This paper critically examines the use of the name 'Pseudo-Archytas' to refer to two aspects of the reception of Archytas of Tarentum in antiquity: the 'author-inflection' and the 'authority-inflection'. In order to make progress on our understanding of authority and authorship within the Pythagorean tradition, it attempts to reconstruct Porphyry's views on the importance of Archytas as guarantor of Pythagorean authenticity in the former's lost work On the History of the Philosophers by considering a fragment preserved in Arabic by Ibn (...) Abī Uṣaybi‘a. The article finally argues that a range of problems attend our use of the term 'pseudo-Archytas', which is not fit for purpose when considering the evidence regarding authorship and authority in the Pythagorean tradition. It recommends a more critical approach to the notion of authenticity within the Pythagorean tradition and suggests a new term, 'Archytism', as a more useful point of reference. (shrink)

Scholarly use of the label “school” to describe groups of philosophers has sometimes led to a neglect of the ways in which such gatherings of philosophers could function as unofficial associations of recognizable types. Concerns to distance supposedly “secular” philosophers from any “religious” connection have fed into this image of the philosophical “school,” diverting attention away from other important dimensions of associative life among philosophers and other literate professionals, including involvement in honours for the gods and in commensal activities. Epigraphic (...) evidence helps to elucidate the broader associative context. The fact that some philosophers formed associations has implications for adjacent fields, such as Christian origins, where there is a tendency to ask whether groups of Jesus followers were socially analogous to a Judean synagogue, an association, or a philosophical school, as though these were distinct options rather than overlapping social phenomena. Such associations of relatively literate people were among the few in antiquity that can also be described using the scholarly category of “reading communities.”. (shrink)

Although telos has been important in farm animal ethics for several decades, clearer understanding of it may be gained from the close reading of Aristotle’s primary texts on animals. Aristotle observed and classified animals informally in daily life and through planned evidence gathering and collection development. During this work he theorized his concept of telos, which includes species flourishing and a good life, and drew on extensive and detailed assessments of animal physiology, diet and behaviour. Aristotle believed that animals, like (...) humans, have purpose, and that telos is natural and unchanging. Moreover, he greatly valued the economic, political and defence contributions of farmers to their communities. In his stockperson ethics, animals are ordered to rational human purposes through husbandry, and good practice is established and shared by experience, habituation and training. Aristotle provides a useful and demanding framework for farm animal ethics that goes well beyond negative theories of welfare as freedom from harms. (shrink)