Socrates’ burial is dismissed as philosophically irrelevant in Phaedo 115c-e although it had previously been discussed by Plato’s older contemporaries. In Antisthenes’ Kyrsas dialogue describes a visit to Socrates’ tomb by a lover of Socrates who receives protreptic advice in a dream sequence while sleeping over Socrates’ grave. The dialogue is a metaphysical explanation of how Socrates’ spiritual message was continued after death. Plato underplays this metaphorical imagery by lampooning Antisthenes philosophy and his work (Phd. 81b-82e) and subsequently precludes him (...) from an active role in the Phaedo. A similar case is the exclusion of Euclides of Megara. Fragments of a lost Socratic dialogue depict Apollodorus citing an unnamed Megarian in order to justify care for the remains of the dead. Similar mistaken notions explain Kyrsas’ belief when he lusts after Socrates even though he was dead. In spite of these disputes, the philosophers (Euclides, Antisthenes and Plato) each attempted to present Socrates’ moral influence as a force that continued after his death and burial. (shrink)

At Varro LL VI.56 and SE M 8.275-276, we find reports of the Stoic view that children and articulate non-rational animals such as parrots cannot genuinely speak. Absent from these testimonia is the peculiar case of the superficiality of the actor’s speech, which appears in one edition of the unstable text of PHerc 307.9 containing fragments of Chrysippus’ Logical Investigations. Commentators who include this edition of the text in their discussions of the Stoic theory of speech do not offer a (...) univocal account of the superficiality of the parrot’s, the child’s, and the actor’s speech. In this paper, I offer a reconstruction of the Stoic account of genuine and superficial speech and show that not only is there an account of superficial speech that univocally explains the superficiality of the speech of parrots, children, and actors, but that this account challenges traditional assumptions about the entities at the heart of the Stoic theory of language—lekta. It will turn out that genuine speech is the expression of a lekton by way of performing a speech act, and that this account of superficial speech can be used to explain other linguistic phenomena that are of interest to the Stoics, such as sentences in insoluble sophisms and sentences containing demonstratives that do not refer to anything in the subject term. Importantly, my reconstruction shows, against the near consensus view of lekta, that lekta do not primarily explain what makes an utterance meaningful. Rather, they primarily explain what makes an utterance an instance of genuine speech. (shrink)

An overview of the ancient philosophers and their philosophical system (divided into the fields of logic, physics, and ethics) comprising the living, organic, enduring, and evolving body of interrelated ideas identifiable as the Stoic perspective.

This paper rehabilitates the Stoic conception of blending from the ground up, by freeing the Stoic conception of body from three interpretive presuppositions. First, the twin hylomorphic presuppositions that where there is body there is matter, and that where there is reason or quality there is an incorporeal. Then, the atomistic presupposition that body is absolutely full and rigid, and the attendant notion that resistance (antitupia) must be ricochet. I argue that once we clear away these presuppositions about body, the (...) foundations of Stoic corporealism fall into place. Body is fundamental (not hylomorphic). The two fundamental principles (archai) are bodies: divine active reason (logos) and passive matter (hulē); and these two bodies are two, not matter and form all over again, nor actual and potential, but agent and patient. The independence of the two archai is no threat to the unity of the cosmos, however, because the Stoic theory of body allows for the complete coextension of the archai. The hylomorphic thinker rightly asks, what relation could be tighter than that of the wax and its shape? The Stoic replies: a causal relation, the interaction of agent and patient completely coextended in a through and through blend. (shrink)

The author deals with the lost works of Empedocles, an often neglected subject, in the frame of the discussion concerning the number of the poems and their main features. He reviews the traces of the Passage of Xerxes, of the Medical Discourse, and of the Proem to Apollo among the fragments and witnesses, taking his cue from textual aspects and dealing with the contents, the significance of each of these writings in Empedocles’ culture and thought and their multifarious relationships with (...) his times. As to the Passage, he tries to reconcile the contrasting interpretations so far proposed (historical or religious poem). Concerning B111, the only relic from the Medical Discourse, he explains why its contents are incompatible with the Physical Poem and the Purifications. He analyzes the Proem to Apollo in several perspectives (text, witnesses, contents also from the epistemological point of view, literary genre). He assigns fragments 131–134 and 142 to the Proem, drawing one of his arguments from the comparison with the third Homeric Hymn to Apollo, and also suggesting a relationship with an intellectual cult of the sun. Formal features help to ascribe each fragment to the relevant poem. Close similarities between fragments do not necessarily mean that they come from the same writing: Empedocles is wont to allude to one poem of his while composing another. The author concludes that the striving for a reductio ad unum of the Acragantine’s output, also evident in the attempt by a number of scholars to make only one poem out of the Περὶ φύσεως and the Καθαρμοί, has often led researchers to take for granted that none of the fragments preserved might belong to the lost works. (shrink)

This chapter considers the encounter of skepticism with the Kantian and post-Kantian philosophical enterprise and focuses on the intriguing feature whereby it is assimilated into this enterprise. In this period, skepticism becomes interchangeable with its other, which helps understand the proliferation of many kinds of views under its name and which forms the background for transforming skepticism into an anonymous, routine practice of raising objections and counter-objections to one’s own view. German philosophers of this era counterpose skepticism to dogmatism and (...) criticism, ancient to modern skepticism, and, importantly, conceptualize the transitions from one form to another, which forms the conceptual matrix in which new disciplinary forms, such as psychology, anthropology, and historicism contend for cultural-intellectual standing beside philosophy. I present this assimilationist trajectory by reviewing three well-known moments of this encounter of skepticism and idealism: (1) Kant’s idealization of skepticism as a floating position amidst various philosophical positions through the dialectic, polemics, systematics, and history of pure reason; (2) Fichte’s schematic conception of skepticism as a dispute of systems in the early Wissenschaftslehre following his review of the skeptic G. E. Schulze’s attacks on Critical philosophy; (3) Hegel’s historicizing conception of skepticism in the context of differences between subjective idealism and speculative thought and his early Jena review of another work by the same skeptic Schulze. (shrink)

The subject of life, birth and death constitutes one of the main topics in Democritus’ reflection on human questions. He seeks to understand what men think about the processes of birth and death and how they, accordingly, determine their behavior and attitudes. His reflections comprise a wide range of perspectives and aspects that include examining human behaviour and investigating how it reveals a certain temperament or inclination, inquiring about the nature of these processes and extending the analyses of the processes (...) of birth and death to whole beings through the couple generation-corruption. In the present paper, I intend to examine the main theses and arguments which appear in the testimonies and fragments through which Democritus’ thought was transmitted from antiquity. Furthermore, I will also discuss the hypotheses that for Democritus the most important opposition was not life-death, but rather birth-death and that, at the same time, his idea of nature and life comprises both processes in the perspective of atomistic philosophy. I shall show that corruption has to be considered in two different ways, that is, in the context of physical processes that keep the kosmos in its persistence and in the context of the existence of natural beings, both living and lifeless. (shrink)

Plato’s nephew Speusippus has been widely accepted as the historical person behind the mask of the anti-hedonists in Phlb. 42b–44c. This hypothesis is supported by, inter alia, the link between Socrates’ char- acterization of them as δυσχερεῖς and the frequent references of δυσχέρεια as ἀπορία to Speusippus in Aristotle’s Metaphysics MN. This study argues against assigning any privileged status to Speusippus in the assimilation of δυσχέρεια with ἀπορία. Instead, based on a comprehensive survey of how δυσχερ- words were used in (...) classical antiquity, the semantic shift of δυσχέρεια can be explained in an alternative way. (shrink)

Tradução do quinto livro, passos 36-57 de Vidas, de Diógenes Laércio, tratando da vida de Teofrasto.

As a crucial source for Presocratic theories of sense perception, Theophrastus’ De sensibus deserves a closer scrutiny than the placement among A-fragments, as often suggested or instigated. This paper proposes to refine our terminology for labelling the varying quality of reporting within the A-fragments has. It supplements the existing criticism of Diels’ division by analysing neglected features. A reassessment of the assumptions underlying the terms ‘fragment’ and ‘paraphrase’ can contribute to dissolving the sharp distinction between A- and B-fragments in DK. (...) It advocates, not equality for A-fragments, but a more inclusive and accurate evaluation of the passages. (shrink)