The article tries to prove that the famous formula "epekeina tês ousias" has to be understood in the sense of being beyond being and not only in the sense of being beyond essence. We make hereby three points: first, since pure textual exegesis of 509b8–10 seems to lead to endless controversy, a formal proof for the metaontological interpretation could be helpful to settle the issue; we try to give such a proof. Second, we offer a corollary of the formal proof, (...) showing that not only self-predication of the form of the Good, but of any form is not possible, that is: no form of F has the form of F. Third, we apply Spinoza’s distinction between an ens imaginarium and a chimaera to Plato’s Idea of the Good. (shrink)

En la obra que ahora presentamos al público hispanoparlante, reunimos diez trabajos previamente publicados en lengua italiana que abordan importantes cuestiones que ocupan en este momento a los estudiosos de la filosofía helenística y romana. Sus autores son diez de los más importantes especialistas italianos actuales en el estudio de este periodo histórico.

Sextus Empiricus associates the skeptical stance with the activity of inquiry or investigation. My purpose in this paper is to examine the Pyrrhonist's involvement in that activity because getting an accurate understanding of the nature and purpose of skeptical inquiry makes it possible to delineate some of the distinctive traits of Pyrrhonism as a kind of philosophy. I defend the minority view among specialists according to which (i) Sextus describes both the prospective Pyrrhonist and the full-fledged Pyrrhonist as inquirers into (...) truth, and (ii) the full-fledged Pyrrhonist can, without inconsistency, engage in truth-directed inquiry. (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)

Philosophy and Literature is an internationally renowned refereed journal founded by Denis Dutton at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. It is now published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Since its inception in 1976, Philosophy and Literature has been concerned with the relation between literary and philosophical studies, publishing articles on the philosophical interpretation of literature as well as the literary treatment of philosophy. Philosophy and Literature has sometimes been regarded as iconoclastic, in the sense that it repudiates academic pretensions, (...) insidious jargon and institutional vogue. Dutton, who remains the editor, still writes a regular column. A distinctive feature of Philosophy and Literature was the annual Bad Writing Contest, held from 1995–98, which sought to identify (and publish) the ‘most stylistically lamentable passages’ of academic prose, often to great amusement. (shrink)

Despite Diotima’s irresistible virtues and attractiveness across the millennia, she spells trouble for philosophy. It is not her fault that she has been misunderstood, nor is it Plato’s. Rather, I suspect, each era has made of Diotima what it desired her to be. Her malleability is related to the assumption that Plato invented her, that she is a mere literary fiction, licensing the imagination to do what it will. In the first part of my paper, I argue against three contemporary (...) ‘majority views’ about Diotima that I regard as false. The first is that we can be certain she is fictional;1 a second is that Diotima is our best evidence for Plato’s feminism; the third, that she is Plato’s mouthpiece for the higher mysteries in the Symposium. After I have set aside what I regard as false, I proceed in the second half of my paper to develop Diotima’s positive contribution to philosophical psychology, her naturalistic account of the psyche as mortal, unified, and developmental. Whether the view Plato assigns to her is one that he held I do not pretend to know; but it is a powerful, defensible, and coherent view that inspired positive aspects of Freudian psychology in the twentieth century. Freud’s insight, in fact, makes clear how erōs can be developed in relation to the bad as well as the good. (shrink)

Plato is commonly considered a metaphysical dualist conceiving of a world of Forms separate from the world of particulars in which we live. This paper explores the motivation for postulating that second world as opposed to making do with the one we have. The main objective is to demonstrate that and how everything, Forms and all, can instead fit into the same world. The approach is exploratory, as there can be no proof in the standard sense. The debate between explaining (...) Plato’s ontology with a single world and requiring a two-world model to make sense of the same thing is typically about scouring the Platonic corpus for evidence and turning to Aristotle for help where we need it. The aim here is to dig deeper than what either of them, or anyone else, has said or implied about the number or worlds, searching instead for any insight that might be gained from the way Forms are supposed to exist versus what we ourselves might understand by existence. Although the paper is, at its most basic level, about the existence of the Forms, the intention is not to prove that they exist, nor to evaluate the proofs and objections already on record, but to consider how they might exist and what follows if they do. Dialogue toward consensus on why we think the Forms exist, and why we think they do not, could perhaps provide a smoother “second sailing” in waters where we have been unable to agree whether they do and where they would if they did. (shrink)

A obra filosófica de Cícero põe em cena debates intelectuais entre membros da elite romana, e suas figuras principais exibem uma combinação equilibrada de dotes intelectuais, excelência moral e expertise política. A filosofia grega emerge como um importante aliado no projeto intelectual de Cícero, mas não in toto. Este artigo lida com o modo pelo qual Cícero denigre uma multitudo de filósofos que produziam aquilo que ele considerava obras moralmente perigosas e estilisticamente inferiores, contribuindo para a criação de uma filosofia (...) “clássica” que ainda configura o estudo moderno da filosofia. (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)

Around 87b.c.during the turmoil of the first Mithridatic war, Philo of Larissa, head of the so-called Fourth Academy, fled from Athens to Rome. There he gave lectures on philosophical topics and taught rhetoric. His classes were attended by a young man called Cicero, who was inspired by him to include in a work on rhetorical theory, somewhat inappropriately, a fervent confession of scepticism to which he stuck for the rest of his life. Later Cicero claimed to be—as an orator—not a (...) product of the workshops of the teachers of rhetoric, but of the spacious walks of the Academy. And he developed the ideal of the philosopher-orator. Scholars disagree whether the idea to bring philosophy and rhetoric together is Cicero's own invention or an adaptation from someone else, for instance Philo. (shrink)

Around 87 b.c. during the turmoil of the first Mithridatic war, Philo of Larissa, head of the so-called Fourth Academy, fled from Athens to Rome. There he gave lectures on philosophical topics and taught rhetoric. His classes were attended by a young man called Cicero, who was inspired by him to include in a work on rhetorical theory, somewhat inappropriately, a fervent confession of scepticism to which he stuck for the rest of his life. Later Cicero claimed to be—as an (...) orator—not a product of the workshops of the teachers of rhetoric, but of the spacious walks of the Academy. And he developed the ideal of the philosopher-orator. Scholars disagree whether the idea to bring philosophy and rhetoric together is Cicero's own invention or an adaptation from someone else, for instance Philo. (shrink)

A dispute in the form of rival interpretations of Carneades arose in the New Academy about whether the wise person is permitted to form opinions. One party rejected opinion; the other defended it. Because the terms enjoy a certain currency, the positions are here labelled ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ respectively. This essay tackles the question whether and how they differed. It argues that the disagreement was less about human epistemic capacities than about the standards and aspirations against which they should be (...) measured and that Cicero, our principal source, was a consistent adherent of the ‘radical’ party. (shrink)

This presentation traces an historical root of the reductio ad absurdum mode of argumentation in Greek philosophy. I propose a new understanding of the liar paradox as an instance of this mode of argumentation. I show that the paradox was crea ted as part of a refutational argument in the controversy over the justification of realism and the realists concepts of truth and certainty. The paradox was part of the dialectical style of Greek scepticism, which was characterized, inter alia, by (...) the u se of the reductio ad absurdum. The paradox turns out to be a metaphysical and epistemological argument. (shrink)

The aim of this thesis is to explore the relationship between Achilles Tatius' novel Leucippe and Cleitophon and the Platonic corpus. I have searched for Platonic allusions of various natures and purposes and grouped them into thematic chapters. I have also compared instances of similar uses of Plato in contemporary authors in order to classify both the individual cases and the place of Achilles Tatius' novel in its literary environment, including the intended readership. In my introduction I have argued that (...) through the combination in his works of philosophy and literary excellence Plato was an extremely important figure to the Greeks of the second sophistic. However, despite the increasingly influential opinion that Greek novel readership was not dissimilar to that of other works, the possibility that the Greek novelists used Plato in a more than cosmetic fashion has been relatively neglected. The uses of Plato on which I have concentrated are the employment of Platonic names as allusions to their namesakes; Platonic narrative technique as the model for the dialogue form and open-endedness of Leucippe and Cleitophon with the integration of this technique into the broader question of the discrepancies between the beginning and the end; the allusion to a particularly famous passage of the Phaedrus in the name of the heroine; the repeated allusions to the Phaedran flow of beauty, their purposes and the light they shed on the characterisation of Cleitophon; and the Phaedran scene-setting, indulged in by many other writers, which Achilles Tatius uses in two significant passages. The conclusions I have reached are that Achilles Tatius uses Plato far more extensively and imaginatively than hitherto realised; that such an intimate engagement can shed light on other issues, such as psychological characterisation and the question of humour; that Achilles Tatius wrote something of an "anti-Platonic" novel; and that his work displays many similarities with other works whose sophistication is less in doubt. (shrink)

RESUMEN El siguiente artículo tiene como objetivo destacar el carácter polifónico del pensamiento platónico y poner en cuestión el sentido de la autoría de Platón. Suponer, a partir de obstinados prejuicios modernos, que Platón, tal como cualquier escritor moderno, habría expuesto su propia doctrina, es ignorar la importancia de la forma dramática de su pensamiento. El testimonio de la variedad de interlocutores y de puntos de vista que se suceden en los diferentes diálogos, nos invita a prestar atención a la (...) compleja trama del pensamiento platónico, cuya variedad de funciones corresponde a los límites y al alcance del discurso de quienes en un determinado momento y situación cooperan en el diálogo. ABSTRACT The following paper aims to highlight the polyphonic character of Platonic thought and to question the meaning of Plato's authorship. To assume, from obstinate modern prejudices, that Plato, like any modern writer, would have exposed his own doctrine, is to ignore the importance of the dramatic form of his thought. The testimony of the variety of interlocutors and points of view that take place in the different dialogues, invites us to pay attention to the complex plot of Platonic thought, whose variety of functions corresponds to the limits and scope of the discourse of those who, in a given moment and situation, cooperate in the dialogue. (shrink)