Showing papers in "Phronesis in 1967"

Division and its Relation to Dialectic and Ontology in Plato

Abstract: The formal divisional exercises which we meet above all in the Sophist may strike the reader as tedious. Yet it is usually said that Plato lays great store by Division as a method of philosophy, one, moreover, to which he gives the title of 'dialectic' and which reveals the real structure of Ideas. I wish to discuss how far the method is to be identified with dialectic, what relation, if any, it bears to Plato's ontology, and what Plato hopes for from it. I shall be mainly concerned with Phaedrus, Sophist and Statesman, having discussed the Philebus on a previous occasion (Phronesis 5,1 [1960], 39-44).

Parmenides' Sail and Dionysodorus' Ox*

Abstract: 300E 'X Yp ~cp7 o ALovua6Ac)po'. 5 " EE y ys, elpijv, xat 7toXX y, J AL0VUCo'a)pS. 301 A TApa E'D?po v Koy e; Eu'y-'tet roko' ye, nV O yco.

Phaedo 104-105: Is the Soul a Form?

Abstract: In his Plato's Phaedo, R. Hackforth notes that the confusions of the final argument for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo are deepened by a change in Plato's conception of the 'logical status' of the soul from 'soul as form to soul as possessor of form' in the course of the argument, probably at 105E10.1 D. Keyt, in a recent article in Phronesis, adapts Hackforth's view to his aim of locating the fallacies in the final argument by commenting that even if Plato does not take the soul to be an immanent form in the argument, he does treat it as if it were one.2 Although Keyt does not accuse Plato of equivocating on 'soul' in the course of the argument, one of the two fallacies he attributes to him stems from Plato's treating the soul as if it were a form. I should like to defend Plato from both these criticisms by showing that he never treats the soul as an immanent form in the course of the argument. The most important evidence that both Hackforth and Keyt cite for their view is the parallelism of the statements at 104 D 1-7 and 105 D 3-5. Here are these crucial passages:

Pleasure, Knowledge and Sensation in Democritus

Abstract: W hile historians of philosophy, ancient and modern, have generallY and rightly considered the main interest of Democritus to lie in his metaphysics and epistemology, the bulk of the fragments of his writings deal not with these but with ethical topics. It is, therefore, of obvious interest to enquire what connexion, if any, may be discerned between the ethical writings and the main body of the atomistic system. Further, this enquiry, as undertaken by modern critics, has produced considerable divergence in its results. Thus on the one hand Dyroff 1 was unable to see any connexion at all, while Bailey2 is content with the conclusion that the ethical doctrine, whicl was in itself in no sense a coherent system, had only a loose connexion with the main atomistic theory. In contrast, Natorp3 held that the ethical theory is closely integrated with the cosmological, a view which has been developed with impressive erudition by Vlastos.4 In this paper I attempt to show that while there certainly exists a close connexion between the two main strands in Democritus' philosophy, the exact nature of that connexion has not been adequately outlined by either Natorp or Vlastos. To be more precise, their mistake seems to me to lie in looking for the connexion in some description of the ultimate end of human action as conceived by Democritus, rather than in the relation of his accounts of moral and of theoretical knowledge.

Chrysippus: on the criteria for the truth of a conditional proposition

Abstract: The dialecticians recommend conflicting criteria of following upon (xpLrpr pL r-r o (ii) if it is not day, I am conversing; and (iii) if it is not day, I am not conversing; while, given the same circumstances, it is false, by Philo's definition of "follow upon", that if it is day, I am not conversing. In other words, Philo made "follow upon" the relation that is now called "material implication".4 Diodorus held any conditional proposition to be true if, beginning from a true antecedent, it could not have terminated and cannot terminate in a false consequent.5 For Diodorus, then, each of the four propositions formulated above as examples of Philonian true and false conditionals is false. For Diodorus would deny that 'if it is day, I am