Renowned scholar of Ancient Greek Martin Ostwald explains, for a modern audience, the terms by which the ancient Greeks saw and lived their lives—and ...

The basic contention of this article is that, contrary to a widely held and influential view, the Chalkis Decree does not constitute evidence that Athens tried to impose democracies on rebellious allies after their subjugation. It contains an exchange of oaths between Athens and Chalkis, confirming an 'agreement' (homologia), the contents of which are lost. The oaths show Athenian concern for the protection of the Athenian democracy and its friends at Chalkis, and impose some judicial but no political restrictions on (...) Chalkis to secure Athenian domination and assure the priority of Athenian interests. In fact, the Athenians acknowledge the right of the Chalkidians to insist on the performance of civic duties in Chalkis on the part of aliens (xenoi) resident there. The Athenians among these resident xenoi, who are exempted from these obligations, are neither colonists nor kleruchs, as is sometimes alleged, but most probably individual settlers who had been given land in Chalkidian territory by Tolmides in the 450s. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:246 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY lish a line of succession from Schleiermacher to Stenzel and further on to some of the most recent Platonic scholars in Germany. In this connection the peculiar character of Platon der Erzieher is a side issue. Gaiser seems only moderately interested in paideia and even tries to free Stenzel from the suspicion that he should have considered paideia as the essence of Platonism. Some sentences (...) in Stenzel's book which might suggest such an opinion are said to be "consciously one-sided formulations" (p. viii, note 7). Gaiser's true interest is Plato's ontology. Nothing explains his stand better than his endorsement of H. J. Kr~imer's representative work Arete bei Platon und Aristoteles. Kr~imer, whose major objective is a reconstruction of what he thinks was Plato's esoteric philosophy, has emphatically declared that he arrived at his results by pursuing the method and the factual interests of Stenzel. Gaiser's attempt to locate Stenzel's position must be understood in the light of this and perhaps similar declarations.1 This is not the place to discuss those of Stenzel's theories which are at best touched upon in Platon der Erzieher or even the theories of those who proclaim to be his heirs. There is, however, one point on which I insist. Gaiser tries to link Stenzel with Heidegger and points to the interest which Stenzel took in Heidegger in his later years. Platon der Erzieher appeared in the same year as Sein und Zeit. I believe that the two works belong to entirely different worlds. Whereas Heidegger powerfully broke up new dimensions of thought, the philosopher Stenzel, for better or worse, represents a period which had reached its end when he died in 1934. ERNST MORITZ MANASSE North Carolina College at Durham Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy. Introduction, Text, Translation and Indices by L. G. Westerink. (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1962. Pp. lii + 69.) L. G. Westerink, whose interest in the Alexandrian commentators on Plato has already borne ample and distinguished fruit in his editions of the Alcibiades commentaries of Olympiodorus and Proclus and of Damascius' lectures on the Philebus, has now further enriched our knowledge of Platonic studies in the sixth century A.D.by publishing a new critical text of a little-known set of introductory lectures to Plato, which originated in the Alexandrian school. The importance of the present work is indicated by the facts that the last critical text of these prolegomena, which forms part of a tenth-century manuscript in the Vienna National Library (Vindob. 1Cf. also Gaiser's new book Platons Ungeschriebene Lehre (Stuttgart, 1963), which appeared after this review was written. BOOK REVIEWS 247 phil. gr. 314), was published over a century ago by K. F. Hermann in his Appendix Platonica, and that the most recent commentary is that of L. Skowronski in a dissertation published in 1884. In other words, nothing substantial had appeared on the Prolegomena after the publication of the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, and Westerink's great merit consists in bringing to bear upon the present work the insights gained from a study of these Aristotelian commentaries. For the same professors taught both Plato and Aristotle at Alexandria, and not only did their teaching of one color their views on the other, but they frequently borrowed ideas, quotations, stories, and even phrases from one another. The chief aim of the Introduction (pp. ix-l) is to investigate the authorship of the Prolegomena, which the almost unanimous agreement of scholars since 1675 (the one exception is Beutler in RE s.v. "Olympiodorus") had attributed to Olympiodorus. W. begins by establishing the Alexandrian background of these lectures and by discussing, one by one, the characteristic beliefs of the various members of the school and the way in which these are reflected in introductory lectures to Aristotle. This is followed by a painstaking analysis of the sources of the Prolegomena and finally the conclusion that the present text belongs "in the immediate surroundings of Olympiodorus and Elias" (p. xlix). Discrepancies between the biography of Plato here and in Olympiodorus' commentary on the A lcibiades militate, according to W., against Olympiodorus' authorship, although... (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Abhandlungen und Vorträge allgemeinen Inhalts" verfügbar.

In order to be effective, Christian development practitioners need to have a comprehensive understanding of poverty informed by the concepts and definitions used by the poor themselves. Far too often, this is not the case. Research shows that community level understandings of poverty encompass a gamut of relational, material, cultural, psychological, and spiritual variables that are often overlooked, and that need to be taken into account for more effective holistic, transformational development to take place.

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Vorlesungen über Naturphilosophie" verfügbar.

A long-standing theme in discussion of perception and thought has been that our primary cognitive contact with individual objects and events in the world derives from our perceptual contact with them. When I look at a duck in front of me, I am not merely presented with the fact that there is at least one duck in the area, rather I seem to be presented withthisthing (as one might put it from my perspective) in front of me, which looks to (...) me to be a duck. Furthermore, such a perception would seem to put me in a position not merely to make the existential judgment that there is some duck or other present, but rather to make a singular, demonstrative judgment, that that is a duck. My grounds for an existential judgment in this case derives from my apprehension of the demonstrative thought and not vice versa. (shrink)

On Inception is a translation of Martin Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe 70. This work belongs to the crucial period, before and during WWII, when Heidegger was at work on a series of treatises that begins with "Contributions to Philosophy" and includes "The Event" and "The History of Beyng." These works are difficult, even hermetic, but represent a crucial development in Heidegger's thinking. On Inception deepens the investigation underway in the other volumes of the series and provides a unique perspective on Heidegger's (...) thinking of Being and of Event. Here, Heidegger asks, with a greater insistence than anywhere else in his work, what it might mean to think of being as event, and not as presence. Event cannot be thought without the sense of a beginning - an inception - and so, Heidegger insists, we must try to think of being as inception, as fundamentally inceptive. On Inception pursues rigorously the difficult and puzzling implications of this speculation. It does not merely extend work already undertaken but also opens doors onto wholly other pathways. (shrink)

Is it OK to lie to Siri? Is it bad to mistreat a robot for our own pleasure? Under what condition should we grant a moral status to an artificial intelligence (AI) system? This paper looks at different arguments for granting moral status to an AI system: the idea of indirect duties, the relational argument, the argument from intelligence, the arguments from life and information, and the argument from sentience. In each but the last case, we find unresolved issues with (...) the particular argument, which leads us to move to a different one. We leave the idea of indirect duties aside since these duties do not imply considering an AI system for its own sake. The paper rejects the relational argument and the argument from intelligence. The argument from life may lead us to grant a moral status to an AI system, but only in a weak sense. Sentience, by contrast, is a strong argument for the moral status of an AI system—based, among other things, on the Aristotelian principle of equality: that same cases should be treated in the same way. The paper points out, however, that no AI system is sentient given the current level of technological development. (shrink)

Over the past three decades, the philosophy of biology has emerged from the shadow of the philosophy of physics to become a respectable and thriving philosophical subdiscipline. The authors take a fresh look at the life sciences and the philosophy of biology from a strictly realist and emergentist-naturalist perspective. They outline a unified and science-oriented philosophical framework that enables the clarification of many foundational and philosophical issues in biology. This book will be of interest both to life scientists and philosophers.

We provide a battery of examples of delusions against which theoretical accounts can be tested. Then, we identify neuropsychological anomalies that could produce the unusual experiences that may lead, in turn, to the delusions in our battery. However, we argue against Maher’s view that delusions are false beliefs that arise as normal responses to anomalous experiences. We propose, instead, that a second factor is required to account for the transition from unusual experience to delusional belief. The second factor in the (...) aetiology of delusions can be described superficially as a loss of the ability to reject a candidate for belief on the grounds of its implausibility and its inconsistency with everything else that the patient knows. But we point out some problems that confront any attempt to say more about the nature of this second factor. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy reflects his famous philosophical "turning." In this work, Heidegger returns to the question of being from its inception in Being and Time to a new questioning of being as event.

What exactly is hope and how does it influence our decisions? In How We Hope, Adrienne Martin presents a novel account of hope, the motivational resources it presupposes, and its function in our practical lives. She contends that hoping for an outcome means treating certain feelings, plans, and imaginings as justified, and that hope thereby involves sophisticated reflective and conceptual capacities. Martin develops this original perspective on hope--what she calls the "incorporation analysis"--in contrast to the two dominant philosophical (...) conceptions of hope: the orthodox definition, where hoping for an outcome is simply desiring it while thinking it possible, and agent-centered views, where hoping for an outcome is setting oneself to pursue it. In exploring how hope influences our decisions, she establishes that it is not always a positive motivational force and can render us complacent. She also examines the relationship between hope and faith, both religious and secular, and identifies a previously unnoted form of hope: normative or interpersonal hope. When we place normative hope in people, we relate to them as responsible agents and aspire for them to overcome challenges arising from situation or character. Demonstrating that hope merits rigorous philosophical investigation, both in its own right and in virtue of what it reveals about the nature of human emotion and motivation, How We Hope offers an original, sustained look at a largely neglected topic in philosophy. (shrink)

A ‘lottery belief’ is a belief that a particular ticket has lost a large, fair lottery, based on nothing more than the odds against it winning. The lottery paradox brings out a tension between the idea that lottery beliefs are justified and the idea that that one can always justifiably believe the deductive consequences of things that one justifiably believes – what is sometimes called the principle of closure. Many philosophers have treated the lottery paradox as an argument against the (...) second idea – but I make a case here that it is the first idea that should be given up. As I shall show, there are a number of independent arguments for denying that lottery beliefs are justified. (shrink)