In his historical writings, Cluvius Rufus evidently found cause to criticize Verginius Rufus for his conduct on a particular occasion ‘Scis, Vergini, quae historiae fides debeatur; proinde, si quid in historiis meis legis aliter ac velles, rogo igmoscas’. From his reply, it is clear that Verginius automatically understood Cluvius to be referring to an event to which he himself attached great significance: ‘Tune ignoras, Cluvi, ideo me fecisse, quod feci, ut esset liberum vobis scribere quae libuisset?’.

Surprisingly little attention has been devoted to Musonius Rufus, a noted teacher and philosopher in first–century CE Rome, despite ample evidence for his impact in the period. This paper attempts to situate Musonius in relation to his philosophical predecessors in order to clarify both the contemporary status of the Stoic tradition and the value of engaging with the central figures of that school’s history. I make the case for seeing Cleanthes as a particularly prominent predecessor for (...) class='Hi'>Musonius and reaffirm the importance of framing his philosophical commitments in the context of the Stoic tradition. On this latter point, I attempt to connect Musonius’ perspective on askesis and moral development with that of Posidonius (and Seneca). In doing so, I push back against the sometimes overly schematic intellectualism attributed to Stoic ethics generally. (shrink)

Called 'The Roman Socrates,' Musonius Rufus is a first-century Stoic philosopher who was famous for living and teaching the good life of virtue. This book describes his exemplary life, his ethical teachings, and the practical methods he used to educate people in the good life. Based on the ancient texts and modern scholarship, this book is the first comprehensive treatment of Musonius Rufus's life, teachings, and methods.

A good illustration of the interpretation of ancient philosophy argued for by P. Hadot in the book reviewed above is provided by the Roman Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus, the teacher of Epictetus. In the present work A. Jagu supplies a rather brief introduction to Musonius, a French translation of ancient texts reporting Musonius' views, and comprehensive indices. The translation is accurate and reads well. Jagu's notes on the texts are copious, showing Musonius' orthodoxy by referring (...) to the early Stoics and his influence on Epictetus and Clement of Alexandria. Musonius himself wrote nothing, but his opinions were recorded by pupils, in particular by a certain Lucius. The Christian John Stobaeus, in compiling his anthology, incorporated excerpts from Lucius' work, thus saving it partially from oblivion. This means that as far as our evidence for Musonius is concerned, we are largely at the mercy of Lucius' understanding of his master and of Stobaeus' conventional moralistic interests. These factors account for the almost total absence of material concerning logic and physics and the preservation of fairly trivial discussions concerning, for example, food, clothing, furniture, and even beards! More central issues are also touched on--marriage, children, education, should women do philosophy?, exile, etc. If then what survives relates almost exclusively to ethics, it is clear that in any case Musonius subordinated logic and physics to ethics as did classical Stoicism. Apart from what derived from Lucius, a small amount of evidence concerning Musonius and originating elsewhere is preserved in Stobaeus, Plutarch and some other authors, but it does little more than give a somewhat different impression of Musonius than does Lucius. This book, especially the notes, will be of use not only to those interested in Stoic philosophy and its history but also to students of Roman society and politics of the first century A.D., in which Musonius played a prominent role.--Dominic J. O'Meara, Université de Fribourg. (shrink)

(2007). A Rview Of “Musonius Rufus and Education in the Good Life: A Model of Teaching and Living Virtue”. Educational Studies: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 77-81.

Musonius problématise la politique stoïcienne de manière originale. Sous la direction du maître, l'individu assimile les principes de la vertu et renoue, dans l'ascèse, avec l'impulsion fondamentale de l'oikeiôsis. Le mariage, modèle de toute relation, fonde la petite comme la grande cité qu'il préfigure.

Epictetus (c. 50 A.D., Hierapolis, Phrygia – c. 135 A.D., Nicopolis, Epirus), one of the most prominent representatives (along with Seneca and Marcus Aurelius) of Later Stoa, disciple of Musonius Rufus. In young age he was a slave of Epaphroditus, a courtman of emperor Nero. Under emperor Domitianus he was banned into exile to Nicopolis, where he established his own school. Epictetus was an outstanding exponent of Stoic ethics notable for the consistency and power of his ethical thought (...) and for effective methods of teaching. More sharply than any other stoic he accentuated the item of moral freedom. Epictetus’s chief concerns were with inner integrity and self — management which he advocated by demanding of his students a thorough examination of two central ideas, the capacity of “volition” and the “correct use of impressions”. Heartfelt and satirical by turns, Epictetus has had significant influence on the popular moralistic tradition (in the first place on Marcus Aurelius). His lucid resystematization and challenging application of Stoic ethics qualify him as an important philosopher in his own right within stoic tradition. (shrink)

Rufus of Ephesus (fl. c.100c.e.) was a prolific medical author and practitioner in the Imperial period whose historical importance has been obscured by the loss of most of his works. One of the largest gaps in our knowledge of Rufus’ corpus is his gynaecological writings, none of which survives in full. This article assembles and comments on several fragments from Rufus’ lost gynaecological workOn the Retention of Menses(perhapsΠερὶ τῶν ἐπεχομένων ἐμμήνων). Comparison of overlapping passages from the authors (...) Ibn al-Jazzār (tenth century) and Aëtius of Amida (sixth century) reveals that more fragments of this work in Arabic and Greek have survived than previously thought. These fragments provide new evidence for the analysis of Rufus’ medical thought, and further our understanding of gynaecology in the Roman empire. (shrink)

Richard Rufus of Cornwall was educated as a philosopher at Paris where he was a master of arts.Thomas Eccleston, De adventu Fratrum minorum in Angliam c. 6 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1951), p. 30. In 1238, after lecturing on Aristotle’s libri naturales, Rufus became a Franciscan and moved to Oxford to study theology, becoming the Franciscan master of theology in about 1256 and probably dying not long after 1259.A. Little, “The Franciscan School at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century,” (...) Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 19 (1926): 842–45. Wills and Inventories, Surtees Society Publications 2 (London: J.B. Nichols, 1835), pp. 10–11. Cf. A. Little, The Grey Friars in Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), p. 143. (shrink)

Il Commento di Rufo alla Metafisica aristotelica è tradito integralmente nel Vat. lat. 4538 e parzialmente in altri quattro mss.: Erfurt, Bibl. Amplon., Q. 290 ; Praha, Archiv Prazského Hradu, M. 80 ; Oxford, New College, 285 ; Oxford, Bodl. Libr., misc. lat. C. 71 . Per l'ed. dello Scriptum sono stati utilizzati V, E, e N. In questa sezione del Commento , dove il francescano inglese si propone di conciliare la dottrina dell'immutabilità divina con la dottrina della creazione e (...) dei futuri contingenti, l'A. individua la presenza di argomenti utilizzati da Roberto Grossatesta nel De libero arbitrio. (shrink)

Rufus of Ephesus (fl.c.a.d.100) wrote a large body of works on a variety of medical topics. Generally speaking, the Arabic tradition is particularly important for the reconstruction of much of his œuvre. In the present article, I am going to present four new fragments of Rufus’On Melancholyand a fragment from an otherwise unknown monographOn Preferring Fresh Poppies. These new fragments provide fascinating new insights into Rufus’ approach to recording case histories.

Already an admired senior poet to Virgil in the Eclogues , Varius by the mid-thirties, B.C. had established himself as the leading epic writer of his day . It is a sobering thought that we do not know even the titles of the serious hexameter works which had won him so high a reputation, except for de Morte, quoted four times by Macrobius.

An interesting phrase in a letter of Caelius to Cicero in 51 BC, especially relevant to the standing of injured socii or their non-Roman representatives in the quaestio de repetundis at this time, has been frequently misinterpreted by commentators on Cicero. Caelius is telling Cicero of the outcome of the condemnation of C. Claudius Pulcher after his governorship of Asia and the effect this had on an associate of Claudius, M. Servilius.

In 88 B.C. the dying embers of the Social War kindled an even more dangerous civil war. Violence with gangs was no longer the final solution in Roman political struggles, but war with a regular army took its place. The link between the two wars and the critical escalation of political conflict was created by the tribunate of P. Sulpicius Rufus. Most modern accounts differ little in describing the sequence of events in his tribunate, though they vary in the (...) interpretation of his motives and policy. They agree because they accept the common basis to the narratives of Appian, Plutarch, and Velleius as true, even though they usually discard the Tendenz in these authors, through which Sulpicius is portrayed as an unscrupulous man who put his services at Marius’ disposal. It is the aim of this paper to propose that the wheat in these authors cannot be so easily separated from the chaff: that in fact the bias, which is most obvious in Plutarch’s Lives, and there can be largely ascribed to the influence of Sulla’s fjown memoirs, has not only distorted motives but misplaced and misrepresented facts. Important inconsistencies in Appian, when taken in conjunction with the little information we have outside these sources, suggest a different outline for Sulpicius’ tribunate—one which involves more uncertainties than the commonly accepted view, because it is obtained by rejecting the validity of more of our scanty source material, but which may enable us to judge more fairly not only Sulpicius and Marius but also Sulla himself. (shrink)

This has been an excellent opportunity for me to get a sense of what scholars in fields other than my own (viz., theological social ethics) think I am trying to do, and whether there might be some sense in it. But in all honesty, I must say that the experience of reading and pondering the articles by Lewis Baldwin and Dwayne Tunstall in this issue of The Pluralist has been both enlightening and a joy, inasmuch as it has been an (...) opportunity for me to find out what I have been doing in the academy for the last twenty-five years and where might be some of the limitations as well as promise in my work.When I read these articles, I recalled an experience that second-generation personalist Francis J. McConnell reported .. (shrink)

This book describes the shape of a Christian ethic that arises from a conversation between contemporary accounts of natural law theory, and virtue ethics. The ethic that emerges from this conversation seeks to resolve the tensions in Christian ethics between creation and eschatology, narrative and natural law, and objectivity and relativity. Black moves from this analytic foundation to conclude that worship lies at the heart of a theologically grounded ethic whose central concern is the flourishing of the whole human person (...) in community with both one another and God. (shrink)

I attempt to provide a new answer to the enduring question of why people take the acute risks of climbing mountains. In so doing, I aim to explain, but not necessarily justify, participation in suc...

Los objetivos específicos son los siguientes: (i) reconstruir en forma sistemática la relación entre λόγος y ἔθος/ἄσκησις desarrollada por Musonio Rufo en las Disertaciones 5 y 6; (ii) postular las reflexiones de Aristóteles sobre el problema de la habituación como un marco conceptual relevante para encuadrar el análisis de ambas disertaciones; (iii) analizar las posibles tensiones lógicas entre la concepción de Musonio de ἔθος/ἄσκησις y la concepción intelectualista de la acción humana defendida por la ortodoxia estoica. Sugeriré asimismo que el (...) recurso a las Dissertationes de Epicteto puede ofrecer una respuesta tentativa a interrogantes no resueltos en las Disertaciones 5 y 6. -/- The specific goals are the following: (i) to put together in a systematic manner the relationship between λόγος and ἔθος/ἄσκησις presented by Musonius Rufus in Lectures 5 and 6; (ii) to propose Aristotle’s reflections on the problem of habituation as a relevant framework to make sense of both lectures; (iii) to analyze the possible logical conflicts between Musonius’ conception of ἔθος/ἄσκησις and the intellectualist conception of human agency defended by Stoic orthodoxy. I will further suggest that Epictetus’ Discourses may offer a tentative answer to questions that are left unanswered in Lectures 5 and 6. (shrink)

"This is a strong and sophisticated treatment of Martin Luther King, Jr., that makes an important contribution. It reflects Burrow's immense knowledge of personalist philosophy and the thought of King." —Gary Dorrien, Reinhold Niebuhr Chair of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary "This scholarly, courageous, insightful work, which fuses so successfully King's academic career with his heritage from the Black Church, is a much needed addition to Martin Luther King studies and breaks new ground for all of us who pursue truth (...) of the 'whole' King. No book more clearly illustrates how pervasive an influence the philosophy of personalism was on King's life and thought. It is an obligatory read." —Ira G. Zepp, Jr., Professor Emeritus, McDaniel College Although countless books have been devoted to the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., few, if any, have focused on King's appropriation of, and contribution to, the intellectual tradition of personalism. Burrow argues that King's adoption of personalism represented the fusion of his black Christian faith and his commitment not only to the social gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch, but most especially to the social gospel practiced by his grandfather, his father, and black preacher-scholars at Morehouse College. Burrow devotes much-needed attention both to King's conviction that the universe is value-infused and to the implications of this ideology for King's views on human dignity and his concept of the "Beloved Community." Burrow also sheds light on King’s doctrine of God. He contends that King's view of God has been uncritically and erroneously relegated by black liberation theologians to the general category of "theistic absolutism" and he offers corrections to what he believes are misinterpretations of this and other aspects of King’s thought. He concludes with an application of King’s personalism to present-day social problems, particularly as they pertain to violence in the black community. (shrink)

This paper responds to Tugendhat's well-known and influential critique of Heidegger's concept of truth with the resources of Heidegger's texts, in particular §44 of Being and Time. To start with, Tugendhat's primary critical argument is reconstructed. It is held to consist firstly in the charge of ambiguity against Heidegger's formulations of his concept of truth and secondly in the claim that Heidegger's concept of truth is incompatible with an adequate concept of falsehood. It is shown that the supposedly ambiguous meanings (...) are, on the one hand, in fact clearly distinguished by Heidegger and, on the other, that they merely amount to different extensions of the same meaning of truth. It is then shown how this concept of truth is indeed compatible with an adequate, albeit post-metaphysical, concept of falsehood. Finally, the grounds of falsehood in the untruth of the existential of Verfallen are pursued and further objections are dismissed. (shrink)

God's point of view to the people and the powers at a time when injustice, deceit, malfeasance, and crushing the poor and the oppressed was prominent--much like today! The prophets spoke courageously and emphatically about God's profound and unrelenting concern and compassion for human beings. Much influenced by the theology of prophecy developed by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, this book discusses the nature, meaning, and relevance of ethical prophecy at a time when democracy--in the United States of America and elsewhere--is (...) under vicious assault from the religious and secular right and authoritarian politicians who openly flirt with and support murderous dictators, sexism, homophobia, racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred of Muslims both in word and practice. An examination of the contributions of eight powerful personalities from the period of American slavery through the post-civil rights era--Angelina Grimké, Ida B. Wells, Abraham J. Heschel, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Óscar Romero, and Alice Walker--offers a recipe for addressing this state of affairs. (shrink)