OF DISSERTATION TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD IN PLATO’S SOPHIST This dissertation is a study of the ontological foundations of true and false speech in Plato’s Sophist. Unlike most contemporary scholarship on the Sophist, my dissertation offers a wholistic account of the dialogue, demonstrating that the ontological theory of the “communing” of forms and the theory of true and false speech later in the dialogue entail one another. As I interpret it, the account of true and false speech in the Sophist is primarily concerned with true and false speech about the forms. As Plato sees it, we can only make true statements about spatio-temporal beings if it is possible to make true statements about the forms. Statements about the forms, however, make claims about how forms “commune” with other forms, that is, how forms are intelligibly related to and participate in one another. If forms stand in determinate relations of participation to other forms, however, then forms, as the relata of these relations, must compose structured wholes. Yet if they compose structured wholes, there must be a higher order normative principle that explains their structure. This creates a regress problem. In order to ground the structure of spatio-temporal beings, forms must be the highest explanatory principles. The theory of the “communing” of forms, however, makes it seem as if the forms require further explanation. This dissertation argues (1) that in the Sophist Plato solves the regress problem and (2) that, by doing so, he is able to ground true and false speech about the forms. I demonstrate that he solves the regress problem by differentiating a form’s nature from a form qua countable object. Then I show that this distinction between a form’s nature and a form qua countable object explains how true and false statements about the forms are possible.

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Truth and Falsehood in Plato's Sophist

Plotinus, the founder of the Neoplatonic school of philosophy, conceptualises two different notions of self (or 'us'): the corporeal and the rational. Personality and imperfection mark the former, while goodness and a striving for understanding mark the latter. In this text, Dr Remes grounds the two selfhoods in deep-seated Platonic ontological commitments, following their manifestations, interrelations and sometimes uneasy coexistence in philosophical psychology, emotional therapy and ethics. Plotinus' interest lies in what it means for a human being to be a temporal and a corporeal thing, yet capable of abstract and impartial reasoning, of self-government and perhaps even invulnerability. The book argues that this involves a philosophically problematic rupture within humanity which is, however, alleviated by the psychological similarities and points of contact between the two aspects of the self. The purpose of life is the cultivation of the latter aspect, the true self.

Plotinus on Self: The Philosophy of the 'We'

1. Historical background 2. Proclus' metaphysics 3. Proclus' polytheistic theology 4. Epistemology 5. Ways of unification 6. Inspired poetry and its symbols 7. Evil and theodicy 8. Ethics 9. Worldview 10. Epilogue: Proclus' legacy.

Proclus: An Introduction

Matiere et memoire de Bergson est largement inspiree des idees psychologiques du 19e siecle. Nous restituons le contexte psychologique afin de montrer que la psychologie contemporaine pousse Bergson a s’engage dans la lutte contre Kant et a developper sa propre pensee ; discerner et prolonger extremement les mouvements. Le premier chapitre porte sur la notion de « plans de conscience ». Nous montrerons dans quelle mesure Bergson reprend les discours des psychologues associationnistes et des psychologues pathologiques (notamment Pierre Janet) sur le deroulement des idees. Ce detour nous permettra de cerner les enjeux proprement bergsoniens de la notion de plans de conscience : il s’agira de discerner les mouvements sui generis de la memoire.Les deux chapitres suivants essaient de penetrer dans le domaine de la psychologie physiologique ; le developpement de la notion d’action reflexe cerebrale modifie le probleme du rapport entre le mouvement et le moi qui en est la cause, de sorte qu’il met en question la notion de la causalite (Carpenter Laycock et Ribot) ; Fouillee transforme le probleme psychologique en celui de la condition de donnee. Tout cela met en lumiere la polemique essentielle entre Bergson et Kant ; Bergson a tire des conceptions psychologiques une implication philosophique qui destitue le fondement de la Deduction kantienne : il remplace la limitation kantienne de la realite phenomenale par le prolongement demesure d’un mouvement dans un fait, et ce jusqu’a une perception universelle en droit. Ce dernier point sera le cardinal de notre interpretation. Le dernier chapitre porte sur le sens de l’etre dans la critique bergsonienne de l’idee de non-etre de l’Evolution creatrice, qui eclaircira le rapport entre la determination et l’existence et qui profile une conception bergsonienne de la realite comme mouvements.

https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02436753/document

Bergson et la psychologie du dix-neuvième siècle : la métaphysique de mouvements contre Kant

Porphyry's account of the nature of seeds can shed light on some less appreciated details of Neoplatonic psychology, in particular on the interaction between individual souls. The process of producing the seed and the conception of the seed offer a physical instantiation of procession and reversion, activities that are central to Neoplatonic metaphysics. In an act analogous to procession, the seed is produced by the father's nature, and as such it is ontologically inferior to the father's nature. Thus, the seed does not strictly speaking contain a full-fledged vegetative soul. Rather, it acquires its vegetative soul only while it is being actualized by an actual vegetative soul. This actualization takes place primarily at conception, where the seed as it were reverts back and becomes obedient to the mother's nature, but continues through the period of gestation. In this way, Porphyry can account both for maternal resemblance and for ideoplasty. He uses the Stoic language of complete blending to describe the mother's relation to the seed and embryo, and this reveals that he thinks of individuals as having their own unique individual natures (as opposed to sharing in a single universal nature). In the course of developing this theory, Porphyry makes significant revisions to his philosophical predecessors' views in both embryology and botany. He revises Aristotle's verdict on the relative importance of the female in generation as well as Theophrastus' explanation of the biological mechanics of grafting. Although Plotinus nowhere addresses embryology in the same detail as Porphyry does, we can conclude from his remarks on seeds and plants that his own views were similar to those of his student.

Porphyry and Plotinus on the Seed

Plotinus on matter and evil

The origin of matter is one of the last and greatest unsolved mysteries bedevilling modern attempts at understanding the philosophy of the Enneads . There are two stages in the production of Intellect and of soul. The One or Intellect produces an undifferentiated other, which becomes Intellect or soul by itself turning towards and looking towards the prior principle, with no possibility of the One's "turning towards" or "seeing" itself. But where does matter come from? To arrive at his conception of matter, Plotinus has radically altered the definitions of non-being given by Plato and Aristotle in their refutation of Parmenides. Matter, for Plotinus, is a non-being opposed, not to "the being of each thing", as in Plato's Sophist , but to all "the beings properly so-called", i.e. to all the forms. It is then further identified with Aristotle's definition of non-being as privation, with the crucial difference that privation, for Plotinus, is made a permanent substratum of change. This re-formulation of ideas from the Sophist and the Physics proves unmistakably that it is matter which is generated when soul produces a "non-being" which is also a "total lack of definition". The production of matter by soul does not, however, follow the model of the production of Intellect from the One or of soul from Intellect. Since matter is lifeless, it cannot turn towards its source. Soul therefore has to be herself directly responsible both for the production of matter and for the covering of matter with form. Matter is therefore included among the products which stem ultimately from the One. But the origin and the nature of matter have to be understood as very different from the double process of emanation which lies at the origin of Intellect and of soul.

La matière chez Plotin: son origine, sa nature

Stobaeus records a placitum where Empedocles says that the world is destroyed by the domination in turn of Love and of Strife. The placitum makes perfectly good sense in the context of Empedocles' belief that Love and Strife produce, in turn, a non-cosmic state of total unity (Love) and of total separation (Strife). But for over two hundred years scholars have been unable to hear that simple message. Sturz (1805) emended the text so as to make it fit the non-cyclical interpretation of Empedocles that he had taken over from the pages of Tiedemann (1791). When Diels included Stobaeus' text in his edition of Aetius, in the Doxographi graeci (1879), he failed to remove the emendation, although his own reconstruction of the chapter heading in Aetius made the emendation impossible. Twenty years later, Diels saw the light, and printed Stobaeus' placitum, unemended, in his Poetarum philosophorum fragmenta (1901) and in successive editions of his Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (from 1903 onwards). But Kranz resurrected the emendation in the Nachtrage to his sixth edition of the Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (1951). The emended placitum is used again by Uvo Holscher (1965) to support a non-cyclical interpretation of Empedocles and is repeated in the latest collection of the fragments and testimonia (Brad Inwood, 1992). Holscher fails to appreciate that the text that he uses to support his reconstruction is merely Sturz's translation into Greek of the non-cyclical interpretation of Empedocles proposed by Tiedemann at the end of the eighteenth century.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/4182633

Hermann Diels on the Presocratics: Empedocles' double destruction of the cosmos (Aetius ii 4.8)

Parmenide : le non-etre et l'erreur des mortels. Platon : le non-etre et l'alterite. Plotin : le non-etre et la matiere

Denis O'Brien

Papers

Plotinus on matter and evil

La matière chez Plotin: son origine, sa nature

Hermann Diels on the Presocratics: Empedocles' double destruction of the cosmos (Aetius ii 4.8)

Le non-être dans la philosophie grecque : Parménide, Platon, Plotin

Le Non-Être : deux études sur le sophiste de Platon