History of Philosophy Commons^™

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.

The Edifying Influence Of Soren Kierkegaard, Alan Dunn

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Soren Kierkegaard is presented as a Christian corrective to nineteenth century idealism. The nature of idealism is described as it arises in Hegelianism, the ecclesiastical structure, and the cultural setting. The Hegelian ontology of "pure thought," the principle of "mediation," and the striving for "objectivity" are presented as the fundamental obstacles to the assimilation of Christianity. Kierkegaard approaches these issues maieutically. This method is discussed as it relates to the author and his works. The stages of existence (i.e. Aesthetic, Ethical, Religiousness A, and Religiousness B) are described in relation to Kierkegaard's maieutical approach. Kierkegaard's Christological concern is discussed. Comments …

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

Notes On The Animal Kingdom Of The Spirit, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

One of the more neglected chapters of Hegel's Phenomenology, which contains neither the obvious drama of the master and slave dialectic nor the deep enigmas of the final pages on absolute knowledge, carries the somewhat puzzling title Das geistige Tierrefrh und der Bertrug oder die Sache selbst. Of the major commentators on Hegel only Lukács has suggested its central place in the design of the whole: Kojéve and Lowenberg (following Royce) have suggested vivid readings of it as an analysis of the conflicts and jealousies of intellectual, artistic, and professional work. What follows is a series of remarks and variations …

Listing Of The 1979-1980 Sagp Content, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Alexander Bain And Herbert Spencer Upon William James, David D. Nelson

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the influence of Alexander Bain (1818-1903) and Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) upon William James (1842-1910). James is generally considered to be the foremost American psychologist and the one who "introduced" experimental psychology to the United States. James had become familiar with the psychological writings of Bain and Spencer early in his career, and he used Spencer's The Principles of Psychology and later Bain's The Senses and the Intellect and The Emotions and the Will as textbooks for his course in psychology at Harvard. Bain was foremost English psychologist at that time, and Spencer was widely known as a …

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.

Marx's Theory Of History, William H. Shaw

Open Educational Resources

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.

Critique Of Feuerbach's Philosophical & Theological Concepts Of God & Man, David Draper

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In the critique of Ludwig Feuerbach's identification of the nature of man and of the nature of God, it is seen that his ideas stem from some aspects of Hegelian philosophy. Feuerbach's thought revolves around his conception of man. He believed, after much study, that he perceived in Hegelian philosophy a portrait of man that was veiled by Hegel's mystical concept of Absolute Mind. If, Feuerbach thought, one could strip away the idealistic tendencies of Hegelianism, then one would be left with a true picture of man. He reversed Hegelian thought and re - postulated man in his "Towards a …

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. …

Epicurus' Scientific Method, Elizabeth Asmis

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I argued that Epicurus sought to infer all truths about what cannot be perceived (what is "non-apparent", adêlon) by using what is perceived (the "phenomena") as "signs" of what is non-apparent. This is an empirical method, based on the claim that sensory perception shows what is true. In the case of his basic physical doctrines, Epicurus argued by a reductio ad absurdum that if the negation of the doctrine were true, there would be a conflict with what we perceive. This applies to Epicurus' first two doctrines, that "nothing come to be from non-being" and that "nothing is destroyed …

Listing Of The 1976-1977 Content, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Anaxagoras And Epicurus, Margaret Reesor

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

It is, I believe, clear that Epicurus adopted an interpretation of the impression which was alien to Democritus’ atomic theory and closer to that of Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras may have believed that the qualities of the impression accurately reproduced the attributes of the objects; and he certainly regarded the objects of sense perception as true. He held that that from which an entity emerges had predominant parts which were the same as the predominant parts of the entity. Anaxagoras' experiments suggest that he was aware in some degree of the principle of confirmatory evidence and evidence to the contrary. His form …

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,” …