This article considers an interpretative model for the study of Heraclitus, which was first put forward by Alexander Mourelatos in 1973, and draws upon a related model put forward by Julius Moravcsik beginning in 1983. I further develop this combined model and provide a motivation for an interpretation of Heraclitus. This is also of interest for modern metaphysics due to the recurrence of structurally similar problems, including the ‘colour exclusion’ problem that was faced by Wittgenstein. Further, I employ the model (...) to shed new light on Heraclitus’ image of the river, while relating potential readings to various contemporary metaphysical views. (shrink)

I offer an examination of a core element in the reflectiveness of Heraclitus’ thought, namely, his rebuke of polymathy . In doing so, I provide a response to a recent claim that Heraclitus should not be considered to be a philosopher, by attending to his paradigmatically philosophical traits. Regarding Heraclitus’ attitude to that naïve form of ‘wisdom’, i.e., polymathy, I argue that he does not advise avoiding experience of many things, rather, he advises rejecting experience of things as merely many (...) independent things in their manifoldness , and, instead, to understand their unity and thereby to unify our knowledge of them. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to consider whether the Commentator of the Derveni Papyrus can contribute to our understanding of the double divine will to reject and accept the name of Zeus. After examining some inconsistencies that the traditional readings raise, the authoress appeals to the Derveni Papyrus in order to offer an alternative diachronic interpretation. On this reading, the unique wise one, in the first place, does not wish to be called by the name of Zeus because this (...) name ascribes birth and diversification to it, while it is, as such, eternal and simple. On the other hand, as it cyclically becomes multiple, it is also willing to be identified with Zeus, the God who, according to the Papyrus, swallowed his Grandfather’s phallus along with Mind, got pregnant of everything and re-created the universe. This account fits with Heraclitus’ doctrine that there is no creation of the world but some kind of derivation of it from the one, and vice-versa. (shrink)

The first book-length philosophical study on the Presocratic influences in Plotinus’ Enneads.

_The first book-length philosophical study on the Presocratic influences in Plotinus’ Enneads._.

I argue that these inconsistencies in wording and practice reflect the existence of two distinct Aristotelian views of inquiry, one peculiar to the Posterior Analytics and the other put forward in the Physics and practiced in the Physics and in other treatises. Although the two views overlap to some degree (e.g. both regard a rudimentary understanding of the subject as an essential first stage), the view of the syllogism as the workhorse of scientific investigation and the related view of inquiry (...) as a search for the ‘missing middle terms’ turn out to be ideas peculiar to the Analytics. Conversely, the techniques of analysis and differentiation highlighted in the Physics account receive only cursory attention in the Analytics. However, when we consider the character of Aristotle’s own inquiries, on both scientific and philosophical topics, it becomes clear that it is the Physics rather than the Posterior Analytics that gives us Aristotle’s considered view the path to knowledge. (shrink)

Among our earliest extant references to the word ‘philosophize’ is an unfamiliar one, from the mythographer Herodorus of Pontic Heraclea, whose son Bryson associated with Plato and Aristotle. A Byzantine compiler quotes Herodorus, probably from his book on Heracles, as saying that his hero ‘philosophized until death’ (φιλοσοφήσας μέχρι θανάτου,FGrHist31 F 14). This is a surprising claim in light of the fifth/fourth-centuryb.c.view of Heracles as long-toiling but not intellectual. Euripides'Licymniuscharacterizes him as ‘unimpressive and unadorned, good to the greatest degree, confined (...) from allsophiain action, unversed in talking’ (φαῦλον ἄκομψον, τὰ μέγιστ᾽ ἀγαθόν, | πᾶσαν ἐν ἔργῳ περιτεμνόμενον | σοφίαν, λέσχης ἀτρίβωνα, fr. 473TGF). Heracles is thus explicitly distinguished from those who strive for dialectical understanding or theoretical knowledge. (shrink)