Stoicism was one of the new philosophical movements of the Hellenistic period. The name derives from the porch (stoa poikilê) in the Agora at Athens decorated with mural paintings, where the members of the school congregated, and their lectures were held. Unlike ‘epicurean,’ the sense of the English adjective ‘stoical’ is not utterly misleading with regard to its philosophical origins. The Stoics did, in fact, hold that emotions like fear or envy (or impassioned sexual attachments, or passionate love of anything (...) whatsoever) either were, or arose from, false judgements and that the sage—a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection—would not undergo them. The later Stoics of Roman Imperial times, Seneca and Epictetus, emphasise the doctrines (already central to the early Stoics' teachings) that the sage is utterly immune to misfortune and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Our phrase ‘stoic calm’ perhaps encapsulates the general drift of these claims. It does not, however, hint at the even more radical ethical views which the Stoics defended, e.g. that only the sage is free while all others are slaves, or that all those who are morally vicious are equally so. Though it seems clear that some Stoics took a kind of perverse joy in advocating views which seem so at odds with common sense, they did not do so simply to shock. Stoic ethics achieves a certain plausibility within the context of their physical theory and psychology, and within the framework of Greek ethical theory as that was handed down to them from Plato and Aristotle. It seems that they were well aware of the mutually interdependent nature of their philosophical views, likening philosophy itself to a living animal in which logic is bones and sinews; ethics and physics, the flesh and the soul respectively (another version reverses this assignment, making ethics the.. (shrink)

Surveys the ideals of friendship in ancient Greco-Roman philosophy. The notion of the best friendship inevitably reflects the various conceptions of a good life.

This essay argues the Stoics are rightly regarded as pantheists. Their view differs from many forms of pantheism by accepting the notion of a personal god who exercises divine providence. Moreover, Stoic pantheism is utterly inimical to a deep ecology ethic. I argue that these features are nonetheless consistent with the claim that they are pantheists. The essay also considers the arguments offered by the Stoics. They thought that their pantheistic conclusion was an extension of the best science of their (...) day. Some of their most interesting arguments are thusa posteriori. (shrink)

I recognise in retrospect that this review chides Prof. Hadot for those things that he didn't do so well, while failing to give due credit to the kinds of writing about philosophy that he did do well.

The Platonic dialogues contain passages that seem to point in quite opposite directions on the question of the moral equality of women with men. Rep. V defends the view that sexual difference need not be relevant to a person’s capacity for philosophy and thus for virtue. Tim. 42a-c, however, makes incarnation in a female body a punishment for failure to master the challenges of embodiment. This paper examines the different ways in which two subsequent Platonists, Proclus (d. 485 CE) and (...) Theodore of Asine (d. c. 360 CE), dealt with this tension. (shrink)

It is sometimes claimed that the Kantian Ought Implies Can principle (OIC) rules out the possibility of moral dilemmas. A certain understanding of OIC does rule out the possibility of moral dilemmas in the sense defined. However I doubt that this particular formulation of the OIC principle is one that fits well with the eudaimonist framework common to ancient Greek moral philosophy. In what follows, I explore the reasons why Aristotle would not accept the OIC principle in the form in (...) which it rules out the possibility of moral dilemmas. (shrink)

Later versions of Platonic ethics fit the frame of eudaimonism and specify a telos based on Theaetetus 176B and Timaeus 90A-D: 'likeness to god in so far as possible'. This paper examines the development of this idea from the middle Platonist Alcinous to the Neoplatonist Proclus. It examines the way in which Proclus makes this specification of human happiness a bit less "other worldy".

The idea that there is a coherent and morally relevant concept of sexual perversions has been increasingly called into question. In what follows, I will be concerned with two recent attacks on the notion of sexual perversion: those of Graham Priest and Igor Primoratz. Priest’s paper is the deeper of the two. Primoratz goes methodically through various accounts of sexual perversion and finds difficulties in them. This is no small task, of course, but unlike Priest he does not attempt to (...) provide any diagnosis of why any attempt to analyse the concept of sexual perversion must fail. Priest argues that sexual perversion is an “inapplicable concept”: the presuppositions that would allow us to make sense of the notion have been rightly rejected. Without the theoretical backdrop of an Aristotelian moral teleology, we cannot provide a satisfactory account of sexual perversion, for only such a teleological world-view allows us to give some sense to the idea that a sexual practice might be morally wrong because it is unnatural. Priest surveys accounts of perversion that don’t appeal to any idea of unnaturalness and rejects them—rightly I believe. But, Priest argues, Aristotle’s own moral teleology is part and parcel of his wider views about purpose in nature. This natural teleology has been shown to be explanatorily superfluous. Though some sciences still talk of functions, this can be understood in terms of contributions to evolutionary survival. Though there is considerable disagreement about the details of the right account of function, all versions of this scientifically respectable teleology are morally neutral: it would not follow from the fact that homosexual intercourse does nothing to propagate the agents’ genetic material to future generations that it is therefore morally wrong. Here too I think Priest is right. He also considers what he calls “Aristotelian revivalism” in Roger Scruton’s account of sexual perversion. I think Priest sells Aristotelianism short. I have no interest in defending Scruton’s own understanding of the Aristotelian moral framework nor his particular account of sexual perversion. I shall, however, argue that Aristotelian moral philosophy provides a more useful framework for thinking about these issues than Priest implies, and attempt to defend an account of sexual perversion within the context of this framework. (shrink)

Hartshorne and Reese thought that in the Timaeus Plato wasn’t quite a panentheist—though he would have been if he’d been consistent. More recently, Cooper has argued that while Plato’s World Soul may have inspired panentheists, Plato’s text does not itself describe a form of panenetheism. In this paper, I will reconsider this question not only by examining closely the Timaeus but by thinking about which features of current characterizations of panentheism are historically accidental and how the core of the doctrine (...) might most fruitfully be understood. I’ll argue that there is a polytheistic view that deserves to be called panentheistic and that Plato’s Timaeus describes such a view. (shrink)

This article tackles the sole surviving ancient commentary on what was perhaps the second most important Platonic work, with special interest for the manner in which the ancients tackled the setting of Plato's dialogues, Socratic ignorance, Socratic eros, the central myth-like Palinode, and the question of oral as against written teaching.

Translation and commentary on the only surviving sustained work on Plato's Phaedrus from antiquity.

It is widely agreed that, in the re-emergence of Platonism as a dogmatic school of philosophy following the demise of the sceptical academy, Plato's works came to have an authoritative status. This paper argues for a particular understanding of what that authority consists in and how it was acquired.

Proclus defends the Platonic view that the heavens consist in (the highest gradations) of all four elements. He attacks Aristotle's view that the heavens consist in a distinct, fifth element.

In this paper we examine some of the astrological content in Proclus' exegesis of the 'nuptial number' in Republic 545d, ff. The downfall of the best city-state is said by Socrates to be due to the fact that the Guardians, for all their wisdom, make a mistake about the timing of the breeding of future rulers and this mistake is somehow due to perception. We argue that Proclus' Republic Commentary is best understood as supposing that the Guardians are highly capable (...) astrologers who can -- up until one fateful day -- reliably hit the astrological trifecta: they combine conception astrology with natal and katarchic astrology. The marriage festivals are timed so that future Guardians are conceived under the right stars, with pregnancies of the right duration, and are born under the right stars, with guardian daemons whose names and natures are known through an astrologically-oriented theurgic practice. All this (and more) Proclus took to be hinted at through Socrates' opaque specification of the marriage number. (shrink)

Plato’s Phaedrus is a dialogue of journeys, a tale of transitions. It begins with Socrates’ question, ‘Where to and from whence, my dear Phaedrus?’ and concludes with the Socrates’ decision, ‘Let’s go’ (sc. back into the city from whence they’ve come). In the speech that forms its centre-piece Socrates narrates another famous journey—the descent of the soul into the body and its reascent to the realm of Forms through erotic madness. It is not too implausible to suppose that Plato himself (...) saw fit to relate his powerful images of the human soul’s fall and re-ascent by dramatic means that highlight the movement from one place to another. This explains how Hermias of Alexandria -- author of the longest sustained work on the Phaedrus to survive from antiquity related the physical journey to the Ilissus to the soul's descent and ascent. This seemingly implausible allegorising gains a certain kind of sense when we consider that the Neoplatonic commentary tradition formed part of a philosophic way of life with an ethical telos. (shrink)

Plato's Tim. 90b1-c6 describes a pathway to the soul's salvation via the study of the heavens. This paper poses three questions about this theme in Platonism: 1. The epistemological question: How is the paradigmatic function of the visible heavenly bodies to be reconciled with various Platonic misgivings about the faculty of perception? 2. The metaphysical question: How can »assimilation« to the motions of bodies in the realm of Becoming provide for the salvation of souls when souls are »higher«- a mid-point (...) between Being and Becoming? 3. The psychological question: What can it mean for an incorporeal soul to utilise the motions of a body for an ethical and cognitive paradigm? And provides an account of how Proclus and some of his fellow Neoplatonists answered these questions. (shrink)

In the Phaedrus, Socrates insists that every proper logos must have the unity of an organic living thing. And yet it is hard to say what imposes any such unity on the various speeches and topics that are dealt with in this very dialogue. This chapter situates the view of Hermias of Alexandria in relation to modern debates about what, if anything, unifies the Phaedrus. For the ancient Neoplatonists, the question of unity was bound up with the question of each (...) dialogue's "skopos". We argue that Hermias' answer to this question -- that the skopos of the Phaedrus is 'beauty at every level' -- is not as wildly implausible as Neoplatonic readings of Plato's dialogues are often thought to be. (shrink)

In his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Alexander of Aphrodisias quotes from Aristotle's now-lost work On the Ideas -- his account of the arguments offered by Plato for the theory of Forms and his criticisms of those arguments. This paper considers one of these arguments, the Argument from Relatives (ta pros ti). It considers how Plato argued for Forms or Ideas such as the Large Itself, the Just Itself and so on and whether Plato supposed that there were Forms corresponding to (...) sortal terms like Man. (shrink)

Discussions of divine immutability normally take place against the backdrop of a presupposition of monotheism. This background makes some problems seem especially salient—for instance, does the notion that God is immutable have any implications for God’s relation to time? In what follows, I’ll consider the problem of divine immutability in the context of henotheistic conceptions of god. I take henotheism to be the view that, although there are a plurality of gods, all of them are in some sense dependent upon (...) and subordinate to one god that is the supreme first principle or archê. Henoetheism was the dominant approach to gods among the pagan philosophers of antiquity—with a few exceptions. I consider the development of henotheistic defences of divine immutability through a dialectical development from Xenophanes to Plato to Proclus. (shrink)

It is widely supposed that Epicurus' identification of aponia (painlessness) and the absence of anxiety (ataraxia) yields as a consequence the claim that the most pleasant life is one that requires little in the way of resources or power. This paper argues that the remarks in Cicero which attempt to reconstruct Epicurus' reasons for thinking that aponia and ataraxia are the limit of pleasure are best interpreted if we suppose that the inference runs the other direction. Epicurus supposed that it (...) was a pre-theoretical constraint on any account of human happiness that it should be natural. Moreover, its naturalness means its in-principle availability to most humans. (shrink)

Lengthy review of the 2020 Brill Companion to Hellenistic Astronomy with special reference to Neoplatonism.

We ought to combine the predicative and veridical readings of estin. Plato’s view involves a parallelism between truth and being: when we know, we grasp a logos which is completely true and is made true by an on which is completely (F). Opinion takes as its object a logos which is no more true than false and which concerns things which are no more (F) than not (F). This view, I argue, is intelligible in the context of the presuppositions which (...) underlie Socratic ‘What is F?’ questions. (shrink)

I come not to clarify Aristotle’s defence of the principle of non-contradiction, but to put it in its proper context. I argue that remarks in Metaphysics IV.3 together with the argument of IV.4, 1006a11-31 show that Aristotle practises Plato’s method of dialectic in his defence of PNC. I mean this in the strong sense that he uses the very methodology described in the middle books of the Republic and, I claim, illustrated in such dialogues as Parmenides, Sophist and Theaetetus.

In the Phaedo, Socrates endorses the view that the senses are not a means whereby we may come to gain knowledge. Whenever one investigates by means of the senses, one is deceived. One can attain truth only by inquiry through intellect alone. It is a measure of the success of empiricism that modern commentators take a very different approach to Phaedo 65a9-67b3 than their neoplatonist forebearers did. In what follows I shall argue that, if they made too much of "Socrate's" (...) anti-empiricism, we make too little of it.I believe that careful examination of the presuppositions of Socratic questioning will reveal some principled reasons which lead to the view about sense perception that Socrates endorses in the Phaedo. These reasons are, I believe, wrong and I think that Plato may have had occassion to reconsider them later in his career. But even if this is so, it remains that Socrates' anti-empiricism in this dialogue is not simply a gratuitous epistemological reflection of the dialogue's otherworldly, ascetic ethical outlook. (shrink)

In this paper we look at two kinds of relations that give rise to reasons for action of a distinctive sort: friendship and erotic love. We argue that what is common to these different relations of affection is that the people in them exhibit dispositions toward mutual direction by one another and interpretation of one another (in a sense that we describe in detail below). This mutual responsiveness is, in part, a matter of responding to reasons that arise from the (...) relation of love or friendship. These reasons are frequently distinct from – and may be opposed to – normative reasons arising from prudence or even morality. Yet reasons of love are normative: they too may obligate us. They may make demands on us that conflict with our present desires and require considerable sacrifice. (shrink)

In previous chapters, it has become clear that Proclus’ metaphysics is often relevant to human life. In this chapter, that relation is elaborated on in detail, starting from the notion of a ‘textual community’. In the first section, the author presents the Neoplatonic goal of human life, assimilation to the divine. In the second section, he elaborates the scale of virtues through which, according to Proclus, one may reach that assimilation. The third section is devoted to establishing the interesting hypothesis (...) that the philosophical curriculum was in fact considered a mystagogy, aimed at internalizing semantic associations and thereby acquiring the different virtues. In the last section the author turns to Proclus’ political philosophy, and specifically the analogical relation between the philosopher-ruler and the demiurge. (shrink)

Proclus takes the Republic’s (Book V) recommendation that there should be both male and female Guardians as a serious political proposal, but like Plato, he gives few specifics. A recurring theme in Proclus’ commentary is that political arrangements are just to the extent that they effectively mirror the providential administration of the cosmos. Thus the Myth of Er is not merely an adornment at the end of the dialogue, but contains important information about the cosmic paradigm to which the just (...) human polis should assimilate itself. This paper will consider the role of female Guardians in Proclus’ interpretation of the Republic as a serious suggestion in political theory by looking at the cosmic paradigms for women’s administration of justice in the Myth of Er. I have argued elsewhere that Proclus hypothesises gendered souls corresponding to male and female divinities and that, moreover, the feminine is subordinate to the masculine at the level of the divine. One point to emerge from my reading of the Myth of Er is that the female Guardians are likely to be subordinated to their male counter-parts if they play a role in the ideal polis analogous to the female divinities in the Myth of Er. A second point is that there are aspects of their role that seem to resemble some features of what has come to be called ‘the ethics of care’. (shrink)

Lengthy critical notice of J. B. Kennedy, The Musical Structure of Plato's Dialogues (Acumen, 2011). -/- We approached the prospect of reviewing Kennedy’s book with excitement and optimism, but we’ve left rather disappointed. The case doesn’t hang together, we think, because it requires us to suppose that Plato composed to a pattern that his readers wouldn’t be looking for. They wouldn’t be looking for it musically, because it is not musically significant. Moreover, if he expected them to be looking for (...) such a pattern in the stichometry, then the evidence available to us suggests that his expectations went wholly unfulfilled. Plato may have been a perverse writer in many ways – for instance, by disparaging philosophical writing in a philosophical text – but we think Kennedy’s hypothesis requires us to attribute a touch too much perversity to one of our favourite authors. (shrink)

In Plato’s dialogues we often find Socrates talking at length about poetry. Sometimes he proposes censorship of certain works because what they say is false or harmful. Other times we find him interpreting the poets or rejecting potential interpretations of them. This raises the question of whether there is any consistent account to be given of Socrates’ practice as a literary critic. One might think that Plato himself in the Ion answers the question that I have raised. Rhapsody, at least (...) in the Ion , is portrayed as the activity of interpreting and evaluating the works of the poets. At first glance at least, Plato seems to conclude that this activity cannot meet the standards of a τέχνη. Rhapsodes are divine madmen. Thus, there cannot be a systematic Platonic account of literary criticism because this activity is inherently irrational and, subsequently, not something that one could engage in in a systematic way, guided by a theory of any sort. In the first part of the paper I argue that the Ion does not simply consign the Interpretation of poetry to the irrational and, as a result, does not pose an obstacle to the possibility of a Platonic literary criticism. In the second part of the paper I turn to the task of finding an account of the purpose of reading poetry and strategies for fulfilling this purpose that make systematic sense of Socrates’ multifarious remarks about poetry. (shrink)

Proclus' interpretation of the Timaeus confronts the question of whether the living being that is the Platonic cosmos perceives itself. Since sense perception is a mixed blessing in the Platonic tradition, Proclus solves this problem by differentiating different gradations of perception. The cosmos has only the highest kind. This paper contrasts Proclus' account of the world's perception of itself with James Lovelock's notion that the planet Earth, or Gaia, is aware of things going on within itself. This contrast illuminates several (...) key differences between contemporary theories of perception and the neoplatonic world view. In particular, it argues that the neoplatonists had a radically different view of these matters because they assigned the property of truth not only to representations, but to objects as well. (shrink)

Lengthy review of Nicola Spanu's 2020 book, Proclus and the Chaldean Oracles A Study on Proclean Exegesis, with a Translation and Commentary of Proclus’ Treatise On Chaldean Philosophy. The review indulges in some reflections on methodology and the interpretation of Neoplatonic texts.

It is an axiom of late neoplatonic metaphysics that all things are in all, but in each in an appropriate manner (ὀικείως, ET 103). These manners or modes of being are indicated by adverbial forms such as παραδειματικῶς or εἰκονικῶς. Thus, for example, the Forms are in the World Soul in the mode of images, while the objects in the sensible realm below Soul are in it in the manner of paradigms (in Tim. II 150.27). Among the many modes of (...) being distinguished by Proclus we find existence ὁλικῶς and μερικῶς – in the manner of a whole and in the manner of a part. This paper investigates the nature and significance of these mereological modes of being. (shrink)

The Phaedo is usually taken to be among Plato's metaphysically richest dialogues. Dilman argues that, at best, the views of Plato's Socrates are here free of the taint of metaphysics, or that worthwhile, nonmetaphysical theses are propounded alongside metaphysical ones. In these cases, Dilman attempts to separate out "Socrates' spiritual and moral perceptions" from the metaphysical claims. The latter are "a mystification of the grammar of the language in which such perceptions are expressed". Dilman's objection to such metaphysical theses is (...) Wittgensteinian. When philosophy goes beyond the attempt to articulate the role that a certain discourse plays in our form of life and, instead, attempts to provide some philosophical justification or explanation for our form of life, it degenerates into incoherence. Such language ceases to "do work" and is then "idling.". (shrink)

In the present volume Proclus describes the 'creation' of the soul that animates the entire universe. This is not a literal creation, for Proclus argues that Plato means only to convey the eternal dependence of the World Soul upon higher causes. In his exegesis of Plato's text, Proclus addresses a range of issues in Pythagorean harmonic theory, as well as questions about the way in which the World Soul knows both forms and the visible reality that comprises its body. This (...) part of Proclus' Commentary is particularly responsive to the interpretive tradition that precedes it. As a result, this volume is especially significant for the study of the Platonic tradition from the earliest commentators onwards. (shrink)

The commentary on Plato's Republic by Proclus (d. 485 CE), which takes the form of a series of essays, is the only sustained treatment of the dialogue to survive from antiquity. This three-volume edition presents the first complete English translation of Proclus' text, together with a general introduction that argues for the unity of Proclus' Commentary and orients the reader to the use which the Neoplatonists made of Plato's Republic in their educational program. Each volume is completed by a Greek (...) word index and an English-Greek glossary that will help non-specialists to track the occurrence of key terms throughout the translated text. The second volume of the edition presents Proclus' essays on the tripartite soul and the virtues, female philosopher rulers, and the metaphysics and epistemology of the central books of the Republic. The longest of the essays in Volume II interprets the nature and significance of the 'marriage number' whose miscalculation leads to the degeneration of the ideal city-state. (shrink)

In the present volume Proclus comments on the creation of the body of the universe in Plato's Timaeus.

Covers Essays 1 to 6 in Proclus' Commentary and includes a general introduction to the work as a whole.

Neoplatonist commentators generally regarded Plato as having a unified account of a method called 'dialectic'. This paper looks at the manner in which they reconciled the idea of dialectic from the Republic (with its ascent to an unhypothetical first principle) with the method of collection and division described in dialogues like Phaedrus and Philebus and seemingly illustrated in dialogues like the Statesman.

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

_ Source: _Volume 11, Issue 2, pp 173 - 195 This paper examines the role of the theme in Neoplatonic interpretive practice, particularly with respect to Platonic dialogues. The belief that every dialogue has a single _skopos_ and that every aspect of the dialogue can be seen as subserving that _skopos_ is one of the most distinctive of the Neoplatonists’ intepretive principles. 1 It is also the one that is most directly responsible for the forced and artificial character of their (...) readings of Plato. The arguments offered in support of this principle are manifestly inadequate to justify the role that it plays. This is so even if we evaluate those arguments by the Neoplatonists’ own lights. If we want to understand how this practice seemed rational to them, we need to consider more than their texts and Plato’s. We need to consider the role that the shared act of reading a Platonic dialogue with the teacher had in transforming the souls of the students and in the self-understanding of Neoplatonic teachers. I. Hadot, among others, has argued that the continuous commentary was a kind of spiritual exercise. 2 I largely agree with her conclusion, though I believe her analysis of the sense in which these were spiritual exercises needs to be deepened. I argue that the justification for the assumption that each dialogue has a single _skopos_ is best understood by reference to the manner in which the practice of commentary functioned within the internal economy of their schools considered as textual communities. 3. (shrink)

A critical examination of contemporary nursing theory suggests that two distinct discourses coexist within this field. On the one hand, proponents of the ‘knowledge discourse’ argue that nurses should drop the ‘virtue script’ and focus on the scientific and technical aspects of their work. On the other hand, proponents of the ‘caring discourse’ promote a view of nursing that embodies humanistic qualities such as compassion, empathy and mutuality. In view of this, we suggest a way to reconcile both discourses despite (...) the fact that they appear to be at odds theoretically and practically. To that end, we argue that nursing theory must give a prominent role to the Aristotelian conception of virtue, and we offer an account that includes both character and intellectual virtues. This account allows for a focus on moral competence but also accommodates the demands for discipline‐specific knowledge. Our account incorporates the caring discourse by suggesting a way for individuals to cultivate the conditions within themselves that make ‘caring in nursing’ possible, while the knowledge discourse is accommodated via the acquisition of the intellectual virtues. The process for achieving both these ends is the same: an intention to consistently develop, hone and exercise certain character traits over time. (shrink)

Philosophy, theology and engineering are each characterised by striking, yet similar, low participation rates by female academics. While these disciplines seem very different, and so the diagnosis of the causes of this under-representation might likewise be expected to differ, we show a commonality of analysis in the diagnoses of, and responses to, women's under-representation. In each, we find a shared argument that concepts and methodologies central to that discipline are gendered male. We also find a shared response which urges engagement (...) in projects of critical re-imagination. We conclude with a case study of critical re-imagination in philosophy and draw some lessons from its successes and failures for the potential of gendered innovations to transform male dominated disciplines. While critical re-imagination of key concepts, presuppositions, and methodologies in these disciplines may be a necessary condition for improving participation rates by women, it is by no means sufficient. (shrink)

This commentary records, through notes taken by Hermias, Syrianus' seminar on Plato's Phaedrus, one of the world's most influential celebrations of erotic beauty and love. It is the only Neoplatonic commentary on Plato's Phaedrus to have survived in its entirety. Further interest comes from the recorded interventions by Syrianus' pupils - including those by Proclus, his eventual successor as head of the Athenian school, who went on to teach Hermias' father, Ammonius. The second of two volumes of Hermias' commentary, the (...) chapters translated here begin with a discussion of how the discarnate soul is visualised as a winged chariot team whose charioteer may gain some glimpse of beauty itself, which can explain subsequent erotic longing. This volume provides a translation is accompanied by explanatory notes, an introduction detailing the significance and context of the treatise and a scholarly apparatus including multiple indexes, glossaries and a bibliography. (shrink)