History of Philosophy Commons^™

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.

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, …

Listing Of The 1978-1979 Sagp Content, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Form Of The Good In Plato's Republic, Gerasimos X. Santas

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The theory of the Form of the Good in the Republic is truly and coherently the centerpiece of the canonical Platonism of the middle dialogues, the centerpiece of Plato's metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics, and even his theory of love and art. In this theory of the Form of the Good Plato was truly the first grand philosophical synthesiser. If to achieve such a grand synthesis he had to employ a few unholy combinations, such as the combination of reality, goodness, and self-predication, he may perhaps be forgiven - at least if he is understood.

Eidos As Norm In Aristotle's Biology, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The first part of the paper explores Aristotle's biological concept of an eidos (species or form) in comparison with modern biological taxonomy. The second part outlines normative determinants of an Aristotelian eidos. The third part considers two passages in which Aristotle compares non-biological eide to biological: pleasures, in EN 10.4-5, and kinds of government in Pol. 4.4.

Form And Content In Gorgias' Helen And Palamedes: Rhetoric, Philosophy, Inconsistency And Invalid Argument In Some Greek Thinkers, Arthur Adkinis

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I ask whether Gorgias indulges in rhetorical flourishes in which form takes precedence over content, and whether the presuppositions of the Helen and Palamedes are inconsistent with one another. More generally, are the presuppositions and inconsistencies of Gorgias shared with other early Greek philosophers.

"Nothing" As "Not-Being": Some Literary Contexts That Bear On Plato And On Parmenides, Alexander P.D. Mourelatos

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In the main Section of this paper I examine a certain "characterizing" use of meden/ouden and medeis/oudeis in pre-Platonic non-philosophical contexts. The passages discussed and analyzed offer cle.ar and suggestive illustrations of the assimilation of "nothing" or "nobody" to "not-being." In the concluding Section I explore connections between that use and philosophical concepts,with particular reference to Plato's doctrine of degrees of reality.

The dialectic of being in classical Greek speculation focuses not on 'What there is' but on 'what it is' or 'how it is'; not on existence but on physis, constitution, or form.

Listing Of The 1977-1978 Sagp Content, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Problems In Epicurean Physics, David Konstan

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

This article treats several problems in Epicurean atomic theory, including how atoms rebound (the answer is that they must keep moving at a uniform speed and simply move in another direction when impeded), the role of minima in defining the boundaries of an atom and accounting for its impenetrability and why adjacent atoms do not merge, and the explanation of atomic weight as a tendency of atoms emerging from collisions to move in a preferred direction, which is by definition “down.”

Diogenes Of Oenoanda: The New Discoveries (1968-1976), Diskin Clay

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Short bibliography of the state of the art on the fragments of Diogenes of Oenoanda as of December 1976.

Epicurus' Conception Of The Psyche, K. W. Harrington

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In this paper I try to establish the following differences between Epicurean and Lucretian psyches:

1. For Lucretius, the psyche is composed of particles of air, breath, heat, and a fourth unnamed constituent. Epicurus suggests that the psyche is composed of a single kind of atom, and that it in some way resembles heat and in some way resembles breath.

2. For Epicurus, breath and heat are properties of compounds, not kinds of atoms or kinds of compound entities. Lucretius apparently takes the opposite position.

3. For Lucretius, the components of the psyche seem to be entities larger than atoms.

Plato On The Complexity Of The Psyche, John Moline

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

What were the parts of the psyche posited by Plato in the Republic? The question calls not for a list but for an account of the grounds on which Plato posited and distinguished such parts. It calls for an account of their nature and role in his system.

We are not lacking in attempts at such an account. These parts have been termed "faculties", "principles", "activities", "aspects", "instances", and "levels" of the psyche. Their nature and role have been characterized in ways influenced as much perhaps by the connotations of these terms as by the details of Plato's text. …