Showing papers in "Phronesis in 2001"

Epicurus On Pleasure

Abstract: The paper deals with the question of the attribution to Epicurus of the classification of pleasures into 'kinetic' and 'static'. This classification, usually regarded as authentic, confronts us with a number of problems and contradictions. Besides, it is only mentioned in a few sources that are not the most reliable. Following Gosling and Taylor, I believe that the authenticity of the classification may be called in question. The analysis of the ancient evidence concerning Epicurus' concept of pleasure is made according to the following principle: first, I consider the sources that do not mention the distinction between 'kinetic' and 'static' pleasures, and only then do I compare them with the other group of texts which comprises reports by Cicero, Diogenes Laertius and Athenaeus. From the former group of texts there emerges a concept of pleasure as a single and not twofold notion, while such terms as 'motion' and 'state' describe not two different phenomena but only two characteristics of the same phenomenon. On the other hand, the reports comprising the latter group appear to derive from one and the same doxographical tradition, and to be connected with the classification of ethical docrines put forward by the Middle Academy and known as the divisio Carneadea. In conclusion, I argue that the idea of Epicurus' classification of pleasures is based on a misinterpretation of Epicurus' concept in Academic doxography, which tended to contrapose it to doctrines of other schools, above all to the Cyrenaics' views.

Proclus vs Plotinus on matter (De mal. subs. 30-7)

Abstract: In De malorum subsistentia chs 30-7, Proclus criticizes the view that evil is to be identified with matter His main target is Plotinus' account in Enn I,8 \[51] Proclus denies that matter is the cause of evil in the soul, and that it is evil or a principle of evil According to Proclus, matter is good, because it is produced by the One Plotinus' doctrine of matter-evil is the result of a different conception of emanation, according to which matter does not revert to its principle Proclus claims that to posit a principle of evil either amounts to a coarse dualism, or makes the Good ultimately responsible for evil Plotinus does not seem to be able to escape the latter consequence, if he is to remain committed to the Neoplatonic conception of causation Plotinus equated matter with privation and said it is a kind of non-being that is the contrary of substance, thus violating fundamental Aristotelian tenets Proclus reinstates Aristotelian orthodoxy, as does Simplicius in his Commentary on the Categories It is possible that Iamblichus was the source of both Proclus and Simplicius, and that he was the originator of the parhypostasis theory and the inventor of the anti-Plotinian arguments

The Moral Purpose of the Human Body A Reading of Timaeus 69-72

Abstract: Etude de la conception teleologique de la cosmologie de Platon. Soulignant la dimension ethique et politique de la physique developpee dans le «Timee», l'A. montre que la fonction morale du corps humain chez Platon se distingue de l'approche naturaliste et biologique d'Aristote.

Gli scolî di Ermia e un passo controverso del' Fedro di Platone (Phaedr. 269e1-270c5)

Abstract: Il brano del Fedro (269e1-270c5) in cui e menzionato Ippocrate e il suo metodo e uno dei piu controversi dell'opera platonica. Alcuni studiosi si sono serviti degli scoli antichi al dialogo, tramandati sotto il nome del neoplatonico Ermia (V sec. d. C.), per sostenere che il metodo in questione non implica un'indagine preliminare dell'universo. E tuttavia utile (oltreche finora intentato) ripercorrere quanto l'esegeta neoplatonico dice a proposito dell'intero brano in questione per constatare come egli, al contrario, ne fornisca un'interpretazione cosmologica, sulla base della significazione tecnica di λη ψυχ come «anima dell'universo». In ogni caso l'esegesi di Ermia risulta essere non una semplice parafrasi grammaticale del testo platonico, ma anche una sua riformulazione filosofica nei termini della dottrina neoplatonica, la quale e estremamente complessa anche nel caso dell'anima umana.

Did Plotinus and Porphyry disagree on Aristotle's Categories?

Abstract: In this paper I propose a reading of Plotinus Enneads VI.1-3 \[41-43] On the genera of being which regards this treatise as a coherent whole in which Aristotle's Categories is explored in a way that turns it into a decisive contribution to Plotinus' Platonic ontology. In addition, I claim that Porphyry's Isagoge and commentaries on the Categories start by adopting Plotinus' point of view, including his notion of genus, and proceed by explaining its consequences for a more detailed reading of the Categories . After Plotinus' integration of the Categories into the Platonic frame of thought Porphyry saw the possibilities of exploiting the Peripatetic tradition both as a means to support the Platonic interpretation of the Categories and as a source for solutions to traditional questions. His allegiance to a division of being into ten, and his emphasis on semantics rather than ontology can be explained from this orientation. In the light of our investigation the alleged disagreement between Plotinus and Porphyry on the Categories changes its appearance completely. There are differences, but these can be best explained as confirmation and extension of Plotinus' perspective on the Categories and its role in Platonism.

The New Academy's Appeals to the Presocratics

Abstract: Members of the New Academy presented their sceptical position as the culmination of a progressive development in the history of philosophy, which began when certain Presocratics started to reflect on the epistemic status of their theoretical claims concerning the natures of things. The Academics' dogmatic opponents accused them of misrepresenting the early philosophers in an illegitimate attempt to claim respectable precedents for their dangerous position. The ensuing debate over the extent to which some form of scepticism might properly be attributed to the Presocratics is reflected in various passages in Cicero's Academica. In this essay, we try to get clearer about the precise nature of the Academics' historical claim and their view of the general lesson to be learned from reflection on the history of philosophy down to their own time. The Academics saw the Presocratics as providing some kind of support for the thesis that things are non-cognitive, or, more specifically, that neither the senses nor reason furnishes a criterion of truth. As this view is susceptible to both 'dialectical' and non-dialectical readings, we consider the prospects for each. We also examine the evidence for the varied functions both of the Academics' specific appeals to individual Presocratics and of their collections of the Presocratics' divergent opinions. What emerges is a better understanding of why the Academics were concerned with claiming the Presocratics as sceptical ancestors and of the precise manner in which they advanced this claim. Ever since philosophy attained a measure of maturity as a discipline, philosophers have looked to the great figures of the past for inspiration and, equally importantly, have reflected upon the lessons to be learned from their discipline's history. The members of the New Academy were no exception, and the past few decades have yielded a better understanding of some of the ways in which they were able plausibly to present themselves as true defenders of their Academic inheritance.' But the Academics

The Case of Theaetetus

Abstract: Any comprehensive interpretation of the Theaetetus has to provide answers to, among others, two very general questions concerning that dialogue: "What is Plato's relation to the problems faced in the Theaetetus ?" and "What is the significance of the absence of the Forms from the discussion of the Theaetetus , given their undoubted relevance to the topic of the dialogue, i.e. knowledge?" Predominantly, the answer given to the first question in the literature has been that the problems are those that Plato is trying to tackle and the one to the second question, when it has been addressed at all, that the Forms are left out of the discussion because Plato no longer thought them relevant, either for having abandoned or seriously revised them, by the time of writing the Theaetetus . In this study of the Wax Block and the Aviary models of judgment that occur in the second part of the Theaetetus as part of its discussion of the problem of false judgment, I argue that the problems faced there actually arise because of the neglect of Forms. The discussion of the second part is, I contend, carried out on a materialist ontology, an ontology assumed because it suits the definition of knowledge as true judgment which inaugurates that part of the dialogue, an ontology in no way subscribed to by Plato. The Wax Block is, I explain, a materialist model and fails in the case of judgments about numbers for treating them on a par with material subjects, ignoring their intelligible status. In particular, it fails to distinguish judging 5 and 7 to be 11 from judging 12 to be 11 because of its neglect of Forms; Plato would distinguish those judgments by distinguishing 5 and 7 from 12 with help from his part-whole analysis, to which the Forms are essential.

Lucretius, Symmetry arguments, and fearing death

Abstract: This paper identifies two possible versions of the Epicurean 'Symmetry argument', both of which claim that post mortem non-existence is relevantly like prenatal non-existence and that therefore our attitude to the former should be the same as that towards the latter. One version addresses the fear of the state of being dead by making it equivalent to the state of not yet being born; the other addresses the prospective fear of dying by relating it to our present retrospective attitude to the time before birth. I argue that only the first of these is present in the relevant sections of Lucretius ( DRN 3.832-42, 972-5). Therefore, this argument is not aimed at a prospective fear of death, or a fear of 'mortality'. That particular fear is instead addressed by the Epicureans through the additional premise (found in the Letter to Menoeceus 125) that it is irrational to fear in prospect an event which is known to be painless when present. This still leaves unaddressed the related fear of 'premature death', which is to be removed through the acceptance of Epicurean hedonism.

Horizontalism or Verticalism? Proclus vs Plotinus on the Procession of Matter

Abstract: One of the central topics of the Neoplatonic debate on matter is the question of how it relates to the One Good. The basic Neoplatonic claim is clear enough. If one maintains that the Good is the first and omnipresent principle of reality, then matter, too, must be originated by the Good. This indeed is the claim that distinguishes Neoplatonism from gnostic dualism. Most Neoplatonists, particularly in the later tradition, took it that matter for this reason cannot be evil. But even those in the school who held that matter is evil (this was Plotinus's own thesis) did accept that, ultimately, matter stems from the One Good. Of course, the latter position requires a subtle argument to prove that an offspring of the Good can turn out to be evil. In the present article, we shall briefly present Plotinus's explanation of matter's being evil while stemming from the One, and confront it with the doctrine of the later Neoplatonists. We intend to show that the central point of difference between Plotinus and his successors on the issue results from a difference in perspective. Plotinus, on the one hand, proposed a "vertical" or "hylemorphic" scheme: he considered the emanation of reality from the One as a process in which a substratum (generated by a higher level) receives its specific form from above. The later Neoplatonists, on the other hand, presented a "horizontal" scheme: they held that the procession consists in the combination of two elements at the same level, which are modalities of a duality of primordial principles. We shall argue that this shift between Plotinus and his successors is the result of a new reading of Plato's Philebus.

The Structure of Dialectic in the Meno

Abstract: In this paper I offer a new interpretation of the philosophical method of the Meno. In the opening discussion of the dialogue, Plato introduces a restriction on answers in dialectical inquiry, which I call the Dialectical Requirement (DR). The DR is applied twice in the Meno, in different ways (75d5-7, 79d1-3). In the first section of the paper, I argue that the two applications of the DR represent the beginning and end of dialectic. This shows that dialectical inquiry starts from our linguistic competence with the name of the property we investigate, and ends only when we have an account saying what is common to and explanatory of the bearers of that property. Dialectic begins in our ordinary ability to speak and think about the world, and ends in genuine grasp of the underlying causes of nature. In the second section, I describe the resources of linguistic competence, and their role in dialectical progress. Our linguistic competence with the name of a property enables us to make a wide variety of statements about the property and its bearers in ordinary discourse. In dialectic, these ordinary statements act as a portfolio in which the property under investigation is presented to us writ large, through its instances, types, species, etc. We seek to develop an account that says what is common to, and explanatory of the phenomena in the portfolio. When an account is inconsistent with one of the things we tend to say, this demands revision either in the account, or in the portfolio of statements. In this way, the process by which we develop our account also helps to organize and revise the statements in our portfolio so that they and the account ultimately form a coherent, explanatory body of statements.

Themistius on evil

Abstract: Although Themistius does not develop a theodicy, his observations on evil are fairly consistent. Both in his paraphrases of Aristotle and in his speeches, he argues that since God is the intelligent and powerful cause of all good things in the universe, evil is due to the στ ρησιsigma in matter and to the νοια of human beings. Despite some (Neo-)Platonic and Stoic influences, Themistius defends a basically Peripatetic world-view, in which evil is minimized.