It is often believed that the only alternative to an idealist conception of natural phenomena excludes both the presence of objective universal forms and their progression towards higher forms as the finality of processes in the natural world. Realism regarding the universal and teleological approaches regarding processes are signs of idealism. Therefore, materialism, it would seem, must conform to a nominalist and mechanical view of nature. However, an intelligent materialist reading of idealism’s classics reveals a more complex scenario. A real (...) fact is expressed in a mystical fashion in idealism’s conceptions of objective universals and teleology. This article attempts to show such a real fact in its authentic (materialist) form. With that goal in mind, the present article discusses the notion of nature’s alienation, the distinction between abstract and concrete universals, and the concept of dialectical interaction. The natural-historical emergence of a higher form of matter’s organization assimilates, as its organs, the conditions that preceded it in time, transforming itself into an active producer of such conditions. That is the secret glimpsed but not correctly understood by idealism that a consistent materialist should not ignore. (shrink)

There is a long history of philosophers granting a privileged epistemic status to cognition of directly present objects. In this paper, I examine three important historic accounts which provide different models of this cognitive state and its connection with its objects: that of the Stoics, who are corporealists and think that ordinary perception may have an epistemically privileged status, but who seem to struggle to accommodate non-perceptual cognizance; that of Augustine, who thinks that incorporeal objects are directly present to us (...) in ‘intellectual perception’, and that, by way of contrast, ordinary sense-perception does not have a privileged epistemic status; and that of William of Ockham, who allows for unmediated action at a distance and is fairly generous about what counts as being directly present. (shrink)

According to the Stoics, ordinary unified bodies—animals, plants, and inanimate natural bodies—each have a single cause of unity and being: pneuma. Pneuma itself has no distinct cause of unity; on the contrary, it acts as a cause of unity and being for itself. In this paper, I show how pneuma is supposed to be able to unify itself and other bodies in virtue of its characteristic tensile motion (τονικὴ κίνησις). Thus, we will see how the Stoics could have hoped to (...) account for corporeal unity by positing another body (pneuma) apparently itself in need of unification. (shrink)

Cet article vise à comprendre la théorie stoïcienne de la deixis afin d’expliquer l’importance accordée par les stoïciens aux pronoms démonstratifs et aux énoncés qu’ils composent, c’est-à-dire les propositions dites définitives. Nous montrons que ces propositions sont privilégiées pour des raisons à la fois ontologiques et épistémologiques en raison des propriétés sémantiques de leur sujet. Elles sont privilégiées d’un point de vue ontologique parce que la deixis grâce à laquelle leur sujet fait référence au réel crée une relation privilégiée à (...) la matière, la catégorie ontologique stoïcienne fondamentale. De plus, ces sujets requièrent que leur référent existe et soit présent et saisissable. Ces énoncés sont d’autre part privilégiés d’un point de vue épistémologique parce qu’ils sont fondamentaux dans l’acquisition de la connaissance. Nous suggérons enfin que tous les énoncés apparemment définis ne le sont pas en effet, et considérons quand et sous quelles conditions une référence déictique est réussie. (shrink)

Void is at the heart of Stoic metaphysics. As the incorporeal par excellence, being defined purely in terms of lacking body, it brings into sharp focus the Stoic commitment to non-existent Somethings. This article argues that Stoic void, far from rendering the Stoic system incoherent or merely ad hoc, in fact reflects a principled and coherent physicalism that sets the Stoics apart from their materialist predecessors and atomist neighbors.

At the beginning of his Isagoge, Porphyry establishes a famous set of questions concerning genera and species, which is the origin of the medieval “Quarrel of universals”. But this text gave rise to difficulty for interpreters: does Porphyry, when elaborating this set of questions, refer to historical positions or does he offer these alternatives in a lingua franca, which would be neutral from a doctrinal point of view? This article focusing on the first of the three alternatives raised by Porphyry (...) aims to show that replacing Porphyry's text in its historical and philosophical background can shed light on the meaning of this alternative. During the Post-Hellenistic period (100 B.C.–200 A.D.), the different schools discussed the ontological status of universals. Therefore, not only does Porphyry use the terminology shaped by former philosophers, but he also alludes to the debate between Stoics, Middle Platonists and Peripatetics. Alexander of Aphrodisias constitutes a precious help to reconstruct this dispute, which this article tries to depict. (shrink)

Stoicism was one of the new philosophical movements of the Hellenistic period. The name derives from the porch (stoa poikilê) in the Agora at Athens decorated with mural paintings, where the members of the school congregated, and their lectures were held. Unlike ‘epicurean,’ the sense of the English adjective ‘stoical’ is not utterly misleading with regard to its philosophical origins. The Stoics did, in fact, hold that emotions like fear or envy (or impassioned sexual attachments, or passionate love of anything (...) whatsoever) either were, or arose from, false judgements and that the sage—a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection—would not undergo them. The later Stoics of Roman Imperial times, Seneca and Epictetus, emphasise the doctrines (already central to the early Stoics' teachings) that the sage is utterly immune to misfortune and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Our phrase ‘stoic calm’ perhaps encapsulates the general drift of these claims. It does not, however, hint at the even more radical ethical views which the Stoics defended, e.g. that only the sage is free while all others are slaves, or that all those who are morally vicious are equally so. Though it seems clear that some Stoics took a kind of perverse joy in advocating views which seem so at odds with common sense, they did not do so simply to shock. Stoic ethics achieves a certain plausibility within the context of their physical theory and psychology, and within the framework of Greek ethical theory as that was handed down to them from Plato and Aristotle. It seems that they were well aware of the mutually interdependent nature of their philosophical views, likening philosophy itself to a living animal in which logic is bones and sinews; ethics and physics, the flesh and the soul respectively (another version reverses this assignment, making ethics the.. (shrink)

At Outlines of Pyrrhonism (PH) 2.227–8, Sextus Empiricus argues that certain entities which his adversaries hold to be one and the same for different individuals are in fact not. This he does by, among other things, considering the truth-value of sentences of which the subject is a common noun, thereby drawing an interesting connection between metaphysics and semantics. In this article, I provide a careful analysis of Sextus’ arguments at PH 2.227–8 and explore the origins and limits of such a (...) connection. In particular, I argue that Sextus’ argument at PH 2.227 probably reflects a Stoic argument against Aristotelian essences, thereby relying on specifically Stoic doctrines about universals and common nouns, whereas his next argument at PH 2.228 targets accidents. If this is true, it follows that the overall structure of PH 2.227–8 fits well with the typically Aristotelian distinction between essence and accident. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on the relationships between language, definition and being in Antisthenes. I start from Plato’s Sophist 251b–c, in which the reference to the ὀψιμαθεῖς stands out, and I conclude that it is not possible to identify these characters with Antisthenes. The conception of ὀψιμαθεῖς provides for the exclusive legitimacy of identical judgments, exploiting in an eristic sense an evident Eleatic legacy. But this position, rather than concordances, reveals serious opposition to what is surely known to us (...) of the logical and linguistic doctrines of Antisthenes. The most explicit testimony about the relationship between language and being in Antisthenes is handed down by Porphyry, who attributes to Antisthenes the equation λέγειν = λέγειν τι = λέγειν τὸ ὄν. My analysis intends to show that this equation is assumed by Antisthenes through a Socratic mediation and has a double objective: to ensure an objective reference of language, as opposed to Gorgias’ self-referential conception of language, and to nullify the antilogy, which is typical of sophistic argumentation. To it Antisthenes contrasts the ἐπίσκεψις τῶν ὀνομάτων, which is a development of Socratic ἐξετάζειν, and whose aim is to reach, at the end of the examination, no longer just a ὁμολογία, but a definition valid once and for all. Antisthenes is aware that there is a distinction between essence and quality, and with this, he moves a first important step beyond the univocal conception of being proper to Parmenides. The doxography will sum up Antisthenes’ position by describing him as the first philosopher to advance a definition of logos, i. e., definition. He bases his theory of definition on the identification of that attribute which is ἴδιον καὶ οἰκεῖον of the proposed object. Antisthenes coined the phrase τὸ τί ἦν to designate what the predicate is meant to say in a definition, i. e., the proper quality. This expression does not seem to identify the general notion of a predicate as such, but rather to indicate the determination or qualification necessary to actually define the object in question. In the final part of my article, I examine some testimonies that show how, with his theory of definition, Antisthenes is, and was considered already in antiquity, the precursor of the Stoic theory of definition, whose objective is, according to Chrysippus’ formula, to provide the explanation of what is proper (ἰδίου ἀπόδοσις). (shrink)

In this paper, I defend that the historiographical category of eclecticism is a correct way to describe the epistemology and the exegetical activity of the Anonymous commentator on Plato’s Theaetetus. In addition, I show that the interpretation of the platonic philosophy presented in this text not only presupposes an eclectic philosophical attitude, but also offers a conscious defense of a positive and philosophically relevant form of eclecticism. By eclecticism, I understand a method of inquiry based on the deliberate use of (...) hypotheses and arguments from different philosophical traditions. My claim is that Anon. intends to lay ground of his way of doing philosophy by attributing it to Plato and the platonic tradition. In doing so, Anon. provides us with a positive understanding of eclecticism as a legitimate methodology of philosophical investigation. (shrink)

Le début de l'Isagogè de Porphyre énonce une série de trois questions à propos des genres et des espèces, que l'on tient pour l'origine de la médiévale « Querelle des universaux ». Mais la question s'est posée aux interprètes de savoir si, dans ce texte, Porphyre se référait à certaines thèses historiquement déterminées ou bien s'il construisait ces alternatives de façon théorique, dans une lingua franca non connotée d'un point de vue doctrinal. Cet article, en se concentrant sur la première (...) alternative du questionnaire, tente de montrer que le texte porphyrien prend davantage sens si l'on s'avise que l'époque post-hellénistique (IIe s. av. J.-C. – début du IIIe s. ap. J.-C.) donne déjà à voir une polémique scolaire sur le statut des universaux. Ce n'est ainsi pas seulement le vocabulaire employé par Porphyre qui est doctrinalement connoté, mais l'alternative elle-même, qui fait très probablement référence à un débat entre les thèses platoniciennes, stoïciennes et péripatéticiennes. Alexandre d'Aphrodise constitue une aide précieuse pour reconstruire ce débat, dont l'article esquisse une cartographie. (shrink)

In Quaestiones 1.3 and 2.14, Alexander presents a distinctly realist or essentialist view of the objects of definition, distinguished, on the one hand, from two types of realism rejected by Aristotle, and, on the other, from two types of conceptualism that probably belong within the Peripatetic tradition. The difference between Alexander’s view and essentialist abstractivism lies in his understanding of definienda not as the common concepts of things existing in the particulars, but as the common things conceived of as existing (...) in the particulars. This paper offers a close reading of Quaest. 1.3, whose aim is to flesh out Alexander’s position vis-à-vis the objects of definition against the backdrop of the four rejected alternatives. The distinction between Alexander’s essentialism and the essentialist abstractivist notion of definienda is further explained in light of Quaest. 2.14. The amended Greek text of Quaest. 1.3 is appended with an English translation. (shrink)