_Reading Aristotle: Argument and Exposition_ demonstrates that Aristotle’s treatises rely crucially on expository principles—questions of proper sequence, pedagogical method, and distinctions between different sciences.

Volume XXIX contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2012-13. The papers feature Plato's Republic and Timaeus, examine Aristotle on generation, analogy and method, and analyze Proclus on first principles.

These essays reveal a dynamic range of interactions, reactions, tensions, and ambiguities, showing how Greek literary creations impacted and provided the ...

Essays on Greek philosophy and literature from Homer and Hesiod to Aristotle. In Logoi and Muthoi, William Wians builds on his earlier volume Logos and Muthos, highlighting the richness and complexity of these terms that were once set firmly in opposition to one another as reason versus myth or rationality versus irrationality. It was once common to think of intellectual history representing a straightforward progression from mythology to rationality. These volumes, however, demonstrate the value of taking the two (...) together, opening up and analyzing a range of interactions, reactions, tensions, and ambiguities arising between literary and philosophical forms of discourse, including philosophical themes in works not ordinarily considered in the canon of Greek philosophical texts. This new volume considers such topics as the pre-philosophical origins of Anaximander’s calendar, the philosophical significance of public performance and claims of poetic inspiration, and the complex role of mythic figures (including perhaps Socrates) in Plato. Taken together, the essays offer new approaches to familiar texts and open up new possibilities for understanding the roles and relationships between muthos and logos in ancient Greek thought. “This is a stellar effort. The essays are all of extremely high quality and interest. The scholarship is rigorous and the content is innovative. The conception of the book is highly original, well-grounded, and well-thought-out. William Wians’s work as a scholar and as an editor has been consistently first-rate, and with this volume he has surpassed himself.” — Rose M. Cherubin, George Mason University. (shrink)

Plato's Meno presents a deceptively simple surface. Plato begins by having his character Meno ask Socrates how virtue is acquired. Instead of having Socrates respond directly, Plato has him divert the conversation to the question of what virtue is. But Plato's Meno isn't accustomed to the rigors of Socratic inquiry, and so Plato allows him to force the discussion back toward a version of his original question. After a series of false starts and frustrations, Plato ends his dialogue with (…) (...) - 12. Plato 12 (2012). (shrink)

_Physics_ VIII 1 presents a multi-stage argument concluding that there was not, nor ever will be, a time when there was not nor will not be motion (_Phys_. VIII 1.252b5-6). In this paper I shall argue that chapter’s argument is dialectical in a precise way. My claim will be that _Physics_ VIII 1 is apodeictically conditioned – its structure must be understood in terms of the theory of science in the _Posterior Analytics_ and the methods for establishing principles in the (...) _Topics. Physics_ VIII 1 is not demonstrative in a straightforward deductive way, but is structured with the nature of a scientific _genos_ and requirements for scientific knowledge always in mind. Aristotle begins by asking about the eternality of motion, posing a pair of conceptual opposites that form a mutually exclusive and logically exhaustive dichotomy. But the initial statement of the dichotomy turns out to require substantial unpacking, leading eventually to a single remaining option, that motion in the cosmos is eternal. But the status of this conclusion itself turns out to be problematic. Put in terms of Aristotle’s theory of science, all _phusiologoi_ made motion a posit or hypothesis, whether they regarded motion as eternal or not. Though Aristotle has rejected one option, at a deeper level, he finds all previous accounts lacking. Because motion is fundamental to all coming-to-beand-passing-away, what is at stake is the status and adequacy of a principle governing the whole science of nature (_tên theôrian pasan_; 250b17). In this way, the chapter prepares for the subsequent investigation into the principles of cosmic motion. (shrink)

I shall argue that, according to Aristotle, the knowledge we may attain is profoundly qualified by our status as human knowers. Throughout the corpus, Aristotle maintains a separation of knowledge at the broadest level into two kinds, human and divine. The separation is not complete—human knowers may enjoy temporarily what god or the gods enjoy on a continuous basis; but the division expresses a fact about humanity's place in the cosmos, one that imposes strict conditions on what we may know, (...) with what degree of certainty, and in what areas. While passages bearing on human knowledge are familiar, looking at them collectively and in comparison with certain other well known Aristotelian doctrines may significantly affect how we understand the goals of his philosophy and why our hopes for reaching them must be limited. (shrink)

Matthew Walker’s book argues that contemplation is not useless as “traditionally” claimed, but serves the crucial function of guiding what Walker frequently refers to as human life activities, most importantly the self-maintenance of the human organism. By this phrase, he includes the full range of psychic functions essential to a perishable organism, extending down to nourishment and reproduction. As such, contemplation not only becomes the central organizing principle of Aristotle’s ethics, but also must be understood in connection with Aristotle’s natural (...) philosophy.The book’s early chapters strike me as following something like the order of the De anima, leading from what is perhaps... (shrink)

A collection of 16 essays which assess the revival of development studies in relation to Aristotle.

In his fine paper on the aims of Aristotle’s methods, Sean Kirkland suggests that Aristotle practiced a proto-phenomenological approach to truth. In doing so, Kirkland reminds us of the lived dimension of Aristotle’s philosophizing, an active and ongoing response to the world that begins long before the emergence of philosophical concepts and systems. I am in sympathy with much of what Kirkland argues. However, I think more needs to be said about the relationship between dialectic and demonstration, and about the (...) precise nature of dialectic itself, which Aristotle characterizes as a form of deductive argument, rather than the loose collection of inductive techniques implied by Kirkland. Aristotle shows a remarkable sensitivity to the complexity of searching for principles, and the variety of means by which the search is conducted, implying a need for a discourse on methods, though he himself supplies it only unsystematically. (shrink)

_Explores the philosophical dimensions present in the works of ancient Greek poets and playwrights._.

Volume 31 contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2014-15. Works: _Symposium_, _Republic_, _Euthyphro_, Proclus’s _De malorum_, _Sophist_, _Statesman_; topics: eros, tripartite soul, what the gods love, evil, Homeric motifs.

The volume contains papers and commentaries presented to the _Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy_ during the academic year 2015-16. Works: Phaedrus, Republic, Apology, Laws, Seventh Letter, Stoic texts. Topics: Stoic blending, reciprocal eros, perception in tripartite soul, Stoic identity, Plato’s politics and events.

This volume, the twenty-seventh year of published proceedings, contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2010-11. The papers treat thinkers ranging from Philolaus, Plato and Aristotle, to Plotinus.

This volume, the twenty-eighth year of published proceedings, contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2011-12. The papers treat thinkers ranging from early Greek cosmology, to several on Plato and one each on Aristotle and Plotinus.

Volume 33 contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2015-16. Works: Parmenides’ _Poem, Posterior Analytics_ and _Poetics_, Gorgias. Topics: liar’s paradox, syllogism and nature, authorial freedom, _ousia_ and the true and good.

This volume, the twenty-fifth year of published proceedings, contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2008-9. The papers treat thinkers ranging from Heraclitus and Anaxagoras, to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and to Chyrsippus and Proclus.

This volume, the twenty-sixth year of published proceedings, contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2009-10. The papers treat thinkers ranging from Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle, to Themistius.

Volume XXIX contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2012-13. The papers feature Plato's Republic and Timaeus , examine Aristotle on generation, analogy and method, and analyze Proclus on first principles.

Volume XXX contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2013-14. They feature: Philebus , Republic , Theaetetus and Alcibiades I , Sophist , and Symposium , Apology and Phaedo , on pleasure, knowledge, the city, and the philosopher.