Ancient Philosophy

Diogenes Laertius ascribes the first concept of spherical Earth to both Pythagoras and Parmenides. Indeed, a major shift in cosmologies—emergence of the spherical conception of the Earth and the surrounding heaven—took place between the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. Given the poor state of preservation of early Pythagorean tradition, it is argued that primacy in formulating the notion of spherical Earth should be ascribed to Parmenides.

What makes Socratic inquiry valuable? A standard response is what I term instrumentalism: Socratic inquiry is merely instrumentally valuable; it is valuable only because it produces valuable results. This paper challenges instrumentalism. First, I present two value puzzles for instrumentalists and argue that these puzzles are best solved by denying instrumentalism. Then, I survey passages in the Apology that point to the source of Socratic inquiry’s non-instrumental value.

Near the end of Plato’s Republic iv, Socrates reveals that the justice discovered externally in the city is a phantom of justice, as opposed to the justice discovered internally in the individual, which is justice in truth (443b7-444a2). This paper explains the distinction between true justice and its phantom, as well as the significance of this distinction to the underlying argument of Plato’s Republic.

In Republic ix, Socrates begins his argument that deceptive pleasure causes insatiable desire by citing the error that cessation of pain is the greatest pleasure. Some interpret this error as an illusion, experiencing pleasure when there is no pleasure; but illusion cannot explain insatiable desire. Our interpretation explains insatiable desire—and Socrates’ restatement of wisdom and justice to include pleasures, which links the knowledge of unchanging reality with these virtues.

In this essay, I discuss the philosophical significance of three features of the Phaedrus’s dramatic scenery: the myth of Boreas, the two trees Socrates singles out upon arriving at the grove, and the grove itself. I argue that attention to these three features of the dramatic scenery helps us better understand the Phaedrus’s account of erōs.

This article argues that the second part of the Parmenides (137-166) consists not only of the well-known logical structure that has been widely studied but also of a great variety of definitions of forms. My aim is to show how these definitions depend on a specific group of closely connected primary forms (i.e., same, different, part, whole). The definitions that Parmenides provides help Socrates overcome his failure in attempting to define forms in the first part of the dialogue.

The passage 18a34-⁠b5 of Aristotle’s famous sea-battle chapter has often been misunderstood. My aim is to show, firstly, that Aristotle in this passage attempts to prove that the unrestricted validity of the Principle of Bivalence entails, in the case of singular statements, the validity of the Principle of Truth-value Distribution for the contradictory pairs they are members of. According to the latter principle either the affirmative member of a contradictory pair of statements must be true and the negative false or vice versa. Secondly, I want to show what consequences the correct understanding of the passage in question has for the understanding of the introductory passage of the chapter (18a28-⁠33) and for the dispute over whether Aristotle exempts singular statements about contingent future events from the domain of the Principle of Bivalence. The thesis, advanced by some modern interpreters, that Aristotle refrains from doing so even though he exempts the contradictory pairs such statements are members of from the domain of the Principle of Truth-value Distribution will be rebutted as resulting from a fallacious line of reasoning.

Two of Aristotle’s major legacies, namely, the theory of scientific syllogism and teleology seem to conflict on several planes. Indeed, an array of formal limitations prevents him from formalizing teleological explanations into scientific syllogisms, which are entirely absent from his works. To achieve this, Aristotle resorts to a different tool, the logic of ‘consequence’. This governs both the teleological relation between an end and a means that underlies necessity ‘from a hypothesis’—which is the necessity proper to living things—and a different form of syllogisms, namely, syllogisms ‘from a hypothesis’. His guidelines in the first chapter of his Parts of Animals on the proper form of demonstration to be adopted in biology should be read as laying out the rules of inference for translating teleological explanations into syllogisms ‘from a hypothesis’.

Aristotle says that conclusions of practical syllogisms are actions that occur εὐθύς, which is normally translated to indicate temporal immediacy. Both aspects of this—that the conclusions are actions, and that they occur immediately—seem wrong. Interpreting εὐθύς as atemporal, specifically as indicating that nothing more is needed to explain the action, makes better sense of practical syllogisms and solves the problems raised by calling their conclusions actions.

In section 1 I present a case for understanding Cicero as a radical Academic skeptic, based on evidence from the Academica. In section 2 I offer an explanation of the concept of skeptical fideism and present a way to taxonomize various versions of the view. The material in sections 1 and 2 positions us to ask, was Cicero, the Academic augur, a sincere orthopraxic skeptical fideist? In section 3 I attempt to answer that question, beginning with an examination of De divinatione. Reading that work in a skeptical light, as I do, we are led to an impasse on our central question. However, in section 4 I consider two lines of argument that might enable us to determine Cicero’s own views.

I argue for the authenticity of a fragment found in Eusebius, PE i 2.2-5, and sometimes attributed to Porphyry of Tyre. I argue against the case for non-Porphyrian authorship that has become dominant in recent years, employing evidence that highlights congruity with generally accepted Porphyrian works. This allows me to move on to an initial reconstruction of Porphyry’s religious epistemology, and to assess what that means in his historical context.