Classics Commons^™

Material Alteration And Cognitive Activity In Aristotle's De Anima, John Sisko

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In this paper, I would like to sketch my account of the relation between cognitive activity and material alteration within Aristotle's psychological theory. I will begin by suggesting a new framework through which to view the important issues (§2). I will then show that on Aristotle's account material alteration is required both for any episode of perception in animals taken generally (§3) and for any episode of thought in human beings (§4). Finally, I will examine Aristotle's rationale for supposing that material alteration is required for human thought (§5).

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 …

Sagp Newsletter 1995-96.2 November, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the panels of SAGP with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association December 28 in New York and with the American Philological Association December 28 in San Diego.

Dialectic And Definition In Aristotle's Topics, May Sim

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The middle term between dialectic and being is definition. Definitions are formulae of essences or substances. Thus, one’s view of substance will depend on one’s view of definition: what a definition is, and how it is acquired. Further, insofar as definitions are arrived at through dialectic, definitions depend on dialectic. That is, the specific procedure of dialectic shapes the mode of definition, and the mode of definition shapes the notion of being. Not only does dialectic shape being through definition, but being and knowledge of it also determines dialectic. In short, these three things go together: dialectic, definition and being. …

Aristotle's Child: Formation Through Genes, Oikos, Polis, Daryl Mcgowan Tress

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The discussion of children in Pol VII and the linking of nature, habit and reason supports our thesis that Aristotle has a composite conception of the child and that it can be reconstituted by way of a linked examination of his analyses in the biology, ethics and politics.The child has his or her beginnings prior to birth and grows from unfinished to finished adulthood through linked phases. Each phase of development has its own telos - the complete human animal nature at birth, the complete ethical character later on, and the cultured, educationally complete person ready for adult life in …

Aristotle On The Αρχή Of Practical Reasoning: Countering The Influence Of Sub-Humeanism, Lynn Holt

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

My central aim is to show that Aristotle convincingly avoids what has been the linchpin of the dominant contemporary view of the starting point of practical reasoning: that practical reasoning must begin, both normatively and motivationally, with some desire or want (call this sub-Humeanism). My task is made more difficult by the presence of a now common interpretation of Aristotle himself in which desire is both normatively and motivationally super-ordinate. On this view, Aristotle cannot be a genuine alternative to the contemporary view, since he just is a contemporary: Aristotle is the first sub-Humean about practical reasoning.

In order to …

An Aristotelian Definition Of Friendship, Paul Schollmeier

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

My paper explicates the Aristotelian definition of friendship, and it demonstrates that friendship for Aristotle can be either altruistic or egoistic. Aristotelian friendship includes three species, one of which is altruistic and two of which are egoistic. Good friendship is essentially friendship, and it is for the sake of another. Useful and pleasant friendships are accidentally friendships, and they are for the sake of oneself.

Society For Ancient Greek Philosophy Bylaws, Sagp

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Sagp Newsletter 1994-95.3 March, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the SAGP panel with the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association for April 28, 1995, in Chicago.

Sagp Newsletter 1994-95.2 February, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the meeting of SAGP with the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association March 31, 1995, in San Francisco.

What Does Aristotle's Prime Mover Do?, Sarah Waterlow Broadie

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The Prime Mover of Metaphysics Lambda is the source, above all, of eternal motion in the first sphere. It may seem silly to ask 'What (according to Lambda) does the Prime Mover do?' The answer is obvious: 'He — or it — gives rise to the motion of the first sphere'. But according to a widely accepted interpretation, this is not what the Prime Mover does first and foremost; instead, the Mover essentially contemplates. This contemplative conception is my target here. I shall adduce reasons for suspecting that the contemplative Prime Mover is not an Aristotelian postulate in Lambda, but …

The Parts Of Definitions, Unity, And Sameness In Aristotle's Metaphysics, Mark R. Wheeler

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

First principles (ἀρχάι) are crucial to Aristotle's conception of scientific knowledge (επιστήμη). In the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle teaches us that all scientific knowledge is either knowledge arrived at through demonstration from first principles or knowledge of the first principles themselves. The first principles of a given science are the primary premises (τὰ πρώτα) of that science (Pst. An., 72a7); they express the essential characteristics of the substance about which the given science is concerned; and all other scientific knowledge is derived from the first principles through syllogistic inference.

The first principles of the various sciences are expressed through definition (ὁρισμός). …

Being According To Aristotle's Metaphysics Delta, Richard Bodeus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In ordinary language, what is said 'being' is so-called in several different ways. In his attempt to clarify this important point, Aristotle introduces distinctions that are not as easily grasped as one might at first believe. Commentators are particular troubled by what 'being per se' means, especially in relation to the 'categories'. Some of them are also surprised to see that Aristotle leaves no room for what one might call 'existential being.' And other aspects of Aristotle's account raise additional problems. I hope to contribute to a more successful understanding of Aristotle's general aim in this text.

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, …

Sagp Newsletter 1994-95.1 November, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the SAGP panels with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association December 28, 1994, and with the American Philological Association, December 30, 1994.

Sagp Ssips 1994 Addendum, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Addendum to the SAGP SSIPS Program October 1994

Intentionality And Isomorphism In Aristotle, Christopher Shields

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In this paper I investigate one central source of Aristotle's dissatisfaction with a comprehensive analogy between aisthêsis and noêsis. I will argue that his conception of nous as organless is neither empirically motivated nor obviously misguided. On the contrary, Aristotle's insistence that nous is separate and unmixed with the body is grounded in an approach to intentionality nascent in his treatment of noêsis. This approach to intentionality helps motivate the special status he awards nous.

Aristotle On Good And Bad Actualities, Owen Goldin

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

This paper is a discussion of one of the more neglected passages in the central books of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Θ 9 105la4~19. In this passage Aristotle makes some assertions concerning relations that hold among potentialities and actualities, both good and bad. These assertions seem to be made as an afterthought, and their relation to the analysis of potentiality and actuality that precedes is unclear. I shall argue that in this passage Aristotle is in effect providing a metaphysical foundation for the normative component of a teleological analysis of composite substance. I consider certain difficulties in reconciling the text with the …

Change And Contrariety: Problems Plato Set For Aristotle, Charles Young, James Bogen

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Plato's views on change and contrariety arise from concerns about definition and explanation in the aporetic Socratic dialogues that find more systematic analysis and resolution in the more constructive dialogues that follow. After developing these concerns, analyses, and solutions, we sketch Aristotle's quite different treatment of the same and other related issues.

Deception In Aristotle's Rhetoric: How To Tell The Rhetorician From The Sophist, And Which One To Bet On, Eugene Garver

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle has a simple answer to questions about the morality of rhetoric: he distinguishes the rhetorician and the sophist. What sets the sophist apart from the rhetorician is "not the faculty (dynamis) but the moral purpose (prohairesis)" (I1.1355M7; see de Soph Elen 1.165a30). Keep straight the difference between sophist and rhetorician and all moral problems will evaporate. He certainly doesn't think telling them apart needs great philosophical development or exquisite ethical judgment. Distinguishing them requires neither phronesis nor familiarity with the Rhetoric. He gives his distinction all the explanation he thinks it needs by saying:

In rhetoric, the person who …

Nous As The Ground Of Aristotle's Metaphysics?, John J. Cleary

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

This paper explores the implications of Aristotle's puzzling suggestions that the possibility of first philosophy somehow depends on whether part of the soul is separable from material body. My Conjecture1 is that for Aristotle the science of metaphysics depends on a special activity of nous that grasps die self-identical essences which are objects of first philosophy, as distinct from physics and mathematics. From Aristotle's perspective, of course, it is the existence of such essences that makes metaphysics possible, but it is arguable that without a corresponding mode of cognition this would not be a human science. It is a moot …

Sagp Newsletter 1993/4.2 (November), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Programs of the Society with the Eastern Division and with the American Philological Association, December 1933.

Aristotle On The Principles Of Perceptible Body (Gen. Corr. 2.1-3), David E. Hahm

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

With his clarification of the philosophical significance of the Pre- Socratic theories of elements Aristotle completes his discussion of the principles of perceptible bodies. He had embarked on this subject with the intent of explaining the first bodies and their role as principles of genesis and destruction. Jumping off from the theories of the Ionian philosophers who first proposed simple elemental bodies as principles of change, he probed behind these to discover even more fundamental principles, one of which was anticipated by another Ionian and by his teacher Plato. These ultimate principles will become for Aristotle the foundation of all …

Sagp Newsletter 1993/4.4 (March), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the SAGP panel at the Central Division in Kansas City, May 1994.

Sagp Newsletter 1993/4.3 (February), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Program of the Society with the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association March/April 1994.

Anaximander And The Architects, Robert Hahn

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

This essay is divided into several sections. In (B) I set out the problem of making a diagram or model of Anaximander's cosmos, then in (C) I outline the relevant fragments and testimony - for Anaximander's picture of the cosmos and its formation — from which a diagram or model might be constructed. Next, in (D) I invite the reader to reflect on the differences between plan and elevation perspectives: two ways of Imagining. In (D.l), evidence for plan and elevation perspectives in ancient Egyptian architecture is examined, and the contributing influence is considered; in (D.2) evidence for plan and …

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 …

Foundationalism, Coherentism, And Aristotle, Robin A. Smith

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

It is the need to respond to various forms of relativism, with their nihilistic consequences for philosophy and science, that was the primary epistemological goal for Plato and Aristotle. Such a goal is a far more credible and a far more urgent one for them than the refutation of Cartesian radical skepticism, a position they do not even seem to take seriously.

Aristotle's Account Of Courage In En Iii.6-9, Howard Curzer

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I shall argue that Aristotle (a) does not limit courage to life- threatening situations on the battlefield; (b) is right to maintain that courage governs both fear and confidence; (c) applies a plausible doctrine of the mean to courage; (d) appropriately distinguishes courage from continence; and (e) does not affirm that courageous acts are overall pleasant for courageous people.

Sagp/Ssips 1992, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Ethics, Aesthetics and Ontology: 11th Annual SAGP/SSIPS conference, at Columbia University: panels