Ancient Philosophy Commons^™

Footnotes To Footnotes: Whitehead's Plato, Nathan Oglesby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the presence of Plato in the philosophical expressions of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). It was Whitehead who issued the well-known remark that “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists in a series of footnotes to Plato" -- the purpose of this project is to examine the manner in which Whitehead positioned himself as one such footnote, with respect to his thought itself, and its origins, presentation and reception.

This examination involves: first, an explication of Whitehead’s cosmology and metaphysics and their ostensibly Platonic elements (consisting chiefly in the Timaeus); second, investigation …

We Should Always Call The Receptacle The Same Thing: Timaeus 50b6-51b6, Christopher Buckels

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Plato’s Timaeus is a challenge to understand and to interpret, but its central ontological innovation, a third kind in addition to the standard Platonic categories of Being and Becoming, is, even according to Timaeus himself, a murky and difficult topic. I endeavor to shed a meager light on this shadowy entity, the Receptacle of all Becoming, by examining an argument Timaeus gives for the claim that “we should always call it the same thing” (50b6-7).[1] This claim comes immediately after the famous gold analogy, about which I will say only a few words, and so it also closely follows …

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.

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 …

On The Antecedents Of Aristotle's Bipartite Psychology, William W. Fortenbaugh

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

This paper will be concerned with the antecedents of Aristotle's bipartite or moral psychology. It will consider two common theses: 1) Aristotle's bipartite psychology is in origin a popular psychology already present (if not clearly formulated) in Euripides' Medea; 2) Aristotle's bipartite psychology developed out of tripartition by collapsing together the two lower elements of tripartition. Roughly, I shall be affirming the first and rejecting the second thesis. In both cases I hope to develop and make more precise the origins of Aristotle's bipartite psychology.

Dinos, John Ferguson

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Speculation on circular movement is part of the general process of replacing mythology by science and mathematics - Dinos did indeed evict Zeus. That the primal movement is circular stems from astronomical observation. The atomists equate the dine with ananke, and that becomes tyche for Plato and Aristotle.

Euripides and Aristophanes were aware of the philosophical implications of the latest physical speculation.

The Argument For Immortality In Plato's Phaedrus, Thomas M. Robinson

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The Phaedrus seems to be saying that soul is the cause of all movement in an organized world, a world measurable by Time. In a non-organized world not measurable by Time one can wonder whether the movement in question has anything to do with this. At this stage words start to break down under the strain. Plato is compelled to give some description of the pre-cosmic chaos, and talk of movement in such a world is no more and no less intelligible than phrases like 'before this' (53a8) in the same passage, when Time has been admitted to be absent. …

The Platonic Dream, David Gallop

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The author writes (12/13/16): "The 1965 paper concerned Plato's use of dreaming and waking as metaphors for various contrasts in different philosophical contexts, and especially for its relevance to the Divided Line and Cave of Republic VI-VII. It was a companion piece to my study of Images in the Republic, published in the Archiv sur Geschichte der Philosophie in 1965, and was originally written with it as part of a single long paper. That 1965 paper dealt with Plato's attacks on images and mimesis, and tried to reconcile them with his own constant use of images, especially in Republic V-VII."