Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons^™

Sagp/Ssips Program 1988, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Persons, Community and the Good in Antiquity and in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Philosophy. 7th annual SAGP/SSIPS conference, at Baruch College. Program of papers presented.

A New Look At The Ergon Argument In The Nicomachean Ethics, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

It is commonly assumed that the ergon argument consists in an inference which starts from the powers specific or peculiar to man and arrives at a definition of the human good. This would commit Aristotle to some form of naturalism which is either fallacious or at least not available to us because we cannot share his views about human nature. The purpose of the present paper is to show that this interpretation is unsatisfactory. Aristotle's argument is based on a general principle which may be reformulated as follows: "For any x, if x has an ergon y_, then x will …

Existence Claims In The Posterior Analytics, Richard D. Mckirahan Jr.

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Existence Claims in the Posterior Analytics

Richard McKirahan

This paper treats several questions about the place of existence claims in theory of science presented in the Posterior Analytics. On the basis of a close reading of the text it shows that Aristotle identifies existence claims as a distinct kind of scientific principles (alongside definitions and common principles), that what these principles declare to exist are the subjects as opposed to the attributes that the science studies (triangles, as opposed to the property of having angles equal to two right angles), and not all the subjects, but a subset of them, …

Aristotle On The Mechanics Of Thought: Abstract, Michae V. Wedin

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The submission is itself an abstract, not a complete paper. The revised (complete) paper is included in J. P. Anton & A. Preus, eds. Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy V. Aristotle's Ontology. SUNY Press. 245-272.

Sagp Newsletter 1987/8.4 (March), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Program for the meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy with the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association in April, 1988, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Sagp Newsletter 1987/8.3 (February), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Program for the meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy with the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association March 24, 1988, in Portland Oregon.

Listing Of The 1987-1988 Sagp Content, Society For Ancient Greek Philosophy

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Dust To Dust: Aristotle's Account Of Generation And Desctruction, Mary Louise Gill

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I believe Aristotle could endorse God’s statement to Adam as reflecting his own theory of generation and destruction. Complex bodies, such as living organisms, are generated out of earth, and to earth they will ultimately return. In this paper I will argue that Aristotle defends a cyclical model of generation and destruction which starts and ends with some simple stuff. I will call the model the ''construction model." The construction model underlies many of Aristotle’s claims about substantial generation and destruction, but he presents the main theory in Metaphysics H.5, a text that is curiously neglected in recent discussions of …

Ethical Method In Aristotle: Setting Out The Phainomena, Daniel T. Devereux

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

My chief objective here is the task of setting out and clarifying the data that we need to consider in giving an account of Aristotle's method in ethics. These data are more complex than is usually supposed. I argue that it may be quite misleading to speak of the method of endoxa as the dialectical method, and that it is a mistake to think that there are close parallels between this method and the concept of dialectic discussed in the Topics.

Sagp Newsletter 1987/8.2 (November), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the meetings of the Society with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association and with the American Philological Association for December 1987.

The Plotinian Reduction Of Aristotle's Categories, Christos C. Evangeliou

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I propose to consider the Plotinian reduction of Aristotle’s categories, especially as presented in the problematic VI. 3. 3. The following questions will be discussed: Which of the Aristotelian categories did Plotinus consider dispensable and for what specific reasons? Are there any non-Aristotelian categories in the Plotinian set and, if so, where do they come from and how do they function? By what method, if any, did Plotinus determine the number of his set of categories and why just five? Finally, why is it that Plotinus is the last, in a long series of Platonists, to sharply criticize Aristotle’s doctrine …

Ends And Intrinsic Goods In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Richard Kraut

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

(The attached paper is in fact a longish abstract. Here is a SHORT abstract)

This paper considers some connections between NE I and NE X.7-8. I argue that the two are consistent, and that Aristotle proposes two dominant ends, one for the philosophical life, another for the political life.

The Aporias Of De Anima Γ 4, 429b22-430a9., John Driscoll

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Aristotle introduces the assumption that mind is, as described by Anaxagoras, 'without mixture,' later restating it in his own terms as the view that mind is simple and ἀπαθές and without anything in common with anything else. This leads to two aporias: how, Aristotle asks, will thinking be possible under the assumptions stated, and how can mind itself be an object of thought? He then states two theses of his own: while mind is its objects potentially it is nothing in actuality until thinking occurs, and in the case of things without matter what thinks is the same as what …

Epicurus On Pleasure And Happiness, Julia Annas

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I concentrate on Epicurus' attempt to show that pleasure is complete, not just one aim we have for its own sake but ultimately the only non-instrumental aim we have. Epicurus tells us that we will be happy, have the best overall life, by having pleasure as our final aim, and that we shall achieve this by living according to the virtues, by becoming a certain kind of person.

Sagp Newsletter 1986/7.4 (March), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the meeting of the Society with the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association, May 1 1987.

Sagp Newsletter 1986/7.3 (February), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the meeting of the Society with the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, March 1987.

Philosophical Lives: The Academics, Jorgen Mejer

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No modern account of the history of the Academy as a whole exists. For the early history of the Academy, the last 3 1/2 centuries BC, we are in an unusual situation, as compared with the other schools of philosophy, that two historical accounts are preserved: Papyrus Herculanensis 1021, the Index Academicorum, and Book 4 of Diogenes Laertius' Lives and Opinions of the Philosophers. Comparison of these two sources gives us a better possibility of determining what belongs to the main tradition and what is peculiar to each source.

Aristotle On Reason, Practical Reason, And Living Well, Deborah K.W. Modrak

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

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 …

Sagp Newsletter 1986/7.2 (November), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the meetings of the Society with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association and with the American Philological Association, December 1986.

Aristotle On Meaning And Natural Kinds, David Charles

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Given the account that I give of natural kind terms in Aristotle, the task of explaining the coherence of essentialist claims lay elsewhere for him than in the theory of reference. He required a deeper account of necessity and explanation than the modern theorist provides in order to fulfill an explanatory task left virtually untouched by his account of the meaning of these terms. ... The ancient and modern routes to essentialism seem fundamentally different. And this is why Aristotle did not require to attribute to the pre-scientific thinker the deep assumptions invoked by the modern theorist.

Aristotle On Property Rights, Fred D. Miller Jr.

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The thesis is that a theory of private property rights can be reconstructed from the remarks about property scattered throughout Aristotle’s writings. His working concept is as follows: X has a property right in P if, and only if, X possesses P in such a way that the use of P is up to X and the alienation of P (giving P away or selling P) is up to X. It is argued that Aristotle provides clear answers to the important questions which should be answered by a theory of property rights: (1) What individuals can properly hold rights to …

Socrates' Evil Associates And The Motivation For His Trial And Condemnation, Thomas C. Brickhouse, Nicholas D. Smith

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

We argue against those who construe the charge made by Polycrates, that Socrates was the teacher of Alcibiades and Critias, to be a substantial feature of the prejudice that Socrates faced as he stood trial for impiety and corrupting the youth.

Sagp Newsletter 1985/6.3 (February), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the meetings of the Society with the Pacific and Central Divisions of the American Philosophical Association for Spring 1986.

On 'Essentially' (Hoper) In Aristotle, Alban Urbanas

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In this paper I shall examine the notion of ταὐτόν - commonly translated as 'same' or 'identical' - and its relevance to so-called essential predications, as effected through the use of ὅπερ in Aristotle. It will be shown that propositions of the type 'A is ὅπερ B' involve an essential predication where either a genus is affirmed of a species, or a species of an individual. The possibility of such predications will be founded upon the doctrine of the categories and the ontological distinction between essence and accident. Besides predications involving generic or specific identity, others effected through propositions of …

The Origin Of Aristotle's Metaphysical Aporiae, Edward Halper

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

That the fifteen aporiae to whose exposition Aristotle devotes all of Metaphysics B originate from Platonism is widely accepted. However, the text provides no account of how Aristotle constructed these aporiae, and the exact path by which they developed remains shrouded by our lack of knowledge of Aristotle's contemporaries and of the discussions in Plato's Academy. Book B has been a focal point for various, conflicting accounts of Aristotle's development, for scholars assume that the aporiae presented here are problems that troubled Aristotle and remained unsolved when he wrote Metaphysics B. In this paper I shall present an alternative account …

How Learning Mathematics Helps Us Be Virtuous, Joan Kung

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

A number of passages in the Timaeus make a connection that strikes us as odd, even bizarre perhaps. Who nowadays thinks that the study of geometry or number theory has anything to do with being a good person? Yet these passages emphasize the importance for human virtue and happiness of mathematical studies, especially the study of the ratios of numbers and the geometry of solids in motion, the harmonies and revolutions of the world or of the god. We are told, for example, that by learning to know and compute these rightly we shall bring our souls into order and …

Eudemian Ethical Method, Lawrence J. Jost

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Are there any distinctive contributions that the EE, as opposed to the NE, makes to the study of ethical method? The fact that the Eudemian environment is particularly hospitable to endoxic method by comparison with the NE is surely worthy of note, even extended examination. We look first at undoubtedly NE passages for methodological remarks, noting how spare such as can be found really are when compared with undoubtedly EE material. Eventually we shall be in position to suggest that it is the EE and not the NE which must be given the credit for containing the fullest account of …

Sagp Newsletter 1985/6.2 (November), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the panels of the Society with the Eastern Division and the American Philological Association in December 1985.

Sagp/Ssips Program 1985, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Episteme - Scientia - *Ilm

Scientific Knowledge in Antiquity and in Christian and Islamic Philosophy

Fourth Annual SAGP /SSIPS conference, at Baruch College

Program of papers presented