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From Hades to the Stars: Empedocles on the Cosmic Habitats of Soul', Classical Antiquity, Vol
Edinburgh Research Explorer From Hades to the stars Citation for published version: Trepanier, S 2017, 'From Hades to the stars: Empedocles on the cosmic habitats of soul', Classical Antiquity, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 130-182. https://doi.org/10.1525/ca.2017.36.1.130 Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1525/ca.2017.36.1.130 Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Published In: Classical Antiquity Publisher Rights Statement: Published as Trépanier, S. 2017. From Hades to the Stars: Empedocles on the Cosmic Habitats of Soul, Classical Antiquity, Vol. 36 No. 1, April 2017; (pp. 130-182) DOI: 10.1525/ca.2017.36.1.130. © 2017 by the Regents of the University of California. Authorization to copy this content beyond fair use (as specified in Sections 107 and 108 of the U. S. Copyright Law) for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by the Regents of the University of California for libraries and other users, provided that they are registered with and pay the specified fee via Rightslink® or directly with the Copyright Clearance Center. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. -
The Minotaur in Phaedo's Labyrinth: Philosophy's Necessary Myth
Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Trinity Publications (Newspapers, Yearbooks, The Trinity Papers (2011 - present) Catalogs, etc.) 2016 The Minotaur in Phaedo’s Labyrinth: Philosophy’s Necessary Myth Gregory Convertito Trinity College, Hartford Connecticut Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/trinitypapers Part of the Classical Literature and Philology Commons Recommended Citation Convertito, Gregory, "The Minotaur in Phaedo’s Labyrinth: Philosophy’s Necessary Myth". The Trinity Papers (2011 - present) (2016). Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford, CT. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/trinitypapers/43 The Minotaur in Phaedo’s Labyrinth: Philosophy’s Necessary Myth Gregory Convertito Plato’s Phaedo is a confusing dialogue. It takes place after the Apology and the Crito, on Socrates’s last night before his execution; Socrates has been waiting in prison for a long time due to an Athenian law barring executions during the annual ritual to celebrate Theseus’s mythical victory over the Minotaur. This story of the death of Socrates is embedded in a narration by Phaedo himself, who is relating the story to Echecrates. Socrates, after discussing the soul, the self, immortality, and death with Simmias and Cebes, Pythagorean acquaintances who have come to visit him, drinks the φαρμακον and dies. The myth of the Minotaur—a monster which has the body of a man and the head of a bull—is explicitly invoked in the text, which structurally mirrors this myth. Each has a monster, fourteen characters, and a thread which leads out of a labyrinth. In the myth, Theseus and the others are taken into the labyrinth wherein the Minotaur resides as tribute, as dictated by the Delphic Oracle, and the princess Ariadne gives Theseus a ball of thread to attach to the entrance, so he may find his way out again. -
Teleology in the Phaedo's Biographical Account
4 Teleology in the Phaedo’s Biographical Account José Manuel Osorio The aim of this paper is to clarify the first section of Socrates's biographical account (the 1 so-called first sailing) in Phaedo (96a-99d). Specifically, the aim is to have a better understanding regarding the teleological argument about the intellect in Socrates's speech. This is a complex and difficult passage which has been subjected to a series of what, in my view, are contradictory interpretations. Broadly speaking, it is possible to distinguish two very different groups of interpretations of the teleological arguments in the first part of the biographical section. In the first interpretation, scholars looking for the roots of the teleological arguments of the Timaeus arrive at the conclusion that they lie in the Phaedo. For this group of scholars, Plato employs a teleological argument in Socrates’s biographical account in the Phaedo, although it is 2 considered to be in schematic form when compared to the one employed in the Timaeus. In the second interpretation, scholars focusing exclusively on the Phaedo’s biographical passage argue 3 that teleological arguments are not used by Plato in the Phaedo since Socrates said in the first part of the biographical passage that he was completely incapable of finding a teleological cause (99c-d).4 The upshot is this: studies of the Phaedo support the thesis that teleology is not present in the dialogue, while studies of the Timaeus support the opposite, namely, that in Socrates’s biographical account teleology is present. So there seems to be a contradiction in the literature about the place of teleology in the Phaedo. -
Curriculum Vitae
1 Geoffrey Lloyd PUBLICATIONS I BOOKS 1966 Polarity and Analogy: two types of argumentation in early Greek thought, pp. v + 503, Cambridge University Press reprinted 1987 Bristol University Press; translations: Spanish 1987, Italian 1992: Korean forthcoming 1968 Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of his Thought, pp. xiii + 324, Cambridge University Press; translations: Japanese 1973, Italian 1985, Chinese 1985, Spanish 2008 1970 Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle, pp. xvi + 156, Chatto and Windus; translations: Spanish 1973, French 1974, Italian 1978, Japanese 1995, French 2nd ed. 1990, Korean 1996, Chinese 2005, Greek 2005, Polish forthcoming. 1973 Greek Science after Aristotle, pp. xiii + 189, Chatto and Windus; translations: Italian 1978, French 1990, Japanese 2000, Greek 2007 Slovene 2009, Polish forthcoming.. 1979 Magic, Reason and Experience, pp. xii + 335, Cambridge University Press; reprinted 1999 Bristol Classical Press; translations: Italian 1982, French 1990, Greek forthcoming, French 2nd ed 1996 1983 Science, Folklore and Ideology, pp. xi + 260, Cambridge University Press; reprinted 1999 Bristol Classical Press; translations: Italian 1987. 1985 Science and Morality in Greco-Roman antiquity, (Inaugural Lecture) pp. 29, Cambridge University Press. 1987 The Revolutions of Wisdom, pp. xii + 468, University of California Press, Berkeley; translations: Italian forthcoming. 1990 Demystifying Mentalities, pp. viii + 174, Cambridge University Press; translations: Italian 1991, French 1994, Spanish 1996. 1991 Methods and Problems in Greek Science, pp. xiv + 457, Cambridge University Press; translations: Italian 1993, Rumanian 1995, Greek 1996. 2 1996 Adversaries and authorities, pp. xvii + 250, Cambridge University Press 1996 Aristotelian explorations pp. ix + 242, Cambridge University Press 2002 The Ambitions of Curiosity pp. xxi + 175, Cambridge University Press translations Italian 2003, Spanish 2008 2002 The Way and the Word (with Nathan Sivin) pp. -
An Interpretation of Platoʼs Ideas and Criticism of Parmenides According to Peanoʼs Ideography
Athens Journal of Humanities & Arts - Volume 5, Issue 1 – Pages 13-28 An Interpretation of Platoʼs Ideas and Criticism of Parmenides according to Peanoʼs Ideography By Giuseppe Boscarino Anyone who studies the Platonic work finds great difficulty in interpreting the precise meaning of his ontological terms, which are most often enveloped in an obscure and mystical language. Aristotle already emphasized the allegorical and poetic meaning of the platonic terms "imitation" and "participation," related to the sensible things, "copies" of the "ideas." I have asked myself then the following question: Is there a rational and logical nucleus within the mystical and mythological shell of Platonism? Studying the mathematical ideography of Peano, a great logician, mathematician and contemporary linguist, elicited the following question: can we make an ideographic translation of Platoʼs ontological terms in the same way Peano did for aspects of Euclidʼs work? We demonstrate a possible valid, rational, and logical nucleus of certain Platonic nomenclature beyond the mists of certain metaphysical interpretation, while also showing Platoʼs criticism of Parmenides to be invalid in the light of Peanoʼs ideography. Difficulty in the Interpretation of Platonic Theory in Educational and Historiographical Processes Many students have experienced the darkness, ambiguity and vagueness of philosophical language in the study of the history of philosophy. This turns into difficulty whenever the teacher has to explain to young students the thoughts of a philosopher, using the most limpid and clear language possible. Thus, texts on the history of philosophy instead of helping young people to escape from imprecise, vague and primitive ways of reasoning, rather accentuate this aspect, exposing the thinking of philosophers in even more obscure and ambiguous ways than seen in the original source. -
Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece
Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Ancient Greek Philosophy but didn’t Know Who to Ask Edited by Patricia F. O’Grady MEET THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ANCIENT GREECE Dedicated to the memory of Panagiotis, a humble man, who found pleasure when reading about the philosophers of Ancient Greece Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece Everything you always wanted to know about Ancient Greek philosophy but didn’t know who to ask Edited by PATRICIA F. O’GRADY Flinders University of South Australia © Patricia F. O’Grady 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Patricia F. O’Grady has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identi.ed as the editor of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Meet the philosophers of ancient Greece: everything you always wanted to know about ancient Greek philosophy but didn’t know who to ask 1. Philosophy, Ancient 2. Philosophers – Greece 3. Greece – Intellectual life – To 146 B.C. I. O’Grady, Patricia F. 180 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Meet the philosophers of ancient Greece: everything you always wanted to know about ancient Greek philosophy but didn’t know who to ask / Patricia F. -
Immortality in Empedocles
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by St Andrews Research Repository apeiron 2016; aop Alex Long* Immortality in Empedocles DOI 10.1515/apeiron-2015-0054 Abstract: The paper examines Empedocles’ attributions of immortality. I argue that Empedocles does not withhold immortality from the gods but rather has an unorthodox conception of what immortality is. Immortality does not mean, or imply, endless duration. A god’s immortality is its continuity, as one and the same organism, over a long but finite period. This conception of divine immor- tality then influences Empedocles’ other attributions of immortality, each of which marks a contrast with discontinuity, real or apparent. The nature of this contrast varies from context to context, and there is considerable heterogeneity in the list of immortal items. On the other hand, the attribution of immortality never implies that the item is completely changeless. Keywords: empedocles, immortality, gods, theology Empedocles identifies himself as a daimôn (B115) and elsewhere as a god (B112), but his account of the cosmic cycle suggests that daimones and gods, or at least some gods, do not last forever. Despite claiming to have attained godhood he does not believe that his existence will continue endlessly into the future. It is natural to contrast Empedocles’ eschatology with the account of the soul that Socrates eventually vindicates in Plato’s Phaedo,1 according to which the soul will never perish, whatever else may befall it. How is the contrast between Empedocles and Plato best expressed? We may find it natural to say that Empedoclean gods, unlike Platonic souls, are “mortal”, not “immortal”. -
The Attunement Theory of the Soul in the Phaedo Naoya Iwata
Naoya Iwata: The Attunement Theory of the Soul The Attunement Theory of the Soul in the Phaedo Naoya Iwata 0. Introduction At Phaedo 86b7–c2 Plato makes Simmias, one of Socrates’ main interlocutors in the dialogue, present the theory that the soul is the ‘blend’ (κρᾶσις) and ‘attunement’ (ἁρμονία) of the hot, cold, dry, wet and certain other such things that make taut and hold together the body.1 According to this theory, when those things are properly and proportionately held together, the soul exists as a sort of attunement; when, on the other hand, they are improperly and disproportionately loosened or tautened because of illness or for some other reasons, the soul perishes at once, just like other sorts of attunement. Simmias thus casts serious doubt upon Socrates’ previous arguments in the dialogue that the soul is immortal. Who originated this attunement theory of the soul is a historical conundrum: there is no reliable evidence for identifying its authorship. Among the older thinkers, however, there is one attribution that receives some support from ancient writers: the Pythagoreans, especially Philolaus. For example, Plotinus, Olympiodorus and Philoponus discuss the view that the soul is an attunement by reference to the Pythagoreans;2 Macrobius, more specifically, reports that Pythagoras and Philolaus said that the soul was an attunement. 3 However, Plotinus and Philoponus, presumably bearing in mind Plato’s arguments against the attunement theory in the Phaedo, takes pains to distinguish the Pythagorean attunement theory from the one Simmias introduces in our passage, that the soul is the attunement of bodily elements. -
Overturning the Paradigm of Identity with Gilles Deleuze's Differential
A Thesis entitled Difference Over Identity: Overturning the Paradigm of Identity With Gilles Deleuze’s Differential Ontology by Matthew G. Eckel Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy Dr. Ammon Allred, Committee Chair Dr. Benjamin Grazzini, Committee Member Dr. Benjamin Pryor, Committee Member Dr. Patricia R. Komuniecki, Dean College of Graduate Studies The University of Toledo May 2014 An Abstract of Difference Over Identity: Overturning the Paradigm of Identity With Gilles Deleuze’s Differential Ontology by Matthew G. Eckel Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy The University of Toledo May 2014 Taking Gilles Deleuze to be a philosopher who is most concerned with articulating a ‘philosophy of difference’, Deleuze’s thought represents a fundamental shift in the history of philosophy, a shift which asserts ontological difference as independent of any prior ontological identity, even going as far as suggesting that identity is only possible when grounded by difference. Deleuze reconstructs a ‘minor’ history of philosophy, mobilizing thinkers from Spinoza and Nietzsche to Duns Scotus and Bergson, in his attempt to assert that philosophy has always been, underneath its canonical manifestations, a project concerned with ontology, and that ontological difference deserves the kind of philosophical attention, and privilege, which ontological identity has been given since Aristotle. -
Being Suneches, Being Continuous, Is a Central Notion in Aristotle
1 The notion of continuity in Parmenides1 1. Introduction: Being suneches, being continuous, is a central notion in Aristotle’s Physics, and of crucial importance for understanding time, space, and motion within Aristotle’s framework. In this paper I want to show that continuity is, however, already of crucial philosophical significance in Parmenides, who seems to be the first thinker in the West to use the notion of continuity in a philosophically interesting and systematic way. But Parmenides uses it in a way that is importantly different from Aristotle with opposing implications. The notion of suneches itself has not attracted much attention from Parmenides scholars (even though the passages in which Parmenides talks about suneches have, and their understanding is highly disputed).2 What I will do in this paper is to look first in some detail at the three passages in fragment 8 of Parmenides’ poem that are of crucial importance for Parmenides’ notion of being suneches before comparing it briefly to Aristotle’s notion. An analysis of these three passages in Parmenides will show that suneches for Parmenides implies complete homogeneity and indivisibility. The three passages I look at are (1) fragment 8, lines 5-6a, where Parmenides calls what is (eon) “suneches” for the first time and links being suneches and being homou (‘being together’). (2) Lines 22-25 show being suneches to exclude differences in kind as well as any more or less. (3) Lines 42-49, finally, even though not using the word “suneches”, can be understood as taking up the discussion of conditions that would prevent eon from being suneches and as systematizing these conditions. -
The Concept of Presocratic Philosophy Its Origin, Development
© Copyright, Princeton University Press. No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher. CHAPTER 1 ~ Presocratics: Ancient Antecedents The term “PresOcratIc” Is a modern creatIOn. The earlI- est attestation discovered so far is found in a manual of the univer- sal history of philosophy published in 1788 by J.- A. Eberhard (the addressee of a famous letter by Kant): one section is entitled “Pre- socratic Philosophy” (“vorsokratische Philosophie”).1 But the idea that there is a major caesura between Socrates and what preceded him goes back to Antiquity. In order to understand the modern debates that have developed around the Presocratics, it is indispensable to go back to these ancient Presocratics, whom by convention I pro- pose to designate “pre- Socratics” (in lowercase, and with a hyphen), in order to distinguish them from the “Presocratics,” the historio- graphical category to whose creation they contributed but under which they cannot be entirely subsumed. Even if undeniable simi- larities make the ancient “pre- Socratics” the natural ancestors of our modern Presocratics, the differences between the two groups are in fact not less significant, in particular with regard to the stakes involved in both of them. Antiquity knew of two ways to conceive of the dividing line be- tween what preceded Socrates and what followed him: either Soc- rates abandoned a philosophy of nature for the sake of a philosophy of man (this is the perspective that I shall call Socratic- Ciceronian, which also includes Xenophon), or he passed from a philosophy of things to a philosophy of the concept (this is the Platonic- Aristotelian tradition). -
Notes on Plato's Phaedo
Sean Hannan The Examined Life Autumn 2015 Notes on Plato’s Phaedo 1. Background a. The Phaedo tells the story of Socrates’ final days. Taking place after the events depicted in the Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, this dialogue serves as his swansong. b. Whereas the Apology had a fairly straightforward structure, consisting mainly of Socrates’ monologues to the citizens of Athens (with a bit of back-and-forth with Meletus thrown in), the Phaedo is a full-blown dialogue. In fact, it operates as a dialogue on multiple levels. First we have the framing dialogue, which consists of the eponymous main character Phaedo’s account of Socrates’ final words, which he gives to Echecrates and others on his way home from Athens. Then we have the dialogue recounted by Phaedo, which takes place between Socrates and those who were with him in his final hours. c. First, let’s take a closer look at the framing dialogue. Phaedo (the character) is on his way back from Athens after attending the trial and execution of Socrates. As he approaches his hometown of Elis in the Peloponnese, he runs into a group of Pythagoreans, the most vocal of which is Echecrates. These men are dubbed ‘Pythagoreans’ because they follow the teachings of Pythagoras. While most of us are familiar with his theorem, Pythagoras had much more to say on the topics of philosophy and mathematics. For our purposes here, we should only note these Pythagoreans would’ve been especially open to the mathematical examples Phaedo tells them Socrates made use of in his final conversation—e.g., the difference between odd and even numbers, etc.