Search results for "Ancient philosophy"
showing 10 items of 29 documents
Being Itself and the Being of Beings : Reading Aristotle’s Critique of Parmenides (Physics 1.3) after Metaphysics
2018
The essay studies Aristotle’s critique of Parmenides (Physics 1.3) in the light of the Heideggerian account of Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics as an approach to being (Sein) in terms of beings (das Seiende). Aristotle’s critique focuses on the presuppositions of the Parmenidean thesis of the unity of being. It is argued that a close study of the presuppositions of Aristotle’s own critique reveals an important difference between the Aristotelian metaphysical framework and the Parmenidean “protometaphysical” approach. The Parmenides fragments indicate being as such in the sense of the pure, undifferentiated “is there” (τὸ ἐόν)—as the intelligible accessibility of meaningful reality to think…
A Logical Reconstruction of Leibniz’s Argument for His Complete Concept Conception of the Nature of Substance in Discours §8
2020
Abstract This paper develops a valid reconstruction in first-order predicate logic of Leibniz’s argument for his complete concept definition of substance in §8 of the Discours de Métaphysique. Following G. Rodriguez-Pereyra, it construes the argument as resting on two substantial premises, the “merely verbal” Aristotelian definition and Leibniz’s concept containment theory of truth, and it understands the resulting “real” definition as saying not that an entity is a substance iff its complete concept contains every predicate of that entity, but iff its complete concept contains every predicate of any subject to which that concept is truly attributable. An account is suggested of why Leibniz…
Sourcebook for the History of the Philosophy of Mind
2014
Introduction.- I Soul as an entity.- 1. The soul and the mind in ancient philosophy (Juha Sihvola and Henrik Lagerlund).- 2. The soul and the mind in medieval and early modern theories (Henrik Lagerlund).- II Sense perception.- 1. Ancient theories (Miira Tuominen).- 2. Medieval theories (Simo Knuuttila & Pekka Karkkainen).- 3. Early modern theories (Tuomo Aho).- III Common sense, fantasy, and estimation.- 1. Common sense and fantasy in ancient philosophy (Miira Tuominen).- 2. Medieval theories of internal senses (Simo Knuuttila & Pekka Karkkainen).- 3. Renaissance theories of internal senses (Lorenzo Casini).- 4. Common sense and fantasy in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Tuomo Aho).…
How can Parmenides’ τὸ ἐόν be unending but non-endless?
2023
In this paper we shall walk a well-trodden but still only partially explored path, along which we shall attempt to establish a basis for the study of the Parmenides poem’s unity by way of a comparison with 20th-century physics. In particular, we shall investigate the hypothesis that Parmenides’ sphere-shaped τὸ ἐόν, as described in B8.42-49, could be understood as a hyperspherical unlimited whole cosmologically bounded by the διάκοσμος described by the complex sphere system in fragment B12.
The Historical Background of Relativism
2020
Epistemological relativism has been defended and criticised since ancient philosophy (Baghramian M, Relativism. Routledge, London, 2004). At the beginning of this chapter, I create a short introduction to the history and development of epistemological relativism from Protagoras to today’s relativists. After this, I introduce a few philosophers who have been significant in the development of relativism. First, I introduce Kant’s understanding of knowledge and its construction. Then, I bring forth two notable perspectivists. G. W. Leibniz claimed in his book, Monadology (1898), that every monad has its own perspective of reality. The diversity of perspectives is one of the riches of the world…
La sophía come paideia
2021
La filosofia può essere intesa come sophía, ossia come sapere puro in grado di cogliere la verità che si nasconde dietro l’apparenza delle cose sensibili. La parola chiave sophos (sapiente), originariamente, oltre che essere rapportata al possesso del sapere puro, implicava la capacità di un’abilità pratica, sul modello dell’artigiano. In questa prospettiva, i concetti di sophía e di phronesis risultano strettamente legati a quello di paideia. Philosophy as to be considered as "sophía", as a pure knowledge, reaching the truth, that is hidden behind the appereance of material objects. The keyword "sophos" (wise man), originally was related to the pure knowledge, as well as to a practical ski…
The (Meta)politics of Thinking
2021
In this chapter, Jussi Backman approaches Hannah Arendt’s readings of ancient philosophy by setting out from her perspective on the intellectual, political, and moral crisis characterizing Western societies in the twentieth century, a crisis to which the rise of totalitarianism bears witness. To Arendt, the political catastrophes haunting the twentieth century have roots in a tradition of political philosophy reaching back to the Greek beginnings of philosophy. Two principal features of Arendt’s exchange with the ancients are highlighted. The first is her account, in The Human Condition (1958), of the profound transformation of the Greek perceptions of political life initiated by Plato, the…
Choice and Practical Reasoning in Ancient Philosophy
2013
Ancient thinkers acknowledged that we are the sort of creatures that want things to be a certain way and can make efforts for them to become that way. In that sense, the ancients had a notion of volition. But it is not clear how they conceived of volition. The problem is partly historical. Some late ancient, notably Christian thinkers came to regard volition in a different way than earlier thinkers had done, seeing reason as a less powerful ability than Socrates did, and instead placing their hopes on the will, which they regarded as a separate and sovereign part of the soul. About these historical developments there is much debate and little agreement. The problem is also partly conceptual…
Healing Grief: A Commentary on Seneca's Consolatio ad Marciam
2023
Both our view of Seneca’s philosophical thought and our approach to the ancient consolatory genre have radically changed since the latest commentary on the Consolatio ad Marciam was written in 1981. The aim of this work is to offer a new book-length commentary on the earliest of Seneca’s extant writings, along with a revision of the Latin text and a reassessment of Seneca’s intellectual program, strategies, and context. A crucial document to penetrate Seneca’s discourse on the self in its embryonic stages, the Ad Marciam is here taken seriously as an engaging attempt to direct the persuasive power of literary models and rhetorical devices toward the fundamentally moral project of healing Ma…
Could Themis be the Deity who «Steers» Parmenides’ Cosmos?
2021
In this paper I will investigate the identity of the daímōn introduced by Parmenides in B12, 3 DK, the deity “who steers all things”. The importance of this deity is not adequately reflected in ancient doxography but in recent decades many scholars have reconsidered its role. I argue that in Parmenides’ poem this daímōn may play a relevant role in connecting the theological, ontological and cosmological planes. My purpose is to provide enough arguments for the hypothesis that the daímōn may be the same goddess, Themis, who in the proem (B1, 28) is paired with Dike as a guide for Parmenides to the theá who will reveal to him the truth of tò eón, and in the part of the poem called alḗtheia (B…