Interpreters of Theaetetus are prone to endorse the view that a god gave Socrates maieutic skill. This paper challenges that view. It provides a different account of the skill’s origins, and reconstructs a genealogy of Socratic philosophy that begins and has its end in human experience. Three distinct origins coordinate to bring forth a radically new conception of philosophy in the image of female midwifery: the state of wonder (1. efficient origin), the exercise of producing, examining and disavowing beliefs in (...) the gradual cultivation of human nature’s lack of skill (2. material origin), and Socrates’ understanding of god’s assistance as an endorsement of his mental infertility and the benefit of a particular form of dialectical training (3. formal origin). The paper concludes by arguing that Socrates transforms philosophy into a pursuit of wisdom that has its telos in becoming like a woman. (shrink)

Charles E. Snyder considers the New Academy's attacks on Stoic epistemology through a critical re-assessment of the 3rd century philosopher, Arcesilaus of Pitane. Arguing that the standard epistemological framework used to study the ancient Academy ignores the metaphysical dimensions at stake in Arcesilaus's critique, Snyder explores new territory for the historiography of Stoic-Academic debates in the early Hellenistic period. Focusing on the dispute between the Old and New Academy, reveals the metaphysical dimensions of Arcesilaus' arguments as essential (...) to grasping what is innovative about the so-called New Academy. Resisting the partiality for epistemology in the historical reconstructions of ancient philosophy, this book defends a new philosophical framework that re-positions Arcesilaus' attack on the early Stoa as key to his deviation from the metaphysical foundations of both Stoic and Academic virtue ethics. Drawing on a wide range of scholarship on Hellenistic philosophy in French, Italian, and German, Beyond Hellenistic Epistemology builds bridges between analytical and continental approaches to the historiography of ancient philosophy, and makes an important and disruptive contribution to the literature. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is the dispute between the Academic Arcesilaus of Pitane (ca. 316–240 BC) and the philosophy of Zeno of Citium. Scholars typically claim that Arcesilaus set out to attack Zeno’s epistemology or theory of knowledge. The framework of epistemology prevails in the modern reconstruction of Arcesilaus’s arguments. Proponents of this framework usually contend that the epistemic possibility of Stoic “cognition” or “apprehension” (κατάληψις) is the principal aim of Arcesilaus’s attack. The aim of this article is to (...) contest the limited scope of the framework of epistemology in the interpretation of Arcesilaus’s attack, and reposition his critical arguments, in view of the fragmentary evidence, within the framework of an ontology of knowledge. (shrink)

This article is an examination of Hannah Arendt's 1929 dissertation.

Less than a century after Plato’s death, the Academy’s scholarch Arcesilaus of Pitane inaugurates a peculiar oral phase of Academic philosophy, deciding not to write philosophical works or openly teach his own doctrines. Scholars often attribute a radical change of direction to the school under his headship, taking early Stoic epistemology to be the primary target of the New Academy’s attack on Stoic philosophy. This paper defends a rival view of Arcesilaus’ Academic revolution. Shifting the focus of that attack from (...) epistemology to ethics, the paper illuminates the continuity in development from Polemo to Arcesilaus and the evidence corroborating this continuity. (shrink)

Scholars of Greek and Roman antiquity advance a variety of reasons to explain why the study of Hellenistic philosophy remains dependent on fragments and testimonies. Mansfeld observes such dependence in his use of the premise that philosophers of late antiquity based philosophical instruction and school curricula on a core set of writings from the classical period. On this basis, Mansfeld infers that schools of late antiquity continually transcribed and preserved writings of instructional significance. The schools routinely excluded other classical and (...) Hellenistic writings from the curricula, thus ensuring that a sizable body of literature deemed less pedagogically significant would perish, along with the original material on which the inscriptions had been made. The main problem with this standard survey of reasons is that it fails to explain why we remain extraordinarily dependent on peripheral sources and later testimonies in studying the Hellenistic Academy. (shrink)

Interpreters of Theaetetus are prone to endorse the view that a god gave Socrates maieutic skill. This paper challenges that view. It provides a different account of the skill’s origins, and reconstructs a genealogy of Socratic philosophy that begins and has its end in human experience. Three distinct origins coordinate to bring forth a radically new conception of philosophy in the image of female midwifery: the state of wonder (1. efficient origin), the exercise of producing, examining and disavowing beliefs in (...) the gradual cultivation of human nature’s lack of skill (2. material origin), and Socrates’ understanding of god’s assistance as an endorsement of his mental infertility and the benefit of a particular form of dialectical training (3. formal origin). The paper concludes by arguing that Socrates transforms philosophy into a pursuit of wisdom that has its telos in becoming like a woman. (shrink)

Focused on the reference to Socrates’ confession of ignorance at Academica 1.45, this paper challenges the common assumption that the passage transmits Arcesilaus’ conception of Socrates. This paper develops in two steps a more plausible reading of the passage. According to this reading, Cicero presents an interpretation of Arcesilaus’ historical relation to Socrates. In conclusion, the paper argues that traditional readings of Acad. 1.45 underestimate not only Cicero’s originality as an historical thinker, but also his clever reconstruction of Academic history, (...) as it effectively opposes the controversial Academic history defended by Antiochus in the early first century BCE. (shrink)

Focused on the reference to Socrates’ confession of ignorance at Academica 1.45, this paper challenges the common assumption that the passage transmits Arcesilaus’ conception of Socrates. This paper develops in two steps a more plausible reading of the passage. According to this reading, Cicero presents an interpretation of Arcesilaus’ historical relation to Socrates. In conclusion, the paper argues that traditional readings of Acad. 1.45 underestimate not only Cicero’s originality as an historical thinker, but also his clever reconstruction of Academic history, (...) as it effectively opposes the controversial Academic history defended by Antiochus in the early first century BCE. (shrink)

Focused on the reference to Socrates’ confession of ignorance at Academica 1.45, this paper challenges the common assumption that the passage transmits Arcesilaus’ conception of Socrates. This paper develops in two steps a more plausible reading of the passage. According to this reading, Cicero presents an interpretation of Arcesilaus’ historical relation to Socrates. In conclusion, the paper argues that traditional readings of Acad. 1.45 underestimate not only Cicero’s originality as an historical thinker, but also his clever reconstruction of Academic history, (...) as it effectively opposes the controversial Academic history defended by Antiochus in the early first century BCE. (shrink)

Focused on the reference to Socrates’ confession of ignorance at Academica 1.45, this paper challenges the common assumption that the passage transmits Arcesilaus’ conception of Socrates. This paper develops in two steps a more plausible reading of the passage. According to this reading, Cicero presents an interpretation of Arcesilaus’ historical relation to Socrates. In conclusion, the paper argues that traditional readings of Acad. 1.45 underestimate not only Cicero’s originality as an historical thinker, but also his clever reconstruction of Academic history, (...) as it effectively opposes the controversial Academic history defended by Antiochus in the early first century BCE. (shrink)

Focused on the reference to Socrates’ confession of ignorance at Academica 1.45, this paper challenges the common assumption that the passage transmits Arcesilaus’ conception of Socrates. This paper develops in two steps a more plausible reading of the passage. According to this reading, Cicero presents an interpretation of Arcesilaus’ historical relation to Socrates. In conclusion, the paper argues that traditional readings of Acad. 1.45 underestimate not only Cicero’s originality as an historical thinker, but also his clever reconstruction of Academic history, (...) as it effectively opposes the controversial Academic history defended by Antiochus in the early first century BCE. (shrink)

Focused on the reference to Socrates’ confession of ignorance at Academica 1.45, this paper challenges the common assumption that the passage transmits Arcesilaus’ conception of Socrates. This paper develops in two steps a more plausible reading of the passage. According to this reading, Cicero presents an interpretation of Arcesilaus’ historical relation to Socrates. In conclusion, the paper argues that traditional readings of Acad. 1.45 underestimate not only Cicero’s originality as an historical thinker, but also his clever reconstruction of Academic history, (...) as it effectively opposes the controversial Academic history defended by Antiochus in the early first century BCE. (shrink)

Focused on the reference to Socrates’ confession of ignorance at Academica 1.45, this paper challenges the common assumption that the passage transmits Arcesilaus’ conception of Socrates. This paper develops in two steps a more plausible reading of the passage. According to this reading, Cicero presents an interpretation of Arcesilaus’ historical relation to Socrates. In conclusion, the paper argues that traditional readings of Acad. 1.45 underestimate not only Cicero’s originality as an historical thinker, but also his clever reconstruction of Academic history, (...) as it effectively opposes the controversial Academic history defended by Antiochus in the early first century BCE. (shrink)

Focused on the reference to Socrates’ confession of ignorance at Academica 1.45, this paper challenges the common assumption that the passage transmits Arcesilaus’ conception of Socrates. This paper develops in two steps a more plausible reading of the passage. According to this reading, Cicero presents an interpretation of Arcesilaus’ historical relation to Socrates. In conclusion, the paper argues that traditional readings of Acad. 1.45 underestimate not only Cicero’s originality as an historical thinker, but also his clever reconstruction of Academic history, (...) as it effectively opposes the controversial Academic history defended by Antiochus in the early first century BCE. (shrink)

Focused on the reference to Socrates’ confession of ignorance at Academica 1.45, this paper challenges the common assumption that the passage transmits Arcesilaus’ conception of Socrates. This paper develops in two steps a more plausible reading of the passage. According to this reading, Cicero presents an interpretation of Arcesilaus’ historical relation to Socrates. In conclusion, the paper argues that traditional readings of Acad. 1.45 underestimate not only Cicero’s originality as an historical thinker, but also his clever reconstruction of Academic history, (...) as it effectively opposes the controversial Academic history defended by Antiochus in the early first century BCE. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In his 1981–82 lectures The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Michel Foucault claims that a significant portion of the modern historiography of ancient philosophy tends to discredit the ethical framework of epimeleia heautou (“care of the self”). The thematic analysis of knowledge in the historiography of ancient philosophy overshadows the theme of care of the self. Taking Foucault’s claim as a point of departure, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, the paper provides a genealogy of the early Hellenistic (...) Academy, from Polemo to Arcesilaus. Second, the paper demonstrates that for Arcesilaus, the alleged pioneer of what modern historiography has designated the Academy’s epistemological scepticism, philosophy is not restricted to a continual search for knowledge at a theoretically rarefied level of challenging arguments or discursive statements. This paper situates Arcesilaus’ opposition to early Stoic epistemology within the framework of Academic epimeleia heautou, and defends the thesis that under Arcesilaus the Hellenistic Academy undergoes a shift in the practice of care of the self. (shrink)

Interpreters of Theaetetus are prone to endorse the view that a god gave Socrates maieutic skill. This paper challenges that view. It provides a different account of the skill’s origins, and reconstructs a genealogy of Socratic philosophy that begins and has its end in human experience. Three distinct origins coordinate to bring forth a radically new conception of philosophy in the image of female midwifery: the state of wonder, the exercise of producing, examining and disavowing beliefs in the gradual cultivation (...) of human nature’s lack of skill, and Socrates’ understanding of god’s assistance as an endorsement of his mental infertility and the benefit of a particular form of dialectical training. The paper concludes by arguing that Socrates transforms philosophy into a pursuit of wisdom that has its telos in becoming like a woman. (shrink)

The Victorian period in Britain was an “age of reform.” It is therefore not surprising that two of the era’s most eminent intellects described themselves as reformers. Both William Whewell and John Stuart Mill believed that by reforming philosophy—including the philosophy of science—they could effect social and political change. But their divergent visions of this societal transformation led to a sustained and spirited controversy that covered morality, politics, science, and economics. Situating their debate within the larger context of Victorian society (...) and its concerns, _Reforming Philosophy_ shows how two very different men captured the intellectual spirit of the day and engaged the attention of other scientists and philosophers, including the young Charles Darwin. Mill—philosopher, political economist, and Parliamentarian—remains a canonical author of Anglo-American philosophy, while Whewell—Anglican cleric, scientist, and educator—is now often overlooked, though in his day he was renowned as an authority on science. Placing their teachings in their proper intellectual, cultural, and argumentative spheres, Laura Snyder revises the standard views of these two important Victorian figures, showing that both men’s concerns remain relevant today. A philosophically and historically sensitive account of the engagement of the major protagonists of Victorian British philosophy, _Reforming Philosophy_ is the first book-length examination of the dispute between Mill and Whewell in its entirety. A rich and nuanced understanding of the intellectual spirit of Victorian Britain, it will be welcomed by philosophers and historians of science, scholars of Victorian studies, and students of the history of philosophy and political economy. (shrink)

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Charles Dickens easily could have been describing our time and the dilemma in which victims of nonmalignant chronic pain find themselves.I am a forty-six-year-old registered nurse who specializes in oncology care and education. I am also a patient who suffers from chronic nonmalignant pain, and this malady has been the most frightening, the most humiliating, and the most difficult ordeal of my life.The morning of February 1983 severed (...) my life into “before” and “after,” as clearly as if it has been cut by a sharp knife. The “before” included my career as an oncology nurse, a college nursing professor, and a writer; but that was abruptly ended by the catastrophic rupture of a deep cerebral aneurysm. Surgery saved my life, but something unforeseen occurred during the procedure; and so, in the “after,” I have had to live with a serious seizure disorder and memory loss. (shrink)

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Charles Dickens easily could have been describing our time and the dilemma in which victims of nonmalignant chronic pain find themselves.I am a forty-six-year-old registered nurse who specializes in oncology care and education. I am also a patient who suffers from chronic nonmalignant pain, and this malady has been the most frightening, the most humiliating, and the most difficult ordeal of my life.The morning of February 1983 severed (...) my life into “before” and “after,” as clearly as if it has been cut by a sharp knife. The “before” included my career as an oncology nurse, a college nursing professor, and a writer; but that was abruptly ended by the catastrophic rupture of a deep cerebral aneurysm. Surgery saved my life, but something unforeseen occurred during the procedure; and so, in the “after,” I have had to live with a serious seizure disorder and memory loss. (shrink)

For many people the existence of God is by no means a sufficiently clear feature of reality. This problem, the fact of divine hiddenness, has been a source of existential concern and has sometimes been taken as a rationale for support of atheism or agnosticism. In this collection of essays, a distinguished group of philosophers of religion explore the question of divine hiddenness in considerable detail. The issue is approached from several perspectives including Jewish, Christian, atheist and agnostic. There is (...) coverage of the historical treatment of divine hiddenness as found in the work of Maimonides, St. John of the Cross, Jonathan Edwards, Kierkegaard, and various Biblical writers. A substantial introduction clarifies the main problems of and leading solutions to divine hiddenness. Primarily directed at philosophers of religion, theologians, and scholars of religious studies, this collection could also serve as a textbook for upper-level courses in philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This paper summarizes a version of the argument from evil for atheism and then assesses several theodicies, including those that appeal to punishment, evil as a necessary counterpart for good, free will, natural evil as natural consequence, natural law, higher-order goods, and the conjunctive "Big Reason" including all the above and more beside.

In this paper, we outline and critically evaluate Thomas Hofweber’s solution to a semantic puzzle he calls Frege’s Other Puzzle. After sketching the Puzzle and two traditional responses to it—the Substantival Strategy and the Adjectival Strategy—we outline Hofweber’s proposed version of Adjectivalism. We argue that two key components—the syntactic and semantic components—of Hofweber’s analysis both suffer from serious empirical difficulties. Ultimately, this suggests that an altogether different solution to Frege’s Other Puzzle is required.

Faith in God conflicts with reason—or so we’re told. We focus on two arguments for this conclusion. After evaluating three criticisms of them, we identify an assumption they share, namely that faith in God requires belief that God exists. Whether the assumption is true depends on what faith is. We sketch a theory of faith that allows for both faith in God without belief that God exists, and faith in God while in belief-cancelling doubt God’s existence. We then argue that (...) our theory, unlike the theory of Thomas Aquinas, makes sense of four central items of faith-data: (i) pístis in the Synoptics, (ii) ʾemunāh in the Hebrew scriptures, (iii) exemplars of faith in God, including Abraham, Jesus, and Mother Teresa, and (iv) the widespread experience of people of faith today. We close by assessing revisions of the two arguments we began with, revisions that align with our theory of faith, and find them dubious, at best. (shrink)

In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an open, descriptive style, and Darwin's emphasis on the value of diversity speaks more strongly now than ever. As well as a stimulating introduction and detailed notes, this edition offers a register of the many (...) writers referred to by Darwin in the text. (shrink)