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JournalISSN: 1415-6261

Phronesis 

Brill
About: Phronesis is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Ancient philosophy & SOCRATES. Over the lifetime, 1248 publications have been published receiving 15557 citations.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors reconstruct a scene from an early Greek comic playwright Epicharmus, which dates from the opening decades of the fifth century B.C. The following reconstruction is based on one verbatim quotation of twelve lines, plus two indirect references to it in later authors.' Character A is approached by Character B for payment of his subscription to the running expenses of a forthcoming banquet.
Abstract: The story starts with a scene from an early Greek comedy. Its author is the Syracusan comic playwright Epicharmus, and it probably dates from the opening decades of the fifth century B.C. The following reconstruction is based on one verbatim quotation of twelve lines, plus two indirect references to it in later authors.' Character A is approached by Character B for payment of his subscription to the running expenses of a forthcoming banquet. Finding himself out of funds, he resorts to asking B the following riddle: 'Say you took an odd number of pebbles, or if you like an even number, and chose to add or subtract a pebble: do you think it would still be the same number?' 'No,' says B. 'Or again, say you took a measure of one cubit and chose to add, or cut off, some other length: that measure would no longer exist, would it? 'No.' 'Well now,' continues A, 'think of men in the same way. One man is growing, another is diminishing, and all are constantly in the process of change. But what by its nature changes and never stays put must already be different from what it has changed from. You and I are different today from who we were yesterday, and by the same argument we will be different again and never the same in the future.' B agrees. A then concludes that he is not the same man who contracted the debt yesterday, nor indeed the man who will be attending the banquet. In that case he can hardly be held responsible for the debt. B, exasperated, strikes A a blow. A protests at this treatment. But this time it is B who neatly sidesteps the protest, by pointing out that by now he is somebody quite different from the man who struck the blow a minute ago. To subsequent generations, the argument used in this scene read like a remarkable anticipation of a philosophical doctrine associated with the names of Heraclitus and Plato, that of the radical instability of the physical world; and Plato himself was pleased to acknowledge such evidence of the doctrine's antiquity.2 But although the puzzle is a serious challenge to ordinary assumptions about identity, never in the fourth century B.C., the era of Plato and Aristotle, does it meet with a proper philosophical analysis

149 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A close scrutiny of De Anima II 5 can be found in this article, where it is argued that the textual absence of any underlying material realisation for perceiving supports a view I have defended elsewhere, that perception involves no material processes, only standing material conditions.
Abstract: This is a close scrutiny of De Anima II 5, led by two questions. First, what can be learned from so long and intricate a discussion about the neglected problem of how to read an Aristotelian chapter? Second, what can the chapter, properly read, teach us about some widely debated issues in Aristotle's theory of perception? I argue that it refutes two claims defended by Martha Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Sorabji: (i) that when Aristotle speaks of the perceiver becoming like the object perceived, the assimilation he has in mind is ordinary alteration of the type exemplified when fire heats the surrounding air, (ii) that this alteration stands to perceptual awareness as matter to form. Claim (i) is wrong because the assimilation that perceiving is is not ordinary alteration. Claim (ii) is wrong because the special type of alteration that perceiving is is not its underlying material realisation. Indeed, there is no mention in the text of any underlying material realisation for perceiving. The positive aim of II 5 is to introduce the distinction between first and second potentiality, each with their own type of actuality. In both cases the actuality is an alteration different from ordinary alteration. Perception exemplifies one of these new types of alteration, another is found in the acquisition of knowledge and in an embryo's first acquisition of the power of perception. The introduction of suitably refined meanings of 'alteration' allows Aristotle to explain perception and learning within the framework of his physics, which by definition is the study of things that change. He adapts his standard notion of alteration, familiar from Physics III 1-3 and De Generatione et Corruptione I, to the task of accounting for the cognitive accuracy of (proper object) perception and second potentiality knowledge: both are achievements of a natural, inborn receptivity to objective truth. Throughout the paper I pay special attention to issues of text and translation, and to Aristotle's cross-referencing, and I emphasise what the chapter does not say as well as what it does. In particular, the last section argues that the textual absence of any underlying material realisation for perceiving supports a view I have defended elsewhere, that Aristotelian perception involves no material processes, only standing material conditions. This absence is as telling as others noted earlier. Our reading must respect the spirit of the text as Aristotle wrote it.

136 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Victor Caston1
TL;DR: Theoretique de la conception de l'imagination developpee par Aristote dans le traite "De anima" (III, 3) is described in this article.
Abstract: Etude de la conception de l'imagination developpee par Aristote dans le traite «De anima» (III, 3). S'inscrivant dans sa theorie de la sensation et de la conception (perception et pensee), l'A. montre qu'Aristote introduit la faculte de l'imagination afin de resoudre le probleme de l'erreur qui se pose dans le cadre de sa definition de l'intentionnalite

111 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Aristotle holds that nature does nothing pointless and that natural processes are structured by the good ends they serve as discussed by the authors. But there is a strong current tendency to read him, in line with the priorities which govern his zoological works, as refusing to extend the workings of this finality in nature beyond the internal structure and functioning of individual organisms.
Abstract: Aristotle holds that nature does nothing pointless that natural processes are structured by the good ends they serve. But there is a strong current tendency to read him, in line with the priorities which govern his zoological works, as refusing to extend the workings of this finality in nature beyond the internal structure and functioning of individual organisms.' Some do continue to attach importance to the occasional remarks in his corpus which appear to acknowledge a broader, interactive teleology.2 My object is to support the latter party, and to do so by seeking to illuminate the actual structure of the global teleology in question. In a word, I hope to show that this structure is anthropocentric. What do I mean by suggesting that Aristotle might have a natural teleology centred on man? After all, if there is one thing that we know for certain about Aristotle, it is that he believes in a cosmic hierarchy in which god, not man, is the best being. To explain what I have in mind, I will take

105 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

105 citations

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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Journal in previous years
YearPapers
202128
202041
201944
201850
201756
201641