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Alexander On Form-In-Matter And The Breakdown Of Aristotle's Categories, John O. Ellis

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

My discussion is divided into six sections. In the first I provide some background to the form-in-matter problem in Aristotle; the second focusses on Alexander's solution to the problem; in the third, we consider Plotinus' contribution; in the fourth, there's brief treatment of the problem by the commentators on the Categories; and finally in the fifth section I look at what I call the 'Lucius problem' - this pertains directly to the substantial qualities doctrine, and it reveals, I suggest, how Alexander's way of solving the form-in-matter problem contributes to the breakdown of Aristotelian categories. In the sixth section …

The Dialectical Convergence Of Rhetoric And Ethics: The Imperative Of Public Conversation, Lawrence Kimmel

Philosophy Faculty Research

Man is a rule-making, rule-governed creature—he is, as Aristotle put it, an animal defined by and within a community of speech. The two disciplines of ethics and rhetoric and the cultural activities they engage are instrumental to this defining activity of human life. If moral life is riddled with ambiguities, theoretical understanding of it is no less plagued with an ambivalent relationship which rhetoric and ethics have to each other, despite their mutual concern with the practical affairs of human beings. To argue a necessary convergence of rhetoric and ethics for an understanding of moral life, it is ironic and …

Review Essay: Ernesto Grassi And Maristella Lorch, Folly And Insanity In Renaissance Literature, Silvia R. Fiore

Quidditas

Ernesto Grassi and Maristella Lorch, Folly and Insanity in Renaissance Literature, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1986, 128 pp., biblio., index, $18.00.

The Punctator's World: A Discursion, Gwen G. Robinson

The Courier

"The Punctator's World: A Discursion" is a study, in several parts, of the origins of punctuation and its development to the present day. Part One, herewith, follows the subject from its murky beginnings into the broad daylight of classical usage.

The Lives Of The Peripatetics: Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum, Book Five, Michael Sollenberger

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The fifth book of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers is concerned with the first four heads of the Peripatos – Aristotle, Theophrastus, Strato, and Lyco – and two outstanding members of the school – Demetrius of Phalerum and Heraclides of Pontus. Consideration is given her to rather general matters of structure, organization, and arrangement of material in Book Five as a whole, to the different categories of information in the individual lives, and to the most striking feature of this book which set it apart from other books: namely, the wills of the first four scholarchs and the extensive …

The Unambiguity Of Aristotelian Being, Jaakko Hintikka

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In this paper, I shall try to enhance our understanding of Aristotle's thought by relating it to certain contemporary problems and insights of philosophical logicians. One of the most central current issues in philosophical logic is a challenge to a hundred-year old dogma. Almost all twentieth-century philosophers in English-speaking countries have followed Frege and Russell and claimed that the words for being in natural languages — "is," "ist," ἔστι etc.— are ambiguous between the is of predication, the is of existence, the is of identity, and the generic is. The significance of this ambiguity thesis has not been limited to …

Concepts Of Ethos In Classical And Modern Rhetoric, Corinne Thomley

Masters Theses

Statement of Purpose:

Ethos, or the character of the speaker, is a subject of interest to students of rhetoric. This study traces the concepts of ethos from classical to modern times, and identifies philosophical value systems on which these concepts are based.

Hypothesis:

The study explores the hypothesis that similarities and differences exist between classical and modern concepts of ethos and that the concepts can generally be identified with philosophical value systems.

Criteria and Procedure:

The study is focussed by the following seven questions:

1. What philosophical value systems provided the bases for the concepts of ethos set forth by classical …

"Nothing" As "Not-Being": Some Literary Contexts That Bear On Plato And On Parmenides, Alexander P.D. Mourelatos

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In the main Section of this paper I examine a certain "characterizing" use of meden/ouden and medeis/oudeis in pre-Platonic non-philosophical contexts. The passages discussed and analyzed offer cle.ar and suggestive illustrations of the assimilation of "nothing" or "nobody" to "not-being." In the concluding Section I explore connections between that use and philosophical concepts,with particular reference to Plato's doctrine of degrees of reality.

The dialectic of being in classical Greek speculation focuses not on 'What there is' but on 'what it is' or 'how it is'; not on existence but on physis, constitution, or form.

Aristotle's Attitude Towards Homer, Donald J. Mcguire

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Meaning Of Resolution As A Reflective Method In The Philosophy Of Thomas Aquinas, Astrid M. O'Brien

Research Resources

While the importance of resolution as a reflective method in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas is generally recognized, relatively little has been written about it, and the few articles devoted to it differ in their conclusions as to its nature and use. It is the aim of this dissertation to analyze the texts in which the term or its synonyms appear in order to discover its fundamental meaning and role as revealed by Thomas’s own statements and practices.

The first chapter notes the divergent meanings which the Latin term resolutio acquired through being used to translate several different Greek terms, …

A Foundational Synthesis Of Heraclitus, David T. Ozar

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.