

Athetizing The Catharsis Clause In The Poetics, Gregory Scott

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I start with Aristotle’s theory of definition in order to claim that Aristotle could not reasonably have included the catharsis clause in the definition of tragedy on his own strictures. Moreover, in case we could solve this problem, I expose some very serious shortcomings that result in the Poetics itself, which are never or rarely acknowledged, if the catharsis clause is kept. Finally, given statements of Strabo and Plutarch, I suggest that the clause was probably a mistaken interpolation by an editor who repaired a damaged Aristotelian manuscript or who imagined that he was augmenting deficient Aristotelian doctrine. M.D. Petrusevski …

What Does Pyrrhonism Have To Do With Pyrrho?, Richard Bett

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I sketch the views of Pyrrho and Aenesidemus, as I understand them, indicating the differences between them, and between each of them and the view expressed in Outlines of Pyrrhonism. I shall then try to indicate how the transition between one view and the next might nonetheless have naturally taken place.

Aristotle On The Nature Of Logos, John P. Anton

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Attention has been frequently drawn to the problems attending attempts "to trace a long progression of meanings in the history of the word logos" (Kerferd). Especially difficult proved the assigning to Aristotle a place in this long progression. One of the reasons is that we have yet to reconstruct his theory of logos. The difficulty is not so much with the complexity of the uses of the term in his works as it is with the widely recognized fact that he left no special treatise on the subject of a doctrine of logos, not to be confused with the instrumentalities …