Classics Commons^™

Animal Perception In Early Stoicism: A Response To Richard Sorabji, Scott Rubarth

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The Stoics cannot deny that animals perceive things in relation to each other things (e.g. the scent coming from that direction). The dog must minimally connect the scent a direct if we are to explain the animal following an animal's trail. And it is also true that if the animal is to act on a stimulus it must connect the stimulus with a desire or experience. The dog must connect the scent with its desire or hunger. However, I do not agree that the animal must believe that the scent is coming from a given direction or even believe that …

On Separating The Intellect From The Body: Aristotle's De Anima Iii.4, 429a10-B5, John E. Sisko

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle is clearly aware that the theory of separable intellect is not without its own difficulties. One difficulty is that of how intellect is to come to possess its objects. These objects first exist (potentially) in material things, but material things (it would seem) share no underlying generic sameness with separable (immaterial) intellect. So, upon consideration of his own account of agency and patiency, which requires that agent and patient hold something in common (see Generation and Corruption 1.7), it becomes unclear to Aristotle how it is that separable intellect, having nothing in common with anything else, is to ever …

Are Ends Subject To Deliberation In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics? A Reply To David Wiggins, Anthony Crifasi

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

We focus upon the difficulties involved in Wiggin's interpretation of deliberation, since these form the basis for his later analyses. Wiggins grounds his thesis that ends are subject to deliberation upon the view that the various virtues are constituents of happiness. As constituents of the ultimate end itself, they would not be ordered to any higher end. Consequently, the virtues would be incommensurable with one another, since conflicts between virtues would not be resolvable in terms of any common end. It is perfectly understandable that under this view the sole arbiter of such conflicts would be “situational appreciation,” as Wiggins …

Are Ends Subject To Deliberation In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics? A Reply To David Wiggins, Anthony Crifasi

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Conflicts between virtues would not result in the radical incommensurability described by Wiggins (having no common end at all). Such a highest end would by no means be a “universal rule” in the sense criticized by Wiggins in his reply to Allan, since particular circumstances could, as always, affect or prevent altogether the manner and means by which the end would be actualized. The “situational appreciation” of practical wisdom would therefore still play a vital role in the practical actualization of any virtue. Since the benefits of this interpretation include the elimination of radical incommensurability without appeal to universal Kantian …

Aristotle On Existential Import And Nonreferring Subjects, Scott Carson

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Much contemporary philosophy o f language has shown considerable interest in the relation between our linguistic practice and our metaphysical commitments, and this interest has begun to influence work in the history of philosophy as well. In his Categories and De interpretatione, Aristotle presents an analysis of language that can be read as intended to illustrate an isomorphism between the ontology of the real world and how we talk about that world. Our understanding of language is at least in part dependent upon our understanding of the relationships that exist among the enduring πράγματα that we come across in our …

Epicurus, Sententia Vaticana Xxiii, Eric A. Brown

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Sententia Vaticana 23, as usually emended, says that every friendship is choiceworthy for its own sake. I argue that this sentence should not be attributed to Epicurus. No other evidence supports the attribution of this view to Epicurus, and much other evidence counts strongly against it. It would be better to reject the emendation, so that the sentence says, in somewhat awkward but not entirely unprecedented Greek, that every friendship is by itself a virtue, or to attribute the emended sentence not to Epicurus but to the later, more timid Epicureans who, according to Cicero, conceded more value to friendship …

Sagp Newsletter 1998-99.3 November, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the SAGP panels with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in Washington DC December 28 and with the American Philological Association, also in DC, December 30.

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” …

Sagp Newsletter 1998-99.5 April, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the SAGP panel with the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association in New Orleans, May 7, 1999.

The Receptivity Of Νοῦς In De Anima Iii.4, Joseph M. Magee

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

• For Aristotle, the faculty of thought is legitimately characterized as being receptive of its objects. To construe Aristotle as holding that it is not renders a significant part of DA 3.4 to be of highly questionable internal coherence, since it makes it seem that he is claiming that something foreign might intrude into a power that has no organ and render that power inoperable. Moreover, failure to acknowledge the intellect's receptivity renders what is clearly supposed to be an explanation (mind is unmixed because it 7 knows all things) otiose and virtually unrelated to the logic of his argument. Finally, …

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 …

Prior Analytics And Aristotle's Commitment To Logos, George Boger

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Prior Analytics describes a natural deduction system as part of an underlying logic. It is a proof-theoretic treatise concerned principally to establish and to perfect a deduction system for science. Aristotle knew that deductions about matters pertaining to a given subject matter are content specific and that they employ a topic neutral deduction system; such a system makes evident that given sentences logically follow from other given sentences. One process of deduction is accomplished through taking pairs of given categorical sentences to generate immediate inferences according to prescribed rules, which categorical inferences are then added to the given sentences and …

Aristotle's Account Of The Virtue Of Courage In Nicomachean Ethics Iii.6-9, Howard J. Curzer

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle's account of courage exhibits several general principles of his architectonic. First, Aristotle applies to courage what I have called the doctrine of disjoint spheres. (1) Each virtue has its own sphere completely separate from the spheres of all other virtues. Aristotle then goes on to narrow the sphere of courage by insisting correctly that courage governs only situations involving both fear and confidence. Aristotle does not make the mistake of further restricting courage to life-threatening situations. Like his accounts of other virtues, Aristotle's account of courage involves several different parameters. (2) Each virtue is a disposition for getting all …

Cicero, On Invention 1.51-77: Hypothetical Syllogistic And The Early Peripatetics, William W. Fortenbaugh

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In the course of this paper, I shall say some things about Cicero’s discussion of induction, but my primary concern will be with his account of deduction. In particular, I want to call attention to Cicero’s argument for a quinquepartite analysis of deductive reasoning (Ded. 3). It is remarkable in that it makes elaborate use of the mixed hypothetical syllogism, and also of some importance in that it supplements our evidence for early Peripatetic interest in syllogisms of this land. Recent scholarship on the history of ancient logic has generally focused on later sources—like Alexander of Aphrodisias, Boethius, Philoponus and …

Impulse And Animal Action In Stoic Psychology, John A. Stevens

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Even in orthodox Chrysippan epistemology, the Stoics believed that impulse can precede assent. Their doctrines on the propatheiai form a theory of temptation, in which impressions exert a force upon us to assent, just as the Academic critics of the Stoics argued. Close readings of De Fato 40-43 and Stobaeus do not actually bear out the consensus understanding of modern critics like Inwood that impulse is identical with, and can only occur with assent. Stevens collects more evidence and sets out the argument with greater clarity in his published version "Preliminary Impulse in Stoic Psychology", Ancient Philosophy 20.1 (2000) 139-168.

On Using The Past In Sextus Empiricus: The Case Of Democritus, Emidio Spinelli

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

If we draw the conclusions from a quick reconstruction of the presence of Democritean doxai in Sextus, we could underline that he seems to use them with the precise (and often explicit) intention of reaching at least two purposes, both functional to the attitude he constantly shows vis-à-vis philosophic past. These purposes are — it seems to me — the following:

a. the first one, that of taking advantage of D.'s doctrines as an integrating part of the diaphoniai that he builds (or that he inherits from the Pyrrhonian tradition which preceded him), always presenting D. as a Dogmatist among …

Sagp Newsletter 1996-97.2 November, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the SAGP Panels with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association and with the American Philological Association for December 1996.

Aristotle And Chrysippus On The Physiology Of Human Action, Priscilla Sakezles

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The early Stoics do not seem to have physiological theories about the workings of the human body. This is not surprising in light of Chrysippus' admission, reported by Galen, of his ignorance of anatomy. Yet a physiological theory explaining the mechanics of how the body moves in response to the soul's desires can be reconstructed from a handful of neglected fragments. Interestingly, the revealed theory is nearly identical to Aristotle's explanation in On the Motion of Animals of "how the soul moves the body in voluntary motion" (700bl0 and 703b3). In this paper I reconstruct the Stoic theory, and argue …

Aristotle On Civic Friendship, Robert Mayhew

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle offers us no sustained account of civic friendship (πολιτική φιλία), only remarks scattered throughout the Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics. In this paper I hope to make clear what his views on civic friendship are.

Citizens will feel affection for one another due to the mutual benefit they receive from living together in a city. They agree about what is advantageous for the city: who should rule, how the city should be run, etc.; and to the extent that they care about the common good, they all have one aim. In addition, the affection a citizen feels for his …

Sagp Newsletter 1995-96.4 April, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the SAGP panel with the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association in Chicago April 26, 1996.

Sagp Newsletter 1995-96.3 March, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the panel of SAGP with the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in Seattle, April 4, 1996.

Even Friends Cannot Have All Things In Common: Aristotle's Critique Of Plato's Republic, Christos C. Evangeliou

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle considered as the core of Plato's ideal polity the proposal of communism in its double form, community of women and children and community of property for the guardians who, thus, would be able to provide the means to achieving the perfect unification of the state. Aristotle objected to these innovations and came out as a defender of common sense and common Greek political practice. His arguments were intended to show not only the impracticability of Plato's proposals and their incompatibility with common Greek practices but also their undesirability. He believed that, human nature being what it is, a political …