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Full-Text Articles in History of Philosophy
Impulse And Animal Action In Stoic Psychology, John A. Stevens
Impulse And Animal Action In Stoic Psychology, John A. Stevens
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
Even in orthodox Chrysippan epistemology, the Stoics believed that impulse can precede assent. Their doctrines on the propatheiai form a theory of temptation, in which impressions exert a force upon us to assent, just as the Academic critics of the Stoics argued. Close readings of De Fato 40-43 and Stobaeus do not actually bear out the consensus understanding of modern critics like Inwood that impulse is identical with, and can only occur with assent. Stevens collects more evidence and sets out the argument with greater clarity in his published version "Preliminary Impulse in Stoic Psychology", Ancient Philosophy 20.1 (2000) 139-168.
Sex & Mysticism In Plato, John Thorp
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, …
Foundationalism, Coherentism, And Aristotle, Robin A. Smith
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.
Xenophanes' Skepticism, James H. Lesher
Xenophanes' Skepticism, James H. Lesher
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
The character of Xenophanes’ skepticism was the subject of dispute as early as the 4th century BC and the central statement of his position, fragment 34, has been variously interpreted ever since. In this paper I argue that Xenophanes’ remarks about knowledge are best understood in connection with his distinctive, austere conception of the divine (B 23-26) and related rejection of the claims of seers and diviners to gain access to divine matters (A 52). When Xenophanes denies that there ever was or will be anyone who “knows about the gods and such things as I say about all things,” …