Apeiron 

About: Apeiron is an academic journal published by De Gruyter. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Ancient philosophy & SOCRATES. It has an ISSN identifier of 0003-6390. Over the lifetime, 831 publications have been published receiving 5944 citations. The journal is also known as: Apeiron (Berlin) & Apeiron (Berlin. Online).

Clinical Gynecology and Aristotle’s Biology: The Composition of HA X

Abstract: Although Aristotle was an avid researcher into the processes of sexual reproduction, many of his statements show that he had limited access to the bodies of women. For example, he failed to note that in women, unlike other female mammals, the urethra and vagina have separate orifices on the exterior of the body, and he believed that menstrual bleeding was akin to estrus and took place at the same time of the month in all women. It might seem that Aristotle simply did not avail himself of the knowledge available from physicians who attended women. However, the gathering of endoxa (professional opinions and empirical observations) before proceeding with his own theorizing on any subject was central to Aristotle’s methodology and it would be inconceivable that he would have failed to do this on the topic of women too. In the present paper, I wish to argue that the Aristotelian corpus, as it has been transmitted to us, contains in the first five chapters of Historia Animalium X (HA X) a treatise, On Failure to Reproduce (OFR), authored by a doctor, whom I shall call Ps-Aristotle, which formed part of Aristotle’s endoxa when developing his reproductive theories. I will argue that the final two chapters have been added as comments on OFR either by Aristotle himself or a later Peripatetic, and that it is the presence of these two chapters that has led to the work being

Towards a History of Friendly Advice: The Politics of Candor in Cicero's de Amicitia

Abstract: In recent years scholarship on Qcero's philosophical and rhetorical writings of the 40s BC has focused less on Cicero's use of sources and more on his immediate political motivations. Reasons for this shift in focus from sources to context are not far to seek. The political events of the period, including Pompey's loss at Pharsalus, the dictatorship and assassination of Julius Caesar, and the rising tension between Antony and the Senate were virtually unprecedented, and their significance was as obvious to participants as it has been to subsequent history. In addition, Cicero's own assessment of these events and the corresponding fluctuation in his emotional and psychological condition are well-documented in the surviving correspondence. As a result, scholars who seek to identify political aims in Cicero's ostensibly nonpolitical writing of the period have no difficulty in establishing either motive or opportunity. Yet it is perhaps precisely because of the topical or occasional significance of the late treatises of Cicero that readers have tended to overlook their significance (indeed the significance of

The Stoics on the Extirpation of the Passions

Abstract: There is, I assure you, a medical art for the soul. It is philosophy, whose aid need not be sought, as in bodily diseases, from outside ourselves. We must endeavor with all our resources and all our strength to become capable of doctoring ourselves' (Cic TD ΙΠ.6). There are certain healthful practical arguments that may be compared to the prescriptions of useful drugs; these I am writing down, having found them effective in healing my own sores, which, even if not thoroughly cured, have at least ceased to spread' (Sen Ep 8.2). So first Cicero, then Seneca, display the Stoic use of the medical analogy, which is more pervasive and more highly developed in Stoic texts than it is in those of any other Hellenistic school — so pervasive, in fact, that Cicero declares he is tired of their 'excessive attention' to such analogies (TD IV.23). The analogy can be traced back to the greatest of the Stoic philosophers, Chrysippus, who wrote, in his book on the therapeutic treatment of the passions: