In my paper, I shall provide a reading of Diogenes of Apollonia such that his understanding of the metaphysics of differentiation and of individual ensoulment may constitute an ingenious answer to the problems of his time. To this extent, I will argue that Diogenes' worldview solves the difficulties of Anaxagoras' metaphysics and successfully integrates mentality in a causally closed conception of nature. Finally, I will suggest that a Diogenes-inspired approach might be relevant to treat some pressing (...) concerns in the contemporary philosophy of mind – thus demonstrating how his production might offer some interesting solutions for the problems of our time too. (shrink)

This paper is about the history of a question in ancient Greek philosophy and medicine: what holds the parts of a whole together? The idea that there is a single cause responsible for cohesion is usually associated with the Stoics. They refer to it as the synectic cause (αἴτιον συνεκτικόν), a term variously translated as ‘cohesive cause,’ ‘containing cause’ or ‘sustaining cause.’ The Stoics, however, are neither the first nor the only thinkers to raise this question or to propose a (...) single answer. Many earlier thinkers offer their own candidates for what actively binds parts together, with differing implications not only for why we are wholes rather than heaps, but also why our bodies inevitably become diseased and fall apart. This paper assembles, up to the time of the Stoics, one part of the history of such a cause: what is called ‘the synechon’ (τὸ συνέχον) – that which holds things together. Starting with our earliest evidence from Anaximenes (sixth century BCE), the paper looks at different candidates and especially the models and metaphors for thinking about causes of cohesion which were proposed by different philosophers and doctors including Empedocles, early Greek doctors, Diogenes of Apollonia, Plato and Aristotle. My goal is to explore why these candidates and models were proposed and how later philosophical objections to them led to changes in how causes of cohesion were understood. (shrink)

Hynek Bartos does the field of ancient philosophy a great service by detailing the influence of early Greek thinkers (such as Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Diogenes of Apollonia) on the Hippocratic work On Regimen, and by demonstrating that work’s innovative engagement with contemporary scientific and philosophical concepts as well as its direct influence on Plato and Aristotle. His study usefully counteracts the lamentable tendency among ancient philosophers to ignore or downplay the influence of medical literature on philosophy (...) in general, and to heap scorn on this text in particular, which Kirk, Raven, and Schofield considered ‘an eclectic and very superficial quasi- philosophical treatise’ and Barnes famously called ‘a silly farrago of ill-digested Presocratic opinions’. (shrink)

Diogenes of Sinope, bilinen adıyla Diogenes ya da Sinoplu Diyojen’e yönelik yapılan bu çalışmada amacım, Dioegenes’in yaşamının, felsefi duruşunun ve benimsediği etik kuralların kapsamlı ve belgelenmiş bir şekilde sunulmasıdır. Diogenes’in hayatını ve öğretilerini güvenilir bir şekilde aktarmak aşırı derecede zordur, çünkü diğer antik filozoflardan ayrı olarak, onun yaşamına ilişkin güvenilir kaynaklar bulmak oldukça sınırlıdır. Ayrıca, fıçının içinde yaşayan bir Kinikli’ye yönelik ortaya konulmuş birçok kurmaca anekdot ile uğraşılması gerekmektedir. Güvenilir bilginin azlığı ve belgesiz atıfların yarattığı zorluklara rağmen, (...) yine de birçok kişinin hayalinde hayatta kalmayı başaran ünlü filozofun portresini ölümünden yirmi üç yüzyıl sonra yeniden inşa etmek mümkün gözükmektedir. Bu bağlamda, Diogenes’in yaşam tarzı ve felsefesine yönelik bilgiler verilecek, ardından temsil ettiği akım olan kinizmin temel öğretileri çeşitli kaynaklardan gösterilerek aktarılacaktır. Son olarak da, Diogenes’in Sinop kültürünün ve kültürel mirasımızın bir parçası olarak kabul edilmesinin mümkün olup olmadığı tartışılacaktır. (shrink)

Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers occupies a unique place in the history of Western philosophy. In addition to its valuable summaries of the doctrines of philosophers and their schools, it is often the best, or, indeed, the only source available for biographical details of many figures. Yet, as a work, it is often criticized for a lack of originality and critical judgement, notable only because it happened to survive while all other philosophical histories of the era did not, (...) or useful only because Diogenes had access to sources which are now lost to us. White sets himself against this pessimistic interpretation of Diogenes, and endeavors to show both the genuine merits of his work and his worth as a historian. (shrink)

This is the translation of Protagoras' life from Diogenes Laertius' "Lives of eminent Philosophers" (IX, 8).

The philosophy of Diogenes pays special attention to knowledge. Diogenes bases his thought on the well-known thesis of Parmenides which identifies einai and noein, combining it with the nous of Anaxagoras. According to Diogenes, the intellect (noesis) is embodied in the formal features of things and therefore is powerful, like the nous of Anaxagoras. The aim of the following pages is to show, in confrontation with Laks, that noesis does not homogenize the cosmos, but rather it diversifies (...) it. (shrink)

In this article, the author examines how Diogenes of Sinope and Plato employed the analogy of the dog in order to illustrate two very different conceptions of the philosopher. Although in both cases the analogy of the dog is used to exemplify and explain certain moral or psychological characteristics of the philosopher, the author argues that the differences between Diogenes’ and Plato’s usages of the analogy are both more essential and more philosophically significant. Thus, against those scholars who (...) claim that there is a tight link between the Cynic’s and Plato’s analogy, the author demonstrates that these two versions of the paradigm should be understood independently from one another. The article is accordingly devoted to contrasting Diogenes’ and Plato’s respective usages of the analogy of the dog in order to bring out the profound rift separating their rival conceptions of the philosopher: whereas Plato’s guardian assumes the responsibility of protecting the just society and its institutions, Diogenes’ philosopher, by contrast, defends a marginal way of living that shuns institutions altogether. (shrink)

Cynicism is a unique philosophy. You could even say that they took their principles a little too far, perhaps. Diogenes' core idea was that Man should live in accordance with nature, as simply as possible. He along with his students were missionaries of a sort, traveling city-to-city preaching about the life of simplicity. To Diogenes, material things like money and lavish accessories corrupted nature. Not only did he despise concrete things, but he also disapproved of social conventions. Like (...) every philosopher in the Hellenistic period, Diogenes believed that virtue was the highest good. Virtue was the rejection of desires and the pursuit of goods earned by the individual, according to Diogenes. What he meant by goods earned by the individual was that things granted by other people and nature happen purely by chance. Diogenes said that everything we own should come from ourselves: confidence, happiness, et cetera. Diogenes said that everything we own should come from ourselves: confidence, happiness, et cetera. Two of the key principles of Cynicism were freedom (eleutheria, ελευθερια) and free speech (parrhesia, παρρησια). To be a Cynic, you must be free from society's and life's constraints and you must also speak without fear. Desires of wealth and reputation were unnatural and made us less human, property and social classes dehumanized us, and conventional, man-made norms limited our freedom. (shrink)

Comme de nombreux penseurs antiques avant et après eux et contrairement à Socrate, Calliclès et Diogène ont déclaré avoir fondé leur éthique sur l’observation de la nature. Et pourtant, les deux discours normatifs qui sont tirés d’une nature que l’on pourrait a priori croire être la même sont on ne peut plus opposés. Calliclès croit que l’homme est appelé à dominer autrui ; Diogène pense plutôt qu’il doit se dominer lui-même ; le premier est un hédoniste débridé, le second croit (...) que le bonheur ne s’achète qu’au prix du sacrifice des désirs artificiels. Comment expliquer cette dichotomie ? Nous empruntons deux routes explicatives. D’abord, nous montrons que pour Calliclès et Diogène, la notion de nature non seulement diffère, mais est observée sous un angle différent. La première est celle des tyrans et de dieux anthropomorphes, la seconde, celle de petits animaux et de dieux autarciques. La première concerne la relation des hommes entre eux ; la seconde, celle de l’homme avec lui-même. Ensuite, nous exposons la différence des présupposés normatifs qui précèdent ou accompagnent l’observation de la nature ; nous contrastons, pour ce faire, les formes d’anticonventionnalisme et d’anti-intellectualisme défendues par Calliclès et Diogène. -/- SUMMARY. Like many ancient thinkers before and after them and contra Socrates, Callicles and Diogenes said they based their ethics on the observation of nature. And yet, the two normative discourses that are derived from nature that we might a priori believe to be the same could not be more opposed. Callicles believes that people are called to dominate others, Diogenes rather thinks people must dominate themselves. The first is an unbridled hedonist, the second believes that happiness can be bought only at the price of sacrificing artificial desires. How to explain this dichotomy? We take two explanatory routes. First, we show that for Callicles and Diogenes, the notion of nature not only differs but is observed from a different angle. The first one is the nature of tyrants and anthropomorphic gods, the second that of small animals and autarkic gods. The first focuses on the relationship between people, the second focuses on the relationship of a person with themselves. Secondly, we expose the difference in normative assumptions that precede or accompany the observation of nature; in order to do so, we contrast anticonventionalism and anti-intellectualism forms proper to both Callicles and Diogenes. (shrink)

This article contrasts Epicurus's and Diogenes the Cynic's respective views on acceptable desires. I emphasize their appeals to nature to legitimize or de-legitimize certain types of desires.

When considering the value of friendship, most philosophers ignore the negatives. Most assume that humans need friends to flourish, and some argue that friendships can be good, no matter the risks entailed. This makes conversations about the value of friendship one-sided. Here, I argue that Cynics and Pessimists have an important view on friendship, despite it being ignored. They hold that: (a) friendship is unnecessary for flourishing, and (b) friendship presents ethical risks, especially to one’s own self-sufficiency. I defend these (...) views. Then I conclude with reflections on why Cynics and Pessimists actually make great friends. By helping people to focus on vulgar human nature and the flaws that humans have, they create an unpretentious basis for friendship. (shrink)

An inter-disciplinary enquiry concerning Europe, Europeans and Europeanity across time, based on proceedings of the 10th world congress of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas convened at the University of Malta. -/- Originally published in: Frendo, Henry (2010): The European Mind: Narrative and Identity : Proceedings of the X World Congress of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, University of Malta, 24th-29th July 2006. International Society for the Study of European Ideas. Malta University Press.

This paper discusses the reports in Diogenes Laertius and in Sextus Empiricus concerning the classification of propositions. It is argued that the material in Sextus uses a source going back to the Dialectical school whose most prominent members were Diodorus Cronus and Philo of Megara. The material preserved in Diogenes Laertius, on the other hand, goes back to Chrysippus.

How demanding is the virtuous life? Can virtue exist alongside hints of vice? Is it possible to be virtuous within a vicious society? A line of thinking running through Diogenes and the Stoics is that even a hint of corruption is inimical to virtue, that participating in a vicious society makes it impossible for a person to be virtuous. One response to this difficulty is to claim that virtue is a threshold concept, that context sets a threshold for what (...) is considered virtuous. On this way of thinking, what counts as virtuous in one society may be more demanding than what passes for virtuous in another. This response seems plausible when considering that virtue-theoretic terms like `honest' are gradable adjectives. Many gradable adjectives, like `tall' and `expensive,' have contextual thresholds that shift depending on the situation, and so is tenable that virtue-theoretic adjectives might function with contextual thresholds as well. A major difficulty for this response, however, is that virtue terms are absolute gradable adjectives, a variety of gradable adjectives that do not require a contextual threshold. Absolute gradable adjectives instead draw their truth conditions from their maximal degree, suggesting that Diogenes and the Stoics were correct to think that virtue is incompatible with even a small degree of vice. (shrink)

Diogenes Laertius (8.63-6) preserves a fascinating account of the Presocratic philosopher Empedocles' life. There, drawing on evidence from Aristotle, Xanthus, and Timaeus of Tauromenium, the biographer provides several anecdotes which are meant to demonstrate how Empedocles had, contrary to expectation, been a democratic philosopher - a paradox of itself in Ancient Greece. This article unpacks the complex web woven by Diogenes and argues that there is no good reason to assume that Empedocles was indeed a democratic philosopher, and (...) moreover, that neither Xanthus nor Aristotle thought him so. Indeed, what Diogenes actually preserves for us is the Hellenistic biographer Timaeus' critical dialectical engagement with the versions Aristotle and Xanthus, in his anachronistic bid to render Empedocles a democratic hero. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the existence of a Dialectical school proper against criticisms brought forward by Klaus Döring and by Jonathan Barnes. Whereas Döring claims that there was no Dialectical school separate from the Megarians, Barnes takes issue with my claim (argued for in “Dialektiker und frühe Stoiker bei Sextus Empiricus”) that most of the reports in Sextus on the dialecticians refer to members of the Dialectical school. Barnes contends that these dialecticians are in fact Stoic logicians. As against (...) Döring, I argue that the passage in Diogenes Laertius II 113 (first drawn attention to by David Sedley) which talks of a the Megarian Stilpo winning over disciples from the Dialecticians is not refuted by Döring’s arguments. It clearly shows that the Dialecticians and the Megarians at the time were taken to be different philosophical sects. As against Barnes I insist on the differences between the report in Ps.-Galen’s Historia 9 and the Sextan report on the theory of sign in AM VIII. These reports offer incompatible definitions of the indicative sign. Moreover, the classification of simple propositions reported by Sextus at AM VIII 96f. cannot be a truncated version of the (Stoic) list to be found in Diogenes Laertius VII 69f. since in Sextus’ report one of the three classes of simple propositions is labelled middle (meson). This is a certain sign that we are dealing with a triad, and hence that this list is meant to be complete. Therefore the classification found in Sextus and attributed to the dialecticians and the one in Diogenes Laertius reporting Stoic material do come from different sources. (shrink)

Epicurean philosophy, as Epicurus's teachings became known, was used as the basis for how the community lived and worked. At the time, founding a school and teaching a community of students was the main way philosophical ideas were developed and transmitted. Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE), for instance, founded a school in Athens called the Lyceum. Epicurus and his disciples believed either there were no gods or, if there were, the gods were so remote from humans that they were not (...) worth worrying about. Similarly, humans would not have to worry about the afterlife. Instead, humans should live by maximizing their pleasure. The highest pleasure was to be found in the absence of pain. Epicurus taught that humans could maximize their pleasure by living simply and enjoying those impulses that are natural to humans. These impulses include the need to eat and the desire for good friends and company. The Principal Doctrines are 40 statements outlining the basis for the beliefs of Epicurus and his followers about how to lead a good life. Epicurus's other philosophical beliefs (such as his belief that existence was composed of indivisible particles called atoms) are expressed in other writings. Almost none of Epicurus's original writings survive to the present day. His works, including the Principal Doctrines, are known to us because of the work of later writers. In the 3rd century CE, Diogenes Laërtius reproduced Epicurus's writings in Lives, Teachings, and Sayings of Famous Philosophers. Produced centuries after Epicurus's death, such collections may not be Epicurus's precise words or formulations. The Principal Doctrines should thus be regarded as the core principles not only of Epicurus but also of his followers, the Epicureans. (shrink)

Nietzsche (1844–1900) struggles with complexity and many-sidedness throughout his life. He is a nuanced thinker who offers fragments instead of a rigid philosophical system, yet he admires the ‘virtuous energy’ with which systematic thinkers, especially the pre-Socratic philosophers, express themselves. His ability to write with comparable energy is hindered by university philosophy, which privileges restraint and consistency. Therefore, he adopts a practice of spontaneous life writing in order to become simple and honest in thought and life. Inspired by figures such (...) as Emerson, Diogenes, and Sterne, he grasps the ‘nearest shoddy words’ and continually produces new insights in disjointed monologues and aphorisms. Nietzsche's vague metaphors, loose language, inconsistency, and hyperbole stem from this practice, and his autobiography, Ecce Homo (1888), is the closest that he ever comes to rekindling the energy of the pre-Socratics. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the Genealogy of Morals is, in part, a work of philosophical therapy. First, I provide an account of philosophical therapy by turning to the Hellenistics, for whom philosophical therapy begins with the diagnosis of some widespread cultural problem. I then turn in more detail to Nietzsche, arguing that the Genealogy does therapeutic work similar to the work of the Hellenistics. In particular, I examine Nietzsche’s claim that modern thinking has fallen prey to what he (...) calls the ‘ascetic ideal’; I interpret this claim as diagnosis, and I interpret the work of Essay Three as providing therapy for that diagnosis. The rest of the paper considers how this therapy unfolds for the three major ‘types’ that Nietzsche identifies in Essay Three: the artist, the philosopher, and the priest. Finally, I return to the Hellenistics to re-evaluate both their therapeutic projects and Nietzsche’s in light of the notion of self-cultivation. (shrink)

It seems that a new notion of language played an important role in seeing how notions like knowledge and humanities are to be understood anew. I believe that our notion of language is not only pluralistic in the sense that distinct verbal languages force us to see the world in different ways but also ubiquitous in the sense that anything which is seen by human eyes or which is processed digitally is a text in need of interpretation. Then, our notion (...) of knowledge needs to be communal rather than absolutistic and the ideal of the contemporary human predicament is such that we may go beyond its passive freedom to a more active freedom. These two conditions appear to suggest a bridge by which one can relate the humanities in the academic world and the humanities in the cultural markets. (shrink)

This paper argues that despite recent tendencies to minimize the differences between Posidonius and the Early Stoics, there are some important aspects of Stoic ethics in which Posidonius deviated from the orthodox doctrine. According to two passages in Diogenes Laertius, Posidonius counted health and wealth among the goods and held that virtue alone is insufficient for happiness. While Kidd in his commentary dismissed this report as spurious, there are good reasons to take Diogenes’ remarks seriously. Through a careful (...) analysis of the sources, in particular of Galen's De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, this article offers a new interpretation of Posidonius’ ethics. It sheds light on Posidonius’ theory of virtues and shows that Posidonius must have granted a special status to things like health and wealth even if he did not regard them as genuine goods. (shrink)

In the Phaedrus, Plato speaks of various forms of madness having a divine origin, and bestowing virtue on mankind. A similar, though not equivalent elevation of madness over sanity is found in the Pauline epistles, where Christians are described as fools. Diogenes of Sinope and a number of other Cynics, as well as Christian ascetics, adopted a way of life that could reasonably be described as mad. This challenged received ideas about sanity, and in so doing, emphasized its social (...) aspect. The prophet and the poet were seen in antiquity to disclosed truth, in enigmatic sayings and in odd turns of phrase that stretch everyday usage. This overstepping of reason (logos) links both inspired madness and simulated madness to the lexis of mysticism. They are, in other words, a stance, in relation to knowing, that is shared by philosophy. To use Heidegger’s idiom, the latter is nothing other than a rambling path through the forest, one which often leads nowhere. But sometimes comes to a clearing in which Being itself is made manifest as ek-stasis. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper, I would like to argue that brain-dead small children have a natural right not to be invaded by other people even if their organs can save the lives of other suffering patients. My basic idea is that growing human beings have the right to grow in the form of wholeness, and dying human beings also have the right to die in the form of wholeness; in other words, they have the right to be protected from outside invasion, (...) unless they have declared their wish to abandon that right beforehand. I call this the principle of wholeness. Natural rights, which were discussed by Hobbes and Locke in the 17th century, have to be extended to include the right to grow and die in the form of wholeness in the age of scientific civilization, where peripheral human lives are being threatened by aggressive biomedicine and other advanced technologies. (shrink)

This overview attempts to explain how we can come to an account of Cynicism and what that account should look like. My account suggests that Cynics are identified by living like Diogenes of Sinope, and that Diogenes' way of life is characterized by distinctive twists on three Socratic commitments. The three Socratic commitments are that success in life depends on excellence of the soul; that this excellence and success are a special achievement, requiring hard work; and that this (...) work requires deprecating mainstream values such as wealth, fame, and ordinary political power. Diogenes' construal of success emphasizes freedom and independence, and his construal of excellence emphasizes endurance and self-mastery. On his account, the work required to achieve these is strikingly unintellectual but difficult, and the deprecation of ordinary values is especially extreme. A few interpretive puzzles about Cynicism are tackled along the way, including whether Cynicism really counts as philosophy and whether Cynics are anti-social. (shrink)

Epicurus strongly discouraged sex, marriage, and the rearing of children. This paper looks at some of the primary evidence for these claims, clears up a translation of one passage, and emends another passage. (The emendation has been accepted into Dorandi's new edition of Diogenes Laertius).

Diogenes Laertius reports (in his Lives of Eminent Philosophers ix 19) that Xenophanes of Colophon stated that ta polla hêssô nou (in some sense, ‘that the many give way to mind’). After reviewing four alternative but unsatisfactory ways of understanding the remark I argue that it is best understood as ‘the multitude of things (i.e. the cosmos) gives way to—is mastered by—the (divine) mind.’ When understood in this way the remark establishes Xenophanes as one of the earliest Greek thinkers (...) to hold that events throughout the cosmos take place under the control of a supremely powerful divine intelligence. (shrink)

The norms of simplicity, convenience, unfussiness, and self-control guide Diogenes the Cynic, Zeno of Citium, Chrysippus, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius in approaching food. These norms generate the precept that meat and dainties are luxuries, so Stoics should eschew them. Considerations of justice, environmental harm, anthropogenic global climate change, sustainability, food security, feminism, harm to animals, personal health, and public health lead contemporary Stoics to condemn the meat industrial complex, debunk carnism, and select low input, plant-based foods.

Immediately upon the death of Plato in 347 BCE, philosophers in the Academy began to circulate stories involving his encounters with wisdom practitioners from Persia. This article examines the history of Greek perceptions of Persian wisdom and argues that the presence of foreign wisdom practitioners in the history of Greek philosophy has been undervalued since Diogenes Laertius.

Kant’s account of “the radical evil in human nature” in the 1793 Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone is typically interpreted as a reworking of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin. But Kant doesn’t talk about Augustine explicitly there, and if he is rehabilitating the doctrine of original sin, the result is not obviously Augustinian. Instead Kant talks about Stoic ethics in a pair of passages on either end of his account of radical evil, and leaves other clues that (...) his argument is a reworking of an old Stoic problem. “Radical evil” refers to the idea that our moral condition is — by default and yet by our own deed — bad or corrupt; and that this corruption is the root (radix) of human badness in all its variety, ubiquity, and sheer ordinariness. Kant takes as his premise a version of the Stoic idea that nature gives us “uncorrupted starting points” (Diogenes Laertius 7.89). What sense can be made of the origin of human badness, given such a premise? Kant’s account of radical evil is an answer to this old Stoic problem, which requires a conception of freedom that is not available in his Stoic sources. (shrink)

At the heart of the Stoic theory of modality is a strict commitment to bivalence, even for future contingents. A commitment to both future truth and contingency has often been thought paradoxical. This paper argues that the Stoic retreat from necessity is successful. it maintains that the Stoics recognized three distinct senses of necessity and possibility: logical, metaphysical and providential. Logical necessity consists of truths that are knowable a priori. Metaphysical necessity consists of truths that are knowable a posteriori, a (...) world order according to certain metaphysical principles and natures that god crafts within the constraints of matter. Finally, what is providentially necessary is what occurs according to the chain of fate, but only once it is in process or past. -/- The method of the paper is a close reading of Diogenes Laertius 7.75, adducing broad textual evidence along the way, to show that the Stoic theory of modality embraces Philonian possibility, both that which is capable of being true as a matter of logical consistency, and that which is possible according to the bare fitness of the entity. What differentiates the Stoics from Philo is their additional commitment to possibility as opportunity, resisting the collapse of determinism into necessity. (shrink)

There are some tantalizing suggestions that Pyrrhonian skepticism has its roots in ancient India. Of them, the most important is Diogenes Laertius’s report that Pyrrho accompanied Alexander to India, where he was deeply impressed by the character of the “naked sophists” he encountered (DL IX 61). Influenced by these gymnosophists, Pyrrho is said to have adopted the practices of suspending judgment on matters of belief and cultivating an indifferent composure amid the vicissitudes of ordinary life. Such conduct, and the (...) attitudes that it embodied, became inspirations to later skeptical thinkers. It is a fact that practices of the sort attributed to Pyrrho are richly evident in a number of ancient Indian philosophical and ascetic movements. On this basis, attempts have been made to determine the identity of these gymnosophists and, further, to pinpoint the dialectical tropes within Pyrrhonism that may have their basis in Indian thought. But despite these attempts, and in the absence of any new discoveries, these suggestions will likely remain just that. The paucity of the historical data and the problematic nature of the data itself prevent us from reconstructing a solid bridge between ancient India and Greek skepticism that may serve as the basis of robust historical theorizing. Classical India does, however, lay claim to a sophisticated and diverse culture of epistemological reflection, which includes a number of innovative skeptical thinkers deserving study on their own merits. This chapter is meant to provide such a study, or perhaps more accurately, a prolegomena for such. After some initial ground-laying, I will discuss three leading Indian skeptics and situate them historically and conceptually within the network of competing schools that comprise classical Indian philosophy. They are Nāgārjuna (c. 150 CE), the founder of Madhyamaka Buddhism, Jayarāśi (c. 800), associated with the Indian materialist tradition, and Śrīharṣa (c. 1150), a thinker connected to the school of Nondual (Advaita) Vedānta. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida begins the first chapter of his book The Politics of Friendship1 with a statement attributed to Aristotle by both Diogenes Laertes and the 16th Century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne. The statement is this: “O my friends, there is no friend.” Derrida points out the paradox and apparent contradication in such an impossible declaration. Who is Aristotle talking to, given that he is addressing friends to inform them that there are none? How can the statement be taken (...) seriously? We might say that the paradox is a result of a bit of philosophical licence on Aristotle’s part. Aristotle defines the friend as “another self”2 and since it is logically impossible that the friend could actually be another self, then this is simply a bit of philosophical hyperbole that Aristotle engages in, but about which he is not serious. Yet the fact that Derrida has written three hundred pages of text on this subject suggests that this interpretation would be hard to sustain. As the title of his text suggests, Derrida approaches the question of friendship via an analogy with politics, specifically with republican democracy. This paper focuses on three aspects of that analogy. (shrink)

The main biographical source about Plato, according to the testimony of the Neoplatonic Simplicius, was written by the disciple Xenocrates, but unfortunately it has not reached us. The earliest biography of Plato to date, De Platone et dogmate eius, is by a second-century Latin author, Apuleius. All of Plato's other biographies were written more than five hundred years after his death. The Greek historian Diogenes (2nd and 3rd centuries) is the author of a series of biographies of Greek philosophers (...) (The Lives of Philosophers) in which he refers to the life of Plato. He also wrote a funeral praise for Plato. Other early biographers of Plato are Olympiodorus the Younger in the sixth century and an anonymous source. An important source about Plato's life is his philosophical dialogues is his thirteen letters (possibly false though, with the possible exception of Letters VII and VIII), the writings of Aristotle, an excerpt from the Epicurean Philodemus of Gadara's History of Philosophers (Syntaxis ton philosophon), 1st century BC, Prolegomena's anonymous writings on Platonic philosophy traditionally attributed to Olympiodorus, Suda, 10th century and Plutarch's Life of Dio, 1st-2nd Century. -/- DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.15396.96647. (shrink)

A partire dalle testimonianze epistolari ciceroniane, in Varrone accademico e menippeo sono esaminate le dinamiche filologiche, contingenti e psicologiche, sottese alla seconda edizione degli "Academica" a favore della maschera di Varrone. Il "Varro" di Cicerone è l’unica porzione di dialogo superstite riconducibile alla formazione e all’adesione filosofica di Varrone quanto a logica, etica e fisica. Il reatino sarebbe stato spinto a tentare personalmente l’impresa di una trattazione sistematica nel perduto "De philosophia" (di cui resta traccia in Agostino) solo dopo il (...) dono-pungolo ricevuto dall’amico-rivale. Il famoso elogio ciceroniano rivolto a Varrone è riletto alla luce dell’agonismo e dell’antagonismo non tanto filosofico quanto personale tra i due accademici, risolvendosi in una sostanziale "deminutio" del dedicatario e della sua produzione. Dal punto di vista del conduttore del dialogo, le Menippee, in cui Varrone si era esposto anche filosoficamente (in qualche frammento, perfino canzonando i filosofi) e in cui Menippo era stato imitato e non tradotto, avrebbero funto “ad impellendum satis, ad edocendum parum”. L’imitazione di un’imitazione, dunque. Tale venata allusione prelude anche all’ostile tradizione riguardante la fosca ombra di Menippo, il “cane senza coda”, caldeggiato e difeso da Varrone in una menippea dedicata alla dipartita sui generis del filosofo. Nelle "Eumenides", la menippea meglio conservata, è presente il frammento che riassume anfibolicamente la duplice facies della formazione varroniana: la "cana Veritas" sarebbe la bianca verità platonica, ma anche la mordace verità cinica, portata alle estreme conseguenze dal Diogene pazzo. La riflessione si conclude platonicamente focalizzandosi sull’istantaneamente del suddetto frammento attraverso il calco varroniano "de inproviso", che rimanda anche alla Lettera VII e alle dottrine non scritte di Platone. -/- . (shrink)

Whereas the Humean accounts of causality in terms of contiguity, temporal priority, constant conjunction, and contingency face difficulties of one sort, the dispositional explanations of causality...

What I should like to explore here is the experience of landscape both through the arts and as an art, an art of environmental appreciation. A clearer understanding of landscape, environment, and art, as well as what it is to "know" in the context of environmental experience, suggests how the arts can contribute to an intimate, engaged experience of landscape, and how this process itself can be construed as an art in which the perceiver is a quasi-artist. I should like (...) to do this through a re-weaving of words and ideas to propose a new fabric for understanding the relation of art, landscape, and perceiver. The threads I want to combine are four: art, environment, landscape, and knowing in the sense of appreciation. I hope to show how the loose-knit texture they form can be spread over a particular landscape in such a way that the landscape will fill the fabric and the fabric integrate the landscape. I realize that I may have over-worked my metaphor, so I shall leave it now, but I hope that it can serve as a guiding image for the relation and application of the ideas I shall be working with. (shrink)

Whereas the Humean accounts of causality in terms of contiguity, temporal priority, constant conjunction, and contingency face difficulties of one sort, the dispositional explanations of causality in terms of reciprocity, simultaneity, ubiquity, and holism seem to meet difficulties of another sort. But the difficulties which dispositionalism faces may be dissipated if one can appeal consistently to the logic of naturalism, rather than to the grammar of an implicit dualism, for example, as it is illustrated when G. Molnar tried to advance (...) the analogy between the mental intentionality and the physical intentionality.The notion of integration is taken to allow a conceptual space for naturalism of one kind. It may be expressed in the thesis that there is integrationality in any entity like dispositions, such that the integrationality is a power to realize the embedded objective of it in the context where it interacts with all others. The thesis would help to see how dispositions can be intentional, how the no... (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of the divine light in the mystical works of St Symeon the New Theologian in the context of the Eastern Christian ascetical tradition. The author focuses on the passages referring to the divine light in the works of Evagrios Pontikos, St Isaac the Syrian, St Maximus the Confessor, and in the Makarian corpus. As is shown in the present contribution, none of these authors created a fully-developed theory of the vision of the divine light. (...) Being close to these writers in many ideas, St Symeon was generally independent of any of them in his treatment of the theme of vision of light, always basing himself primarily upon his own experience. (shrink)

In support to the development and implementation of the Regional Plan of Action to implement the Kuala Lumpur Declaration on Ageing: Empowering Older Persons in ASEAN (2015), the ASEAN Secretariat under the guidance of the Senior Officials Meeting on Social Welfare and Development (SOMSWD) commissioned a study to identify the trends and opportunities on poverty and active ageing in ASEAN, as endorsed during the 14th Senior Officials Meeting on Social Welfare and Development (SOMSWD) held in September 2018, Singapore. The focus (...) of the study is on specific groups of older persons from two socio-economic perspectives: a) older persons living in poverty and at-risk/vulnerable conditions; and b) older persons in active ageing. The analysis is critical for helping ASEAN Member States to better protect the rights of older person and review their respective policies, plans and programme related to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals and the ASEAN commitment towards building an inclusive, sustainable, and resilient regional community that promotes human rights, equitable access to opportunities, and high quality of life for all. (shrink)

Abstact : This article provides a critical examination of David Estlund’s epistemic proceduralism. Epistemic proceduralism suggests a promising way to justify democracy without renouncing the pursuit of truth. By making the legitimacy and authority of democratic institutions dependent on their general tendency to produce good decisions, rather than on the correctness of their results or on their mere procedural fairness, it shows that they can to be connected to substantial standards, such as justice, without ignoring the persistence of moral disagreements. (...) By subjecting political procedures to a dual requirement, both epistemic and egalitarian, it suggests that a mixed conception of the value of democracy can be articulated. But by refusing to take sides on the nature of truth, on the choice of the relevant substantial standard, or on the moral theory defining the constraints that equal respect imposes on the choice of political procedures, epistemic proceduralism fails in my view to offer a convincing defence of democracy. In order to explain what makes democracy valuable, a philosophical conception must take a position on the nature of truth, justice and equality. -/- Résumé : Cet article propose une relecture critique du procéduralisme épistémique élaboré par David Estlund. Cette théorie suggère une voie prometteuse pour justifier démocratie sans renoncer à la poursuite de de la vérité. En proposant de faire dépendre la légitimité et l’autorité des procédures démocratiques de leur tendance générale à produire de bonnes décisions, plutôt que de la justesse constante de leurs résultats ou à l’inverse de leur seule équité procédurale, il montre qu’elles peuvent être reliées à une visée substantielle, telle la justice, sans ignorer pour autant la persistance des désaccords à son endroit. En soumettant ces procédures à une double exigence, à la fois épistémique et égalitaire, il montre qu’une conception mixte de la valeur de la démocratie est concevable. Mais en refusant de prendre parti sur la nature de la vérité, sur le choix du critère objectif devant guider l’évaluation des décisions politiques ou sur la théorie morale permettant d’expliciter les contraintes que l’égal égard dû aux personnes impose au choix des procédures, le procéduralisme épistémique s’interdit de construire une justification convaincante de la démocratie. Une justification philosophique de la démocratie doit, pour rendre compte de ce qui fait sa valeur, prendre position sur la nature de la vérité, de la justice et de l’égalité. (shrink)

It seems that a new notion of language played an important role in seeing how notions like knowledge and humanities are to be understood anew. I believe that our notion of language is not only pluralistic in the sense that distinct verbal languages force us to see the world in different ways but also ubiquitous in the sense that anything which is seen by human eyes or which is processed digitally is a text in need of interpretation. Then, our notion (...) of knowledge needs to be communal rather than absolutistic and the ideal of the contemporary human predicament is such that we may go beyond its passive freedom to a more active freedom. These two conditions appear to suggest a bridge by which one can relate the humanities in the academic world and the humanities in the cultural markets. (shrink)

The function of a trait token is usually defined in terms of some properties of other (past, present, future) tokens of the same trait type. I argue that this strategy is problematic, as trait types are (at least partly) individuated by their functional properties, which would lead to circularity. In order to avoid this problem, I suggest a way to define the function of a trait token in terms of the properties of the very same trait token. To able to (...) allow for the possibility of malfunctioning, some of these properties need to be modal ones: a function of a trait is to do F just in case its doing F would contribute to the inclusive fitness of the organism whose trait it is. Function attributions have modal force. Finally, I explore whether and how this theory of biological function could be modified to cover artifact function. (shrink)

Biological theory demands a clear organism concept, but at present biologists cannot agree on one. They know that counting particular units, and not counting others, allows them to generate explanatory and predictive descriptions of evolutionary processes. Yet they lack a unified theory telling them which units to count. In this paper, I offer a novel account of biological individuality, which reconciles conflicting definitions of ‘organism’ by interpreting them as describing alternative realisers of a common functional role, and then defines individual (...) organisms as essentially possessing some mechanisms that play this role. (shrink)