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The 'Third Man Argument' And The Text Of The Parmenides, Robert G. Turnbull

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I attempt to show that the 'Large' argument of Parmenides 132 must be understood as part of the attempt to clarify Socrates' response to Zeno. The threat to that response is to the requirement that each form be one and not many. But it is also a threat to the very idea of having a share of a form. In context, the argument is underbrush clearing, getting an unworkable idea out of the way.

Participation In Plato's Dialogues: Phaedo, Parmenides, Sophist, And Timaeus, Leo Sweeney S.J.

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

What was important to Plato was formal causality. From experiencing that many existents are (say) beautiful, he realized that there is a form or essence of beauty. And this causes the beauty in things by its presence somehow in them. Formal causality and participation are two sides of the same coin. But Plato came to realize that his view of participation was incomplete. In the Parmenides and Sophist he joined participation with exemplarity and efficiency.

Aristotle On Genus And Differentia In The Topics And Categories, Herbert Granger

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Each of Aristotle's early works, the Topics and the Categories, provides important evidence for Aristotle's holding two accounts of the nature of genus and differentia. In one account genus and differentia are radically distinct in nature. In the other they are much the same. In this paper I make a case for Aristotle holding each account, suggest why he adopts them, and consider which of the two is the earlier one.

Aristotle On Women, Francis Sparshott

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Sex differentiation is a pervasive and striking feature of the animal world, of which humans form a part. Patriarchy and role differentiation between men and women are pervasive phenomena in human societies. Aristotle is not about to re-design the world. But these phenomena are explained and justified at the economic level, and that is not where human values lie. At the higher level of civilized life, the differentiation becomes anomalous. Aristotle never shows how the anomaly is to be overcome. This is partly because the account of the homestead and the treatment of the city as such are not made …

Sagp Newsletter 1983.1, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Programs of the Society with the Pacific and Western Divisions of the American Philosophical Association, March and April 1983.

Aristotle's Philosophical Principles Of Mathematics, Hippocrates George Apostle

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

On Natural And Unnatural Arts, Jerry Clegg

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The analogy between art and nature is basic in Aristotle's work, but he keeps it from degenerating into an identity. We explore the differences between artificial and natural processes.

Towards An Understanding Of De Anima 432a1: Aristotle's Analogy Between The Soul And The Hand, Sarah J. Shorten

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Construing cognitive processes as life-functions of animals enable him to suggest the view that some of the problems of 'psycho-physical dualism' and 'facts of consciousness' may be philosophical creations after all.

Epicurean Prolepsis, David Glidden

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The paper I presented at the SAGP session was NOT the same as my much longer paper that was subsequently published in Oxford Studies, where I had by then established a fuller philosophical accounting of Epicurean prolepsis as akin to non-conceptual pattern recognition, a purely perceptual facility used by humans and other animals alike. (In this way, my dog recognizes other dogs and distinguishes them from other animals, just as we recognize kinds of things in nature and kinds of situations in our socializing, before we conceptualize and define what we are already habituated to recognizing.) So, the paper …

Eleatic Motions, Wallace Matson

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In "Parmenides Unbound," Philosophical Inquiry 2.1 (1980) 345-360, Matson argues that the accomplishment of Parmenides was the fundamental philosophical distinction between what is known certainly by pure reason and, on the other hand, the domain of (mere?) experience. In this paper Matson argues that Zeno's paradoxes are meant to demonstrate the incoherence of Pythagorean philosophy, for example that the arguments of the Pythagoreans commit them to the unreality of motion, a reductio argument. He takes Melissus as directing his arguments against Heracliteans.

Aristotle's Demarcation Of The Senses Of Energeia In Metaphysics Ix,6, Ronald Polansky

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle demarcates in Metaphysics IX.6 three most crucial senses of energeia. There is that which pertains to categorial being, and that which pertains to becoming. Finally, there is energeia involved in the cognitive and affective lives of animals.

Aristotle And The Functions Of Reproduction, James G. Lennox

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I shall argue that the function of the reproductive capacity is not to perpetuate the kind (or species), but to allow the individual reproducer to be eternal: not eternal without qualifications, but in a way. The basic premise in the arguments which establish this conclusion distinguishes between things which are numerically eternal and those which are formally eternal. This of this latter sort must be members of an everlasting series of individuals which are one-in-form (ἕν εἴδει, in Aristotle's usage). The full understanding of these passages, therefore, requires a proper interpretation of the distinction between numerical and formal unity. with …

Listing Of The 1982-1983 Sagp Content, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

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 …

Some Heraclitean Problems, Miroslav Marcovich

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Beginning from a critique of the idea that a characteristic thought pattern in Heraclitus is the geometrical proportion (proposed by Hermann Fraenkel and others), the author critically discusses the fragments on which that interpretation rests, and goes on to delineate several characteristic means of expression: Paradox, Folklore Motifs, Traditional Wisdom (proverbs), vivid Similes, and metrical forms. The author concludes by discussing the meaning of "logos" in Heraclitus.

Episteme And Logos In Plato's Later Thought, Alexander Nehamas

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

"What is knowledge?" Plato does try to answer this question, asked at the beginning of the Theaetetus, but the answer is not in the dialogue itself, either negatively (as Cornford argued) or positively (as Fine suggested). His answer is partially given in the Sophist and Statesman: the project of definition has been shown to involve the mastery of the whole field to which the object of definition belongs, and hence a science of the field in question. The dramatic sequels to the Theaetetus are also its doctrinal complements. By making knowledge the object of knowledge, Plato was able to …

Plato's Theory Of Social Justice In Republic Ii-Iv, Edward Nichols Lee

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Plato presents the enigmatic and ambiguous formula, "each one doing his own" as his definition of social justice. I will search for the sense that he establishes for that definition: to show how he thinks he has established that that unlikely formula is in fact a reasonable definition of social justice, and to analyze what it means. Plato's theory of justice has its primary sources in sophistic thinking, in particular to the contractarian approach to political philosophy.

Aristotle And Michael Of Ephesus On The Movement And Progression Of Animals Translated, With Introduction And Notes [Translation Of Studien Und Materialen Zur Geschichte Der Philosophie], Anthony Preus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

The translation of Michael of Ephesus, Commentaries on The Movement of Animals and the Progression of Animals, here presented, are the first into a modern language. These are the only surviving Greek commentaries on these treaties.

Listing Of The 1981-1982 Sagp Content, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Did Aristotle 'Develop'? Reflections On Werner Jaeger's Thesis, David R. Lachterman

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Jaeger was combating the previous monolithic interpretation of Aristotle with an organic model of psychological growth. Disproving details in Jaeger's account do not ultimately demonstrate that Aristotle did not develop in some way, or present his ideas in different ways in different places. (Preus)

Plato's Theory Of Participation: Platonic Forms And The Making Of Sense Objects, Richard Patterson

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Plato’s Theory of Participation: Platonic Forms and the Making of Sense Objects

It is correct to say, with certain Friends of the Forms, that Plato’s separate Forms (i.e., non-spatial Forms existing independently of their worldly participants) are not perfect or unqualified instances of themselves, as asserted by prominent Foes of the Forms; rather, they are abstract intelligible entities that do not, with a few exceptions, exemplify themselves. However, this does not yet explain how worldly things can possibly “participate” in Forms, or how that participation can make worldly things be what they are. This paper formulates and defends an explanation …

Socrates And Hedonism: Protagoras 351b-358d, Donald J. Zeyl

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The weight of the evidence is heavily in favor of the antihedonist reading of the Protagoras. It is thoroughly compatible with the text of the Protagoras; it is intelligible in the light of a plausible account of Socrates' aims; and it can meet objections to it, whereas the prohedonist account creates more problems than it solves.

Listing Of The 1980-1980 Sagp Content, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Doctrine And Dramatic Dates Of Plato's Dialogues, Robert S. Brumbaugh

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

My purpose in this paper is to raise - without expecting to finally resolve - the question of the doctrinal significance of the several internal cross-references of Plato's dialogues, and particularly his indications of their proper sequence for the reader.

The Socratic Problem: Some Second Thoughts, Eric A. Havelock

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In this paper, Havelock argues that the distinction between "early" "middle" and "late" dialogues makes little sense. All of the dialogues are Plato's construction; there is no reason to accept any of them as intended to be accurate representations of the historical Socrates. The Apology, often taken as a faithful representation of the historical Socrates, is rather a genre piece, in the tradition of Gorgias' Palamedes. Compare Isocrates' Antidosis. Havelock takes the movement from the orality of Socrates to the literacy of Plato as critical movement in the Athenian thought.

Preus

Listing Of The 1979-1980 Sagp Content, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Metriopatheia And Apatheia: Some Reflections On A Controversy In Later Greek Ethics, John M. Dillon

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The controversy about metriopatheia and apatheia, which generated such heat in later Greek philosophy, is one between the concept of a bipartite or tripartite soul, in which the lower part of parts can never be eradicated - at least while the soul is in the body - but must constantly be chastised. In practice, Stoic eupatheia in practice is very similar to a properly moderated Platonic-Aristotelian pathos, but that is irrelevant to the main point. We find in Plutarch and other Platonists of the period a remarkable unwillingness or inability to comprehend what the Stoic position was.

Intellectualism In Aristotle, David Keyt

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle maintains that the philosophical or theoretical life is the happiest life and that the political or practical life is the second happiest life, but his notion of the proper relation of these two lives is a matter of scholarly controversy. This paper outlines the various interpretative possibilities and attempts to mediate among them.

Episteme And Doxa: Some Reflections On Eleatic And Heraclitean Themes In Plato, Robert G. Turnbull

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I point out some unnoticed features of the interrelationships between episteme and doxa which help to explain some difficult texts and which I take to be archai for their definitive accounts. Much turns on how 'is' is to be understood, and whether or not it can be said to have different senses.

Plotinus And The Value Of The Human Person, John M. Rist

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Plotinus' views on man and his value must be closely related to his views of the One. His first principle is radically different from that of the Platonists, Aristotelians, and Stoics who precede him. In many respects, as in all other areas of his thought, his conception is a synthesis of what went before, but it cannot be overemphasized that it is a new conception, a dynamic first principle whose character as efficient cause is to be viewed in terms of Eros and of will as much as of mind and knowledge.

That being so, and man being a microcosm, …