Peripatetics, Misc

This article expands our knowledge of the historical-philosophical process by which the dominant metaphysical account of the Christian God became ascendant. It demonstrates that Marius Victorinus proposed a peculiar model of ‘consubstantiality’ that utilised a notion of ‘existence’ indebted to the Aristotelian concept of ‘prime matter’. Victorinus employed this to argue that God is a unity composed of Father and Son. The article critically evaluates this model. It then argues that Augustine noticed one of the model's philosophical liabilities but did (...) not publicly name Victorinus when he rejected it in De Trinitate, thereby exemplifying the practice of private ‘rebuke’ (ἐλέγχɛιν). (shrink)

Este capítulo se propõe a analisar os fundamentos utilizados por Aristóteles (2006) para justificar a escravidão. Para isso, é tomada como chave de leitura a categorização das atividades humanas fundamentais proposta por Hannah Arendt (2008). A escravidão no mundo grego antigo era tida como uma forma de liberar o cidadão dos afazeres domésticos e do trabalho para que pudesse ter ócio e, assim, dedicar-se às atividades entre seus iguais, sobretudo à política.

This volume explores the versatility of the concept of pneuma in philosophical and medical theories in the wake of Aristotle’s physics. It offers fourteen separate studies of how the concept of pneuma was used in a range of physical, physiological, psychological, cosmological and ethical inquiries. The focus is on individual thinkers or traditions and the specific questions they sought to address, including early Peripatetic sources, the Stoics, the major Hellenistic medical traditions, Galen, as well as Proclus in Late Antiquity and (...) John Zacharias Aktouarios in the early 14th century. Building on new scholarly approaches and on recent advancements in our understanding of Graeco-Roman philosophy and medicine, the volume prompts a profound re-evaluation of this fluid and adaptable, but crucially important, substance, in antiquity and beyond. (shrink)

Boethius represents one of the most important milestones in Christian reflection about fate and providence, especially considering that he takes into account Proclus’ contributions to these questions. For this reason, The Consolation of philosophy is considered a crucial work for the development of this topic. However, Boethius also exposes his ideas in his commentary on the book that constitutes one of the oldest and most relevant texts on the problem of future contingents, namely Aristotle’s De interpretatione. Although St. Thomas refers (...) to Boethius many times in his systematic works and even devotes two commentaries to two of his theological opuscules, it is of special interest that both authors composed a commentary on the abovementioned work by Aristotle. The commentary of Saint Thomas does not interpret the whole book, but it does study the pages about future contingents in dialogue with Boethius. We will study such texts in our presentation. They constitute one of the greatest contributions of Aquinas to the problem of necessity and contingency and therefore to the vexata quaestio of divine intervention in the world and particularly in human free will. Not only Augustin but also Aristotle (read by Boethius) and Nemesius of Emesa will be decisive in Aquinas’ perception of this matter. (shrink)

Diogenes Laertius (8.63-6) preserves a fascinating account of the Presocratic philosopher Empedocles' life. There, drawing on evidence from Aristotle, Xanthus, and Timaeus of Tauromenium, the biographer provides several anecdotes which are meant to demonstrate how Empedocles had, contrary to expectation, been a democratic philosopher - a paradox of itself in Ancient Greece. This article unpacks the complex web woven by Diogenes and argues that there is no good reason to assume that Empedocles was indeed a democratic philosopher, and moreover, that (...) neither Xanthus nor Aristotle thought him so. Indeed, what Diogenes actually preserves for us is the Hellenistic biographer Timaeus' critical dialectical engagement with the versions Aristotle and Xanthus, in his anachronistic bid to render Empedocles a democratic hero. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This paper traces the earliest development of the most basic principle of deduction, i.e. modus ponens (or Law of Detachment). ‘Aristotelian logic’, as it was taught from late antiquity until the 20th century, commonly included a short presentation of the argument forms modus (ponendo) ponens, modus (tollendo) tollens, modus ponendo tollens, and modus tollendo ponens. In late antiquity, arguments of these forms were generally classified as ‘hypothetical syllogisms’. However, Aristotle did not discuss such arguments, nor did he call any (...) arguments ‘hypothetical syllogisms’. The Stoic indemonstrables resemble the modus ponens/tollens arguments. But the Stoics never called them ‘hypothetical syllogisms’; nor did they describe them as ponendo ponens, etc. The tradition of the four argument forms and the classification of the arguments as hypothetical syllogisms hence need some explaining. In this paper, I offer some explanations by tracing the development of certain elements of Aristotle’s logic via the early Peripatetics to the logic of later antiquity. I consider the questions: How did the four argument forms arise? Why were there four of them? Why were arguments of these forms called ‘hypothetical syllogisms’? On what grounds were they considered valid? I argue that such arguments were neither part of Aristotle’s dialectic, nor simply the result of an adoption of elements of Stoic logic, but the outcome of a long, gradual development that begins with Aristotle’s logic as preserved in his Topics and Prior Analytics; and that, as a result, we have a Peripatetic logic of hypothetical inferences which is a far cry both from Stoic logic and from classical propositional logic, but which sports a number of interesting characteristics, some of which bear a cunning resemblance to some 20th century theories. (shrink)