Hellenistic Philosophy Research Articles

Review of Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind

Review of Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind

Is It Irrational to Vote?

1. See Duncan Black, The Theory of Committees and Elections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951); Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957); James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962); and Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). Anticipations of rational actor models can be found as remotely as the Hellenic and Hellenistic periods. Jane Mansbridge notes that some presocratic philosophers, such as Gorgias and Protagoras, argued that self-interest bound men together in society and that laws were necessary to protect the weak from the strong: Jane J. Mansbridge, Self-Interest in the Explanation of Political Life, in Beyond Self-Interest, ed. Jane J. Mansbridge (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 3-22. See also W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers (New York: Harper and Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1960), pp. 63-80; and Plato, The Republic, trans. Paul Shorey, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (New York: Putnam, 1961). Similarly, the Hellenistic philosopher Carn6ade (c. 213-128 B.c.) argued that all people are egoists and that ethical notions were invented by the least-evil egoists to regulate the most-evil egoists. See Jeanne Croissant, La Morale de Carneade, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 1 (1938): 545-70, and, for more general comment, see Paul Veyne, Le Pain et Le Cirque: Sociologie Historique d'Unpluralisme Politique (Paris: Seuil, 1976). Unfortunately, none of Carneade's writings are extant; his teachings are known only indirectly through criticisms by Epicureans and Stoics. Nevertheless his theory of probability and action may entitle him to claim as the first rational choice theorist. It should be noted, however, that citing these as anticipations is little anachronistic. S-the self-interest theory-is peculiar vision of capitalist society-a crystallization of capitalist decision making, if you like; and, as Robert Heilbroner points out, the behavioral dispositions and beliefs essential to the workings of capitalism were not fully developed until the late 18th century: Heilbroner, The Nature and Logic of Capitalism (New York: Norton, 1986), pp. 107-40. Christianity undoubtedly had an influence as well; see R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study (Gloucester: P. Smith, 1962). Mansbridge cites Havelock's claim that a basic split between the moral and ideal and the expedient or selfish did not develop until Christian otherworldly influences had begun to affect the vocabulary and mind of the West: Mansbridge, Beyond Self-Interest, p. 305. Havelock's comments are in Eric A. Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964). See also Carl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Books, 1944).

Review Discussion: Accessible Hellenistic philosophy - (A. A.) Long and (D. N.) Sedley The Hellenistic philosophers. Cambridge: University Press, 1987. 1. Translations of the principal sources with philosophical commentary. Pp. XV + 512. £35.00 (bound), £15.00 (paper). 2. Greek and Latin texts, with notes and bibliography. Pp. 522. £50.00 (bound), £15.00 (paper).

Review Discussion: Accessible Hellenistic philosophy - (A. A.) Long and (D. N.) Sedley The Hellenistic philosophers. Cambridge: University Press, 1987. 1. Translations of the principal sources with philosophical commentary. Pp. XV + 512. £35.00 (bound), £15.00 (paper). 2. Greek and Latin texts, with notes and bibliography. Pp. 522. £50.00 (bound), £15.00 (paper). - Volume 110

L'anti-humanisme au XVIIe siècle (review)

Boor: REVIV.WS 299 major theoretical issues in the history of science. By constituting his own neoEpicurean contributions to physics as features of a historical narrative which debates their claims and successes relative to other postulates, Gassendi sought to mediate between a sociology of knowledge (in which knowledge of the world might merely be the construct of successive culturally constituted fictions), and an empirical knowledge (in which some models of the physical world could at least contingently assist in research programs). But like most important books, there are important lacunae. For lack of space, I will only mention the most troubling. I heartily embrace the idea that Gassendi's program found its most enabling vehicle in Epicureanism since that ancient philosophy perfectly expressed Gassendi's determination to engage with method, history , and physics. At the same time, and precisely because this is the case, we must ask what has happened, in Joy's analysis, to ethics, which goes unmentioned except for some emphasis on Gassendi's moderation in debate. Most commentators on Hellenistic philosophy predicate the content of Scepticism, Stoicism, and Epicureanism on some overriding ethical purpose which, responding to a diffracted cultural climate, they all share. That Gassendi could not imagine Epicureanism outside its threefold division into logic, physics, and ethics is inadvertently implied by Joy (though never fully addressed), and proven by the material circumstances in which the Animadversiones were published: the "third edition" of a675 devotes the entire second volume--roughly half the entire text--to ethics. (One of the most substantial Gassendist publications in Restoration England was a translation from Bernier's Abr~gg entitled Three Discourses of Happiness, Virtue, and Liberty [London, x699]). Given the intelligence and mastery of Joy's general treatment, I can only explain this oversight either as a deference to Louise T. Sarasohn's excellent but still unpublished dissertation on Gassendi's moral philosophy (U.C.L.A., x979), or to a failure to extrapolate from Gassendi's notions of physical and historical contingency to a notion of contingency which (in contrast to Descartes) might predicate a distinctly permissive ethic on his cognitive principles. Bernard Frischer's The Sculpted Word (Berkeley, I98~) describes an Epicurean mode of cultural imagery along just such lines. Unlike Joy, I still believe that Gassendi contributed significantly to the construction of English empiricism, but precisely on grounds her argument excludes. To distinguish Gassendi from Restoration thinkers, Joy must first assume the emergence of a discursive specialization she never adequately proves; and she can indulge that discrimination only by having already quarantined Gassendi's physics and history from ethics and politics. This is to commit a violence her central methodological claims prohibit. RICHARD W. F. KROLL Princeton University Henri Gouhier. L'Anti-humanisme au XVII" si~cle. Biblioth~que d'Histoire de la Philosophie. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1987. Pp. 179. Paper, F 16u. The "humanism" that Gouhier talks about is the belief that human beings have a measure of self-sufficiency and that, even if God exists, he leaves them some room of 300 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:2 APRIL 1990 their own. The "anti-humanism" of the title is thus a theological position, but one which Gouhier thinks we can use to organize and explain a good many philosophical arguments of the seventeenth century. Gouhier admits that he is imposing a word on the period--"humanisme" was not at home in French until the nineteenth century-but he insists that the problem of human self-sufficiency shaped natural theology, metaphysics, and moral theory. Gouhier has no difficulty in showing that there was a "humanisme libertin," the doctrine of skeptics, atheists, and deists who held that man was on his own. He denies that there was an "anti-humanisme libertin," but the reader may wonder if the skeptical argument should go the other way. Are not human beings, without knowledge, helpless in the face of fate? That skepticism generally did not suggest this is an indication that the skeptics of the time were convinced of the power of human beings to free themselves from the burdens of belief. The notion of a "Christian humanism" is trickier. Gouhier calls the Thomist tradition (33...

Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 1':'3 for an integrated life (197). But he does not mention that for Plato the desire for knowledge and understanding, drawn to its objects, the Forms, is part of what accounts for this compulsion and its intensity. Listening to the Cicadas is an outstanding example of a philosophically sensitive, literary reading of a Platonic dialogue. Ferrari writes demandingly but beautifully, and his dialectical reading often has just the effect he desires, to draw the reader into the Phaedrus's world. In addition, he is familiar with contemporary moral philosophy, moral psychology, and philosophy of action, and employs notions from Williams, Frankfurt, and others in sensible and helpful ways. The book should be accessible to a wide audience; the Greek is transliterated and translated, with virtually all technical discussion confined to notes. But although the series in which the book appears is well known to specialists in classics and classical philosophy, it is probably not familiar to philosophers generally and literary theorists. This is unfortunate, for Ferrari's work is an important one for all of these audiences. Micn^~t. L. MORCAN Indiana University, Bloomington Walter G. Englert. Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action. American Philological Assocation. American Classical Studies. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987. Pp. x + 215. Cloth, $~ 1-95. Paper, $1 ~-95Though he has fallen from top billing (Aristotle and Epicurus on Voluntary. Action was the work's original title as a x981 Stanford dissertation), Aristotle has retained his prominence in Englert's only slightly revised text. Englert's thesis, in fact, is that the Epicurean "swerve was first developed in response to Aristotelian challenges to atomism in cosmology, physics, psychology, and physiology, and in particular, was meant to be the atomic equivalent of Aristotle's sumphuton pneuma in Epicurus's analysis of the voluntary actions of all living creatures" (145). My skepticism toward this assertion is based not so much on the doubtful availability of Aristotelian texts to Hellenistic philosophers (though Englert's depiction of Epicurus responding to specific passages of the De caelo, Physics, and De motu animalium certainly invites this objection) as on the following considerations: (a) Englert's Epicurus posits weight as an atomic property to counter Aristotle's objection that Democritean atoms have no natural motion with which forced motion might contrast. But why would Epicurus think Aristotle's objection any more forceful than we do? If Epicurus insists that atoms fall down, it is not from a metaphysical conviction that every body must have a natural locomotive tendency, but because of his empirical observation that things in fact fall. (b) Englert's Epicurus, casting about for a third cause of motion besides collisions and weight, stumbles upon Aristotle's description of "the accidental" (to sumbebekos) as an event without definite cause happening at an indeterminate time and place, and conceives of the swerve. But the similarity of the two doctrines is entirely superficial. The accident, for Aristotle, is the nonessential: man is not pale by nature, for instance, 124 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28"1 JANUARY 1990 but "by accident," e.g., if he happens to stay indoors. If there is an analogue for this in Epicurus, it's in his notion ofsuraptomata. But what has this to do with the swerve? (c) Finally, Englert's Epicurus posits the swerve as an atomistic adaptation of the workings of Aristotle's sumphuton pneuma. (Does this mean the pneuma's motion is accidental? The relation of this thesis to the last is unclear.) The analogy of the expanding pneuma and the swerving atom is supposed to be that both are physical bodies whose motion marks a more or less "fresh start," breaking the otherwise deterministic causal chain. More or less? Englert speaks of a "delicate balance" in Aristotle's account "between a purely passive causal sequence" (from the stimulus of phantasia to the agent's response) and a "sequence involving a completely new beginning of motion" (93)- But what is this balance if not Stoic compatibilism, an endless causal chain balanced against the ascription of responsibility for personal initiative? Is Aristotle then a proto-Stoic? That is, does Aristotle believe that stimulus plus character determines response? Englert wants to say...

The Symmetry Argument: Lucretius Against the Fear of Death

It is somehow popular among philosophers these days think that anxiety is a reasonable emotion. The fear of death, however, in whatever of the many forms it takes, can be a debilitating and, sometimes, incapacitating emotion, and one would thus expect philosophers have raised more questions about this popular dogma than they have.' It is unclear how account for the prevailing commitment the rationality of anxiety. I suspect that it may be due partly a widespread reception of the currently favored Aristotelian views that death is the most terrible of all and that to fear some things is even right and noble' It may also be due misconceptions or confused conceptions of what the fear of is. Whatever the source of its popularity, contemporary philosophers have assiduously supported the rationality of fearing death.3 Philosophers have not always, or even very often, been attracted the idea that fearing is reasonable. Long ago, Hellenistic philosophers took a less tolerant attitude toward anxiety. Stoics, Skeptics, and Epicureans all dispensed different doctrinal antidotes and intellectual potions against the fear of death. Lucretius joined his master, Epicurus, in the campaign against the fear of death, and offered what has perenially been regarded as a powerful weapon against anxiety. He gave us his famous and now much-discussed symmetry argument.4 He seems have

The Hellenistic Philosophers - A. A. Long, D. N. Sedley: The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1: Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary, Vol. 2: Greek and Latin Texts with Notes and Bibliography. Pp. xv + 512, x + 512; 1 line drawing. Cambridge University Press, 1987. Vol. 1 (£35, paper £15), Vol. 2 (£50).

The Hellenistic Philosophers - A. A. Long, D. N. Sedley: The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1: <i>Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary</i>, Vol. 2: <i>Greek and Latin Texts with Notes and Bibliography</i>. Pp. xv + 512, x + 512; 1 line drawing. Cambridge University Press, 1987. Vol. 1 (£35, paper £15), Vol. 2 (£50).

Hellenistic philosophy: introductory readings

This new edition of Hellenistic Philosophy --including nearly 100 pages of additional materia--offers the first English translation of the account of Stoic ethics by Arius Didymus, substantial new sources on Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Scepticism, expanded representation of Plutarch and Cicero, and a fuller presentation of papyrological evidence. Inwood and Gerson maintain the standard of consistency and accuracy that distinguished their translations in the first edition, while regrouping some material into larger, more thematically connected passages. This edition is further enhanced by a new, more spacious page design.

Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy

In what sense did the Hellenistic philosophers see themselves as the heirs or critics of Socrates? Was Socrates, in their view, a philosopher on whom Plato was the decisive authority? What doctrines or strategies of Socrates were thoroughly alive in this period? These are the principal questions I shall be asking in this paper, particularly the third. To introduce them, and to set the scene, I begin with some general points, starting from two passages which present an image of Socrates at the beginning and at the end of the Hellenistic era. Here first are three lines from the Silloi of the Pyrrhonean Timon of Phlius:From these matters (i.e. the inquiry into nature) he turned aside, the people-chiselling moralising ‘chatterer, the wizard of Greece, whose assertions were sharply pointed, master of the well-turned sneer, a pretty good ironist.

The Jewish hellenist and the medieval Jewish philosopher: A comparison of philo of Alexandria and Saadia Ben Joseph

Two of Judaism's greatest philosophers were Philo of Alexandria (c. 20BCE-50CE) and Saadia ben Joseph (882-942). As the first, who in­ fluenced the development of Christian dogma, is the only Jewish Hellenistic philosopher from whom a body of work has survived, and the second can be considered the father of medieval Jewish philosophy, a comparison is of import.

Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology.

A recent revival of interest has taken place in the Epicureans, Stoics and Sceptics, their theories and problems, and the lively debates that went on between them in ancient Greece. This study provides a philosophical introduction to the epistemological and metaphysical debates in which these Hellenistic thinkers marked out for philosophy some of its central concerns. In the first chapter David Sedley introduces the major thinkers of the period in a brief sketch of Hellenistic philosophy. The papers which follow were originally delivered and discussed at an international conference held in 1978 at Oriel College, Oxford, which was the first of a series of Symposia Hellenistica.

Solzhenitsyn, Epicurus, and the Ethics of Stalinism

Previous articleNext article No AccessSolzhenitsyn, Epicurus, and the Ethics of StalinismDavid M. HalperinDavid M. Halperin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Critical Inquiry Volume 7, Number 3Spring, 1981 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/448111 Views: 9Total views on this site Copyright 1981 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Diodorus Cronus and Hellenistic Philosophy

During the last four decades historians of ancient logic have become increasingly aware of the importance of Diodorus Cronus and his pupil Philo as pioneers of the propositional logic which came to flourish in the Stoa. Their direct influence has so far been recognised in two main areas of Hellenistic controversy – the validity-criteria for conditional propositions, and the definition of the modal terms ‘possible’ and ‘necessary’. But some broader questions have not been satisfactorily answered. What were Diodorus' own philosophical allegiances and antecedents? What is his place in the history of Greek philosophy? How far-reaching was his influence on the post-Aristotelian philosophers?There was little chance of tackling these questions confidently until 1972, when Klaus Döring published for the first time the collected fragments of Diodorus, in his important volume Die Megariker. Meagre though they are, these fragments confirm my suspicion that Diodorus' philosophical background has not been fully explored, and also that his influence on the three emerging Hellenistic schools – the Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics – was far wider than has hitherto been recognised. There has been much discussion as to which earlier philosophers played the most decisive part in shaping Hellenistic philosophy, and the respective claims of the Platonists and of Aristotle have never lacked expert advocacy. In all this, the claims of so obscure a figure as Diodorus have been underrated.

Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics

Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics

Hellenistic Philosophy (Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics).

Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Hellenistic Philosophy (Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics). By A. A. Long (Classical Life and Letters). (London: Duckworth. 1974. Pp. x + 262. Price £4.95.) I.G. Kidd I.G. Kidd Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 26, Issue 103, April 1976, Pages 169–171, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219139 Published: 01 April 1976

Hellenistic Philosophy. Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics

Hellenistic Philosophy. Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics

Niebuhr's Critique of Rationalism: A Limited Validation

The life and thought of Reinhold Niebuhr are characterized by a running debate with rationalism. As a Christian, Niebuhr saw it as his task to defend the Biblical view of man against corruption by an opposing view found in the rationalist tradition of Hellenic philosophy. As a modern Christian, Niebuhr felt even more compelled to resist the incursion of rationalism into Christianity represented in theology by liberal Protestantism and in ethics by the Social Gospel movement.

Philosophic Method in Cicero

AT THZ TUrN OF THE C~NTUR'Z, Wilhelm Windelband's Geschichte der Philosophie laid a judgment upon Cicero which would perdure, almost without challenge, through the decades that followed: his works exhibit an ability for compilation and a talent for expression, but they lack any power of philosophizing---a lack demonstrated in their eclectic selection among philosophic systems, x Earlier Friedrich 0berweg had indicated the derivative nature of Ciccro's thoughts but praised his rhetorical enhancement of ethical values; later German historians would commend his eclecticism as a major source of Hellenistic philosophy, though agreeing with Windelband that Cicero was neither original as a thinker nor significant as a philosopher. 2 Emile Brdhier and Joseph Owens treat him accordingly, citing his works for the doctrines and arguments of others, while omitting any serious analysis of them as philosophic in their own right, a Contemporary historians of philosophy may recognize within his dialogues articulate proponents of divergent philosophies and their systematic ~nity through exposition and refutation, but they relate these works to literary or rhetorical exercises. It is an unexamined assumption of our times that rhetoric and philosophy are univocally separate and exclusive provinces, connected neither by common topics, identifiable subject-matters, nor universal methods. Cicero's view of philosophic method questions the dogmatism of so rigid a disjunction and compels us to consider another possibility within the plurality of philosophic methods. In Cicero's philosophic dialogues as in his textbooks on rhetoric, every careful method of discourse (omnis ratio diligens disserendO was a composite of two moments: invention (discovery) and judgment. 4 The Stoic dialectic failed seriously in its omission of the former, while the preeminence of Aristotle lay in the mastery

De Harmonie der Sferen en het ontstaan van de muzikale modi

The system of the eight modi for liturgical music has its roots in oldMesopotamian cosmology and Neo-Platonism, applied to the Biblical imaginaryof Genesis. Thus the eight modi symbolised the seven planetary spheresof the cosmos and the corresponding degrees of paradise, indicating theitinerary by which the human soul is to attain its eternal, glorified destiny. Inthis contribution, we try to demonstrate that the eight modi originally wereonly a speculative theory, developed by Syrian Hellenistic philosophers andtheologians, not by musicians. Only after completing a theoretical form,musicians were endeavoured to provide compositions according to the systemof modality and to mould older compositions into the newly developedsystem. This process, resulting in different forms of modality, was achievedindependently in Syria, the Byzantine world, and also in the West. Latintheoreticians e.g., although having only a partial knowledge of the originaldoctrine composed and adapted their chants to such a theoretical system.

Some Recent Publications on Hellenistic Philosophy (1937-1957) (Continued)

Some Recent Publications on Hellenistic Philosophy (1937-1957) (Continued)