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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

Sagp Newsletter 1992/3.1 (September), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Programs of the Society with the Eastern Division, in Washington DC December 28, and with the American Philological Association, December 30.

Character And Method In Plato's Republic, Mary Whitlock Blundell, Ruby Blondell

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

It is obvious enough that Plato's literary style, including his use of dramatic form and character, alters drastically along with his philosophical method. It is most economical, though not essential, to attribute these parallel changes to Plato's own chronological development. As Guthrie puts it, "Plato began by giving vivid pictures of Socrates engaged on his mission, and as he went on became more concerned to develop positive doctrines. He retains the dialogue form, but it becomes less dramatic and pictorial and he allows Socrates to indulge in uncharacteristically long discourses only punctuated by expressions of assent from the others" (HGP …

Sagp Newsletter 1992/3.4 (April), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Program of the Society with the Central Division, April 22, 1993, in Chicago.

Were The Neoplatonists Itealists Or Realists?, John Bussanich

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Although it is relatively uncontroversial to characterize all Platonists as metaphysical idealists or immaterialists, the ascription to some of them of explicit arguments for epistemological idealism is controversial and problematic. It will be necessary to consider Neoplatonic attitudes toward perception of an external material world, but also the direct intellectual "perception" of the Forms.

Sagp Newsletter 1992/3.3 (March), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Program of the Society with the Pacific Division March 25, 1993, in San Francisco. Includes an announcement of the Central Division meeting April 22, 1993, in Chicago.

Seneca And The Schools Of Philosophy In Early Imperial Rome, Victoria Larson

Department of Classics and General Humanities Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

The Truth Of Antiphon's 'Truth', Michael Gagarin

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

My intention in this paper is to explore some of the implications of the fact that the fifth century sophistic thinker Antiphon entitled his main "sophistic" treatise, published in two books. Truth (Alêtheia). As in the case of Protagoras' treatise of the same name, this title may be understood as an indication that Antiphon is responding to Parmenides' "Way o f Truth" and is affirming his own view of the truth about the world, that physis is more real or truer than nomos, or in other words, statements are true if and only if they correspond to physis, but not …

Some Ways Of Being In Plato, Allan Silverman

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I propose to examine on this occasion three closely related issues in the interpretation of Plato's metaphysics, the separation of Forms, participation, and the nature of particulars. In the compass of this talk, I cannot do justice to all three of these issues, indeed probably to none of them. A fortiori, I cannot do a semblance of justice to the closely related topics of predication, both ontological and linguistic; the status of Aristotle's remarks about Plato's metaphysics and his own treatment of these issues, or the vexing problem of the development of Plato’s thinking. Nonetheless, I cannot avoid these topics. …

Sagp Newsletter 1991/2.2 (November), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Programs of the Society with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association and with the American Philological Association.

Sagp Newsletter 1991/2.1 (September) Ssips, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the Program for the 10th annual SSIPS/SAGP conference, at Baruch College, October 1991.