Peripatetics

The discussions of conatus – force, tendency, effort, and striving – in early modern metaphysics have roots in Aristotle’s understanding of life as an internal experience of living force. This paper examines the ways that Spinoza’s conatus is consonant with Aristotle on effort. By tracking effort from his psychology and ethics to aesthetics, I show there is a conatus at the heart of the activity of the ψυχή that involves an intensification of power in a way which anticipates many of (...) the central insights of early modern and 20th century European philosophy. The first section outlines how Aristotle’s developmental conception of the soul as geometrically ordered lays the foundation for his understanding of effort. The developmental series of powers of the soul are analogous to the series of shapes in mathematics. The second section links the striving of the soul to the gradual acquisition of virtues as a directed activity unifying multiplicity. The third examines the paradigm of self-awareness that Aristotelian effort involves. In the final section I show how ancient Greek theories of music were founded on the experience of striving. The “nature” of music is defined by Aristoxenus, and Theophrastus, in relation to the passion and intentionality of the soul. The geometrical order, as a synthesis of elements in geometry, music, or ethics, is a generative process in which past elements are retained and reintegrated in later stages of development. It requires effort to think geometrically, and the progress of knowledge itself is an integral aspect of all effort. Effort is the lived and self-aware cause which, moving step by step in an orderly and deliberate way, grows and advances upon itself. For both Spinoza and Aristotle, effort is the immanent intelligence which accomplishes what is in the purview of its understanding. Thus, will, in this conception of effort, is not something we already possess innately, but emerges gradually by an effort aimed at improvement. (shrink)

In this article I argue for the thesis that Alexander's main argument, in Ethical Problems I, is an attempt to block the implication drawn by the Stoics and other ancient philosophers from the double potential of use exhibited by human life, a life that can be either well or badly lived. Alexander wants to resist the thought that this double potential of use allows the Stoics to infer that human life, in itself, or by its own nature, is neither good (...) nor bad. Furthermore, I shall argue that Alexander's main argument establishes that human life, despite exhibiting a double potential of use, is by its own nature or intrinsically good. Finally, given that this is not a conclusion that the Stoics are likely to accept, I shall also contend that the argument should be regarded as conducted for the most part in foro interno, as a way of persuading the Peripatetics themselves of the falsity of the Indifference Implication, precisely because of the risk that such an implication be derived from their own theoretical framework. (shrink)

The revised and polished version of Inwood’s 2011 Carl Newell Jackson at Harvard University, Ethics after Aristotle surveys the ethical teachings of the original “neo-Aristotelians,” namely those self-identified (although not always named) members of the Peripatetic school from the time of Theophrastus (fl. 300 BCE) until that of Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 200 CE). An initial chapter surveys the sorts of problems in Aristotle’s ethical corpus which would generate subsequent debate amongst members of the Peripatetic school. Chapter Two examines the (...) views of “Magnus,” the name which Inwood gives to the anonymous 3rd century author of the Magna Moralia (which Inwood takes to be pseudo-Aristotle), and those of Strato of Lampsacus, Lycon, and Hieronymus, 3rd century heads of the Peripatetic school, all of whom show the influences of Epicureanism in their re-articulations of Aristotelian positions. Chapter Three, entitled “The Turning Point,” finds in the work of Critolaus—head of the Peripatetic school in the middle of the 2nd century BCE—a move away from the centrality of activity within Aristotelian ethical thought, which Critolaus instead replaces with the notion of possessing specific goods, namely those of the body, the soul, and what is external. The same chapter argues that at approximately the same historical point Cicero, in the character of Piso in De finibus, articulated an account of Peripatetic ethics that was far more faithful to 4th century Aristotelianism. The final two chapters focus on neo-Aristotelian ethical philosophizing within a new and explicitly Roman cultural setting. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se concentra en el debate acerca de los alcances de la providencia que tuvo lugar entre las escuelas estoica, platónica y peripatética entre las siglos I y III de nuestra era. En ese contexto, analiza el problema del status ontológico de los singulares en Orígenes de Alejandría y Nemesio de Émesa. Influidos primariamente por la síntesis filoniana entre las distintas teorías griegas de providencia y la de las Escrituras, estos autores fundan la consistencia de los singulares en (...) la tesis de una acción directa del principio divino sobre cada uno de ellos. Frente a una cierta tendencia universalista y necesitarista del pensamiento clásico, los Padres griegos intentaron rescatar el valor metafísico del individuo en cuanto tal. -/- The present paper focuses on the debate over the scope of Providence that took place among the Stoic, Platonic and Peripatetic schools between the first and the third centuries AD. In that context, it deals with the problem of the ontological status of the singulars in the thought of Origen of Alexandria and Nemesius of Emesa. Influenced primarily by the Philonian synthesis of the different Greek theories of Providence with that of the Scriptures, Origen and Nemesius ground the consistency of individual beings on the thesis of a direct divine action intended for each of them. Faced with the universalistic and necessitarian tendencies of classical thought, the Greek Fathers tried to rescue the metaphysical value of individuals as such. (shrink)

Biographical note: Bernd Seidensticker, Freie Universität Berlin; Martin Vöhler, Freie Universität Berlin.

This edition presents a radically improved text of Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers. The text is accompanied by a full critical apparatus on three levels. A lengthy introduction lists all the manuscripts of the Lives and discusses its transmission in late antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. There is also an index of personal names, a bibliography and notes covering several features of the text and its interpretation. Professor Dorandi has used the Nachlaß of Peter Von der Mühll, (...) for the first time in its entirety, to verify and consolidate material that he had previously gathered. This is by far the most detailed and elaborate edition which Diogenes' Lives - a unique work which has had a profound influence on European literature and philosophy - has ever received. (shrink)