The physis and nomos controversy first emerged in ancient Greek thought. This article explores Castoriadis' reactivation of the issues concerned; in particular, his radicalization of Aristotle's conception of physis and nomos. It suggests that nomos appears as multifaceted in his work. However, three key variations may be identified: empirical nomos, normative nomos and generic nomos. Empirical nomos signifies the human creation of laws. It challenges the notion, long held in western philosophy, that Being = being determined. Although all laws are (...) by humans created and thus in one sense autonomous, Castoriadis further distinguishes normatively between those societies which embrace their self-creating and self-transformative capacity and those which obscure it. Normative nomos, then, refers to the autonomous or heteronomous institution of society. The third sense of nomos refers to the creation of form. In this generic sense, it is argued that the debate shifts from the human to the non-human realm; that nomos also manifests itself in the realm of physis. (shrink)

En el Cratilo platónico se plantea por primera vez la cuestión del fundamento de la significación lingüística; se lo hace en el marco de la oposición entre naturaleza y convención, en la que se basó también el debate posterior acerca del tema. En el trabajo que sigue se presenta un repaso de los aspectos teóricos más importantes de los argumentos de las tesis naturalista y convencionalista expuestas y defendidas en ese y en otros textos de la tradición antigua, y se (...) esboza una tipología de las variedades que en esa tradición se ofrecen de aquellas dos posiciones. (shrink)

The paper discusses the debate on the human nature in the sophistic thought. Focusing on the "nature-culture" controversy it presents the evolution of the views of the sophists: from Protagoras' optimistic contention of the progress of mankind and his appraisal of culture to its criticism and the radical turn to nature in Antiphon, Hippias, Trasymachos, and Callicles. The paper aims at presenting the analysis of the ongoing discussion, with the stress laid on reconstruction of the arguments and concepts as well (...) as the attitudes that are associated with various positions of this debate. -/- . (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to investigate the connection between ancient medicine and sophistry at the end of 5th century B.C. Beginning with analyses of some passages from the De vetere medicina, De natura hominis and De arte, the article identifies many similarities between these treatises, on the one hand, and the sophistic doctrines, on the other: these concern primarily perceptual/intellectual knowledge and the interaction between reality, knowledge and language. Among the Sophists, Gorgias was particularly followed and imitated, (...) as he was admired not only for his tremendous rhetorical skills, but also for his philosophically significant work On not being, which probably influenced various discussions in the Hippocratic treatises. However, if Gorgias argues in favor of language as dynastēs megas, the authors of VM, NH and De arte consider knowledge to be far more relevant and reliable than logos. These Hippocratic treatises criticize the philosophical thesis and the resulting kind of reductionism. Above all they defend the supremacy of medicine over any other art. By using the same argumentative and rhetorical strategies that were employed by Gorgias, these treatises reverse the thought of those Sophists who exalted only the technē tōn logōn. (shrink)

The inclusion of De astrologia in the Lucianic corpus has been disputed for centuries since it appears to defend astrological practices that Lucian elsewhere undercuts. This paper argues for Lucian’s authorship by illustrating its masterful subversion of a captatio benevolentiae and subtle rejection of Stoic astrological practices. The narrator begins the text by blaming phony astrologers and their erroneous predictions for inciting others to “denounce the stars and hate astrology” (ἄστρων τε κατηγοροῦσιν καὶ αὐτὴν ἀστρολογίην μισέουσιν, 2). The narrator assures (...) readers that he, the knowledgeable astrologer, will correct for the “stupidity and laziness” (ἀμαθίῃ καὶ ῥαθυμίῃ, ibid.) that bring about false predictions. The narrator’s credibility quickly decays when he attempts to recast Orpheus, Bellerophon, Icarus, Daedalus, and a host of other mythological figures as Greek astrologers. Lucian’s audience would expect such far-fetched interpretations of myth from the stereotypical Stoic philosopher, a character lampooned elsewhere in the Lucianic corpus. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit nature as a source of normativity for law in the later Hellenistic period, that is beyond the opposition of law and nature in the early classical period, Plato’s and Aristotle’s naturalism, or the early Stoics’ conception of the common law. I will focus on the first century BCE, when the expression ‘natural law’ gained prominence, reconstructing its origins in the interaction between Hellenistic philosophers and the Roman elite, including jurists. I argue that for the jurists (...) the Stoic doctrine of law in nature offered a theoretical underpinning for their unique practice of dispute resolution, whereas for the Stoics this Roman practice offered an unexpected opportunity to instrumentalise their conception of law. (shrink)

The question of determining the genuine works of Hippocrates, a topic already much discussed by the ancient commentators, still continues to be actively debated, although the disagreements among scholars remain, it seems, almost as wide as ever. In comparatively recent times, Edelstein's IIEPI AEPQN and two subsequent studies of his written in the 1930s and marked a turning-point in that they presented a particularly clear and comprehensive statement of the sceptical view, according to which Hippocrates is, as Wilamowitz put it (...) long ago, ‘ein beriihmter Name ohne den Hintergrund irgend einer Schrift’. (shrink)

It is characteristic of Aristophanes that, in the fifth-century debate on the conflicting moral claims of and he tended to adopt a conservative stance, and in general to support the claims of Most of his plots concern an imbalance.in cosmic order , and the hero's which is undertaken to correct it. Often the cosmic imbalance is caused by the pre-eminence of those who place their own above , and the hero's self-imposed task is to reverse this state of affairs.

A few days before his death my husband requested me to write a few words of thanks on the publication of this collection of articles. He had already prepared the greater part of the volume for the press and had also decided on the title Science a Road to Wisdom. His original selection was somewhat more comprehensive, which is still partly reflected in the Preface. Knowing how much he wished to see this collection published, I respectfully and lovingly fulfil his (...) request, thanking Else M. Barth and J. J. A. Mooij for their extensive and expert care in putting the final touches to the volume. ADDITION TO THE TRANSLATION Finally, I wish to thank Peter G. E. Wesly for his willingness to undertake the translation of the book into English. c. P. C. BETH-PASTOOR IX PREFACE In this republication of a number of philosophical studies I have refrained from including articles of a specialized nature on symbolic logic and the methodology of the exact sciences. There was no cause to include my contributions towards the didactics of mathematics and physics, nor did I consider it appropriate to reprint pieces of a predominantly polemical nature. I decided, however, that a very modest selection from my purely historical work would not be out of place. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that Gorgias’ Helen has a didactic element that has been overlooked by contemporary critique. I show in section I that Gorgias’ presents a commonsensical pattern of argumentation (the Gods and physical violence) to prepare the reader to the following digressions on logos and on love. I analyze in section II the argument on logos and argue that its reasoning structure depends on the two previous arguments, i.e., that Gorgias transforms logos into a sort of violence. (...) I argue in section III that the argument on love depends on the same transformation. In the end, I show that Helen is both a coherent and a didactic speech. (shrink)

In het eerste deel van deze studie zagen we dat de levensbeschouwelijke idee van een normatieve kosmische wereldorde oorspronkelijk een mythische geloofsidee was, die in vrijwel alle grote godsdiensten voorkwam. In de joodse en christelijke tradities werd deze idee in niet-wetenschappelijke zin geloofsmatig, vanuit het Oude Testament verstaan. Temeer omdat de Schrift op dit punt bepaald niet haaks stond op de algemeen gangbare, religieus-heidense publieke opinie, noch in de tijd van Homerus en Hesiodus, noch in de begintijd van het christendom.89 (...) Vervolgens werden de beide genoemde geloofstradities levensbeschouwelijk, theologisch en wijsgerig verwerkt met hantering van uit het heidendom, voornamelijk uit de Stoa, overgenomen gedachten en denkpatronen. (shrink)

The belief that primitive men lived like beasts and that civilisation developed out of these brutal origins is found in numerous ancient authors, both Greek and Latin. It forms part of certain theories about the beginnings of culture current in late antiquity. These are notoriously difficult to trace to their sources, but they already existed in some form in the fifth century b.c. One idea common to these theories is that of progress, and for this reason a fragment of Xenophanes (...) is sometimes cited as their remote prototype: ‘The gods did not reveal all things to men from the beginning; instead, by seeking, men discover what is better in time’. Mainly on the strength of this fragment, Ludwig Edelstein devoted the first chapter of his book The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity to Xenophanes, and W. K. C. Guthrie has even declared that there is good reason to attribute to him a fuller account of progress, one that would include details found in later authors who speak of the early life of mankind. One of these details is the statement that the life of primitive men was ‘brutal’ or ‘beastlike’ . In these authors the implication of that term varies from ‘unschooled in the basic crafts’ to ‘inhumanly violent and bloodthirsty’. In one sense or the other it is repeatedly encountered in ancient references to this subject. Accounts of primitive brutishness which make use of the word θηριώδης (or θηριωδς can be found in the Suppliants of Euripides, in the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine, in three passages of Diodorus, one of which is thought by some to contain Democritean doctrine, in four passages of Isocrates, in a fragment from a satyr-play Sisyphus which the ancient sources attribute variously to Euripides and to Critias, in a fragment of Athenion, in a second-century inscription, in Plutarch, in Tatian, in Themistius, and in a scholion to Euripides. (shrink)