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Plato's Theologia Revisited, Gerard Naddaf
Plato's Theologia Revisited, Gerard Naddaf
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
The word theologia is attested for the first time in Plato’s Republic II, 379a4: Hoi tupoi peri theologias. According to Werner Jaeger (The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, Oxford 1947, 4-‐13), Plato coined the word to support the introduction of a new doctrine which resulted from a conflict between the mythical and the natural (rational) approach to the problem of God. For Jaeger, the word theologia designates what Aristotle was later to call theologikê or “first philosophy (hê protê philosophia) – whence his translation of hoi tupoi peri theologias by “outlines of theology.” Victor Goldschmidt, for his part, in …
Sex & Mysticism In Plato, John Thorp
Sex & Mysticism In Plato, John Thorp
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
It is a commonplace that Plato seems to entertain two rather different pictures of our access to knowledge of the forms. On the one hand there is anamnesis, remembering a knowledge that we had before our incarnation and that we have since forgotten – thus the Phaedo and the Meno. On the other, there is something that looks far more like abstractive generalization from sensible particulars – the Symposium is the best example, though there are elements of it also in the Republic and the Sophist. This paper argues that there is also a third epistemological model at work, …
Some Ways Of Being In Plato, Allan Silverman
Some Ways Of Being In Plato, Allan Silverman
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
I propose to examine on this occasion three closely related issues in the interpretation of Plato's metaphysics, the separation of Forms, participation, and the nature of particulars. In the compass of this talk, I cannot do justice to all three of these issues, indeed probably to none of them. A fortiori, I cannot do a semblance of justice to the closely related topics of predication, both ontological and linguistic; the status of Aristotle's remarks about Plato's metaphysics and his own treatment of these issues, or the vexing problem of the development of Plato’s thinking. Nonetheless, I cannot avoid these topics. …
The Philosophical Economy Of Plato's Psychology: Common Concepts In The Timaeus, Dorothea Aline Frede
The Philosophical Economy Of Plato's Psychology: Common Concepts In The Timaeus, Dorothea Aline Frede
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
Plato's insistence that the eternal immobile model is “the real thing” and the mobile world only an image is to stress the sincerity of his conviction that the intelligible pattern, the unchangeable network of principles, must be the foundation of the physical reality. Only because there is such a fundamentum in re can we have concepts that allow us to understand and explain the world. Without such really existing concepts our thinking would be nothing, it would be a groping for stability in a changing world that could at best provide similarities without any fix point to determine their nature. …
How Learning Mathematics Helps Us Be Virtuous, Joan Kung
How Learning Mathematics Helps Us Be Virtuous, Joan Kung
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
A number of passages in the Timaeus make a connection that strikes us as odd, even bizarre perhaps. Who nowadays thinks that the study of geometry or number theory has anything to do with being a good person? Yet these passages emphasize the importance for human virtue and happiness of mathematical studies, especially the study of the ratios of numbers and the geometry of solids in motion, the harmonies and revolutions of the world or of the god. We are told, for example, that by learning to know and compute these rightly we shall bring our souls into order and …
What Plato's Demiurge Does, Richard D. Mohr
What Plato's Demiurge Does, Richard D. Mohr
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
The paper argues that the project of Plato’s craftsman-like god is directed to an epistemological end rather than an aesthetic one. The Demiurge is chiefly bent on improving the world’s intelligibility rather than its looks. Specifically, the paper argues that what the Demiurge does is to introduce standards or measures into the phenomenal realm by imaging as best he can the nature of Forms where Forms are construed as standards or measures. The two most spectacular examples of Demiurgic crafting on this model are: 1) his crafting the rational world-soul, which serves both as an object of human cognition, and …
Plato's Sophist 251-259, John L. Ackrill
Plato's Sophist 251-259, John L. Ackrill
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
The question I wish to raise is this. Is it correct to say that one of Plato’s achievements in this passage is the ‘discovery of the copula’, or the ‘recognition of ambiguity of ἔστιν’ as used on the one hand in statements of identity and on the other hand in attributive statements? I feel little doubt that it is correct to say this, but Cornford and Robinson (to mention no others) deny it. After a remark on the question itself I shall try state briefly a case for answering it affirmatively, and shall then consider some of the counter-arguments that …