History of Philosophy Commons^™

Sagp Newsletter 1990/91.3 (March), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the program of the Society with the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association for March 28, 1991.

Subversion Of System / Systems Of Subversions, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

What might it mean to think outside or beyond the Hegelian system of philosophy? Already in Hegel's own time this was a question that came to occupy those who labored under the weight of his speculative and comprehensive system of thought. The easiest and most immediately appealing strategy was to seize upon some category that seemed to be relatively neglected within the system, something that seemed to have been too easily aufgehoben into the totality. Kierkegaard is sometimes represented as centering his challenges to the Hegelian system around the valorization of the unhappy consciousness; that is, the consciousness aware of …

Le Contrat Social, Une Œuvre Genevoise? L’École Du Droit Naturel Et Le Débat Politique À Genève. La Réponse De Rousseau, Helena Rosenblatt

Publications and Research

La question de l'influence de Genève sur les idées politiques et religieuses de Jean-Jacques Rousseau est discutée depuis plus de deux cents ans. Cependant, au cours des années, les suppositions méthodologiques sous-jacentes au débat sont restées fondamentalement les mêmes, et elles ont besoin d'être modifiées. C'est pourquoi il est encore nécéssaire de réexaminer un vieux sujet selon une nouvelle approche. Au lieu de voir Genève simplement en tant que source d'idées que Rousseau a pu adopter, il faudrait voir Genève comme fournissant des problèmes concrets et intellectuels que Rousseau a tâché de résoudre.

The Theodicy Of The Timaeus, Thomas M. Robinson

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

I suggest that any explanation of the Demiurge that has a chance of being correct must take into account the fact that he is invariably described in non-contingent terms, and the entities to which many have wished to reduce him (the world’s soul, or the rationality within it) in invariably and unambiguously contingent terms. This holds true despite Timaeus’s readiness to speak without apparent qualm of the Demiurge as either a father or a craftsman or both, or even - after the manner of Anaxagoras - to talk of him on occasion simply as Reason; whatever the variants in the …

Seneca And The Stoic View Of Suicide, Walter Englert

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

will present a summary of the Stoic doctrine on suicide before Seneca, followed by an analysis of Seneca’s own views. Our sources on Stoic views of suicide before Seneca are meager. But they allow us to construct a coherent Stoic theory of suicide, and in Seneca we see the theory fleshed out. Rist is right to point out that we find a connection between suicide and libertas for the first time in Seneca, but wrong to suppose that it is inconsistent with earlier Stoic teaching, pathological, or based on a hatred of life.8 Seneca’s views are consistent with earlier, orthodox …

Sagp Newsletter 1990/91.2 (December), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the Society's panels with the American Philological Association, and the Eastern, Pacific, and Central Divisions of the American Philosophical Association for 1990/91.

The Philosophical Economy Of Plato's Psychology: Common Concepts In The Timaeus, Dorothea Aline Frede

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Plato's insistence that the eternal immobile model is “the real thing” and the mobile world only an image is to stress the sincerity of his conviction that the intelligible pattern, the unchangeable network of principles, must be the foundation of the physical reality. Only because there is such a fundamentum in re can we have concepts that allow us to understand and explain the world. Without such really existing concepts our thinking would be nothing, it would be a groping for stability in a changing world that could at best provide similarities without any fix point to determine their nature. …

Sagp Newsletter 1990/91.1 (September) Ssips, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the panels for the December meetings of the Society, as well as the program for the 9th annual SSIPS/SAGP conference at Baruch College, October 1990.

Plotinus On Freedom, Creativity And The One, Laura Westra

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In this paper I want to show the import and the centrality of Freedom as Creativity in the philosophy of Plotinus. I will only say a little about Freedom's cardinal role and centrality in his thought, as I defend that position at length in my forthcoming book on the topic (and on Enneads 6.8). Instead, I will show the link between Freedom and Creativity in Section 1, then speak of Creativity as a human good and ideal when understood in the Plotinian sense, touching also upon the light it sheds on general problem of philosophy (Section 2); and finally, of …

Aristotle On Unity: Metaphysics Delta 6, Constantine Georgiadis

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The brief passage on accidental unity (ἕv κατὰ συμβεβηκός) in Chapter 6 of Metaphysics Δ (1015b 16-34) raises a number of questions for which the text does not provide explicit answers. Aristotle does not define the nature of accidental unity, nor does he explain the status and character of the items which partake in accidental unities. One may wonder whether those items pertain to language, or to reality or whether they involve a certain relation of language to reality. Aristotle lists different examples which are purported to illustrate different kinds of accidental unity but those kinds are not described in …

Sagp Newsletter 1989/90.4 (March), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the Society's panel with the Central Division, April 1990

Sagp Newsletter 1989/90.3 (February), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the SAGP Panel with the Pacific Division for 1990

Translating, Repeating, Naming: Foucault, Derrida And The Genealogy Of Morals, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Two cautions or warnings (at least) must be heeded in the attempt to do justice to Nietzsche's project of a genealogy of morals in the text that bears that name. While the Genealogy is often regarded as the most straightforward and continuous of Nietzsche's books, he tells us in Ecce Homo that its three essays are "perhaps uncannier than anything else written so far in regard to expression, intention, and the art of surprise.” If we should think ourselves successful in penetrating to these uncanny secrets and saying what Nietzsche's text means, once and for all, we would then have …

Heraclitus: The River Fragments, Leonardo Taran

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Heraclitus was known in antiquity for the obscurity and the ambiguity of his expression, and there can be little doubt .that he purposely made use of ambiguity to emphasize the paradoxical character of some of his doctrines. For us who so many centuries later wish to understand his thought, these characteristics are increased and magnified by the very way his thought has been transmitted: citations and paraphrases by others whose interests were in most cases alien to his. Yet many ancient authors cited him to find authority and corroboration for their views in such an archaic thinker. Other writers, among …

Plotinus On The Articulation Of Being, Steven K. Strange

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Ennead Vi.2 presents itself as Plotinus' official account of the structure of the second Hypostasis, i.e. Intellect (νοῦς) or Being, what corresponds in his metaphysical universe to Plato's realm of Ideas or Forms. Having refuted the Peripatetic and Stoic theories in VI.1, he turns to developing his own view of Being, which he intends to be in agreement with Plato's. Indeed, the account of the 'genera of being' that he give in VI.2 is closely modeled on Plato's discussion of the so-called 'greatest kinds' or megista gene in the Sophist.

Sagp Newsletter 1989/90.2 (November), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Programs of the meeting of the Society with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association December 28, 1989, in Atlanta, and with the American Philological Association, December 28, 1989, in Boston.

Unity And Logos: A Reading Of Theaetetus 201c-210a, Mitchell Miller

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Abstract for “Unity and Logos” (Anc Phil 12.1:87-111):

A close reading of Socrates' refutation of the final proposed definition of knowledge, "true opinion with an account." I examine the provocations to further thinking Socrates poses with his dilemma of simplicity and complexity and then by his rejections of the three senses of "account," and I argue that these provocations guide the responsive reader to that rich and determinate understanding of the sort of 'object' which knowledge requires that the Parmenides and the Eleatic dialogues will go on to explicate.

This paper is available at http://pages.vassar.edu/mitchellmiller/.

Failure And Expertise In The Ancient Conception Of An Art, James Allen

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The ancient notion of an art (τέχνη) embraced a wide range of pursuits from handicrafts like shoemaking and weaving to more exalted disciplines not excluding philosophy (cf. Plato Gorgias 486b; Hippolytus Refutatio. 570,8 DDG; Sext. Emp. Μ II13). Nevertheless, there was a sufficient amount of agreement about what was expected of an art to permit debates about whether different practices qualified as arts. According to the conception which made these debates possible, an art is a body of knowledge concerning a distinct subject matter which enables the artist to achieve a definite type of beneficial result. Obviously, the failure of …

The Good As Unity: Its Role In The Good Life In Plato's Later Thought, Cynthia Hampton

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In the sixth book of the Republic. Socrates begins leading his interlocutors down the 'longer road' that leads to the Form of the Good which is to complete the earlier account of virtue given in Book IV. The end of this road in the Republic is reached via the sketch of the Good portrayed in the famous Sun, Line, and Cave passages. In this paper, I wish to suggest that the road does not, in fact, end here, but extends to the account of the Good offered in one of Plato's latest dialogues, the Philebus . This account, like the …

Does Aristotle's Political Philosophy Rest On A Contradiction?, David J. Depew

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Critique of David Keyt. 1987. "Three Fundamental Theorems in Aristotle's Politics." Phronesis, 32.1:54-79. Keyt claims that Aristotle is committed to these three propositions: 1. The polis is a natural entity, coming to be and existing by nature. 2. A polis comes to be when a legislator imposes constitutional form on social matter by political art. 3. Nothin can come to be both as a natural entity and as a product of rational art. This paper surveys previous attempts to resolve the dilemma, then argues that Keyt relies too much on the idea that the polis is the consequence of an …

Sagp Newsletter 1988/9.4 (March), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Program of the meeting of the Society with the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association April 28, 1989, in Chicago.

Sagp Newsletter 1988/9.3 (February), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Program of the meeting of the Society with the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association March 24, 1989, in Oakland, CA.

Organic Models In The Poetics, David Gallop

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

According to Aristotle, art (technë) imitates nature. This celebrated doctrine is not limited to what we call the 'fine arts', or to works of 'art' in any narrow modern sense; and it does not mean that such art-works copy things in the natural order. It means, more generally, that craftsmen adopt means to produce ends; and that in doing so, they follow a pattern found throughout organic nature. The crafts, in their respective domains, do what nature does everywhere. This parallel often provides Aristotle with analogies from the crafts to illuminate the workings of nature. ,The Poetics is uniquely interesting …

Listing Of The 1988-1989 Sagp Content, Society For Ancient Greek Philosophy

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Paradox, Poetry, And Eternity: Socrates, Parmenides, And Nietzsche, Scott Austin

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Abstractly, some metalanguages and their allied languages are such that the metalinguistic truths cannot be put into the language itself without a (fruitful or devastating) paradox which breaks the very rules which the metalanguage itself enunciates for the language. Others are such that the transposition of metalanguage into language occurs without difficulty. The status of philosophy as a purported "science of all sciences" from classical times to the present hangs on this difference; for, unless there can be speech about speech in one’s own (however elaborated) natural language, the metaphysical enterprise sooner or later topples, to be replaced by faith, …

Ontological Structures In Aristotle, Donald Morrison

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

According to the traditional view of the Categories, the ten "categories" are the highest genera of beings. Each of them stands at the head of a tree-like division of the the items falling under it; this division is also sometimes called a "category". The metaphysical structure made up of these ten divisions is the "system of the categories". According to the traditional view, the system of the categories is very rigidly laid out. Not only is every being included in the structure, but every being has exactly one location. Each being is predicated essentially of those below it along the …

Sagp Newsletter 1988/9.2 (November), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Programs of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association December 28, 1988, in Washington DC, and with the American Philological Association January 7, 1989, in Baltimore, Maryland.

Sagp/Ssips Program 1988, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Persons, Community and the Good in Antiquity and in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Philosophy. 7th annual SAGP/SSIPS conference, at Baruch College. Program of papers presented.

A New Look At The Ergon Argument In The Nicomachean Ethics, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

It is commonly assumed that the ergon argument consists in an inference which starts from the powers specific or peculiar to man and arrives at a definition of the human good. This would commit Aristotle to some form of naturalism which is either fallacious or at least not available to us because we cannot share his views about human nature. The purpose of the present paper is to show that this interpretation is unsatisfactory. Aristotle's argument is based on a general principle which may be reformulated as follows: "For any x, if x has an ergon y_, then x will …

Existence Claims In The Posterior Analytics, Richard D. Mckirahan Jr.

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Existence Claims in the Posterior Analytics

Richard McKirahan

This paper treats several questions about the place of existence claims in theory of science presented in the Posterior Analytics. On the basis of a close reading of the text it shows that Aristotle identifies existence claims as a distinct kind of scientific principles (alongside definitions and common principles), that what these principles declare to exist are the subjects as opposed to the attributes that the science studies (triangles, as opposed to the property of having angles equal to two right angles), and not all the subjects, but a subset of them, …