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Persimals, Steven Luper
Persimals, Steven Luper
Philosophy Faculty Research
What sort of thing, fundamentally, are you and I? For convenience, I use the term persimal to refer to the kind of thing we are, whatever that kind turns out to be. Accordingly, the question is, what are persimals? One possible answer is that persimalhood consists in being a human animal, but many theorists, including Derek Parfit and Jeff McMahan, not to mention John Locke, reject this idea in favor of a radically different view, according to which persimalhood consists in having certain sorts of mental or psychological features. In this essay, I try to show that the animalist approach …
Rhetoric And Platonism In Fifth-Century Athens, Damian Caluori
Rhetoric And Platonism In Fifth-Century Athens, Damian Caluori
Philosophy Faculty Research
There are reasons to believe that relations between Platonism and rhetoric in Athens during the fifth century CE were rather close. Both were major pillars of pagan culture, or paideia, and thus essential elements in the defense of paganism against increasingly powerful and repressive Christian opponents. It is easy to imagine that, under these circumstances, paganism was closing ranks and that philosophers and orators united in their efforts to save traditional ways and values. Although there is no doubt some truth to this view, a closer look reveals that the relations between philosophy and rhetoric were rather more complicated. …