The treatise On Formative Power of Ferrara's emblematic medical humanist, Nicolò Leoniceno, is the one of the first embryological monographs of the Renaissance. It shows, at the same time, the continuity of medieval Arabo-Latin tradition and the new elements brought by Renaissance medical humanism, namely through the use of the ancient Greek commentators of Aristotle like Simplicius. Thus this treatise stands at the crossroad of these two currents. The present study analyses the range of Leoniceno's philosophical discussion, determines (...) its exact sources and brings to light premises for the early modern development of the concept of formative force, which will end up in the theory of "plastic nature" at the heart of the Scientific Revolution. (shrink)

It is commonly agreed that the doctrines of classical Greek philosophers and scientists were transformed by commentators of, roughly, the second to sixth centuries AD. It is, however, less clear how these transformations precisely took place. This article contributes to the discussion by exploring explanative practices in ancient Greek commentaries on authors such as the Hippocratic Corpus, Aristotle, and Euclid and by arguing that among the practices concerned there was a tendency to blur the distinction of nature (...) and text. Among the commentators discussed are Apollonius of Citium, Galen, Proclus, Pappus, Palladius, Simplicius, and Eutocius. Disciplines concerned are mathematics, medicine and natural philosophy. Having distinguished ontological and pragmatic approaches to explanation, I provide an overview of exegetical practices in commentaries which deal with natural phenomena through authoritative texts. The second part of the paper discusses the commentator’s problem of how to decide where to stop explaining or how to select the problems that deserve explanation. The last part analyzes the habit of many commentators to turn perceived gaps into stories. I conclude by returning to the communicative functions of the explanations discussed. It turns out that they, to differing degrees, all contain self-referential aspects that serve to enhance the commentator’s position within his field. (shrink)

An astounding project of analysis on more than one hundred translations of ancient philosophical texts, this index of words found in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series comprises some 114,000 entries. It forms in effect a unique dictionary of philosophical terms from the post-Hellenistic period through to late antiquity and will be an essential reference tool for any scholar working on the meaning of these ancient texts. As traditional dictionaries have usually neglected to include translation examples from philosophical texts (...) of this period, scholars interested in how meanings of words vary across time and author have been ill served. This index fills a huge gap, therefore, in the lexical analysis of ancient Greek and has application well beyond the reading of ancient philosophical commentaries. Bringing together the full indexes from 110 of the volumes published in Bloomsbury's Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, McKirahan has combined each word entry and analysed how many times particular translations occur. He presents his findings numerically so that each meaning in turn has a note as to the number of times it is used. For meanings that are found between one and four times the volume details are also given so that readers may quickly and easily look up the texts themselves. (shrink)

When Barthes starts to conceptualize his courses at the Collège de France, he envisions a methodology which he actually considers to be an ‘anti-method’, that is to say, an ‘unscientific’ method which goes against the grain of traditional education. He pursues the method of his seminars at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes, especially the seminar that ended up with the publication of A Lover's Discourse. In the conclusion to the seminar, Barthes turns to Nietzsche to ground this ‘anti-method’ and (...) to substantiate his claim that literature is a vital dimension of his research and teaching. In the introductory session of Comment vivre ensemble, Barthes labels this ‘anti-method’ – once more with the help of Nietzsche – ‘paideia’. This article aims to scrutinize the scope, the potentialities and the risks of this Greek word to Barthes's theory and ideas on life, criticism and literature. (shrink)

This book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators.... The importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of anicient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence... that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only (...) did they preserve anti-Aristotelian marterial which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they presented Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian Church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators, that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers. --From book jacket. (shrink)

There is a growing recognition that philosophy isn’t unique to the West, that it didn’t begin only with the classical Greeks, and that Greek philosophy was influenced by Near Eastern traditions. Yet even today there is a widespread assumption that what came before the Greeks was "before philosophy." In Philosophy before the Greeks, Marc Van De Mieroop, an acclaimed historian of the ancient Near East, presents a groundbreaking argument that, for three millennia before the Greeks, one Near Eastern people (...) had a rich and sophisticated tradition of philosophy fully worthy of the name. In the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily praised the Babylonians for their devotion to philosophy. Showing the justice of Diodorus’s comment, this is the first book to argue that there were Babylonian philosophers and that they studied knowledge systematically using a coherent system of logic rooted in the practices of cuneiform script. Van De Mieroop uncovers Babylonian approaches to knowledge in three areas: the study of language, which in its analysis of the written word formed the basis of all logic; the art of divination, which interpreted communications between gods and humans; and the rules of law, which confirmed that royal justice was founded on truth. The result is an innovative intellectual history of the ancient Near Eastern world during the many centuries in which Babylonian philosophers inspired scholars throughout the region—until the first millennium BC, when the breakdown of this cosmopolitan system enabled others, including the Greeks, to develop alternative methods of philosophical reasoning. (shrink)

v. 1. The Greek tradition -- v. 2. Greek texts and fragments of the Latin translation of "Alexander's" commentary -- v. 3. Appendices, Danish summary, indices.

The larger topic which interests me is the general influence of the Greeks on Mill but here I shall concentrate on one aspect of this larger problem – can some of the difficulties which Mill is seen as getting into with his modified utilitarianism be better understood through an appreciation of the primacy of Greek views on happiness instead of the usual emphasis given to the Benthamite starting-point? The traditional objections to Mill's version of utility hardly need rehearsing: how (...) can he admit a qualitative element into a scale which only objectively measures quantity? How can he include the higher nature of man in a scheme which only recognizes pleasures and pains? Whether these and other criticisms lead the commentator to condemn Mill's attempt or whether they act as a springboard to discover a plausible defence of Mill, there is today a consensus that Mill's trouble arises from tampering with Bentham as a result of later alien influences. (shrink)

Hegel's relationship to the Greek ideal of his day is well known: early in his career he saw the Greeks as an alternative to modernity, but by 1805 he had retreated from the Greek ideal, although he still admired the Greeks. Despite agreement that the Greeks played a central role in Hegel's thought, only a few commentators have offered an interpretation of Hegel's account of Greek ethical life. This dissertation presents just such an interpretation. ;I begin (...) by situating Hegel's early conception of Greece in the context of 18th- and 19th-century Romantic Hellenism. What emerges is a picture of Hegel as a thinker who appropriated the Romantic fascination with Greece for his own concerns, recasting the Hellenic ideal as an intersubjective one rather than an individualistic one. In recasting it, however, Hegel had to come to terms with a tension internal to the ideal understood intersubjectively; his famous retreat from Greece consequently occurred in part because his early conception of Greece was untenable. His mature works show the result of this transition on his conception of Greek ethical life: it is still an intersubjective ideal, but it has been refrained in order to emphasize the close relationship between subject and community which Hegel calls "beautiful individuality." I thus offer an interpretation of Hegel's account of Greece in which a weak form of subjectivity plays a central role. I then identify four forms of immediacy which Hegel criticized in Greek ethical life. He contends that they made Greek political life both normatively deficient and internally unstable, because they prevented Greek life from providing a context for the exercise of subjective particularity and subjective freedom. The penultimate chapter of the dissertation shows how Hegel thought these institutions developed in the history of Europe and how he thought the institutions of the modern state provide an adequate institutional sphere for the exercise of particularity. I close the dissertation by situating Hegel's critique of Greek ethical life within contemporary debates about particularity, arguing that a Hegelian politics preserves the laudable features of liberalism while answering some criticisms leveled against it. (shrink)

The last chapter of Politian's first Miscellanea dealt with the amica silentia lunae through which the Greeks sailed back to Troy . He argued that the phrase should not be taken literally, as a statement that Troy fell at the new moon, but in an extended sense, as a poetic indication that the moon had not yet risen when the Greeks set sail. This reading had one merit: it explained how Virgil's moon could be silent while the Greeks were en (...) route but shine during the battle for the city . Yet Politian's effort to identify the phase of the moon described by Virgil was anything but clear: Non igitur aut sera fuerit aut pernox luna, tum nec lunae quidem omnino coitus, sed tempus arbitror potius quamdiu illa non luceret. Accordingly, though his arguments were sometimes repeated by commentators and teachers, they won little assent from scholars who occupied themselves seriously with the passage. In his Adversaria Turnebus took silentia lunae as referring ‘ad noctis taciturnitatem…non ad interlunium’. In the first chapter of his De rebus per epistolam quaesitis Giano Parrasio sharply criticised the fuzziness of Politian's explanation: ‘Ambages istae sunt, ambages’. More important, he quoted a line from the Little Iliad: νξ μν ην μέσση, λαμπρ δ' πέτελλε σελήνη. This he rendered ‘Nox erat intempesta, nitebat et aurea coelo Luna’, and inferred from it that the moon had been up when Troy fell. In his Virgilius collation scriptorum Graecorum illustratus, finally, Fulvio Orsini published a scholium on Euripides' Hecuba, one which quoted both the line from the Little Iliad and an analysis of it by the Peripatetic Callisthenes. He too took the line as refuting Politian. (shrink)

The last chapter of Politian's first Miscellanea dealt with the amica silentia lunae through which the Greeks sailed back to Troy. He argued that the phrase should not be taken literally, as a statement that Troy fell at the new moon, but in an extended sense, as a poetic indication that the moon had not yet risen when the Greeks set sail. This reading had one merit: it explained how Virgil's moon could be silent while the Greeks were en route (...) but shine during the battle for the city. Yet Politian's effort to identify the phase of the moon described by Virgil was anything but clear: Non igitur aut sera fuerit aut pernox luna, tum nec lunae quidem omnino coitus, sed tempus arbitror potius quamdiu illa non luceret. Accordingly, though his arguments were sometimes repeated by commentators and teachers, they won little assent from scholars who occupied themselves seriously with the passage. In his Adversaria Turnebus took silentia lunae as referring ‘ad noctis taciturnitatem…non ad interlunium’. In the first chapter of his De rebus per epistolam quaesitis Giano Parrasio sharply criticised the fuzziness of Politian's explanation: ‘Ambages istae sunt, ambages’. More important, he quoted a line from the Little Iliad: νξ μν ην μέσση, λαμπρ δ' πέτελλε σελήνη. This he rendered ‘Nox erat intempesta, nitebat et aurea coelo Luna’, and inferred from it that the moon had been up when Troy fell. In his Virgilius collation scriptorum Graecorum illustratus, finally, Fulvio Orsini published a scholium on Euripides' Hecuba, one which quoted both the line from the Little Iliad and an analysis of it by the Peripatetic Callisthenes. He too took the line as refuting Politian. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 483-500 [Access article in PDF] Greek Origins and Organic Metaphors: Ideals of Cultural Autonomy in Neohumanist Germany from Winckelmann to Curtius Brian Vick That the educated classes of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany were increasingly captivated by images of both nationality and Greek antiquity is a fact long noted and long puzzled over. This seemingly strange confluence of cultural (...) tendencies does, however, help explain why studying the drawn-out debates among German neohumanist scholars on the cultural origins of the Greeks ultimately offers a fresh perspective on certain problems of German national identity—in this case, on the ambivalent relationship to things foreign in that period of German history.Scholarly attention has recently been drawn to this question as part of the conflict over Martin Bernal's Black Athena, the first volume of which argued that nineteenth-century German classicists' denial of an Egyptian contribution to early Greek cultural development revealed their xenophobic tendencies. While Bernal pointed to racism as the prime motive for this repudiation of African and later of Semitic influence on the Greeks, he also invoked several of the other "-isms" that have proven so fruitful yet confusing for efforts to understand the intellectual and cultural climate of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Germany: romanticism, historicism, organicism, and of course neohumanism. 1 [End Page 483]The present essay is not intended to be another of the past decade's many responses to Bernal. Attention must be paid to that discussion, but it is important to recognize the extent to which this debate reflects a much broader disagreement about German attitudes in the romantic and nationalist eras. Some scholars portray the more cosmopolitan side of the romantic inheritance and stress its continued fascination with foreign literatures and cultures. Others, however, seem more like Bernal in citing the historicist turn to nature and nationality either to illustrate or to explain an alleged German xenophobia and hypersensitivity to issues of ethnic and cultural purity. 2It is to this wider question of the cultural legacy of German classicism and romanticism, historicism and organicism, that I would like to direct attention in this essay. Rather than invoking these "-isms" in an effort to explain the various positions taken in the debate about Greek origins, I hope to reverse the process and examine the relevant texts in an effort to clarify the broader implications of these issues of cultural purity and cultural borrowing, from the time of Winckelmann's first assertion of Greek originality through the rise of new kinds of nationalism and racism in the Wilhelmine era. 3 I shall show that belief in the importance of Greek civilization's Asian and even Egyptian cultural heritage remained strong for decades, even after Karl Otfried Müller's seemingly definitive rejection of such a connection in the 1820s. Moreover, most of the figures engaged on both sides of the debate made remarkably similar use of historicizing organic metaphors to help reconcile the twin values of national autonomy and cultural transmission, both so central to the self-conception and national identity of the German Bildungsbürgertum in this period. Continuity and connection with the environment, not purity and isolation from it, were the hallmarks of such organicist thinking across a wide spectrum of romantic, neohumanist, and idealist commentators. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the passing of romantic values, the transformation of historicism into historicist positivism, and the development of new meanings attached to images of biology and race, would this situation slowly begin to change. The Greeks, History, and Culture: Foundational Perspectives Many of the considerations central to discussions about the origins of the Greeks and about the role of cultural mixing generally can be seen in the debate's [End Page 484] two most important early statements, the denial of Egyptian influence by Johann Joachim Winckelmann in his History of Ancient Art of 1764 and the successive sharp critiques of this view by an otherwise admiring Johann Gottfried... (shrink)

This anthology of philosophical texts by Greek and Roman authors brings together works from the late fifth century BC to the sixth century AD that comment on major aesthetic issues such as the perception of beauty and harmony in music and the visual arts, structure and style in literature, and aesthetic judgement. It includes important texts by Plato and Aristotle on the status and the role of the arts in society and in education, and Longinus' reflections on the sublime (...) in literature, in addition to less well-known writings by Philodemus, Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, Augustine and Proclus. Most of the texts have been newly translated for this volume, and some are available in English for the first time. A detailed introduction traces the development of classical aesthetics from its roots in Platonism and Aristotelianism to its ultimate form in late Antiquity. (shrink)

In my comment on Katerina Ierodiakonou’s paper, I outline my understanding of the programme of De anima and how it bears on Aristotle’s discussion of the transparent in De anima 2.7, in contrast with his discussion of the transparent in De sensu 3. I then explore Aristotle’s notion of transparency and sketch an alternative to Ierodiakonou’s interpretation of Aristotle’s views as to how colours are generated in physical objects. At the end, I raise two objections to Alexander’s interpretation of the (...) transparent as discussed by Ierodiakonou. (shrink)

In ancient philosophy, there is no discipline called “logic” in the contemporary sense of “the study of formally valid arguments.” Rather, once a subfield of philosophy comes to be called “logic,” namely in Hellenistic philosophy, the field includes (among other things) epistemology, normative epistemology, philosophy of language, the theory of truth, and what we call logic today. This entry aims to examine ancient theorizing that makes contact with the contemporary conception. Thus, we will here emphasize the theories of the “syllogism” (...) in the Aristotelian and Stoic traditions. However, because the context in which these theories were developed and discussed were deeply epistemological in nature, we will also include references to the areas of epistemological theorizing that bear directly on theories of the syllogism, particularly concerning “demonstration.” Similarly, we will include literature that discusses the principles governing logic and the components that make up arguments, which are topics that might now fall under the headings of philosophy of logic or non-classical logic. This includes discussions of problems and paradoxes that connect to contemporary logic and which historically spurred developments of logical method. For example, there is great interest among ancient philosophers in the question of whether all statements have truth-values. Relevant themes here include future contingents, paradoxes of vagueness, and semantic paradoxes like the liar. We also include discussion of the paradoxes of the infinite for similar reasons, since solutions have introduced sophisticated tools of logical analysis and there are a range of related, modern philosophical concerns about the application of some logical principles in infinite domains. Our criterion excludes, however, many of the themes that Hellenistic philosophers consider part of logic, in particular, it excludes epistemology and metaphysical questions about truth. Ancient philosophers do not write treatises “On Logic,” where the topic would be what today counts as logic. Instead, arguments and theories that count as “logic” by our criterion are found in a wide range of texts. For the most part, our entry follows chronology, tracing ancient logic from its beginnings to Late Antiquity. However, some themes are discussed in several eras of ancient logic; ancient logicians engage closely with each other’s views. Accordingly, relevant publications address several authors and periods in conjunction. These contributions are listed in three thematic sections at the end of our entry. (shrink)

The introduction of Greek philosophy into the Muslim world left an indelible mark on Islamic intellectual history. Philosophical discourse became a constant element in even traditionalist Islamic sciences. However, Aristotelian metaphysics gave rise to doctrines about God and the universe that were found highly objectionable by a number of Muslim theologians, among whom the fourteenth-century scholar Ibn Taymiyya stood foremost. Ibn Taymiyya, one of the greatest and most prolific thinkers in medieval Islam, held Greek logic responsible for the (...) `heretical' metaphysical conclusions reached by Islamic philosophers, theologians, mystics, and others. He therefore set out to refute philosophical logic, a task which culminated in one of the most devastating attacks ever levelled against the logical system upheld by the early Greeks, the later commentators, and their Muslim followers. His argument is grounded in an empirical approach that in many respects prefigures the philosophies of the British empiricists. Professor Hallaq's translation, with a substantial introduction and extensive notes, makes this important work available to a wider audience for the first time. (shrink)

A word of apology may be due for the loose arrangement of this paper; but, as an orderly progress through the 600 odd pages of the Didot Scriptores Erotici was out of the question, I have simply taken a number of passages on which I had corrections to propose, appending to each a few lines of comment, and adding, where feasible, a selection of texts amenable, in my judegment, to the same or an analogous treatment. A reading cited with no (...) mark of orgin may be taken as the consenting manuscript tradition ; an asterisk denotes a conjecture of my own. (shrink)

Commenting on Thucydides I, 136: ναγκáζεται… παρ' αδμητον τòν Μολοσσѿν βασιλέα, ντα α τ ᾦ ο λον, καταλσαι, Shilleto once wroteb: ‘After some thought I have acquiesced in ατᾦ, i.e. in Latin, qui ei erat inimicus. Still inimicum suum would be as natural. In Latin MSS., as sui cannot be con-founded with is , a Critic of course more or less sees his way. But in Greek, as far as my experience goes, we are in a labyrinth without a (...) clue.’. (shrink)

Commenting on Thucydides I, 136: ναγκáζεται… παρ' αδμητον τòν Μολοσσѿν βασιλέα, ντα α τ ᾦ ο λον, καταλσαι, Shilleto once wroteb: ‘After some thought I have acquiesced in ατᾦ, i.e. in Latin, qui ei erat inimicus. Still inimicum suum would be as natural. In Latin MSS., as sui cannot be con-founded with is, a Critic of course more or less sees his way. But in Greek, as far as my experience goes, we are in a labyrinth without a clue.’.

IntroductionIntelligent Virtue is a great book on virtue: an eminently sensible book, and I agree with virtually all of it. For me describing a philosophy book as sensible and indeed commonsensical is real praise, for much philosophy exemplifies a vice to which Martha Nussbaum has drawn our attention in ‘Saving Aristotle’s Appearances.’See Language and Logos Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy, ed. Malcolm Schofield and Nussbaum , pp. 267–293, 277. This is the intellectual vice of philosophers who got ‘fascinated with (...) the internal progress of their argument, even though it ended in a place incredibly remote from and at odds with, human belief.’ Annas’s work is well grounded in the endoxa .I could list all the important theses with which I agree, ranging from the central claim that virtue is analogous to a practical skill, to the very important claim that happiness is not reached by attaining “stuff” such as money, power, prope .. (shrink)

Professor Girle suggests that the ancient Athenian interest in Aristotle’s syllogistic flowed from a preoccupation with debate in the form of a dialogue game. But other cultures, especially in India, also had a preoccupation with debate that could be characterized in the same way. This kind of explanation seems to us to ignore the elephant in the room: the fact that, in ancient Athens, dialogue and debate were not merely a game. They were the life and death of the state. (...) Many Athenians felt that foolish policies had cost the state dearly, especially during the Peloponnesian War, and many of them blamed those policies on shoddy political reasoning in the Assembly. (Plato hammers at this theme relentlessly.) And tellingly, it is only in the wake of such tragedies that Aristotle’s syllogistic finally emerged. We think that any credible explanation of the ancient Greek interest in formal logic needs to include this grim political reality. (shrink)

According to the standard view on the issue, the habit of marking questions with a particular typographical sign in Greek and Latin script does not arise prior to the eighth or ninth century. This period is generally credited with the ‘invention’ of the question mark (excepting Syriac evidence, which points to the fifth and sixth centuries). The purpose of the present article is to correct this view. It argues that the first indication for the use of a typographical sign (...) that marks questions can actually be detected no later than during the reign of Emperor Hadrian (a.d. 117–38), that is, more than half a millennium before the traditional date of the invention. The chief witness is Nicanor of Alexandria, who does not seem to have used question marks himself, but criticizes the misappropriation of another punctuation mark to that purpose. He thus indirectly testifies to the existence of question marks. Comparable traces can also be found later in the exegetical works of some Christian commentators. (shrink)

There is a quiet revolution afoot in our understanding of Early Buddhism, Pyrrhonism, and the Greek, Indian, and Central Asian cultural worlds of Hellenistic antiquity. The implications for the history of philosophy and religion are potentially profound.Christopher Beckwith's recent remarkable and provocative book, Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism, is the latest work breaking important new ground in this area.1 It offers no less than a wholesale geographical and chronological restructuring of traditional Buddhism, upsetting decades of scholarship. (...) Along the way, Beckwith advances the following audacious claims:That the Buddha was a Scythian, not an Indian.That he lived much later than commonly... (shrink)

This chapter aims to illuminate ways in which hope was significant in the philosophy of classical Greece. Although ancient Greek philosophies contain few dedicated and systematic expositions on the nature of hope, they nevertheless include important remarks relating hope to the good life, to reason and deliberation, and to psychological phenomena such as memory, imagination, fear, motivation, and pleasure. After an introductory discussion of Hesiod and Heraclitus, the chapter focuses on Plato and Aristotle. Consideration is given both to Plato’s (...) direct comments on hope and to the narrative contexts of his dialogues, with analysis of Plato’s positive and negative representations of hope, hope’s relationship to reason, and Plato’s more psychological approach in the Philebus, where hope finds a place among memory, recollection, pleasure, and pain. The chapter then reviews Aristotle’s discussions of confidence, hope, and courage, observing that although Aristotle does not mention hope as a virtue, he does note its importance to human agency and deliberation and as a foundation for the further development of virtue. The chapter concludes that discussions surrounding hope in ancient Greek philosophy are rich and challenging and can serve as a lively stimulus to further exploration of the concept of hope. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine a fundamental problem that appears in Greek philosophy: the paradoxes of self-reference of the type of “Third Man” that appears first in Plato’s 'Parmenides', and is further discussed in Aristotle and the Peripatetic commentators and Proclus. We show that the various versions are analysed using different language, reflecting different understandings by Plato and the Platonists, such as Proclus, on the one hand, and the Peripatetics (Aristotle, Alexander, Eudemus), on the other hand. We show (...) that the Peripatetic commentators do not focus on Plato’s solution but primarily on the formulation of the “Third Man” paradox. On the contrary, Proclus seems to be convinced that Plato suggests a sound solution to the paradox by defining the predicate of similarity (homogeneity) that demarcates two types of homogeneous entities – the eide and the participants in them in a way that their confusion would be inadmissible. We claim that Plato’s solution follows a sound line of reasoning that is formalisable in a language of Frege-Russell type; hence there exists a model in which Plato’s reasoning is valid. Furthermore, we notice that Plato’s definition of the second-order predicate of similarity is attained by resorting to first-order entities. In this sense, Plato’s definition is comparable to Eudoxus’ definition of ratio, which is also attained by resorting to first-order objects. Consequently, Plato seems to follow a logical practice established by the mathematicians of the 5th century, notably Eudoxus, in his solution to the paradox. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to situate the expression of the secular culture of the Enlightenment in the Greek context into the broader intellectual and spiritual tradition defined by the Greek language. The analysis points at the breaks introduced into this tradition by the Enlightenment (in historical and geographical conceptions, in scientific and political thought and in the understanding of the classics) but it also argues that despite its novelty the Enlightenment shared a considerable heritage with the broader (...) Orthodox religious culture into which it was transmitted in Southeastern Europe. This point is illustrated by reference to biographical evidence, supplied by the life histories of three important exponents of the Enlightenment writing in Greek (E. Voulgaris, Iosipos Moisiodax and N. Doukas). The complex relation between the Enlightenment and earlier Greek intellectual traditions is underlined in conclusion. ☆ An earlier version of this paper was presented as the concluding lecture of the conference “The Greek world under Ottoman and Western domination, 15th–19th centuries”, held at the Onassis Cultural Centre in New York on 29 April 2006. The original version appeared in the proceedings of the conference, published under the same title in 2008. The version published here has been extensively revised, updated and expanded. In revising the earlier version I had the benefit of the comments and suggestions of Professor Ihor Sevchenko, to whom I am deeply grateful. I am also indebted to Richard Whatmore for his encouragement. (shrink)

This paper reports on a manual monitoring of online representations of LGBT persons in the Republic of Cyprus for the period April 2015–February 2016. The article contextualizes the prevalence of “hate speech” in online Greek Cypriot comments against LGBT individuals, and, more generally, against non-heterosexuals. Adopting a Foucauldian position vis-à-vis the social and discursive construction of sexuality, we outline, first, the socio-historical context with a focus on LGBT rights in the Republic of Cyprus and the nationalistic project construing sexualities. (...) We then examine the different levels of discursive discrimination practices, providing a snapshot of the types of “hate speech” referring to this topic typically found in such an environment. The focus is on identification of the frames used to construct LGBT identities, and their perception.We use in our title the word subject as defined by post-modernists and by Butler in particular : subject refers to “a socially produced ‘agent’ and ‘deliberator’ whose agency and thought is made possible by a language that precedes that ‘I’. In this sense the ‘I’ is produced through power ”. This paper focuses on the socially produced definition of the LGBT community in the context under study. We thus address the way in which sexuality is constructed within a compulsory and hegemonic heterosexuality and heteronormativity. We analyze our data i.e. comments focused on the LGBT community, with corpus linguistic tools as well as through a qualitative examination of the identified frames. Our analysis confirms an interface between nationalism and compulsory hegemonic heteronormativity in the Republic as well as the influence of the Orthodox Church and its beliefs. (shrink)

The Prior and Posterior Analytics were entitled Ta Analutika by Aristotle himself. But it is not at all clear what Aristotle had in mind in grouping these two works together and in giving them this common title. This question was discussed at length by the ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle. Two main possibilities emerged. The first is that taken by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Ammonius, and Philoponus in his commentary on APr. According to this line of thought, Aristotle has (...) in mind the analysis that shows how a complex arises out of simple entities; both Analytics show us how to subject all lines of syllogistic reasoning (including demonstration) to such analysis. According to the second approach, found in the commentary on APo., 2 attributed to Philoponus, in giving APo., 2 the title 'Analytics' Aristotle has in mind the analysis that reasons from effects to causes. Demonstrations reveal the causes of things, and APo., 2 shows how this is the case. In this paper, the two approaches are compared, and a third approach, which builds on the second, but allows 'Analytics' to have a continuity of sense in its use as a title, is proposed. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss Terence's use of Greek loan-words and to examine their distribution by plays and by characters. How far are they used for stylistic effect and what relationship do they have to the themes of different plays? Is there any evidence for the concentration of these words, which often tend to be colloquial in tone, in the mouths of slaves and characters of low social status for the purposes of linguistic characterisation? Finally, does (...) Terence's use of these words develop in the course of his short career? The usefuleness of a previous note on this subject by J. N. Hough is limited by the absence of any comprehensive list of occurrences, so that its objectivity is difficult to check. A more helpful discussion by P. Oksala gives a fuller list, but concentrates mainly on a comparison with Plautine usage in the type and frequency of these words and does not discuss their distribution within the Terentian corpus. The question of characterisation by linguistic means, particularly in the field of New Comedy, has received considerable attention in recent years. The doctrine that a character's speech should be appropriate to his or her age, sex or social status, is well attested in the ancient world, with reference both to the theatre and to the law-courts. The ancient scholia on Aristophanes, as well as the fourth-century commentary on Terence that goes under the name of Donatus, contain comments on the appropriateness of particular words and phrases to particular character types. Leo, commenting long ago on the distribution of Greek words in Plautus, observed that they were used predominantly by slaves and characters of low social standing, a point made earlier by N. Tuchhaendler. More recently M. E. Gilleland has produced detailed statistical evidence for both Plautus and Terence which tends to back up these observations. (shrink)

This brief volume is the first in a series of monographs designed to introduce the main types of ethical theory from ancient Greece to the present. The series provides an historical purview for the beginner, brief but accurate, interspersed with critical evaluation from a modern analytic point of view. Huby's volume on Greek Ethics is more expository than evaluative in nature, with most attention directed toward Plato and Aristotle. Some of the virtues of the volume, in spite of the (...) lack of critical comment, are: 1) The attempt to show the historical continuity of problems. ; 2) A careful treatment of Greek terms, notably physis, nomos, arete, dikaios, sophrosyne, philia, eros, emphasizing multiple meanings and connotations and, where necessary, indicating any differences between Greek and present day usage which might tend to confuse the reader.—C. L. H. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Against the Greek LogiciansCharles E. ButterworthIbn Taimiyya. Against the Greek Logicians. Translated with an introduction and notes by Wael B. Hallaq. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Pp. lviii + 204. $55.00.Wael Hallaq's most readable translation of Ibn Taimiyya's famous work is complemented by a masterful introduction and intelligent, relevant footnotes. In addition, he has taken care to help the reader in many ways, adding, for example, a (...) list of the emendations he has made to the Arabic text as well as a table that details the correspondence between the paragraphs of his translation and the pages and lines within the more standard Arabic texts.The editor-translator's introduction sets forth Ibn Taimiyya's teaching in a clear and well-argued manner, something that is necessary given the repetitiveness and confusing arguments that characterize the original. Though Hallaq tends to reveal himself to be something of a partisan of Ibn Taimiyya's doctrines and thus to overstate the case for his author, this is a minor flaw. The strength of the Introduction is such that the student of logic or philosophy is compelled to indicate the problems in Hallaq's presentation, that is, to identify the reasons for not being persuaded by his exposition. [End Page 273] To do so, however, is merely a means of carrying the argument a step further and thus a compliment of sorts to Hallaq.As I see it, there are five areas where one might take issue with the editor-translator's presentation of Ibn Taimiyya's teaching. First, because he follows his author too closely, Hallaq relies too much on Avicenna and on Avicenna's commentators to present the position of the philosophers. He seems to ignore that the teaching of Avicenna—he whom Averroes would identify only as "that man"-—is problematic even for the philosophers. Second, Hallaq relies too much on secondary literature in order to present the history of philosophy. He would have been far better advised to trace the history of philosophy for himself, especially the history of medieval Islamic philosophy. By relying on others, especially those whose interpretations are open to major objections, he weakens his own presentation. This tendency becomes especially evident in what I take as a third point of criticism, namely, Hallaq's too ready conflation of the history of philosophy and consequent willingness to blame ancient and medieval philosophers for the folly of modern philosophers (see xxx, n. 98 and xviii:17-18). Worse, Hallaq eventually becomes so carried away with the desire to refute the ancient and medieval philosophers that he no longer cares about the evil consequences of modern philosophy (see xviii:8-xlix:20, esp. xlviii:8-29). Indeed, and this is the fourth criticism, so intent is Hallaq on confirming that Ibn Taimiyya has refuted the philosophers that he is content to call anyone a philosopher, even al-Suhrawardī, al-Baghdādī, al-Tūsī, and, wonder of wonders, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (see xliv:4). Though he has good guidance for this from Ibn Taimiyya, one would hope for more objectivity from the critical scholar than from the engaged defender of the faith. Finally, Hallaq actually introduces Ibn Taimiyya's wider teaching rather than the argument of this book, thereby neglecting the primary function of an introduction to a book. Thus, of 91 notes in the Introduction that refer to Ibn Taimiyya's works, only slightly more than half (52) cite this work. The other 39 are to Ibn Taimiyya's other writings. Moreover, many of the 52 notes to this work also refer to other writings by Ibn Taimiyya.Thankful as we must be to Hallaq for this translation, it is most unfortunate that he chose not to be consistent in his translation of Arabic terms. Apparently, he thought he could make more sense of Ibn Taimiyya's argument by translating terms in accordance with what he took to be the sense of what Ibn Taimiyya wished to say rather than in accordance with what he actually says. Consequently, tasdīq (a term I would translate as "assent") is rendered as "judgment"; but so is hukm (see ¶¶ 5 and... (shrink)

This paper addresses two interrelated questions. The first question is our relation, as the modern westerners that we are, to Greek philosophy in its historical context. The second question is the relation between Greek philosophical conceptions of the self and what we moderns take ourselves to be when we try to think about the world objectively. My inquiry is motivated by the belief that what a philosopher of the distant past can say to us is influenced by our (...) own independent viewpoint, a viewpoint which may enable us to use that philosopher as a contributor to debates of which he himself had no inkling. Greek philosophers were innocent of the Cartesian tradition and the problems it has generated concerning the connection, if any, between an individual subject of consciousness and the so-called 'external world'. However, I argue that early Greek speculation about the physical world was inward as well as outward looking. Their attempts to think about the world objectively raised issues about the nature of the self — the inquiring (or non-inquiring) subject — issues that, in the case of Heraclitus, are quite explicit. Following up my earlier point about linking modern viewpoints to ancient insights, I make a comparison beween parts of Thomas Nagel's book, The View from Nowhere, and the philosophy of Heraclitus. In particular, I argue that Heraclitus adumbrates a concept analogous to Nagel's 'objective self and shares some of Nagel's interests in integrating that perspective with the practice of being a person in the everyday world. In the final part of the paper I comment briefly on Plato's and Aristotle's criticism of Heraclitus, a criticism that, from a modern perspective, seems to me misconceived. I also offer the Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was influenced by Heraclitus, as an excellent example of what it could mean to combine an objective viewpoint with one's ordinary humanity. More generally, the paper may be read as a defence of objectivity — not in the sense that we can hope to understand the world independently of our own concepts or culture (I sidestep any questions about objective truth), but in the sense, rather, that trying to get beyond an irreducibly personal view of things is a basic human propensity (property of the self) even though our use of it seems bound to be (and perhaps should be) selective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cocceius and the Jewish CommentatorsAdina M. YoffieThe case of Johannes Cocceius defies the commonplace that Leiden University (and perhaps post-Reformation, confessionalized Europe in general) turned away from humanist scholarship in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. In 1650 Cocceius (1603-69), a Bremen-born Oriental philology professor at Franeker, joined the Leiden theological faculty and wrote a treatise, Protheoria de ratione interpretandi sive introductio in philologiam sacram (De ratione). He (...) praised such rabbinic exegetes as Rashi (1040-1105) and David Kimchi (ca. 1160-ca. 1235) in humanist terms for their erudition. At the same time the "new" Cartesian philosophy was taking hold in the arts faculty, and mathematics instruction was encroaching on scholastic formal logic.1 Leiden would become famous for Cartesianism, mathematics, and "Calvinist Copernicanism" in the second half of the seventeenth century, but Cocceius still worked in the tradition of advanced humanist scholarship that had made the institution famous in the sixteenth century.2Leiden's earlier reputation was due in large part to the biblical humanist work of such Renaissance polymaths as Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) and Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), but by Cocceius's time Leiden theologians were subject to greater Church and State control. As Jonathan Israel and Edwin Rabbie have shown, in response to the controversy that surrounded Jacobus Arminius and his stand on predestination, the Synod of Dordrecht (Dort) drafted an anti-Arminian statement in 1619; any professor who did not sign was subject [End Page 383] to exile from the republic in addition to dismissal from his post.3 Innovative theology, exegesis, and philology suffered as professors, fearing State and Church reprisals, turned to "dogmatic humanism." As Henk Jan de Jonge has explained, this meant that "almost all the theologians of seventeenth-century Leiden who concerned themselves with the explanation of the New Testament placed exegesis at the service of dogmatic objectives."4 Unlike his fellow Leiden theologians, Cocceius pursued biblical humanism and Christian Hebraism through the study of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic-and he did so in a unique way. He was not the first to use Jewish commentaries and even Jewish post-biblical literature for the purpose of reconstructing the original Hebrew Bible, but he was innovative in praising rabbinic scholars as fellow humanists and in incorporating their scholarship into his Christological exegesis and philosophy. He did so, furthermore, not as an independent scholar or pastor or even as a professor of Hebrew; but as the holder of a university chair in theology at a confessionalized university in a century hostile to his brand of late humanism.Although he came to Leiden as a theologian, Cocceius had impressive training as an Orientalist. He had studied with the famous scholar Sixtinus Amama (1593-1629) and polished his Hebrew and Aramaic by working with a Jewish tutor from Hamburg.5 While still a student at Franeker, Cocceius wrote a translation and commentary of the Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin. A few years later he began composing commentaries on the Pentateuch, and, by the time he arrived at Leiden, he had completed one lecture, series of lectures, or piece of writing on every book of the Old Testament. These commentaries were based not only on Cocceius's extensive knowledge of Oriental languages but also on his readings of medieval Jewish commentators. These were the same commentators that Cocceius would later praise in chapter eight of the De ratione.These humanist achievements were much at variance with Cocceius's public persona as perhaps the most prominent Dutch Calvinist theologian of the seventeenth century. For approximately 100 years after his death in 1669 a faction of Leiden theologians calling themselves "Cocceians" battled the "Voetians," followers of Gisbertus Voetius, for the soul of the Dutch Church.6 At Leiden he lectured on the Pauline Epistles, a typical subject for a seventeenth-century Calvinist theologian, and he worked on his famous theological tract, the salvation-historical Summa doctrinae de foedere et testamento Dei (1648). Neither the De ratione nor his voluminous biblical commentary (except [End Page 384] for a short treatise on the last six chapters of Deuteronomy) was published in Cocceius's lifetime. His son Johann Heinrich released these and his father's... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman PhilosophyBrad InwoodDavid Sedley, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xiv + 396. Cloth, $65.00, Paper, $24.00.Readers of this journal are familiar with the Cambridge Companions. What is striking about this one is its broad sweep. A Companion to all of ancient philosophy will necessarily present the reader with a (...) somewhat shallow overview. Is this really such a good idea? What is its role, when there are already Companions to Early Greek Philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, The Stoics, and Plotinus? The editor answers this by aiming also to provide a "book to accompany survey courses on the history of ancient philosophy." It is challenging to provide an overview of the first millennium and more of Western philosophy, but this pedagogical goal is tougher. David Sedley has managed both tasks well. Although some chapters are not suitable hors d'oeuvres for beginners, all will nourish the hungry and whet the appetite for more. Even those chapters which amount to substantial entrées too rich for novices are excellent meat. There are no reheated leftovers. From beginning to end this is a feast of reason.The book makes abundant use of tables to present large amounts of complex material economically—lists of Plato's dialogues indicate topics, speakers and lengths; Roman philosophers are displayed with biographical notes, school affiliations, and major works; philosophical commentators are given with date and the author and work commented on; nineteen Presocratics are adorned with birthplace, date, key ideas and thumbnail comments. Many of the chapters cultivate an elegant but economical style which must be due in part to editorial encouragement and example. Though it is bound to skip over much, it avoids even the appearance of superficiality. Jill Kraye's chapter on "The legacy of ancient philosophy" to the medieval and modern world is a masterpiece of clarity and compression as well as a superb piece of intellectual history.Kraye's survey concludes the volume. Sedley's substantial introduction begins it by motivating the study of ancient philosophy through two characteristic questions, "What is a good human life?" and "Why isn't the earth falling?" and culminates in a highly informative guide to our various textual sources and a compact demonstration of how they become the editions and translations we use.Jonathan Barnes opens (ch. 1) with a homily on "Argument in ancient philosophy"; splendid stuff, but for all its lucidity, not an ideal appetizer for the survey course students I teach—it's a dessert better served later in the volume. Similarly thematic chapters on "Philosophy and literature" (ch. 8, Martha Nussbaum), "Philosophy and science" (ch. 10, R.J. Hankinson) and "Philosophy and religion" (ch. 11, Glenn Most) set ancient philosophy in broader context. Hankinson splendidly communicates the scientific agenda of the ancient world, perhaps over-emphasizing the mathematical sciences, Galen and scientific epistemology at the cost of "scientific" writers like Strabo, Pliny, and Vitruvius. Nussbaum concentrates on the fourth century B.C. at the expense of later centuries, but gives excellent value on the canonical texts, the Republic and the Poetics. Most's essay explores the interpenetration of religious themes with the philosophical (emphasizing how differently pagan religion interacted with philosophy than does any modern faith) and adds an acute though exaggerated set of observations on the religious quality of the ancient philosophical way of life. It would be hard to locate the saintly sages Most presents as typical in the logical landscape evoked by Barnes.The remaining chapters cover periods and major figures. Malcolm Schofield on the Presocratics (ch. 2), Sarah Broadie on the Sophists and Socrates (ch. 3), Christopher Rowe on Plato (ch. 4), John Cooper on Aristotle (ch. 5), Jacques Brunschwig and David Sedley on Hellenistic philosophy, A.A. Long on Roman (ch. 7), and Frans de Haas on Late ancient philosophy. The authors are all eloquent authorities and it's a menu with no bad choices—though I'm sure my undergraduates will find Cooper's treatment of the figures of Aristotle's syllogisms indigestible. I found Rowe's careful balance of old and new in his introduction to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jean Wyatt THE CELEBRATION OF EROS: GREEK CONCEPTS OF LOVE AND BEAUTY IN TO THE LIGHTHOUSE A voracious reader all her life, Virginia Woolf stored up patterns and images which she naturally wove into the fabric of her novels.1 Integrating literature of the past into her own works was also an affirmation of her belief that "everything comes over again a little differently," as Eleanor says in The (...) Years. Acutely aware of the prevailing fluidity of human life, Virginia Woolf sought a counterbalance in the principle of eternal recurrence. The whole chain of human history forms a "gigantic pattern, momentarily perceptible." It becomes perceptible when elemental forces in human life coincide with the forms of individuals, "making them symbolical, making them representative."3 In Mrs. Ramsay, Virginia Woolf combines a personal portrait of her mother with an evocation of eternal life forces in the "symbolical outline" (p. Ill) of Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty and marriage, that Mrs. Ramsay irradiates. Events, too, can be "symbolical, and therefore perhaps permanent," in the words of Bernard in The Waves, when they reflect the continuity of human experience. The dinner party in To the Lighthouse contains ritual elements, reminders that it is one in a series of communal feasts. The search for truth in the midst of human pleasures, by means of human love, recalls one such banquet in particular, the Symposium.'' The central concerns of the Symposium are those of To the Lighthouse: striving for knowledge through love; the desire to create that beauty arouses; the paradox of the eternal in the midst of the transitory. The figures and patterns of Greek literature were part of Virginia Woolf's mental formation. She began learning Greek at King's College in 1897, at the age of fifteen.6 For the next few years, Greek was her chief refuge from a stifling Victorian society. From 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. every day she read Greek: Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, all of Sophocles, Plato. Twice a week she met for Greek lessons, first 160 Jean WyATT161 with Clara Pater, then with Janet Case. Her letters speak of Greek as "the greatest of comforts to me" (April, 1900), "my daily bread, and a keen delight to me" (June, 1900); it "has so much attraction for me... that I don't want to do anything else" (February, 1905).8 A diary entry from 1924 shows how Greek "worked its way" into her life. Upon meeting a herd of cattle, "I waved my stick and stood at bay; and thought of Homer.... some mimic battle. Grizzle grew more and more insolent and excited and skirmished about yapping. Ajax? That Greek, for all my ignorance, has worked its way into me." Seeing Grizzle as Ajax is not different in kind from transforming Mrs. Ramsay into Aphrodite, Mr. Carmichael into Poseidon. Greek was in the forefront of Virginia Woolf's mind in 1924 because she had been reading Greek steadily since 1922 in preparation for the article "On Not Knowing Greek." "The amount of reading... that went into the production of that essay... was remarkable," comments Quentin Bell. She published the essay in 1925, the year she began To the Lighthouse. "On Not Knowing Greek" shows that Virginia Woolf knew the Symposium well: she discusses it for four pages, not with the analytical lens of a literary critic, but with loving familiarity. She first read the Symposium when she was about sixteen, but her intimacy with it suggests that she must have read it more than once. At the center of the Symposium is Diotima's doctrine: man has to work through a series of human loves to arrive at the eternal. Lily pursues a similar quest for knowledge through love. She loves Mrs. Ramsay, but, unable to satisfy her love on a personal level, casts about for a way of reaching "the spirit in her, the essential thing" (p. 76). She finally finds a way of loving that takes her to the essence of things when, ten years after Mrs. Ramsay's death, she sees and loves a Mrs. Ramsay who transcends the individual to become the form of love and beauty. To understand the... (shrink)

James Wilberding - The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD: A Sourcebook. Vol. I, Psychology . Vol. II, Physics. Vol. III, Logic and Metaphysics - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.3 470-471 Richard Sorabji. The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200–600 AD: A Sourcebook. Vol. I, Psychology . Pp. xv + 430. Vol. II, Physics. Pp. xix + 401. Vol. III, Logic and Metaphysics. Pp. xvii + 394. Ithaca, New York: Cornell (...) University Press, 2005. Paper, $39.50, each volume. Interest in the Greek commentators continues to grow, thanks in large part to Richard Sorabji, who has done more than anyone else to reestablish them as at once faithful and original philosophers who remain relevant even to modern students of philosophy. The Sourcebook makes the commentators still more accessible by.. (shrink)

James Wilberding - The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD: A Sourcebook. Vol. I, Psychology. Vol. II, Physics. Vol. III, Logic and Metaphysics - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.3 470-471 Richard Sorabji. The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200–600 AD: A Sourcebook. Vol. I, Psychology. Pp. xv + 430. Vol. II, Physics. Pp. xix + 401. Vol. III, Logic and Metaphysics. Pp. xvii + 394. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, (...) 2005. Paper, $39.50, each volume. Interest in the Greek commentators continues to grow, thanks in large part to Richard Sorabji, who has done more than anyone else to reestablish them as at once faithful and original philosophers who remain relevant even to modern students of philosophy. The Sourcebook makes the commentators still more accessible by... (shrink)

This article is divided into two parts: in the first we explore the academic debate conducted at an international level about insider trading (IT). In particular, we exame IT on three grounds: economic, ethical and legal. In each section we present the arguments in favour of and against IT and then we give our personal opinion. In the second part we present the situation in the Athens Stock Exchange. We examine its past record on the issue of IT and recent (...) developments, and comment on the implications for the future. (shrink)

A discussion of why a strong doctrine of 'reason' may not be worth sustaining in the face of modern scientific speculation, and the difficulties this poses for scientific rationality, together with comments on the social understanding of religion, and why we might wish to transcend common sense.

Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity is presented as a critical project within a specific horizon, in which specific references are frequently made to the ancient Greek and Jewish roots of Western philosophy. For Nancy, this means that philosophy should come to terms with its Christian background. Yet ancient Rome and its political culture, which are also very important to an understanding of the birth and development of Christianity, remain marginal in Nancy’s deconstructive work. Understanding Christianity as an ‘autodépassement’ of the (...) cultures it is based on, this article explores the transformation of civitas into civiatas Dei, which is mentioned but little elaborated upon by Nancy. The exploration takes as an example Augustine’s treatment of Varro’s Antiquitates, a main source of his knowledge concerning Roman religion and politics. Varro’s texts are used and distorted by Augustine. The analysis in this article shows that the way in which is Christianity is deconstructed, changes by taking into account this other reference, particularly with regard to the way in which politics is conceptualised. (shrink)

Let me hasten to affirm that this essay, despite its title, is not so much about Sallust as it is a way of examining a specific constellation of ideas. I have used his conception of Roman social change because it seems to bring into focus a prudential commonplace rooted in Greek and Roman culture. No doubt Sallust's views had a strong formative effect on subsequent social and political thought, but I shall make no effort to explore and define this (...) influence. I have simply chosen �Sallust's Theorem� as a point of departure, a heuristic device encapsulating and emphasizing an important notion of ancient antecedents which, together with its ramifications, may possibly illuminate a significant and neglected aspect of early modern political thought. (shrink)

This is the first study to assess in its entirety the fourth-century Latin commentary on Plato's Timaeus by the otherwise unknown Calcidius, also addressing features of his Latin translation. The first part examines the authorial voice of the commentator and the overall purpose of the work; the second part provides an overview of the key themes; and the third part reassesses the commentary's relation to Stoicism, Aristotle, potential sources, and the Christian tradition. This commentary was one of the main channels (...) through which the legacy of Plato and Greek philosophy was passed on to the Christian Latin West. The text, which also establishes a connection between Plato's cosmology and Genesis, thus represents a distinctive cultural encounter between the Greek and the Roman philosophical traditions, and between non-Christian and Christian currents of thought. (shrink)

R. W. Sharples provides a new edition, with introduction and commentary in English, of the Greek text. The Mantissa is a collection of short discussions, transmitted as a supplement to the treatise On the Soul by the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (c.200 AD).The collection includes discussion of a range of topics, among them the nature of soul and intellect, theories of how seeing takes place, issues in ethics, and the nature of fate. The text is based upon a (...) new collation of the principal manuscript, the ninth century Venetus Marcianus graecus 258, and the apparatus corrects Bruns' misreportings of the principal manuscript and of the others that he used. Account has also been taken of the medieval Arabic and Latin versions of some of the sections which circulated independently, notably On Intellect which had a substantial influence on medieval philosophy. The introduction is chiefly concerned with the manuscripts and the relation between them. The commentary is based on the notes to the editor's English translation of the work (London: Duckworth and Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); however, the commentary also takes into account more recent work on the collection by various scholars. (shrink)