This ground-breaking study offers the first full-length critical examination of H. Diel's Doxographi Graeci , focussing on the doxographer Aëtius, whose work Diels reconstructed from various later sources. Diel's theory is analysed, revised and improved at significant points.

This study investigates the methodology and tradition of Aëtius' Doxography of physics and provides a full reconstruction of Book II as a single unified text.

This collection of essays written between 1989 and 2009 records the authors’ exploration of the important but elusive genre of ancient doxography. Focusing primarily on the Placita of Aëtius, it can be used as a companion volume for the two earlier volumes of Aëtiana.

This study investigates the methodology and tradition of Aëtius' Doxography of physics and provides a full reconstruction of Book II as a single unified text.

During the past three decades the Utrecht scholar Jaap Mansfeld has built up a formidable reputation in the field of the history of ancient philosophy. This state-of-the-art collection of articles is presented to him by colleagues and friends on his sixtieth birthday.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 361-379 [Access article in PDF] The Idea and the Reality of the City in the Thought of Philo of Alexandria * David T. Runia The theme of my paper is the conception of the city as a social and cultural phenomenon held by the Jewish exegete and philosopher Philo of Alexandria (15 bc to 50 ad). There can be no (...) doubt that the city occupied a central position in his own life. As an inhabitant of Alexandria he was thoroughly immersed in a highly urbanized form of life. From a more theoretical angle the city has an important place in his thought because of what it represents: of all physical products of human activity the city is the largest and most complex (here there is in fact little difference between Philo and us, although there is an obvious difference in scale). It is not my aim to examine Philo's political philosophy, i.e., his views on how the city should be governed, nor his views on the actual political administration of the Roman Empire in his time. These subjects have already been treated with sufficient competence by others. 1 I will argue that, though as an Alexandrian Philo was very much a homo urbanus, he nevertheless reveals a significant ambivalence towards the city. This attitude is related to his dual ideological background (Jewish and Greek), and anticipates developments in later antiquity.As always in the case of Philo, it is necessary to reflect on the methodology that should be used to reach our aim. True to his usual method, Philo nowhere examines the nature of the city in a sustained way. It is necessary to cull statements from many different places in his various works. For his views on living in the city of Alexandria we can examine his historical treatises. A more theoretical perspective is gained from his exegetical and philosophical works; but these, too, are not wholly devoid of topical remarks, such as the famous text in [End Page 361] which he complains that he has had to exchange the contemplative life for immersion in the maelstrom of Alexandrian political life (De specialibus legibus 3.1-6).In the analysis of the numerous texts in which Philo speaks of the city, it would be a mistake to try to compartmentalize his thought too much, i.e., to make a sharp distinction between historical-apologetic and exegetical-philosophical modes of thinking. It is true that Philo devotes the greatest part of his oeuvre to giving exegesis of the Law of Moses. But for him this is far from a merely antiquarian exercise. Philo is convinced of the universal relevance of the Pentateuch for both Jew and Gentile, including those who live in a complex urban environment utterly different from the circumstances of tent-dwelling Patriarchs or itinerant Israelites. The Law, it is assumed, represents the constitution of a Mosaic politeia deserving of universal admiration. So when Philo speaks of the city in his exegesis of Mosaic texts, his remarks may well be relevant to our theme. This applies also to allegorical forms of interpretation. The method of allegory enables him to bring forward the more theoretical and "philosophical" aspects of the theme.It remains a problem that our material consists of a large number of scattered and episodic remarks. These can be assembled together into the shape of a plausible and informative picture, but the aspect of a scholarly construct cannot be entirely avoided. There are compensations in Philo's case through the sheer volume of the material he has left behind. This lessens the chance that we should attribute too much significance to what may be no more than casual remarks. We should, however, have no illusions about the extent to which we can pene-trate behind the facade of his works. These were not written with the motive of disclosing his personal views on a wide scale of issues. The personality of Philo the Alexandrian Jew remains largely hidden from view... (shrink)

This volume is a further continuation of the annotated bibliographies on the writings and thought of the Jewish exegete and philosopher Philo of Alexandria, following those on the years 1937-1986 published in 1988, 1987-1996 published in 2000 and 1997-2012 published in 2012. Prepared in collaboration with the International Philo Bibliography Project, it contains a complete listing of all scholarly writings on Philo for the period 2007 to 2016. Part One lists texts, translations, commentaries etc. (75 items). Part Two contains critical (...) studies (1143 items). In Part Three additional items up to 2006 are presented (27 items). In all cases a summary of the contents of the contribution is given. Six indices, including a detailed Index of subjects, complete the work. (shrink)

This volume, prepared with the collaboration of the International Philo Bibliography Project, is the third in a series of annotated bibliographies on the Jewish exegete and philosopher Philo of Alexandria. It contains a listing of all scholarly writings on Philo for the period 1997 to 2006.

A review of the literature on the subject and a discussion involving philosophical analysis, philosophy of science and phenomenology in the style of Merleau-Ponty. The study has practical interest in addition to scientific and philosophical relevance: the way a person conceptualizes his body is important to the way he behaves and the quality of his social interactions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

"Perfect Worlds offers an extensive historical analysis of utopian narratives in the Chinese and Euro-American traditions.

A prominent feature of late nineteenth-century psychology was its intense preoccupation with precision. Precision was at once an ideal and an argument: the quest for precision helped psychology to establish its status as a mature science, sharing a characteristic concern with the natural sciences. We will analyse how psychologists set out to produce precision in 'mental chronometry', the measurement of the duration of psychological processes. In his Leipzig laboratory, Wundt inaugurated an elaborate research programme on mental chronometry. We will look (...) at the problem of calibration of experimental apparatus and will describe the intricate material, literary, and social technologies involved in the manufacture of precision. First, we shall discuss some of the technical problems involved in the measurement of ever shorter time-spans. Next, the Cattell-Berger experiments will help us to argue against the received view that all the precision went into the hardware, and practically none into the social organization of experimentation. Experimenters made deliberate efforts to bring themselves and their subjects under a regime of control and calibration similar to that which reigned over the experimental machinery. In Leipzig psychology, the particular blend of material and social technology resulted in a specific object of study: the generalized mind. We will then show that the distribution of precision in experimental psychology outside Leipzig demanded a concerted effort of instruments, texts, and people. It will appear that the forceful attempts to produce precision and uniformity had some rather paradoxical consequences. (shrink)

The search for an ontological basis of medical practice is questioned from the viewpoint that ontologies are always related to the interpreting person in his situation, and that the definition of medicine includes a certain choice. This choice-character comes into greater play when ethical proposals are made. A foundation of medical ethics on an ontology of the healthy body or the factual medical practice is a naturalistic fallacy. Prior to an ontological basis, the ethical event of responsibility for the suffering (...) and transcendent other (Levinas) is constitutive for medicine. This event with its dimension of infinity of the other can only be ontologized by a totalitarian act. A philosophy of medicine should start with the heteronomy of the other. (shrink)

Illustrations played an important role in the articulation of Wundt’s experimental program. Focusing on the woodcuts of apparatus and experimental designs in the six editions of his Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie (published between 1873 and 1911), we investigate the uses and functions of illustrations in the experimental culture of the physiological and psychological sciences. We will first present some statistics on the increasing number of illustrations Wundt included in each new edition of his handbook. Next we will show how Wundt (...) managed to introduce the material and literary technologies of physiology into the ‘new psychology’. The distribution of Wundt’s material technology will be further demonstrated by highlighting the crucial role of technicians and instrument-makers. We will use Shapin and Schaffer’s notions of the ‘three technologies’ and ‘virtual witnessing’, combined with Latour’s concept of ‘immutable mobiles’, as analytical tools to explore the strategic aspects of Wundt’s illustrations. (shrink)

How to repeat what never has been? Heinz Kimmerle Introduction We do not know what time is. Is it something outside us, just passing by like a car on the ...

The Jewish exegete and philosopher Philo of Alexandria has long been famous for his complex and spiritually rich allegorical treatises on the Greek Bible. The present volume presents first translation and commentary in English on his treatise De plantatione (On planting), following on the volume devoted to On cultivation published previously by the same two authors. Philo gives a virtuoso performance as allegorist, interpreting Noah's planting of a vineyard in Genesis 9.20 first in theological and cosmological terms, then moving to (...) the spiritual quest of both of advanced souls and those beginning their journey. The translation renders Philo's baroque Greek into readable modern English. The commentary pays particular attention to the treatise's structure, its biblical basis and its exegetical and philosophical contents. (shrink)

For more than thirty years now, thinking about the way we, humans, account for our past has taken place under the aegis of representationalism. In its first two decades, representationalism, inaugurated by Hayden White’s Metahistory of 1973, has been remarkably successful, but by now it has lost much of its vigor and it lacks explanatory power when faced with recent phenomena such as memory, lieux de mémoire, remembrance, and trauma. It might be argued that many of the shortcomings of representationalism (...) spring from the fact that it is exclusively geared to “transfer of meaning.” This essay posits that what may be called “presence” is at least as important as “meaning.” “Presence” can be dealt with by employing a “topical” view of history in which the whole of history is stored in “places” that can be “visited” on the plane of the present. Presence can be said to be stored in metonymy. Whereas metaphor is instrumental in the“transfer of meaning,” metonymy brings about a “transfer of presence.” A metonymy is a “presence in absence” not just in the sense that it presents something that isn’t there, but also in the sense that in the absence that is there, the thing that isn’t there is still present. The presence of the past thus does not reside primarily in the intended story or the manifest metaphorical content of the text, but in what story and text contain in spite of the intentions of the historian. One might say that historical reality travels with historiography not as a paying passenger but as a stowaway. As a stowaway, as what is absently and unintentionally present on the plane of time, metonymy is a metaphor for discontinuity, or, rather, for the entwinement of continuity and discontinuity. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE AIM AND STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY About ten years before his death the Athenian philosopher Plato, securely settled in the Academy which he had ...

Moved by the Past radically breaks with this tradition of predating the past, incites us to fully acknowledge the discontinuous nature of discontinuities, and proposes to use the fact that history is propelled by unforeseeable leaps and ...

This treatise deals with Philo's allegory of Genesis 9:20 (And Noah began to be a husbandman). The first part of the treatise deals with Noah as a someone who "cultivates" the soul, and the second part with Noah as one who has set out on the path towards spiritual and ethical perfection.

Dominick LaCapra has remarked that “when you study something, you always have a tendency to repeat the problems you are studying.” In psychoanalytic supervision this phenomenon is called “parallel processing.” Parallel processes are subconscious re-enactments of past events: when you are caught up in a parallel process, your behavior repeats key aspects of what there is to know about what you’re studying—in a way, however, that you yourself don’t understand. This article analyzes the extent to which the “NIOD Report,” the (...) official Dutch report on the massacre in Srebrenica , “parallels” the events it describes. It introduces the phenomenon, examines the way the NIOD researchers unwittingly replicated several key aspects of the events they studied, and discusses some instances in which parallelling highlights precisely those features of the events under consideration that are hard to come to terms with. (shrink)

A new reconstruction and edition of the _Placita_ of Aëtius, arguably the most important work of ancient doxography covering the entire field of natural philosophy. Accompanied by a full commentary, it replaces the seminal edition of Herman Diels.

_Aëtiana IV: Towards an Edition of the Aëtian Placita: Papers of the Melbourne Colloquium, 1–3 December 2015_ provides a critical discussion from various angles by a plurality of authors of the reconstruction of the _Placita_ and the relevance of the compendium for the history of Greek philosophy.

_Aëtiana IV: Towards an Edition of the Aëtian Placita: Papers of the Melbourne Colloquium, 1–3 December 2015_ provides a critical discussion from various angles by a plurality of authors of the reconstruction of the _Placita_ and the relevance of the compendium for the history of Greek philosophy.

Professional historians tend to be ambivalent about one of the prime historical phenomena of our time: the desire to commemorate. The amount of attention given to memory and trauma bears witness to the fact that historians really do want to give in to that desire; the fact that they treat these subjects in a rather “positivist” way suggests that they regard it as a bit improper to do so wholeheartedly. As a result commemoration is all over the place but is (...) never taken as seriously as it should be. This essay argues that effective commemoration should start with a question Giambattista Vico might have asked: “who are we that this could have happened?” Posing this question means relinquishing the identity-enhancing, self-celebrating stance from which we tend to commemorate “unimaginable” events. Commemorative self-exploration is a confrontation with what we don’t like to be confronted with: the fact that occasionally we behave in utter contradiction to what we regard as our identity. Heterodox, “monstrous,” and therefore Gedächtnisfähig behavior comes in three varieties: things we are proud of, things we are ashamed of, and the sublime “mutations” in which we “commit” history and embark on the unimaginable. Because sublime mutations change consciousness, commemorating them confronts posterity with almost insuperable epistemological difficulties. Commemorating sublime mutations means burying them—not in the sense of “covering” them, but in the sense of “inventing” a way in which they keep on living. (shrink)

How can the subliminal, mysterious, but uncommonly powerful living-on, the presence, of the past be envisaged? In this essay I argue that presence is not brought about by stories — by, that is, the "storiness" of stories. Presence rather shows itself in how the past can force us—and enable us—to rewrite our stories about ourselves. The question then is how we acquire the experiences that can eventually force us to do so. How, and with what kind of things, does the (...) mémoire involontaire—from which presence wells up—get filled? In order to answer this question one might turn it around to the question how we can fill the mémoire involontaire of others. A consideration of the "art of slandering" shows that the mémoire involontaire tends to get filled with things that we believe are "common knowledge," that are "obliquely" communicated, and that are cast in metonymies. Metonymy offers a much better road to the mémoire involontaire than metaphor because metonymy is better at suggesting that what it conveys is "common knowledge." Therefore, I propose that presence resides in the metonymical region of language. Instead of being contained in the meaningful content of stories, presence resides in what a story inadvertently has to be—in, that is, the things a story has to present in order to present a story. My conclusion is that as presence the past is the exact opposite of what historians think it is. It is indestructible, uncannily close, and—despite its closeness and its durability—utterly impossible to conserve in "representations" that can be taken along in the hand luggage with which we traverse time. (shrink)

The single most important source for Second Temple Jewish exegetical traditions is the three commentaries series written by Philo of Alexandria. Wanting to understand Second Temple Judaism more fully, a group of scholars founded the Philo Institute in 1971 to explore those traditions. The following year they began publication of The Studia Philonica as a venue for their research; however, the significance of Philo's work soon captured the interest of a broader group of scholars and quickly opened the journal's pages (...) up to all aspects of Philonic studies. Six issues were released from 1972-1980 containing twenty-five articles, annual bibliographies, and abstracts of notable publications. The list of contributors is a who's who in Philonic studies in the 1970s and 1980s. After a lapse of almost a decade, the journal was revived as the Studia Philonica Annual, which is devoted to furthering the study of Hellenistic Judaism, in particular the writings and thought of the Hellenistic-Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria (ca. 15 b.c.e. to ca. 50 c.e.). Each year the Annual publishes the most current Philonic scholarship along with an extensive bibliography that is maintained by David Runia. (shrink)

This volume is a continuation of "Philo of Alexandria: an Annotated Bibliography 1937-1986, published by Roberto Radice and David Runia in 1988 (second edition ...