In letter 120, Seneca tells Lucilius that we gain our concept of the good through analogia. Earlier Stoic texts describe analogia as a mental operation of conceptual magnification. However, some scholars, particularly Brad Inwood, have marshalled evidence from Cicero against interpreting analogia as conceptual magnification. Although scholars more recently have noted that conceptual magnification is the most likely reading of analogia, Inwood's argument has not been adequately answered, and the implications on reading letter 120 of interpreting analogia as conceptual magnification have not been fully appreciated. In this article, I aim to show how Inwood's argument may be answered through an accurate circumscription of analogia's scope and its application in letter 120. On the reading proposed here, analogia turns out to be, contrary to the judgment of previous scholars, a rather mundane and reasonable way of conceptualizing virtue. Furthermore, Seneca uses an additional conceptual operation in letter 120: contrariety. These two conceptual operations are also at play in Seneca's exempla in letter 24.
This paper defends the Pyrrhonian skeptic against the objection that, because she lives entirely without belief (adoxast & omacr;s) in pursuit of psychic tranquility (ataraxia), she is unable or unlikely to act ethically, particularly in unjust sociopolitical contexts. This objection takes the form of three connected charges: (1) the skeptic lacks the moral psychological resources needed to deliberate and act as an ethical agent ought; (2) even if in principle she has these resources, she is likely to just perform whatever action causes the least psychic disturbance regardless of whether it is morally objectionable; and (3) in order to engage in decision-making procedures that would result in ethical action, she would need to hold some beliefs, thus rendering her adoxast & omacr;s Skeptic Way inconsistent. This paper refutes these charges by arguing that the Pyrrhonist is not wholly without moral psychological resources needed for acting ethically by illuminating the role that preferences and desires (i.e., "pro-attitudes") play in her decision-making procedures and showing that these attitudes are distinct enough from belief to preserve her adoxast & omacr;s Skeptic Way, while also being stable and persistent enough to guide her actions in a way that is both reliable and predictable. I demonstrate that the kind of states of affairs the Pyrrhonist's pro-attitudes are likely to be reliably directed toward are those that orient her toward morally praiseworthy actions and away from conformism in unjust sociopolitical contexts. Indeed, I argue she might even be more likely to act ethically in some sociopolitical contexts than her dogmatic peers, whether these be philosophical dogmatists or ordinary people. Consequently, I assert that the Pyrrhonist can be a robust - though certainly atypical - moral agent whose preferences and desires give us reason to be cautiously optimistic about viewing at least some elements of her philosophical way of life as morally praiseworthy.
This paper argues that Socrates' refutation of the Dream Theory amounts to an accusation of Protagoreanism and it defends the aptness of this refutation. It also argues that grammatik & emacr;, which scholars suggest is the model for an improved version of the Dream Theory, fails to survive Socrates' refutation of the original. Though not as disastrously Protagorean, an epistemology of grammatik & emacr; is as inappropriate for human beings as the Dream Theory.
This paper presents a novel interpretation of Aristotle's negative definitions of recollection (alpha nu alpha mu nu eta sigma iota sigma) in De memoria et reminiscentia 2 (451a18-452a4), arguing that his apophatic method critiques Plato's core definitional claims rather than merely setting up the positive definition of recollection as a simile reasoning process (453a9-12). By reconstructing the dialectical structure of this first part of the chapter, I highlight that Aristotle's remarks mirror Plato's statements in negative form, revealing his polemical intent. This reading leads to three key conclusions: first, it deepens our understanding of Plato's influence in De memoria; second, it shows that Aristotle rejects Plato's recollection definition as inadequate for explaining the recovery of past contents (Philebus 34b-c; Meno 81d); and third, it highlights the philosophical significance of Aristotle's theory, which focuses on the unique recovery functions of recollection. Thus, De memoria 2 should be seen as Aristotle's physiological response to Plato's theory and a continuation of his epistemological critique of Analytics.
Many scholars argue that from an Aristotelian point of view, Alexander has no conceptual ground to defend his incompatibilist and indeterminist position; I wish to argue against this reading by showing that this is only right if we take his position to be grounded on the Nicomachean account of what is up to us. I thus wish to argue that Alexander's position is not at odds with Aristotle's notion of what is up to us in the Eudemian account, which clearly claims that the human being's capacity of acting otherwise is deeply rooted in her rational nature.
Prior to arguing against the existence of void in Physics IV.6-9, Aristotle offers an answer to what void is: place deprived of body. His refutations then target two different sorts of void, separated and inseparable voids. It is unsolved in Aristotelian scholarship what these two sorts of void are. This paper presents an interpretation. I find that the distinction between voids is philosophically rich and bears explanatory potential in a way unrecognized by studies on ancient void theory. Indeed, if my interpretation is correct, the distinction may be prescient, perhaps anticipating Newton's own distinction between relative and absolute spaces.
The Greek arithmetical epigrams preserved in Book 14 of the Palatine Anthology have variously been characterized as recreational texts of the riddle genre or educational texts of the Byzantine Rechenbuch type. While each interpretation provides a valuable perspective, neither fully succeeds in accounting for all of the poems' literary and mathematical features, or in placing them into a coherent tradition with the only two other examples of the genre: Diophantus' epigram from Book V of the Arithmetica and Archimedes' Cattle Problem. This article proposes a different interpretive framework, examining the rhetorical dynamics and contextual implications by which these poems construct the relative technical expertise of their notional authors and readers, demarcate the boundaries between expert insiders and amateur outsiders, and position themselves in an exclusive and elite intellectual tradition. This insider/outsider framework reconciles the apparent contradictions between the recreational and educational interpretations and clarifies the intertextual references between the Anthology epigrams and the poems of Diophantus and Archimedes. It also opens the way for these epigrams to give insight into the social history of mathematics and Greek intellectual culture by illuminating one of the ways in which mathematicians constructed their in-group signifiers and engaged with the broader phenomenon of Greek literary science writing. Finally, it allows for a possible reconsideration of the historical reception of the epigrams, which has been overshadowed by a different set of insider/outsider logics rooted in Neoplatonist philosophical commentary.
This essay examines how Plato's myth of Er responds to the Homeric vision of the afterlife with a focus on the concept of the soul's consciousness. Engaging with Socrates' critique of traditional poetry in Books 3 and 10, it offers a philosophical interpretation of Er's account, highlighting the continuity of the soul between its embodied and disembodied states. In this framework, embodied life is the stage in which the soul can either improve or deteriorate, while the afterlife - empowering the soul to choose its future life - serves as the ultimate test of its virtue. Not simply a concession to popular beliefs, the myth of Er is re-integrated into the psychological and moral discourse of the Republic.
We are all familiar with flames, but what are they, really? Plato's account of the ontology of sensibles in the Timaeus is notoriously controversial. The "traditional" interpretation holds that sensible entities are particulars, across the dialogue. By contrast, "reconstructionists" maintain that the 'new beginning' (48e2) heralds an argument whereby sensibles are proposed to be repeatable characteristics. My paper offers a novel case for traditionalism. Specifically, I argue that, at 48e2ff., we find an account of sensible particulars as consisting of co-located, non-repeatable, non-persistent property-instances, each existing at exclusively one region of the Receptacle at one time. The form of traditionalism I advocate fits better with the text than the rival versions of the view and avoids the objections raised by reconstructionists.
This paper focuses on the use of 'qua qualifications' in Plato's Parmenides to shed light on the purpose of both the dialogue as a whole and its parts. It shows that the compatible respects specified by qua and the metaphysics of qua qualifications in the second half of the Parmenides allow forms to have contrary features without being contradictory or collapsing into sensible beings - contrary to what the young Socrates fears in the first half of the dialogue. The discussion demonstrates the originality of Plato's use of qua and contributes to a more unified understanding of the Parmenides.
In this paper, I argue that the Cyrenaics, the Stoic Posidonius, and perhaps also Chrysippus noticed that imagining future evils often prevents distress. For this reason, they recommended the practice of imaginative pre-rehearsal of future evils (praemeditatio futurorum malorum). Considering their different moral psychology, I show that there are at least two ways in which this practice might work according to these thinkers: either by structuring our beliefs or by offering us a peculiar sort of surrogate satisfaction. The former explanation is endorsed by the Cyrenaics and, perhaps, by Chrysippus. The latter explanation is endorsed by Posidonius and it has wider implications than the mere prevention of future distress.
One plausible approach to Aristotle's philosophy of arithmetic is that he held numbers to be hylomorphic compounds. While research has been conducted to show the benefits of this theory, particularly in solving the problem of numbers' unity, none has been extensively dedicated to justifying the initial hypothesis that numbers have hylomorphic structure. The absence of such an account is felt acutely due to Aristotle's repetitive negation throughout Metaphysics M-N that numbers are not and could not be either forms or hylomorphic compounds. This paper argues that despite these explicit statements, Aristotle does, in a way, consider numbers to be hylomorphic without resorting to Platonic hypostatization. His thinking is grounded in the distinction between numbers' ontological status in the natural world and their mental epistemological mode of being. In the natural world, numbers exist as quantitative properties of things, being numbers just potentially. However, in his understanding, the mathematician separates these properties and considers them as if they were individual entities possessing hylomorphic structure. This is how numbers mentally appear to be hylomorphic without actually being such. The paper further clarifies the epistemological procedure of abstraction which bridges the gap between numbers' dual mode of existence and explores various aspects of numerical form and matter to strengthen the initial hypothesis and show that Aristotle indeed had a coherent understanding of the ontology of number.
Proclus responds to the problem of transcendence and immanence by distinguishing between the transcendent unparticipated form and the immanent participated form. Yet, at times he also distinguishes between two kinds of participated entity, one kind being immanent in the participant and the other being separate from it. I argue that the separate participated form is the common character as shared by the many participants, e.g., beauty as shared by many beautiful things. As such, it fulfills a crucial function because it is the predicate, e.g., that which is properly speaking beautiful. I furthermore discuss the implications that my reading has regarding the causal functions of the unparticipated and of the two kinds of participated.
This article offers a fresh inquiry into Plato's views on procreation and into the lack of a clearly defined relation in the dialogues between the biology of procreation and the negative remarks on female virtue, or, rather, vice. The focus is on the Timaeus and the often neglected Critias, with some introductory comments on an important passage from the Laws. The leading question is whether Plato's account of the origins of sex and procreation implies some sort of female inferiority, which would then translate into the political views on marriage and reproduction. The article concludes that Plato's biology offers no direct justification for treating the difference between men and women as a general moral difference. At the same time, the article suggests that what connects both conceptual realms is Plato's important recourse to the artisanal model, which bypasses the inherent opacity of nature. It is no coincidence that this device is especially prominent in the treatment of sex and gender in the Timaeus-Critias.
This paper explores two Stoic theses. The first is what I call the Other-Oriented Thesis, which says that the virtuous person cultivates virtue in others. The second thesis is the Self-Sufficiency Thesis, according to which the virtuous person's happiness is entirely up to her. Both theses are central to Stoicism, yet there is a deep tension between them. In order for the Self-Sufficiency Thesis to hold, it must be the case that (1) an individual's virtue is necessary and sufficient for her own happiness and that (2) an individual's virtue is completely within her control. I argue that the Other-Oriented Thesis, in combination with other Stoic axiological commitments, puts pressure on both these claims. The Stoics have good reason (given their commitments) to hold that the individual's virtue is not sufficient for her own happiness (i.e. they have good reason to hold that happiness requires the virtue of others as well). Additionally, I show that when an agent attempts to cultivate virtue in another person, she must do so without reservation. The fact that reservation does not apply to this type of action renders the virtuousness of this action dependent on factors outside the agent's control. My account explains why Stoicism lends itself to radically different depictions of the sage. It also shows that Stoicism is less monolithic than it is sometimes assumed to be. Stoics did not have a unified approach to resolving this tension.
In Protagoras 352a8-357e2, Socrates proposes to show that knowledge (epsilon pi iota sigma tau eta mu eta, 352c3; phi rho omicron nu eta sigma iota sigma, 352c7) has the power to guide action even in the presence of passions such as anger, pleasure, pain, love, or fear (352b7-8). On this view, no agent in possession of knowledge of what is best for her in a given situation will fail to act on that knowledge, despite the pressure exerted by competing desires or emotions motivating her to choose an inferior course of action. Socrates' view is usually taken by commentators to be grossly counterintuitive: humans are thought to act also on non-rational, rather than exclusively on rational desires. In this paper, I aim to show that criticism of Socrates' argument along these lines is misguided, and to defend the view that, if we understand knowledge in the sense that Socrates proposes in this argument, i.e. as the 'art of measurement,' his view that knowledge is stronger than the passions is far more plausible than is generally assumed. In sections I-IV, I revisit the vexed question of the precise nature of the absurdity Socrates attributes to the view of most people that, while they know what is good for them, they fail to act on it because they are overcome by pleasure (355d1-3). Next, in sections V-VI, I discuss Socrates' alternative explanation for the problem of poor choices, according to which errors in the choice of pleasures and pains are due to lack of knowledge of a specific kind (episteme metretike, 357d3-7). In Section VII, I consider briefly the conclusions Socrates draws from his argument, and finally, in section VIII, I defend his alternative explanation as a viable solution to the problem of poor choices. While Socrates does not develop this position in the Protagoras, I believe it can be shown that, when an agent possesses knowledge of the good irrespective of its temporal proximity to or distance from the moment of action, then it is at least plausible to expect that she will act in accordance with it, even if she has a strong desire to act contrary to her motives.
In the Posterior Analytics , there are at least three types of first principle from which the demonstrative sciences proceed: axioms, definitions, and hypotheses. Of these, it is perhaps most difficult to pin down what Aristotle means by a hypothesis (ὑπόθεσις). Traditionally, hypotheses have been understood as distinct existence claims (‘S exists’), yet this interpretation has significant problems, partly resulting from Aristotle’s seemingly contradictory characterizations of hypotheses (characterizations written off as ‘nontechnical’ by traditionalists). Despite these problems, however, the traditional interpretation has persisted, as its challengers have struggled to offer a compelling alternative. This paper argues for an interpretation of hypotheses that centers on their interplay with definitions. On my view, both definitions and hypotheses are predicative propositions (‘P belongs to S’) serving as premises in demonstrative syllogisms. They are distinct insofar as in definitions the predicate (a definiens) inheres in the ‘what it is’ of the subject, whereas in hypotheses the subject inheres in the ‘what it is’ of the predicate (an in-virtue-of-itself accident of that subject). Together, definitions and hypotheses bring about a demonstrative conclusion that very much resembles the hypothesis. This interpretation, while admittedly iconoclastic, is more consistent than the traditional one with more of what Aristotle has to say about hypotheses throughout the Posterior Analytics .
In Parts of Animals II 1, 646a12-24, Aristotle identifies three compositions, arranged from simple to complex. Although the passage clearly indicates that non-uniform parts are constructed from uniform parts, two ambiguities in the passage call the status of uniform compounds into question. Both ambiguities point toward divergent interpretations of (1) the relationship between uniform parts of living things and their inanimate or inorganic counterparts, and (2) the relationship of uniform compounds to their own material causes. The objective of this paper is to identify and resolve the two ambiguities in PA II 1, 646a12-24, with an eye toward the consequences for uniform materials in Aristotle's natural philosophy. In doing so, this paper argues that for Aristotle, uniform parts of living things, while they are parts of living bodies, are structurally as well as functionally distinct from inorganic and non-functional compounds.
This paper explores Sextus Empiricus' critique of induction, with a particular focus on his arguments against universal grammatical rules in Against the Grammarians (M1 221-227). Sextus challenges the grammarians' reliance on induction to establish universal theorems, arguing that such rules cannot reliably be established from either exhaustive or partial examination of linguistic cases. By dismantling both perfect and imperfect induction, Sextus highlights the limitations of grammarians' methodology and questions the very possibility of universal grammatical rules. The analysis also examines Sextus' conclusion that linguistic correctness is determined by the common usage of the speaker's community rather than by universal principles. This position intriguingly aligns with modern discussions of linguistic rule-following, particularly Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein. Both Sextus and 'Kripkenstein' emphasize the contextual and communal basis of rule-following, rejecting the notion of objective, universal linguistic rules. The paper further considers whether Sextus' critique is consistent with his broader skeptical methodology, which avoids dogmatic conclusions. While his arguments against induction may seem dogmatic at first glance, they ultimately aim to induce suspension of judgment and to undermine the dogmatism of grammarians. However, they involve disregarding both the inductive method and universal linguistic rules in ordinary life. The final section explores how an Alexandrian grammarian, such as Apollonius Dyscolus, might respond to Sextus' critique. The grammarian's most viable defense lies in conceding that grammar, like other empirical disciplines, is not exact and cannot achieve absolute universality. This means recognizing that Sextus' criticism is partially on target.
This paper challenges the common view that the Myth of Er is an incongruous or extraneous conclusion to Plato's Republic, particularly in relation to the work's treatment of justice and critique of poetry. It argues that in Books II and III, Plato establishes a framework for an ideal form of poetry - one that is not only permissible but integral to the cultivation of virtue. Within this framework, a crucial distinction emerges between mimetic poetry, which Plato excludes from the ideal city, and simple poetry, which plays a formative role in shaping a just soul. The Myth of Er, I contend, fully meets the formal and thematic requirements of simple poetry, reinforcing rather than contradicting the dialogue's central claim that justice intrinsically benefits the just. More than a poetic epilogue, the myth is a targeted philosophical intervention, specifically directed at Glaucon. His philonikia (love of victory) risks distorting his spirited nature, preventing its alignment with reason. Through its eschatological vision, the myth illustrates why only a soul properly ordered by philosophy and justice can attain true and lasting eudaimonia. It thus reaffirms the Republic's core argument that justice is its own reward.
