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Full-Text Articles in Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity
Socratic Metaethics Imagined, Steve Ross, Lisa Warenski
Socratic Metaethics Imagined, Steve Ross, Lisa Warenski
Sophia and Philosophia
A time machine mysteriously appeared one day in ancient Athens. Curious about the future of philosophical dialogue, Socrates entered the device and traveled to the 21st Century. He spent several months in the United Kingdom and United States discussing metaethics before returning to Athens, now a devoted and formidable quasi-realist moral expressivist.
On The Relationship Of Alcibiades’ Speech To The Rest Of The Speeches In Plato’S Symposium[1], Andy Davis
On The Relationship Of Alcibiades’ Speech To The Rest Of The Speeches In Plato’S Symposium[1], Andy Davis
Sophia and Philosophia
To get to the point immediately concerning how I think about the relationship between the first five speeches and Socrates’ speech: it seems to me the claim that Plato has only brought together inadequate perspectives on Eros in order to present Socrates’ speech over and against them as the only correct one is completely in error. Socrates himself does not deny these speeches their accolades, he comes back to many things in them as he assigns each single perspective its own due place. Much more, I believe that from the first speech to the last a decisive progress takes place, …
A Religious Revolution? How Socrates' Theology Undermined The Practice Of Sacrifice, Anna Lannstrom
A Religious Revolution? How Socrates' Theology Undermined The Practice Of Sacrifice, Anna Lannstrom
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
Mark McPherran and Gregory Vlastos argue that Socrates’ theology threatened Athenian sacrificial practices because it rejected the do ut des principle (aka the principle of reciprocity). I argue that their arguments are flawed because they assume that the Athenians understood sacrifice as something like a commercial transaction. Drawing upon scholarship in anthropology and religious studies, I argue that we need to revise that understanding of sacrifice and that, once we do, McPherran’s and Vlastos’ arguments no longer show that Socrates would have been a significant threat to the practice of sacrifice. Finally, I argue that McPherran’s Socrates does undermine sacrifice, …
Ratiocination And Socrates' Daimonion: A Practical Solution, Anthony K. Jensen
Ratiocination And Socrates' Daimonion: A Practical Solution, Anthony K. Jensen
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
Socrates's commitment to 'follow the argument wherever it leads' seems to be at odds with his notorious 'divine sign' or daimonion. It appears in several dialogues as a divine force that Socrates cannot help but to obey, even in some cases where no negative consequences would seem to have otherwise obtained. This paper explores the meaning of the daimonion in the religious and cultural contexts of early Greece, concluding that the scope of the daimonion is restricted to Socrates' practical activities rather than his theoretical engagements.
Socratic Perfectionism Ii, George Rudebusch
Socratic Perfectionism Ii, George Rudebusch
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
This paper is part two of an argument that Socrates is an agent-neutral perfectionist (like J. S. Mill) rather than an agent-relative perfectionist (e.g. in Crime and Punishment, the egoist Raskolnikov and the altruist Sophie). The argument is based on Plato's Lysis.
Aristotle On Akratic Action: How Rational Is It?, Patrick Mooney
Aristotle On Akratic Action: How Rational Is It?, Patrick Mooney
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
My answer to the question asked in the paper’s title is: akratic action-acting contrary to what one believes or knows is the best course of action open to one, or “weakness of will”—is not rational at all, according to Aristotle (here restricting myself to his discussion of akrasia in the Nicomachean Ethics, VII. 1-3). In saying that it is ‘not rational at all,’ I have in mind that there is no “intellectual,” or “cognitive,” faculty at work which so much as helps to bring about the akratic act-there is, in other words, no way in which the akrates “figures out” …
Hiccups And Other Interruptions In The Symposium, George Kimball Plochmann
Hiccups And Other Interruptions In The Symposium, George Kimball Plochmann
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
The hoped-for result of my study will be to discover that the genius of philosophy and that of literature do not change places, yet are somehow the same; and if this conclusion involves getting rid of certain textbook conceptions of either philosophy or literature, this too will be all to the good.