Pre-Socratic Philosophy

Special volume of "Thaumàzein - Rivista di Filosofia" dedicated to the theme of Socratic Eudaimonia and care for others. It is a multilingual volume comprising twenty papers divided into six sections with an introduction by Linda Napolitano. Edited by Santiago Chame, Donald Morrison, and Linda Napolitano. -/- Despite the appearances given by certain texts, the moral psychology of Socrates needs not imply selfishness. On the contrary, a close look at passages in Plato and Xenophon (see Plato, Meno 77-78; Protagoras 358; (...) Gorgias 466-468; Euthydemus 278; Lysis 219; Xenophon, Memorabilia III 9, 4-5) suggests that the “egoist”’s welfare depends upon the welfare of others (i.e. family, friends or the whole city). Since the welfare of his family, friends and city is part of his own eudaimonìa, the “egoist” (phìlautos) has a direct and intrinsic motive to promote the welfare of these others. -/- This multilingual issue explores the role that other peoples’ welfare plays in Socratic ethics. Special attention is paid to test-cases in which the principle that moral action is always good only for the agent seems to have no validity. I.e., under which circumstances is the self-sacrifice for the sake of others (such as the soldier’s self-sacrifice on the battlefield) good for the agent (as in Alcibiades I 115a-116d)? Essays deal with contradictions or tensions of this sort, and relate them to more general views on eudaimonìa held within Socratic literature. Comparison between different Socratic authors is used as a means to identify the distinctive features of Socratic eudaimonìa if compared to other Greek theories of happiness, such as the Aristotelian theory of philautìa (NE IX, 1166a-1166b; 1168a-1169b). (shrink)

This essay seeks to understand Gorgias’ reflections upon language and perception in the Encomium of Helen through the threefold vocabularies of medicine, enchantment, and oratory that were often taken together in the fifth century. I demonstrate that the two modes of sorcery to which Gorgias refers have to do with language and its effect on opinion, on the one hand, and perception and its effect upon one’s affective bearing, on the other. Both effects, I claim, are grasped through their forceful (...) means of physically impressing and deforming the soul such that its reliance upon memory and habitual forms of dwelling in the world are subject to oblivion. Further, such conceptual and practical unmooring can be understood as forms of disease that rob an individual of her agency, either temporarily or permanently, and therefore reflect the problematic status of language in early democratic Greece. (shrink)

Until recently, Melissus of Samos has been undeservedly neglected by scholars, largely because of Aristotle's harsh criticism and because, as a result, Melissus has been perceived as a second-rate philosopher clinging to the coattail of Parmenides. In the last half-century, however, several scholars have been re-examining Melissus' arguments and his role in the development of ancient philosophy. They have discovered that Melissus' influence upon later thinkers such as Plato has been far greater than Aristotle's assessment would lead us to believe (...) and that Melissus is a significant philosopher in his own right. Scholars have relied upon the extant fragments, all preserved by Simplicius, in their re-examination, but relatively little attention has been paid to the context of the fragments and of the testimonies. This dissertation is intended to help remedy this neglect by compiling all of the relevant sources and providing some preliminary commentary. I have included all of the sources in the original and in translation, including any passages in Simplicius that may aid in assessing him as an interpreter of and a source for Melissus. Of the comments, the most important are on Plato and Aristotle, the MXG, and Simplicius. Regarding Plato and Aristotle, I argue that the Eleaticism they inherit from Parmenides has been largely filtered through Melissus, whose version of Eleaticism won out over the competing versions of the pluralists Anaxagoras and Empedocles. The MXG, I argue, is a relatively reliable source for the general structure of Melissus' arguments and may also provide clues about the content of parts of Melissus' deduction that have not been preserved in the fragments. Simplicius, I contend, is a reliable reporter of Melissus' doctrine, and he is careful to distinguish Melissus' actual arguments from his own highly tendentious interpretation. His paraphrase, however, is of little value for a reconstruction of Melissus' deduction, with the important exception of the opening sentence, which is either a close paraphrase or an actual quotation of Melissus' opening argument. I conclude the dissertation with a tentative commentary on Melissus' arguments themselves. (shrink)

The subject of the dissertation is the futurological problem of the containment and structure of uncertainty by means of systems analysis and related techniques in a book written by the nuclear strategist Herman Kahn entitled On Thermonuclear War published in 1960. The dissertation closely examines how Kahn articulated specific contents for fighting and and surviving a hypothetical and uncertain future war. Kahn considered his mode of systems analyses, scenarios, war-games, and analogies to comprise a scientific method which was both more (...) comprehensive and more precise than the work produced by his national security counterparts. To a large degree, he attributed the greater definition and refinement of his method to the central importance it gives to the otherwise undervalued status of hypothetical possibility. ;His unbounded field of historical possibility suggests the primary epistemological question of the dissertation. In a situation of general uncertainty, how did Kahn draw forth the specific features of any individual condition? I will examine his employment of an abstract quantitative idiom in calculating risks, and his characteristic methods for circumscribing and plotting the scenario-sets which I designate as the dialectic of faith and insight. By tracing the articulation of the originating field, I shall identify the points at which Kahn set limits to hypotheticals. ;How did Kahn make the future an object of study? How did he block or limit the disruptions of variable uncertainty in his scenarios and calculations? How did he manifest his claim for the scientific integrity of his method? In consequence of my attention to Kahn's rhetorical and scientific performances, my review of his ideas focuses on the formal means of the futurological domain: its idiom, elements, themes, and combinatorial patterns. Only this close and serious scrutiny of Kahn's practices of composing the speculative object will yield an understanding of the specific form of planning which shaped, and one might even say, determined, the American nuclear arsenal. (shrink)

This dissertation analyzes the language of clarity and obscurity in Plato and Aristotle. For each of them Heraclitus serves as a paradigm of obscurity. Against this foil, a strictly philosophical notion of clarity comes to be defined. ;Chapter One frames the topic by examining Lucretius' critique of Heraclitus in the first book of De Rerum Natura. In it I take Lucretius' condemnation of Heraclitus' obscura lingua as exemplifying the dominant conception of what philosophical language must be after Plato and Aristotle. (...) ;Chapter Two contains a reading of the metaphors of light which dominate the central books of the Republic. Here Plato sets out for the first time in anything like a systematic way his conception of what philosophy is. I examine how, early in the discussion of philosophical education, Plato introduces Heraclitus' metaphorical use of sunlight as antithetical to his own, and uses the contrast to formulate his own sun-metaphors in the analogy, the divided line and the cave mythos. ;In Chapter Three I turn to the Cratylus. The problem presented to Platonic philosophy by Heraclitus is here defined not only around a specific set of doctrines which need to be countered, but also around the issues of clarity and obscurity in language. ;In Chapter Four, I analyze two distinct conceptions of metaphorical obscurity in the writings of Aristotle. In theoretical philosophical discourse, Aristotle analyzes metaphor as necessarily generating obscurity. Such obscurity is almost universally condemned as establishing an impassible barrier to the truth. In the Rhetoric and the Poetics, on the other hand, while the connection between metaphora and asapheia remains strong, Aristotle gives a certain guarded approval to the alienating effect of metaphorical obscurity in that it can be shown to generate a unique form of insight. Heraclitus plays a prominent role in the framing of each conception. ;An appendix examines the notion of narrative obscurity as formulated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Longinus. (shrink)

David Gallop provides a Greek text and a new facing-page translation of the extant fragments of Parmenides' philosophical poem. He also includes the first complete translation into English of the contexts in which the fragments have been transmitted to us, and of the ancient testimonia regarding Parmenides' life and thought. All of the fragments have been translated in full and are arranged in the order that has become canonical since the publication of the fifth edition of Diels-Rranz's Die Fragmente der (...) Vorsokratiker. Alternative renderings are provided for passages whose meaning is disputed or where major questions of interpretation hinge upon the text or translation adopted. In an extended introductory essay, Gallop offers guidance on the background of the poem, and a continuous exposition of it, together with a critical discussion of its basic argument. The volume also includes an extensive bibliography, a glossary of key terms in the poem, and a section on sources and authorities. (shrink)

This dissertation attempts to identify the presence and role of myth in Parmenides' philosophical poem. It is argued that the myths of the poem are neither extrinsic to, nor entirely in service of, Parmenides' reasoned account. By virtue of the traditional significance which they possess, the myths of the poem determine both the form and content of Parmenides' philosophical presentation, with the result that Parmenides' philosophy should be viewed as an attempt to sustain traditional tales with philosophical argumentation. Primarily two (...) myths are identified as operative in the poem. The first is that of a mortal's chariot-journey on the path of the sun to a region of life, light and understanding. It is in the context of this archaic myth that a number of otherwise puzzling features of the poem are explained, including the detailed imagery of the prelude, the presentation of the search for knowledge as a "path," the goddess' advice on "ways of seeking," and the characterization of the poem's argumentation as "signs along the way." The second myth takes its point of departure from the first. Parmenides' conception of reality is, at its core, a mythological view of the cosmos as a whole, as associated with the vantage-point of the all-seeing sun at the apex of the sky. A dose examination of the "signs" of what is in Fr. 8 reveals that Parmenides' argumentation constitutes a defense of the notion of the cosmos as a single, animate, corporeal, possibly sentient, being. Mortal ignorance is accordingly explained as an error of perspective for Parmenides, i.e., the inability of charioteer-mind to arrive at an insight into the cosmic whole, the enduring unity from which all things come and into which they return. It is suggested that Parmenides does not deny change and plurality at the level of the phenomena; what he does deny is that change and plurality have reality from the perspective of the unity and totality of all things, in so far as that totality is conceived as a single, ever-living being. (shrink)