How was the world generated and how does matter continue to be ordered so that the world can continue functioning? Questions like these have existed as long as humanity has been capable of rational thought. In antiquity, Plato's Timaeus introduced the concept of the Demiurge, or Craftsman-god, to answer them. This lucid and wide-ranging book argues that the concept of the Demiurge was highly influential on the many discussions operating in Middle Platonist, Gnostic, Hermetic and Christian contexts in the first (...) three centuries AD. It explores key metaphysical problems such as the origin of evil, the relationship between matter and the First Principle and the deployment of ever-increasing numbers of secondary deities to insulate the First Principle from the sensible world. It also focuses on the decreasing importance of demiurgy in Neoplatonism, with its postulation of procession and return. (shrink)

Platonic love is a concept that has profoundly shaped Western literature, philosophy and intellectual history for centuries. First developed in the Symposium and the Phaedrus, it was taken up by subsequent thinkers in antiquity, entered the theological debates of the Middle Ages, and played a key role in the reception of Neoplatonism and the etiquette of romantic relationships during the Italian Renaissance. In this wide-ranging reference work, a leading team of international specialists examines the Platonic distinction between higher and lower (...) forms of eros, the role of the higher form in the ascent of the soul and the concept of Beauty. They also treat the possibilities for friendship and interpersonal love in a Platonic framework, as well as the relationship between love, rhetoric and wisdom. Subsequent developments are explored in Plutarch, Plotinus, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena, Aquinas, Ficino, della Mirandola, Castiglione and the contra amorem tradition. (shrink)

English summary: The connection between the soul and the material world played an important role in Neoplatonic thought. Generally, this connection prompted questions like: How should one think about the effect of the soul on the material and conversely, of matter on the soul? How is evil to be understood? Does the soul beget evil through itself or is it drawn to evil from the matter? How is the connection between the Logos, as the principle structure of the soul, as (...) well as the principle means by which the material world is organized, understandable? And what role does the intellect play in the fabric of matter and soul, which Plato already confirmed as a divine thought? These and other questions are followed up from a historical-systematic perspective in the essays collected in this volume, contributed by internationally renowned scholars of Neoplatonism. German description: Die Beziehung zwischen Seele und Materie spielt eine bedeutende Rolle im Denken des Neuplatonismus. Allerdings wirft diese Beziehung eine ganze Reihe von Fragen auf: Wie muss die Wirkung der Seele auf die Materie und umgekehrt der Materie auf die Seele gedacht werden? Wie ist das Bose zu verstehen? Bringt die Seele das Bose durch sich selbst hervor oder wird sie von der Materie zum Bosen angezogen? Wie lasst sich der Zusammenhang begreifen, durch den der Logos als das Strukturprinzip der Seele die Welt ordnet? Und welche Rolle spielt im Gefuge von Materie und Seele der Geist, den bereits Platon als ein gottliches Denken bestimmt hat? Diesen und anderen Fragen wird in den hier versammelten Aufsatzen aus historisch-systematischer Perspektive von international renommierten Neuplatonismusforschern nachgegangen. (shrink)

Although body alterations, including body art, sexual alteration, technological enhancements, and cosmetic surgery, usually are evaluated separately, they also can be approached by identifying common cultural trends. Because a person’s conception of identity lies at the core of many body alterations, any change to the body must pursue sincere authenticity, the virtue that fulfills one’s true identity.

O Banquete de Platão serve-se de recursos dramáticos diversos, tais como a história-moldura, a organização dos discursos e o ensino de Diotima enquanto meios de orientação do leitor pela mensagem filosófica subjacente, a qual inclui um exame do sistema socrático de educação. Os discípulos de Sócrates demonstram notável entusiasmo pela filosofia, mas parecem incapazes de distinguir o amor por Sócrates do amor pela sabedoria. Agatão ocupa posição de destaque: devido a um trocadilho com o seu nome, a jornada do jantar (...) em sua casa se tornará na ascensão em direção ao Bem. Além disso, ele representa a educação sofística e poética, assim como cada um dos oradores representa algum tipo particular de conhecimento, o que implica que não se deveria simplesmente impingir pedantismo a Eurixímaco, ou tomar o discurso de Aristófanes enquanto um interlúdio cômico. Eles formam, antes, uma complexa rede intertextual. Alcibíades exibe as fraquezas de um homem inábil ou relutante em seguir a totalidade do ensino socrático. Sua solicitação de ser conduzido por Agatão simboliza a incapacidade de encontrar o próprio caminho do Bem, ao passo que a interrupção da ordem bem organizada do banquete pelos boêmios lembra a atitude dos tiranos e de outros homens hostis à filosofia. Apesar dessa crítica aos estudantes de Sócrates, o Banquete finaliza com uma nota positiva. As ações finais de Sócrates ocupam-se das outras pessoas – uma crítica implícita a quem sustenta que a filosofia subverte os laços sociais. (shrink)

Ursula Coope's volume sets out to answer the question of why "true freedom" necessitates "freedom from bodies" according to the Neoplatonists. As a result, while the title suggests a work on ethics, the volume handles such questions within a broader metaphysical framework. Coope admirably traces the initially separate treatments of freedom and responsibility in earlier thinkers before examining how they merge into twin aspects of a related discussion. The handling of Plato's concept of freedom in the first chapter outlines a (...) series of relevant issues, rather than evaluating their relative significance, since the primary focus is on the subsequent tradition. The title is somewhat misleading since much of the... (shrink)

In chapter 3 of Wild Animal Ethics Johannsen argues for a collective obligation based on beneficence to intervene in nature in order to reduce the suffering of wild animals. In the same chapter he claims that the non-identity problem is merely a “theoretical puzzle” which doesn’t affect our reasons for intervention. In this paper I argue that the non-identity problem affects both the strength and the nature of our reasons to intervene. By intervening in nature on a large scale we (...) change which animals come into existence. In doing so, we enable harmful animals to inflict harms on other animals, and we put other animals in harm’s way. The harms that these animals will inflict and endure are foreseeable. Furthermore, since non-human animals aren’t moral agents, harmful animals cannot be morally responsible for their harmful actions. I argue therefore that by causing animals to exist, knowing that they will inflict and suffer harms, we become morally responsible for those harms. By engaging in identity-affecting actions then we take on secondary moral duties towards the animals we have thereby caused to exist, and these secondary moral duties may be extremely demanding, even more so than the initial costs of intervention. Finally, these duties are duties of justice rather than duties of beneficence, and as such are more stringent than purely beneficence-based moral reasons. Furthermore, this conclusion flows naturally from several plausible principles which Johannsen explicitly endorses. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to articulate further what may be called an agency theory of self-knowledge. Many theorists have stressed how important agency is to self- knowledge, and much work has been done drawing connections between the two notions.² However, it has not always been clear what _epistemic_ advantage agency gives us in this area and why it does so. I take it as a constraint on an adequate account of how a subject knows her own mental states (...) and acts, that it construe the known mental states and acts realistically and as independent of their self-ascription, and that it deliver genuine epistemic standing to the knower. The main task of the paper will, then, be to explore how our having rational agency with respect to our mental states may be able to secure genuine epistemic warrant for our self-ascriptions of states or acts independent of the ascriptions. This task will be carried out by focussing on the question of what account we should give of our knowledge of what I call our acts of judging. In the remainder of this section, I will do a little to clarify what is meant by that question. Section 2 will attempt to introduce us to elements of the best way to approach the question by considering some alternative strategies. Section 3 is devoted to forming some idea of what _kind_ of warrant we are looking for when considering how agency might give us self-knowledge. Section 4 aims to present a suggestion as to how agency gives us the kind of warrant identified over our acts of judging. Section 5 deals with some objections. (shrink)

The cosmic cycle described in the surviving fragments of Empedocles' poem is the alternation, in endless succession, of Love and Strife. Dr O'Brien's book is primarily an analysis of this elaborate system. It seeks to determine the positions which Love and Strife occupy in the world at different times.

Stobaeus records a placitum where Empedocles says that the world is destroyed by the domination in turn of Love and of Strife. The placitum makes perfectly good sense in the context of Empedocles' belief that Love and Strife produce, in turn, a non-cosmic state of total unity (Love) and of total separation (Strife). But for over two hundred years scholars have been unable to hear that simple message. Sturz (1805) emended the text so as to make it fit the non-cyclical (...) interpretation of Empedocles that he had taken over from the pages of Tiedemann (1791). When Diels included Stobaeus' text in his edition of Aetius, in the "Doxographi graeci" (1879), he failed to remove the emendation, although his own reconstruction of the chapter heading in Aetius made the emendation impossible. Twenty years later, Diels saw the light, and printed Stobaeus' placitum, unemended, in his "Poetarum philosophorum fragmenta" (1901) and in successive editions of his "Fragmente der Vorsokratiker" (from 1903 onwards). But Kranz resurrected the emendation in the "Nachträge" to his sixth edition of the "Fragmente der Vorsokratiker" (1951). The emended placitum is used again by Uvo Hölscher (1965) to support a non-cyclical interpretation of Empedocles and is repeated in the latest collection of the fragments and testimonia (Brad Inwood, 1992). Hölscher fails to appreciate that the text that he uses to support his reconstruction is merely Sturz's translation into Greek of the non-cyclical interpretation of Empedocles proposed by Tiedemann at the end of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Doctors have an ethical and legal duty to respect patient confidentiality. We consider the basis for this duty, looking particularly at the meaning and value of autonomy in health care. Enabling patients to decide how information about them is disclosed is an important element in autonomy and helps patients engage as active partners in their care.Good quality data is, however, essential for research, education, public health monitoring, and for many other activities essential to provision of health care. We discuss whether (...) it is necessary to choose between individual rights and the wider public interest and conclude that this should only rarely be necessary. The paper makes some recommendations on practical steps which could help ensure that good quality information is available for work which benefits society and the public health, while still enabling patients’ autonomy to be respected. (shrink)

It has been widely accepted that intentional actions are “the actions to which “a certain sense of the question ‘why?’ is given application” (Anscombe 1957/2000: 9). But there are robust reasons for thinking that this claim is false. First, there are intentional actions for which such questions are unsound. We have good reasons for thinking that the questions are not “given application” in these cases. Second, when these questions are “given application” this is best explained, it is argued, not in (...) terms of a necessary link between intentional action and this type of enquiry, but in terms of the fact that this is an enquiry that we pursue when we take an agent to have exercised certain of their rational capacities. (shrink)

_"The Essential Plotinus_ is a lifesaver. For many years my students in Greek and Roman Religion have depended on it to understand the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. The translation is crisp and clear, and the excerpts are just right for an introduction to Plotionus's many-layered view of the world and humankind’s place in it." --F. E. Romer, University of Arizona.

In this paper I want to propose that we see solipsism as arising from certain problems we have about identifying ourselves as subjects in an objective world. The discussion will centre on Wittgenstein.

Stich begins his paper "What is a Theory of Mental Representation?" by noting that while there is a dizzying range of theories of mental representation in today's philosophical market place, there is very little self-conscious reflection about what a theory of mental representation is supposed to do. This is quite remarkable, he thinks, because if we bother to engage in such reflection, some very surprising conclusions begin to emerge. The most surprising conclusion of all, according to Stich, is that most (...) of the philosophers in this field are undertaking work that is quite futile: " It is my contention that most of the players in this very crowded field have _no_ coherent project that could possibly be pursued successfully with the methods they are using. " Stich readily admits that this is a startling conclusion; so startling, he thinks, that some may even take it as an indication that he has simply "failed to figure out what those who are searching for a theory of mental representation are up to". But it is a conclusion that he is willing to stand by, and he sets about it defending it in the body of his paper. (shrink)

Stich begins his paper "What is a Theory of Mental Representation?" (1992) by noting that while there is a dizzying range of theories of mental representation in today's philosophical market place, there is very little self-conscious reflection about what a theory of mental representation is supposed to do. This is quite remarkable, he thinks, because if we bother to engage in such reflection, some very surprising conclusions begin to emerge. The most surprising conclusion of all, according to Stich, is that (...) most of the philosophers in this field are undertaking work that is quite futile: It is my contention that most of the players in this very crowded field have no coherent project that could possibly be pursued successfully with the methods they are using. (p.244) Stich readily admits that this is a startling conclusion; so startling, he thinks, that some may even take it as an indication that he has simply "failed to figure out what those who are searching for a theory of mental representation are up to" (p.244). But it is a conclusion that he is willing to stand by, and he sets about it defending it in the body of his paper. Stich, I think, is right about this—I do take his conclusion to indicate that he has failed to figure out what those who are searching for a theory of mental representation are up to. And he has failed to do this largely because he has failed to distinguish between the theory of mind that is implicit in our folk psychology and the mental mechanism that is responsible for our capacity to make folk psychological judgements. When this conflation is undone, so too is the reasoning that takes Stich to his startling conclusion. This is not to say that the conclusion itself is clearly false; it is merely to say that Stich has failed to show that it is true. In what follows I will defend this analysis of Stich's self-conscious reflections on what a theory of mental representation is supposed to do. I will begin with a very brief exposition of Stich's survey of the logical terrain in this part of the philosophical landscape and the line of reasoning that subsequently delivers up the aforementioned conclusion. I will then go on to argue that the latter line of reasoning is fundamentally misdirected because of an error in the former survey. (shrink)

One of the most striking manifestations of schizophrenia is thought insertion. People suffering from this delusion believe they are not the author of thoughts which they nevertheless own as experiences. It seems that a person’s sense of agency and their sense of the boundary between mind and world can come apart. Schizophrenia thus vividly demonstrates that self awareness is a complex construction of the brain. This point is widely appreciated. What is not so widely appreciated is how radically schizophrenia challenges (...) our assumptions about the nature of the self. Most theorists endorse the traditional doctrine of the unity of consciousness, according to which a normal human brain generates a single consciousness at any instant in time. In this paper we argue that phenomenal consciousness at each instant is actually a multiplicity: an aggregate of phenomenal elements, each of which is the product of a distinct consciousness-making mechanism in the brain. We then consider how certain aspects of self might emerge from this manifold substrate, and speculate about the origin of thought insertion. (shrink)

ANALOGY has not just to do with the abstruse details and niceties of metaphysics but rather underlies the structure of all metaphysical thought. It is the heart of metaphysics. No system of metaphysics can discard it, without prejudice to the richness and variety of being. Without analogy there is elimination and over-simplification. Metaphysics is far from being a straightforward science; it is highly complex and its method and style of argument are not easy to master. Its field of inquiry is (...) wide. It is the task of the metaphysician to reduce the world of things to an intelligible unity. (shrink)