The Development, Logic, and Legacy of Reflexive Concepts in Greek Philosophy

Abstract

Reflexive concepts and philosophy have a history of intimacy. From the beginning, philosophy's discourse incorporates reflexive ideas and makes these essential building-blocks in its project to think the real. I argue that concepts such as the self-moving and self-gathering soul in cosmology and anthropology, the thing-in-itself in ontology, and self-care in ethics become primordial reflexive operations which ground and animate their respective realms, and form an ecology of reflexive ideas. I provide an account of the underlying reasons for the development of these reflexive concepts, while at the same time sketching their reception and legacy in the tradition.