From the publisher: "This book is a lucid and accessible companion to Plato’s Republic, throwing light upon the text’s arguments and main themes, placing them in the wider context of the text’s structure. In its illumination of the philosophical ideas underpinning the work, it provides readers with an understanding and appreciation of the complexity and literary artistry of Plato’s Republic. McAleer not only unpacks the key overarching questions of the text – What is justice? And Is a just life happier (...) than an unjust life? – but also highlights some fascinating, overlooked passages which contribute to our understanding of Plato’s philosophical thought.". (shrink)

Cicero's letters are saturated with learned philosophical allusions and arguments. This innovative study shows just how fundamental these are for understanding Cicero's philosophical activities and for explaining the enduring interest of his ethical and political thought. Dr McConnell draws particular attention to Cicero's treatment of Plato's Seventh Letter and his views on the relationship between philosophy and politics. He also illustrates the various ways in which Cicero finds philosophy an appealing and effective mode of self-presentation and a congenial, pointed medium (...) for talking to his peers about ethical and political concerns. The book offers a range of fresh insights into the impressive scope and sophistication of Cicero's epistolary and philosophical practice and the vibrancy of the philosophical environment of the first century BC. A new picture emerges of Cicero the philosopher and philosophy's place in Roman political culture. (shrink)

In everyday interactions, humans naturally exhibit behavioral cues, such as gaze and head movements, that signal their intentions while interpreting the behavioral cues of others to predict their intentions. Such intention prediction enables each partner to adapt their behaviors to the intent of others, serving a critical role in joint action where parties work together to achieve a common goal. Among behavioral cues, eye gaze is particularly important in understanding a person's attention and intention. In this work, we seek to (...) quantify how gaze patterns may indicate a person's intention. Our investigation was contextualized in a dyadic sandwich-making scenario in which a “worker” prepared a sandwich by adding ingredients requested by a “customer.” In this context, we investigated the extent to which the customers' gaze cues serve as predictors of which ingredients they intend to request. Predictive features were derived to represent characteristics of the customers' gaze patterns. We developed a support vector machine-based (SVM-based) model that achieved 76% accuracy in predicting the customers' intended requests based solely on gaze features. Moreover, the predictor made correct predictions approximately 1.8 s before the spoken request from the customer. We further analyzed several episodes of interactions from our data to develop a deeper understanding of the scenarios where our predictor succeeded and failed in making correct predictions. These analyses revealed additional gaze patterns that may be leveraged to improve intention prediction. This work highlights gaze cues as a significant resource for understanding human intentions and informs the design of real-time recognizers of user intention for intelligent systems, such as assistive robots and ubiquitous devices, that may enable more complex capabilities and improved user experience. (shrink)

Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake) Introduction In this book I deal with some of the central ...

The virtue of μεγαλοψυχία or greatness of soul is prominent in the works of Aristotle as well as in the Peripatetic and Stoic traditions. However, mention of μεγαλοψυχία is extremely rare in our surviving evidence for the Epicurean school. In this paper I reconstruct a viable Epicurean position on μεγαλοψυχία. I argue that the Epicureans have a distinctive account of the virtue that is compatible with their hedonist ethics, and that can also be seen as a reaction to Aristotle. I (...) also demonstrate that the Epicurean account relates closely to their critical engagement with the Cynics and their emphasis on the importance of friendship and generosity in the good life. (shrink)

The chapter explores the symmetry thesis, which holds that departures from or variations on the paradigms of forgiveness and gratitude are conceptually and evaluatively symmetrical or parallel: where one makes sense and is praiseworthy, the other should be too. So if third-party forgiveness makes sense, so too should third-party gratitude; if propositional gratitude makes sense, so too should propositional forgiveness; if self-gratitude makes sense, so too should self-forgiveness. The symmetry thesis fares reasonably well, initially; both third- party forgiveness and third-party (...) gratitude turn on the quasi-legal notion of standing, and thus rise or fall together; though propositional forgiveness seems at first not even coherent, I argue that it is as coherent and appropriate as its counterpart, propositional gratitude. The symmetry thesis falters, however, at self-forgiveness and self-gratitude, since the former but not the latter is conceptually problematic because of doubts that one can wrong oneself, strictly speaking. (shrink)

In Powers of Horror,1 the psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva presented the first explicit, elaborated theory of ‘abjection,’ which she defines as the casting off of that which is not of one’s “clean and proper”2 self. According to Kristeva, abjection is a demarcating impulse which establishes the basis of all object relations, and is operative in the Lacanian narrative of subject formation in early childhood via object differentiation. Abjection continues to operate post-Oedipally to prevent the dissolution of the subject by repressing identification (...) with that which is other, and particularly that which is only tenuously other: the abject. Though Kristeva’s theory is braided into problematic Freudian premises, this essay will argue that abjection remains operative independent of the Oedipal model. (shrink)

In his philosophical works Cicero addresses a number of questions concerning the role of old men in politics, most obviously in his dialogue De senectute of 44 BCE. How best should the old participate in politics and the wider community—what, if anything, do the old have to offer that is special or unique? How should the generations fit together in the body politic, and should age be a factor in the structural organisation of states? Should the old rule? This chapter (...) makes the following argument: (1) in De senectute Cicero develops a coherent line on the special political role of old men within the constitutional framework set out in his earlier De re publica, which can be seen as a call to arms in the contemporary Roman political context; and (2) this line is not just a restatement of traditional republican ideals: in a similar vein to what we see in De re publica, Cicero draws on and adapts some of the most important arguments from Plato’s Republic when addressing these questions regarding the role of old men in politics. (shrink)

In “Doing Without Morality” Richard Kraut argues that Aristotle does not work with moral concepts such as moral rightness and duty. One of his arguments is that Aristotle treats wit as a virtue of character but not a moral virtue in Nicomachean Ethics IV.8 and that this treatment should be extended to all the virtues of character. Though sympathetic to his conclusion, I offer three reasons for thinking that wit is ill-suited to play the role in which Kraut casts it: (...) first, what Aristotle says about wit elsewhere in the NE calls its status as a character virtue into question; second, the taxonomy of virtue and vice implicit in NE IV suggests that wit is not a full-fledged character virtue; and third, in Eudemian Ethics III.7 Aristotle holds that wit is not a virtue of character. Along the way I discuss some intriguing complexities in Aristotle’s taxonomy of virtues and vices and suggest that Aristotle has the resources to make a principled distinction between personality and character traits. (shrink)

In “Doing Without Morality” Richard Kraut argues that Aristotle does not work with moral concepts such as moral rightness and duty. One of his arguments is that Aristotle treats wit as a virtue of character but not a moral virtue in Nicomachean Ethics IV.8 and that this treatment should be extended to all the virtues of character. Though sympathetic to his conclusion, I offer three reasons for thinking that wit is ill-suited to play the role in which Kraut casts it: (...) first, what Aristotle says about wit elsewhere in the NE calls its status as a character virtue into question; second, the taxonomy of virtue and vice implicit in NE IV suggests that wit is not a full-fledged character virtue; and third, in Eudemian Ethics III.7 Aristotle holds that wit is not a virtue of character. Along the way I discuss some intriguing complexities in Aristotle’s taxonomy of virtues and vices and suggest that Aristotle has the resources to make a principled distinction between personality and character traits. (shrink)

Source: Author: Eldar Sultanow, Sean Cox, Sebastian Homann, Philipp Koch, Olliver Franke Mass media initiated exhibitions of information and knowledge streams account for a significant factor of opinion-forming in modern digitalized nations and thus influence their country's political development. Within the framework of a globalized environment, this information has the ability to shape worldwide opinion and international policy decisions across geographical boundaries. Similarly, however, information and knowledge that does not flow freely has an impact on the behind the scenes (...) decisions of world affairs. Selective manipulation, consumed through hidden channels, is therefore a powerful tool for shaping both social and organizational environments. Currently no classification approaches exist in order to identify and evaluate this type of manipulation. Therefore, this article will discuss this type of manipulative communication and align each category into an assessment model. Forty-two varieties of manipulative arguments will be identified as well as classified along three-dimensions. A model has been developed which will serve as a tool to identify the degree and at which level manipulation was performed. ]]>. (shrink)

This paper outlines the full details of Lucretius’ treatment of parental love. It shows that Lucretius is faithful to Epicurus’ notorious claim that parental love is not natural: in addition to orthodox Epicurean hedonist concerns, Lucretius asserts that children do not “belong to” their parents by nature; as such, even though parental love is now ubiquitous and indeed a cultural norm, there is no basis for the naturalness of parental love. This model of the relationship between parents and children does (...) not, however, apply in the case of certain animals, who do have natural parental love for their offspring. Focusing on two famous scenes, the sacrifice of Iphigenia and the forlorn heifer seeking her sacrificed calf, the paper argues that by highlighting the fragility of human parental love in comparison to that of the animals Lucretius brings to his Roman readers’ attention the relative weakness of the familial ties that bond human beings together, and at the same time he emphasizes the need to maintain them if social and political concord, with all its benefits, is to continue. It transpires that unlocking the details of Lucretius’ treatment of parental love brings a key lesson of the poem into clearer focus. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs and evaluates Aristotle's argument in Nicomachean Ethics IX.9 that the happy person needs friends, in which Aristotle combines his well-known claim that friends are other selves with the claim that human perception is meta-perceptual: the perceiving subject perceives its own existence. After exploring some issues in the logic of perception, the essay argues that Aristotle's argument for the necessity of friends is invalid since perception-verbs create referentially opaque contexts in which the substitution of co-referential terms fails.

: This essay reconstructs and evaluates Aristotle’s argument in Nicomachean Ethics IX.9 that the happy person needs friends, in which Aristotle combines his well-known claim that friends are other selves with the claim that human perception is meta-perceptual: the perceiving subject perceives its own existence. After exploring some issues in the logic of perception, the essay argues that Aristotle’s argument for the necessity of friends is invalid since perception-verbs create referentially opaque contexts in which the substitution of co-referential terms fails.

In his letters to Lucius Papirius Paetus from 46 BC Cicero provides striking reports on his thoughts and activities as he seeks to accommodate himself to the new political realities following Caesar’s decisive victory over the republican forces in Africa. In these letters Cicero also engages in a kind of performative role-playing: he casts himself variously as a teacher of oratory to two of Caesar’s close associates (Hirtius and Dolabella), as a bon vivant immersed in the Caesarian social scene, and (...) as a man of moral principle who measures himself against the model of the wise man. Philosophical jokes, allusions, and arguments all figure prominently: Cicero is evidently drawing on a rich range of philosophical material to frame his actions and how he should be judged. This paper brings out the full significance of these underlying philosophical frameworks and makes clear the ways in which Cicero exploits the resources of the Greek philosophical tradition in his self-fashioning in the letters to Paetus. (shrink)

Marxism has probably been the most influential philosophy of this century. Until recently, however, it was either ignored or dismissed without serious consideration by the great majority of English-speaking philosophers. If the situation is now changing, that is thanks in good measure to the development of analytical Marxism.

A collection of essays by nine prominent thinkers on the compatibility of socialism and democracy and its future.