Special volume of "Thaumàzein - Rivista di Filosofia" dedicated to the theme of Socratic Eudaimonia and care for others. It is a multilingual volume comprising twenty papers divided into six sections with an introduction by Linda Napolitano. Edited by Santiago Chame, Donald Morrison, and Linda Napolitano. -/- Despite the appearances given by certain texts, the moral psychology of Socrates needs not imply selfishness. On the contrary, a close look at passages in Plato and Xenophon (see Plato, Meno 77-78; Protagoras 358; (...) Gorgias 466-468; Euthydemus 278; Lysis 219; Xenophon, Memorabilia III 9, 4-5) suggests that the “egoist”’s welfare depends upon the welfare of others (i.e. family, friends or the whole city). Since the welfare of his family, friends and city is part of his own eudaimonìa, the “egoist” (phìlautos) has a direct and intrinsic motive to promote the welfare of these others. -/- This multilingual issue explores the role that other peoples’ welfare plays in Socratic ethics. Special attention is paid to test-cases in which the principle that moral action is always good only for the agent seems to have no validity. I.e., under which circumstances is the self-sacrifice for the sake of others (such as the soldier’s self-sacrifice on the battlefield) good for the agent (as in Alcibiades I 115a-116d)? Essays deal with contradictions or tensions of this sort, and relate them to more general views on eudaimonìa held within Socratic literature. Comparison between different Socratic authors is used as a means to identify the distinctive features of Socratic eudaimonìa if compared to other Greek theories of happiness, such as the Aristotelian theory of philautìa (NE IX, 1166a-1166b; 1168a-1169b). (shrink)

This paper takes a detailed look at the Republic’s Divided Line analogy and considers how we should respond to its most contentious implication: that pistis and dianoia have the same degree of ‘clarity’ (σαφήνεια). It argues that we must take this implication at face value and that doing so allows us to better understand both the analogy and the nature of dianoia.

This book investigates Aristotle’s views on abstraction and explores how he uses it. In this work, the author follows Aristotle in focusing on the scientific detail first and then approaches the metaphysical claims, and so creates a reconstructed theory that explains many puzzles of Aristotle’s thought. Understanding the details of his theory of relations and abstraction further illuminates his theory of universals. Some of the features of Aristotle’s theory of abstraction developed in this book include: abstraction is a relation; perception (...) and knowledge are types of abstraction; the objects generated by abstractions are relata which can serve as subjects in their own right, whereupon they can appear as items in other categories. The author goes on to look at how Aristotle distinguishes the concrete from the abstract paronym, how induction is a type of abstraction which typically moves from the perceived individuals to universals and how Aristotle’s metaphysical vocabulary is "relational.’ Beyond those features, this work also looks at how of universals, accidents, forms, causes and potentialities have being only as abstract aspects of individual substances. An individual substance is identical to its essence; the essence has universal features but is the singularity making the individual substance what it is. These theories are expounded within this book. One main attraction in working out the details of Aristotle’s views on abstraction lies in understanding his metaphysics of universals as abstract objects. This work reclaims past ground as the main philosophical tradition of abstraction has been ignored in recent times. It gives a modern version of the medieval doctrine of the threefold distinction of essence, made famous by the Islamic philosopher, Avicenna. (shrink)

In a crucial passage in the Republic found within a discussion of women’s role in the ideal polis, division of eidē is identified as necessary for dialectic. A careful consideration of the way division is described in this passage reveals that it resembles the procedure of division described in the Phaedrus and the Sophist and that this procedure, when carried out correctly, is central to dialectic according to the Republic and helps set dialectic apart from eristic. Consideration of additional passages (...) in the Republic indicates that division may be employed on different kinds of entities, such as virtues and types of human natures; for according to the argument of the Republic, the correct use of division for the purpose of distinguishing types of human natures or virtues, entities that to the untrained eye may look alike but are distinct by nature, is required for achieving the knowledge philosophers and philosopher-rulers need. In fact, correctly performed divisions help the dialectician to bring into focus a subject matter under consideration in a kind of double-vision that reveals that matter as a concrete phenomenon that exhibits participation in different eidê when it is considered from different points of view. (shrink)

What role, if any, does dialectic play in Aristotle’s epistemology in the Topics? In this paper I argue that it does play a role, but a role that is independent of endoxa. In the first section, I sketch the case for thinking that dialectic plays a distinctively epistemological role—not just a methodological role, or a merely instrumental role in getting episteme. In the second section, I consider three ways it could play that role, on two of which endoxa play at (...) least a co-starring role. But in the third section, I argue that endoxa don’t play that co-starring role, by arguing for a deflationary account of what endoxa are. For that reason, the third view emerges as the most plausible; but the third view is, I’ll suggest, Platonic. (shrink)

This paper deals with the deuteros plous, literally ‘the second voyage’, proverbially ‘the next best way’, discussed in Plato’s Phaedo, the key passage being Phd. 99e4-100a3. I argue that (a) the ‘flight into the logoi’ can have two different interpretations, a standard one and a non-standard one. The issue is whether at 99e-100a Socrates means that both the student of erga and the student of logoi consider images (‘the standard interpretation’), or the student of logoi does not consider images but (...) that “consistency should suffice for truth” (‘the non-standard interpretation’); (b) the non-standard one implies the problem of the hypothesis, a problem analogous to the problem of the elenchus; (c) there is a structural analogy between Descartes’ ontological argument for the existence of God in his 5th Meditation and the final proof for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo. (shrink)

This paper claims that Socrates’ refutation of Gorgias in the eponymous dialogue is designed not to find out the truth about the nature of the art of rhetoric itself but to refute the master of rhetoric himself. I try to justify this claim by displaying some major contradictions between the conclusions reached at with Gorgias and those reached at with Polus. When these contradictions are taken into account, the discussion with Polus is to be seen as reflecting the genuine Socratic (...) position about rhetoric, whereas the discussion with Gorgias seems only to be devised as a dexterity in refutation. (shrink)

The Parmenides poses the question for what entities there are Forms, and the criticism of Forms it contains is commonly supposed to document an ontological reorientation in Plato. According to this reading, Forms no longer express the excellence of a given entity and a Socratic, ethical perspective on life, but come to resemble concepts, or what concepts designate, and are meant to explain nature as a whole. Plato’s conception of dialectic, it is further suggested, consequently changes into a value-neutral method (...) directed at tracing the interrelation of such Forms, an outlook supposedly documented in certain passages on method from the Sophist and the Statesman as well. -/- The article urges that this reading is untenable. For in the Parmenides the question for what entities one should posit Forms is left open, and the passages on method from the Sophist and Statesman neither encourage a non-normative ontology nor a value-neutral method of inquiry. What the three dialogues encourage us to do is rather to set common opinions about the relative worth and value of things aside when conducting ontological inquiries; and this attitude, the article concludes, demonstrates a close kinship, rather than a significant difference, between Plato’s Socrates and his Eleatic philosophers. (shrink)

The digression of Plato’s Theaetetus (172c2–177c2) is as celebrated as it is controversial. A particularly knotty question has been what status we should ascribe to the ideal of philosophy it presents, an ideal centered on the conception that true virtue consists in assimilating oneself as much as possible to god. For the ideal may seem difficult to reconcile with a Socratic conception of philosophy, and several scholars have accordingly suggested that it should be read as ironic and directed only at (...) the dramatic character Theodorus. When interpreted with due attention to its dramatic context, however, the digression reveals that the ideal of godlikeness, while being directed at Theodorus, is essentially Socratic. The function of the passage is to introduce a contemplative aspect of the life of philosophy into the dialogue that contrasts radically with the political-practical orientation characteristic of Protagoras, an aspect Socrates is able to isolate as such precisely because he is conversing with the mathematician Theodorus. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the central role of the Socratic elenchus in the Sophist. In the first part, I defend the position that the Stranger describes the Socratic elenchus in the sixth division of the Sophist. In the second part, I show that the Socratic elenchus is actually used when the Stranger scrutinizes the accounts of being put forward by his predecessors. In the final part, I explain the function of the Socratic elenchus in the argument of the dialogue. By contrast (...) with standard scholarly interpretations, this way of reading the text provides all the puzzles about being (241c4–251a4) with a definite function in the dialogue. It also reveals that Plato’s methodology includes a plurality of method and is more continuous than what is often believed. (shrink)

Plato’s Protagoras contains, among other things, three short but puzzling remarks on the media of philosophy. First, at 328e5–329b1, Plato makes Socrates worry that long speeches, just like books, are deceptive, because they operate in a discursive mode void of questions and answers. Second, at 347c3–348a2, Socrates argues that discussion of poetry is a presumptuous affair, because, the poems’ message, just like the message of any written text, cannot be properly examined if the author is not present. Third, at 360e6–361d6, (...) it becomes clear that even if the conversation between Socrates and Protagoras was conducted by means of short questions and answers, this spoken mode of discourse is problematic too, because it ended up distracting the inquiry from its proper course. As this paper 2 sets out to argue, Plato does not only make Socrates articulate these worries to exhibit the hazards of discursive commodifi cation. In line with Socrates’ warning to the young Hippocrates of the dangers of sophistic rhetoric, and the sophists’ practice of trading in teachings, they are also meant to problematize the thin line between philosophical and sophistical practice. By examining these worries in the light of how the three relevant modes of discourse are exemplifi ed in the dialogue, this paper aims to isolate and clarify the reasons behind them in terms of deceit, presumptuousness and distraction; and to argue that these reasons cast doubts on the common assumption that the dialogue’s primary aim is to show how sophistical rhetoric must succumb to Socratic dialectic. (shrink)

This paper argues that the hypothesis proposed in the Meno is the proposition ‘virtue is good’ alone, and that its epistemic nature is essentially insecure. It has been an object of huge scholarly debate which other hypothesis Socrates posited with regard to the relationship between virtue and knowledge. This debate is, however, misleading in the sense of making us believe that the hypothesis that virtue is good is regarded as a truism in the light of the process of positing a (...) higher hypothesis described in the Phaedo and the Republic. I argue that the hypothesis in question is presented as a result of the earlier discussion of Meno's third definition of virtue, which implies the consequence that morally correct actions are beneficial whether or not accompanied by conventional goods such as wealth and honour. The underlying role of presenting it as a hypothesis is therefore to postpone demonstrating the truth of a controversial thesis which needs a substantial justification. In conclusion, I s... (shrink)

In this paper we provide an interpretation of Aristotle's rule for the universal quantifier in Topics Θ 157a34–37 and 160b1–6 in terms of Paul Lorenzen's dialogical logic. This is meant as a contribution to the rehabilitation of the role of dialectic within the Organon. After a review of earlier views of Aristotle on quantification, we argue that this rule is related to the dictum de omni in Prior Analytics A 24b28–29. This would be an indication of the dictum’s origin in (...) the context of dialectical games. One consequence of our approach is a novel explanation of the doctrine of the existential import of the quantifiers in dialectical terms. After a brief survey of Lorenzen's dialogical logic, we offer a set of rules for dialectical games based on previous work by Castelnérac and Marion, to which we add here the rule for the universal quantifier, as interpreted in terms of its counterpart in dialogical logic. We then give textual evidence of the use of that rule in Plato's dialogues, thus showing that Aris... (shrink)

My dissertation is devoted to an examination of the resolution of fallacy in Plato's Euthydemus. It is a familiar claim that the Euthydemus champions Socratic argumentation over sophistical or eristic reasoning. No consensus however exists regarding either the nature or philosophical significance of Socrates’ treatment of the fallacies he confronts. I argue that a careful reading of the dialogue reveals that the Socratic response to fallacious reasoning is conducted at two different levels of philosophical sophistication. Socrates relies upon the resources (...) of Socratic dialectic in responding to sophisms due to ignorance of refutation. Insofar as Socratic dialectic is grounded in a grasp of the nature of genuine refutation, the objections it raises to false refutation are fully explanatory. On the other hand, Socrates employs various self-refutation arguments against theses which depend on false assumptions regarding the nature of predication---for example, the thesis that false speaking is impossible. It is however characteristic of Socratic dialectic that this method of examination cannot explain why the sophists’ theses are false. The Socratic response to fallacy in these cases is non-explanatory in this sense. On the other hand, these limitations on Socratic expertise are overcome in other passages in the dialogue which are replete with clues to the reader that point to a genuine explanation and resolution of the sophists’ arguments for their various theses. In particular, the reader is invited at every turn to modify, clarify, or reject various assumptions made by the brothers regarding the nature of predication. Here Plato implicitly relies on the results of what I call higher dialectic. This theory, which receives explicit formulation in the Sophist, is conceptually rich enough to expose and dispose of the various false assumptions upon which the sophists’ theses rest. I conclude that the Euthydemus is concerned to identify Socratic dialectic as only a part of philosophy, and to locate and strictly delimit its epistemological status as lying above eristic and the rhetorical arts, but below that of dialectic as that is conceived in the Republic and even later dialogues---thus anticipating the Sophist’s conception of Socrates as the practitioner of a ‘noble sophistry’, and the elenchus as a propaedeutic to philosophy, which purges the soul of false beliefs. (shrink)

This work articulates two thesis: one Socratic and one Platonic; and displays how the first one is heir of the second. The Socratic one is called the principle of priority of definition; the Platonic one is the Recollection theory. The articulation between both theses is possible due to the Meno’s paradox, which makes a criticism on the first thesis, but it is solved with the second one. The consequence of this articulation is a new interpretation of the Recollection theory, as (...) a theory of knowledge acquisition that depends, mainly, on a distinction between knowledge and true opinion. To conclude, a new interpretation of the knowledge/true opinion distinction is displayed –not in the traditional fashion, evaluating the propositions one by one, and in an atomic way–, but as big blocks or chains of propositions shaping knowledge through explanatory reasoning (aitías logismós). (shrink)

Plato's Republic critiques Athenian democracy as practised during the Peloponnesian War years. The diseased city Socrates attempts to purge mirrors Athens in crucial particulars, and his proposals should be evaluated as counter-weights to existing institutions and practices, not as absolutes to be instantiated. Plato's assessment of the Athenian polity incorporates two strategies -- one rhetorical, the other argumentative -- both of which I address. Failure to consider Athens a catalyst for Socrates' arguments has led to the misconception that Plato was (...) dogmatically committed to a single political doctrine for all and for all time. (shrink)

I argue that the technique Socrates describes in the Meno at 86e-87c allows him to make progress without definitions, even while accepting that definitions are necessary for knowledge. Some contend that the technique involves provisionally accepting a claim. I argue, instead, that it provides a secure biconditional that one can use to reduce the question one cares care about to a new question that one thinks will be easier to answer.

What are the implications of taking seriously Chaïm Perelman's proposition that “definitions are rhetorical”? Efforts to find Real Definitions are dysfunctional to the extent they direct argumentation toward pseudo “is” claims and away from explicit “ought” claims about how words are to be used. Addressing definitional disputes explicitly as propositions ofought rather thanis could put on the agenda the pragmatic concerns of definitional choice that might otherwise remain tacit.

I argue against a formidable interpretation of Plato’s Divided Line image according to which dianoetic correctly applies the same method as dialectic. The difference between the dianoetic and dialectic sections of the Line is not methodological, but ontological. I maintain that while this interpretation correctly identifies the mathematical method with dialectic, ( i.e. , the method of philosophy), it incorrectly identifies the mathematical method with dianoetic. Rather, Plato takes dianoetic to be a misapplication of the mathematical method by a subset (...) of practicing mathematicians. Thus, Plato’s critique of dianoetic is a not a critique of mathematics, as such, but of mathematicians. (shrink)

John Cook Wilson (1849–1915) was Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College, Oxford and the founder of ‘Oxford Realism’, a philosophical movement that flourished at Oxford during the first decades of the 20th century. Although trained as a classicist and a mathematician, his most important contribution was to the theory of knowledge, where he argued that knowledge is factive and not definable in terms of belief, and he criticized ‘hybrid’ and ‘externalist’ accounts. He also argued for direct realism in perception, (...) criticizing both empiricism and idealism, and argued for a moderate nominalist view of universals as being in rebus and only ‘apprehended’ by their particulars. His influence helped swaying Oxford away from idealism and, through figures such as H. A. Prichard, Gilbert Ryle, or J. L. Austin, his ideas were also to some extent at the origin of ‘moral intuitionism’ and ‘ordinary language philosophy’ which defined much of Oxford philosophy until the second half of the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, his name and legacy were all but forgotten for generations after World War II. Still, his views on knowledge are with us today, being in part at work in the writings of philosophers as diverse as John McDowell, Charles Travis, and Timothy Williamson. (shrink)

This article considers the function and value of the mythos in Plato's Statesman. As first, I recall the context of the story and its function within the framework of diairetic inquiry about the definition of the real politician. Secondly, I point out that the formulation of the myth is based on a series of traditional stories to which a historical-reconstructive method is applied. I then highlight the ways of reasoning used by the characters in order to reconstruct a rational and (...) plausible account from the mythical tradition. Finally, I try to show that the story, even though it cannot reach the truth of the most stable objects of knowledge, displays a certain degree of plausibility, based on the internal coherence, on the respect of a series of principles admitted as true and, eventually, on its correspondence with the mythical tradition. (shrink)

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that moral disagreement and widespread moral bias pose a serious problem for moral intuitionism. Seneca’s view that we just recognise the good could be criticised using a similar argument. His approach to argumentation offers a way out, one that may serve as a model for a revisionary intuitionism.

This paper presents a new interpretation of the objects of dianoia in Plato’s divided line, contending that they are mental images of the Forms hypothesized by the dianoetic reasoner. The paper is divided into two parts. A survey of the contemporary debate over the identity of the objects of dianoia yields three criteria a successful interpretation should meet. Then, it is argued that the mental images interpretation, in addition to proving consistent with key passages in the middle books of the (...) Republic, better meets those criteria than do any of the three main positions. (shrink)

In this paper, I reconsider the commonly held position that the early moral education of the Republic is arational since the youths of the Kallipolis do not yet have the capacity for reason. I argue that, because they receive an extensive mathematical education alongside their moral education, the youths not only have a capacity for reason but that capacity is being developed in their early education. If this is so, though, then we must rethink why the early moral education is (...) arational. I argue that the reason is rooted in the nature of moral explanations. These sorts of explanations are rooted in the Forms and thus one can only understand those explanations when they have knowledge of the Forms. But this requires preparation – the very sort of preparation that is provided by both the mathematical and moral educations. (shrink)

Proposes a new way of understanding the nature of metaphysics, focusing on nonreductionist emergence theory, both in ancient and modern philosophy, as well as in contemporary philosophy of science.

The purpose of this paper is to briefly describe and compare the original goals and perspectives of both rhetoric and dialectic in theory and in practice. Dialectic is the practice and theory of conversations; rhetoric that of speeches. For theory of dialectic, this paper will turn to Aristotle's Topics and Sophistical Refutations; for theory of rhetoric, to his Rhetoric. Thus it will appear that rhetoric and dialectic are pretty close. Yet, on the other hand, there is a long tradition of (...) mutual antagonism. The paper tries to summarize the common features of, as well as the differences between, the two. To get a taste of both dialectic and rhetoric in practice the reader is invited to enter the House of Callias, as we know it from Plato's Protagoras. After this visit there remains no doubt that rhetoric and dialectic are intertwined on the level of practice. Moreover, we may look forward to their integration on the level of theory. (shrink)

In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates offers two speeches, the first portraying madness as mere disease, the second celebrating madness as divine inspiration. Each speech is correct, says Socrates, though neither is complete. The two kinds of madness are like the left and right sides of a living body: no account that focuses on just one half can be adequate. In a recent paper, Hugh Benson gives a left-handed speech about a psychic condition endemic among mathematicians: dianoia. Benson acknowledges that his account (...) is one-sided, but only hints at the virtues of right-handed dianoia. This note sketches a somewhat fuller picture. (shrink)

Abstract The main thesis of the paper is that, in the coda to the Protagoras (360e-end), Plato tells us why and with what justification he demands a definition of virtue: namely, in order to resolve a particular aporia . According to Plato's assessment of the outcome of the arguments of the dialogue, the principal question, whether or not virtue can be taught , has, by the end of the dialogue, emerged as articulating an aporia , in that both protagonists, Socrates (...) and Protagoras, have argued equally on both its sides. The first part of the paper provides an extensive analysis of the coda, with the aim of establishing the main thesis. The second part provides a comprehensive review of the arguments in the dialogue, with the aim of determining whether their outcome is what Plato says in the coda that it is. I undertake this review in three steps: on Plato's conception of reasons (logoi); Socrates' arguing on both sides; and Protagoras' arguing on both sides. (shrink)

Dialogue is the basis of philosophy in the Western tradition and has taken many different forms.1 From dialogue based on the dialogus, on dialectics and elenchus (Socrates and Plato), through relig...

For Socrates, the virtues are a kind of knowledge, and the virtues form a unity. Sometimes, Socrates suggests that the virtues are all ‘one and the same’ thing. Other times, he suggests they are ‘parts of a single whole.’ I argue that the ‘what is x?’ question is sophisticated, it gives rise to two distinct kinds of investigations into virtue, a conceptual investigation into the ousia and a psychological investigation into the dunamis, Plato recognized the difference between definitional accounts of (...) the ousia and a psychological accounts of the dunamis, and the distinction between these two investigations can effectively resolve various interpretive puzzles regarding the unity of the virtues. It is argued that the virtues are ‘one and the same’ psychologically, while they are ‘parts of a single whole’ conceptually. (shrink)

THE aim of this paper is to explain a paradox in Plato's philosophy. On the one hand, Plato reduces virtue to knowledge; on the other, he rejects the possibility of knowledge or at least has serious doubts that it exists. I shall propose in this paper that the definition of virtue as knowledge is a logical outcome of Plato's denial of the particular aspect of knowledge as cognitive relation. This paper may also be considered as an attempt to resolve the (...) Hintikka‐Santas polemic about whether there is a difference in Plato's philosophy between the function of knowledge and its object. ([3], [6] pp. 1–71). The first part of this paper consists in a critical exposition of Plato's rejection of cognitive relation as a function of knowledge. The second part is devoted to an account of Plato's assumptions in this regard. In the third section of the paper I shall show how, on the basis of these assumptions, Plato reduces virtue to knowledge. And finally, in the last section of the essay, I shall compare my interpretation of this issue with other modern interpretations, especially those of Gerasimos Santas and Jaakko Hintikka. (shrink)

One of the hardest questions to answer for a (Neo)platonist is to what extent and how the changing and unreliable world of sense perception can itself be an object of scientific knowledge. My dissertation is a study of the answer given to that question by the Neoplatonist Proclus (Athens, 411-485) in his Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. I present a new explanation of Proclus’ concept of nature and show that philosophy of nature consists of several related subdisciplines matching the ontological stratification (...) of nature. Moreover, I demonstrate that for Proclus philosophy of nature is a science, albeit a hypothetical one, which takes geometry as its methodological paradigm. I also offer an explanation of Proclus’ view of what is later called the mathematization of physics, i.e. the role of the substance of mathematics, as opposed to its method, in explaining the natural world. Finally, I discuss Proclus’ views of the discourse of philosophy of nature and its iconic character. (shrink)

No Sofista, mediante os circuitos do procedimento ontológico-binário das divisões dialéticas, Platão busca não somente chegar à verdade das coisas em si, mas, também, a sua correta expressão. A superação das aporias relativas à natureza da linguagem por um tratamento metódico rigoroso, que minimiza suas limitações e inadvertências e a instala numa dimensão transcendente, entre os gêneros do Ser, assegura-lhe o estatuto de discurso filosófico, capaz de dizer aquilo que é como ele é.