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Home , Carneades, Hellenistic philosophy, Raphael Woolf

INTRODUCTION

Anne Sheppard

Shortly before his retirement as Publications Manager for the Institute of Classical Studies,

Richard Simpson suggested to me that I might select about a dozen articles on ancient from the Institute’s Bulletin for publication together as a virtual issue. I consulted other colleagues in the University of London and, following helpful advice from Joachim Aufderheide and , agreed to select from issues of BICS from 1980 to the present. A good deal of the material on ancient philosophy published by

BICS since 1980 has appeared in supplementary volumes, which either collected papers from a particular seminar series at the Institute or published the proceedings of conferences held under its auspices.1 The proceedings of two further conferences, one in honour of Bill

Fortenbaugh, the other in honour of Bob Sharples, have been published together as either part or all of a regular volume of BICS.2 In selecting papers for inclusion in this virtual issue, I have ignored these existing collections and considered only papers published in ‘general’ volumes of BICS containing a range of material drawn from the whole spectrum of classical studies. Making such a selection means making choices, some of them difficult. I excluded a of papers which I judged to have been superseded by subsequent publications by their authors as well as some which were more concerned with the historical context of ancient philosophy than with philosophy itself and others which arguably belonged more to the history of than to philosophy. Out of those which remained when I had applied these principles of selection, I have chosen for re-publication a total of 12 papers which I

1 Between 1997 and 2014 eleven BICS supplements were published on ancient philosophy broadly construed, many of them focusing on post-Aristotelian philosophy. 2 Five papers from the conference in honour of Bill Fortenbaugh, with a brief introduction, were published in BICS 47 (2004) 99-174; the papers from the conference in honour of Bob Sharples, together with tributes to him by David Sedley and Richard Sorabji, were published in BICS 55.1 (2012) 1-172. thought particularly important. One of those, Bob Sharples’ paper of 2005 on the new

Alexander of Aphrodisias inscription, needs to be read alongside the original publication of that inscription by Angelos Chaniotis in 2004 – so in the end there are 13 papers in this volume, of which the last two belong closely together.

A number of the papers included in this virtual issue originated in papers given at the

Institute’s regular ancient philosophy seminar and the reader quickly notice that there is a preponderance of work on later ancient philosophy. None of the papers I have selected deals with the Presocratics. One (Sharples on ‘, , and evil’) deals with Plato, but not only with Plato, and one (Matthews) with . Of the rest, five are on , four on Alexander of Aphrodisias (counting Chaniotis and Sharples on the new inscription as two separate papers) and two on . This concentration on post-

Aristotelian philosophy reflects the focus of research in ancient philosophy in London during the period covered by the selection. Under the leadership of both Bob Sharples and Richard

Sorabji many series of the Institute’s ancient philosophy seminar had themes which were either explicitly concerned with later ancient philosophy (e.g. ‘Neoplatonists and Christians’) or very readily lent themselves to the discussion of later ancient philosophy. This London focus in turn reflected trends in ancient philosophy research in the English-speaking world at the time: alongside a good deal of work on Hellenistic philosophy there was increasing study of ‘post-Hellenistic’ philosophers3 and a growing realization that later thinkers such as

Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Neoplatonists have things to say that are of abiding philosophical interest.

For students of ancient philosophy, the name of Alexander of Aphrodisias is indelibly linked to that of Bob Sharples. Bob published many of his papers on Alexander in BICS; I shall have

3 The term ‘post-Hellenistic’ is borrowed from G.R. Boys-Stones, Post-Hellenistic philosophy: a study of its development from the Stoics to (Oxford 2001). a little more to say below about the particular importance of the three included in this virtual issue. It is no accident that the issue includes two other important papers by Bob (‘,

Carneades, and the atomic swerve’ and ‘Plato. Plotinus, and evil’). Both of these reflect the concern with ancient views about , , and divine providence which was at the centre of Bob’s philosophical interests. Surveying the contents of BICS since 1980 in order to compile my selection of articles brought home to me just how much Bob published in BICS and reinforced my awareness of the role he played in both research and teaching in ancient philosophy within the University of London over a long period. The dominance of work by Bob within this virtual issue reflects the extent of Bob’s influence on ancient philosophy in London: never dominating, for he was not that kind of person, but a constant presence, always collegial and always generous with his extensive learning and perspicuous insights.

Some of the papers I have chosen to include need to be seen in the light of other work by their authors, while others are significant because of their relationship to wider issues within ancient philosophy. Bob Sharples’ paper on the treatment of fate in the work ascribed to

Alexander known as the Mantissa, which appeared in 1980, was followed by the publication of his complete translation of the Mantissa in 2004 and then by a full edition of the Greek text with introduction, notes and commentary in 2008.4 Similarly Bob’s discussion of

Alexander’s Ethical Problems 11, published in 1985, was followed by publication of his complete translation of the Ethical Problems in 1990.5 The interest in Alexander’s philosophical work which Bob’s own work did so much to stimulate led to Angelos

Chaniotis’ publication in BICS 2004 of the inscription found in 2001 written on the base of a statue dedicated by Alexander to his father, also called Alexander and also a , and

4 R.W. Sharples, Alexander, of Aphrodisias. Supplement to On the (London 2004); Alexander Aphrodisiensis, ‘De anima libri mantissa’ (Berlin 2008). 5 R.W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias. Ethical Problems (London 1990). to Bob’s discussion in BICS 2005 of the implications of the inscription for Alexander’s biography and philosophical career as well as the possibility that the work On Fevers attributed to him is in fact by his father.

Of the remaining two papers by Bob Sharples included in this virtual issue, the paper on

‘Epicurus, , and the atomic swerve’, published in 1993, uses evidence drawn from

Cicero for Carneades’ criticisms of the Epicurean theory of the atomic swerve to argue, against David Sedley, that in Epicurus’ view the choices made by human do not cause swerves, nor do swerves fully explain choices; rather, there is simply a correlation between the two. Bob’s paper on ‘Plato, Plotinus, and evil’, published in 1994, relates Plotinus’ discussion of evil in Enneads 3.2 and 3.3 to the of Plato’s Timaeus and to the issues concerning human responsibility for moral evil raised both in the myth of Er, at the end of Republic 10, and in Laws 10, arguing that, overall, Plotinus is more successful that

Plato, the Stoics, or Alexander in combining metaphysical with an explanation of evil and imperfection in the world.

The single paper on Aristotle which I have included, a short paper by Gareth B. Matthews published in 1995, discusses Aristotle’s well-known but puzzling claim that ‘ “To be” is said in many ways’ and argues that it should be interpreted in a way which maintains the of substance as primary. Much of the difficulty for modern readers in understanding such claims lies in the way in which ancient thinkers combine what we regard as issues of with what we regard as issues of metaphysics. Difficulty of this kind is also tackled in Michael Frede’s paper on ‘The Stoic notion of a grammatical case’, published in 1994, in which he argues that for the Stoics the Greek word ptōsis was not a linguistic term, meaning what we call ‘a grammatical case’, but a metaphysical one, meaning a constituent of a lekton, i.e. of what is signified by a linguistic expression. An unusual interpretation of a much better known, but no less puzzling, Stoic theory, the theory of mixture, is offered by Eric Lewis in his paper on ‘ Laertius and the Stoic theory of mixture’, published in 1988. Lewis argues against the usual interpretation of Stoic ‘blending’ as a type of mixture in which, paradoxically, the constituents retain their properties and are coextensive with one another; in his view this interpretation is due to a misunderstanding of the Stoic view of body which goes back to the ancient doxographers..

Much current interest in Hellenistic philosophy concerns aspects of it which have been particularly influential in the modern world. On the one hand modern interested in Scepticism have turned to the ancient Sceptics and particularly to in a search for the origins of sceptical methods and assumptions6 while on the other Stoic moral theory, especially as expounded by the Roman Stoics, is enjoying a surge of popularity as a practical guide to daily living.7 Tad Brennan’s paper on Sextus, published in 1994, looks closely at passages of Sextus’ text concerned with the criteria of and with claims about what appears to be the case. He argues that these passages provide support for the view that, rather than being an extreme sceptic who regards all beliefs of any kind as unjustified, Sextus is simply examining particular beliefs held by the dogmatic schools of philosophy. Admiral

Stockdale’s account of what meant to him when he was a prisoner of war in

Vietnam, published in 1995, is not a conventional academic paper but is justly celebrated as demonstrating the very real value of to one particular individual in extreme circumstances.

The remaining two papers in this collection, Henry Blumenthal on ‘ on perception’, published in 1982, and Peter Lautner on ‘Rival theories of self-awareness in late

Neoplatonism’, published in 1994, both concern Neoplatonic psychology, in my view one of the most interesting areas of Neoplatonic thought. Henry Blumenthal published much

6 See, for example, Neil Gascoigne, Scepticism (Chesham 2002) Ch. 2. 7 See particularly the work of the ‘Stoicism Today’ project at http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/. important work on this topic, including his books on Plotinus’ psychology and on the psychology of the Aristotelian commentators.8 Many of his papers have been collected in

Soul and intellect. Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism9 but his paper on Proclus on perception is not included there and remains well worth reading. Peter Lautner’s paper on the theories of self-awareness found in the Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle’s De anima is only one of a number of papers he has published in a variety of places on related topics.10

Taken together, the papers reprinted in this virtual issue represent the range, variety, and high quality of work in ancient philosophy that has appeared in BICS since 1980. I hope that their re-publication as a group will not only win them additional readers but will also prompt reflection on the kinds of connections, both among the individual papers and between those papers and other publications, which I have indicated in this Introduction.

Royal Holloway, University of London

8 H.J. Blumenthal, Plotinus’ psychology: his doctrines of the embodied soul (The Hague 1971); Aristotle and Neoplatonism in late antiquity: interpretations of the De anima (London 1996). 9 Aldershot 1993. 10 See, for example, ‘Philoponean views on phantasia’, Acta Antiqua 34 (1993) 159-71; ‘ of on κοινὴ αἴσθησις and phantasia’, Ancient Philosophy 20 (2000) 425-71; ‘The distinction between φαντασία and δόξα in Proclus’ In Timaeum’, Classical Quarterly 52 (2002) 257-69; ‘Thought Experiments in the De anima commentaries’ in K. Ierodiakonou and S. Roux, Thought Experiments in methodological and historical context (Leiden – New York 2011) 51-65.