Circunscrever de modo consensual e rigoroso aquilo a que se convencionou chamar “filosofia antiga” não é tarefa que levante dificuldade. Com efeito, se encararmos este conceito de um ponto de vista histórico, imediatamente se perfila um determinado quadro temporal, decorrendo grosso modo entre os séculos VII a.C. e VI d.C., mediando a emergência da primeira especulação em moldes filosóficos, com Tales de Mileto, e os últimos testemunhos de um pensamento especificamente grego ou “pagão”, com o neoplatonismo, dentro do qual é (...) possível reconhecer uma sucessão de determinados períodos, fases e épocas, bem como o florescimento de outras tantas correntes e escolas, que esgotam e estruturam a filosofia antiga. Todavia, o que assim se encontra exposto é simplesmente a filosofia antiga enquanto conceito historiográfico, ou, se se preferir, é a história da filosofia antiga: e enquanto conceito historiográfico, a filosofia antiga deixa-se, de facto, retratar nestes termos, convergindo numa larga periodização de conjunto, que todos reconhecem e respeitam. Ora, se é de admitir um consenso em torno da circunscrição histórica da filosofia antiga, o mesmo não é possível dizer da sua caracterização filosófica. E não o é, desde logo, porque não existe sequer consenso quanto à tese preliminar segundo a qual, para além da sua descrição histórica, a filosofia antiga é também passível de uma perspectivação filosófica, isto é, a tese segundo a qual, longe de ser apenas um período histórico-filosófico, ela configura antes de mais um modo de consciência particular, cujo reconhecimento como tal modo de consciência constituiria justamente a aludida caracterização filosófica do conceito de filosofia antiga. É nesta segunda direcção que segue o presente texto. E, ao prossegui-la, a resposta à questão enunciada no título, “há filosofia antes dos gregos?”, impor-se-á, assim o esperamos, por si mesma. (shrink)

The philosophical and philological study of Aristotle fragments and lost works has fallen somewhat into the background since the 1960’s. This is regrettable considering the different and innovative directions the study of Aristotle has taken in the last decades. This collection of new peer-reviewed essays applies the latest developments and trends of analysis, criticism, and methodology to the study of Aristotle’s fragments. The individual essays use the fragments as tools of interpretation, shed new light on different areas of Aristotle philosophy, (...) and lay bridges between Aristotle’s lost and extant works. The first part shows how Aristotle frames parts of his own understanding of Philosophy in his published, 'popular' work. The second part deals with issues of philosophical interpretation in Aristotle’s extant works which can be illuminated by fragments of his lost works. The philosophical issues treated in this section range from Theology to Natural Science, Psychology, Politics, and Poetics. As a whole, the book articulates a new approach to Aristotle’s lost works, by providing a reassessment and new methodological explorations of the fragments. (shrink)

In this article, we aim to offer a new overall interpretation of Heraclitus’ philosophy, through an analysis of his own implicit conception of ‘philosophy’, as it is insinuated in the few but important fragments where the word philia occurs. In these fragments, a clear distinction between reality and appearance is drawn for the first time in the history of philosophy; and, accordingly, philosophy itself is hinted at as a direct ‘attachment’ to reality, beyond the appearances that conceal it. Using this (...) result as a hermeneutic principle, a thorough survey of the most significant fragments is then proposed. The outcome of such a survey is, hopefully, the presentation of Heraclitus’ main doctrines as a coherent whole. (shrink)

Any analysis of the Hippocratic anthropology must begin by taking a stand on two quite different issues. On the one hand, it must ascertain a precise and definite meaning of the word ‘Hippocratic’ in such a context, considering the historical problems surrounding the 'real' Hippocrates and the doctrinal heterogeneity of the Hippocratic collection. On the other hand, it must justify the very possibility of an anthropology within the Hippocratic tradition, by accommodating it with the obvious animadversion that its most representative (...) works show towards any philosophical or speculative inquiry. The first problem can be solved by purely historical means, viz. by restricting the object of analysis to the texts that admittedly represent the views of the Hippocratic school. Not so with the second one, which constitutes the truesignificant problem from a philosophical point of view and with which the present article is therefore concerned. After discussing the texts where the question on the nature of man is posed, a general survey of the Hippocratic conception of the theoretical and scientific foundations of clinical practice is given, in order to understand the Statement according to which it is to medicine, and not to philosophy, that an answer to such a question truly belongs. From such a survey a thesis arises: that, according to the Hippocratic perspective, the appropriate answer to the question on the nature of man is not the one that seeks to determine what man is, even by means of the empirical methods of medicine, but the one that reshapes the question itself, thereby replacing the philosophical focus on the knowing of man, for the sake of knowledge, by the clinical focus on the caring of man, for the sake of man himself. (shrink)

This article, The ontological argument in Plato: the problem of immortality, discusses the interpretation of Socrates’ last demonstration of the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo as an ”ontological argument” and tries to refute this interpretation through an examination of the concept of immortality in Plato and its implications on the central relation soul/life. At the same time, it argues that the ontological argument should be seen as the very back-bone of Plato’s ontology, a point of view which will (...) be developed in a forthcoming paper. (shrink)

The first part of this article attempted to refute the interpretation of Phd. 102a-107a as being the canonic place of the ontological argument in Platonic thought. The second part of this article will attempt to outline three objectives: to show that the ontological argument intervenes in Plato's thought not as a strict démonstration but as a central and permanent structure whereby the idea is necessarily deduced from the sensible; to show that this structure is also present in Saint Anselm's ontological (...) argument as its philosophical meaning; to elucidate how Parmenides' ontology is the paradigm which inspired both Plato and Saint Anselm. (shrink)

The present article aims to clear up three different, though connected, questions: 1st. The significance of the double definition of ‘accident’ in the Topics. 2nd. The significance of the distinction be tween two types of accident in the Posterior Analytics and in the Metaphysics, namely in its alleged relationship with the double definition of ‘accident’ in the Topics. 3rd. The meaning of per se accidents within the framework of the predicables, namely from the point of view of its putative identification (...) with propria predicates. In the course of the analysis, the answers given to these three questions are the following : 1. By definition, the same predicate can never be a per se accident and a proprium, except incidentally, namely when regarded ‘at a certain moment’ or ‘in relation to something else’. In fact, despite Aristotle’s silence about the status of per se accidents within the framework of the predicables, they have there its own peculiar logical location, namely under the first definition of ‘accident’. 2. The distinction between ‘strict’ accident and per se accident, on the one hand, and the double definition of ‘accident’, on the other, do not coalesce, though they partially overlap. The second definition of ‘accident’ in the Topics subsumes only ‘strict ’ accidents, while the first definition is generally valid for ‘strict’ accidents and per se accidents. 3. As far as an educated guess can go on historical matters, we can suppose that the second definition of ‘accident’ was conceived by Aristotle to cover the only kind of accidents recognised by him when writing the Topics, while, by that time, the first definition was thought merely as a alternative negative definition. However, it is the schema provided by the first definition that allows a precise technical definition of the two types of accidents, which nowhere can be found in Aristotle texts. In the final part of the article, we try to reconstruct this technical definition. (shrink)

Dans un article précédent, nous avons essayé de réfuter la thèse selon laquelle la philosophie possède une nature essentiellement indéfinissable. En utilisant cette fois une voie positive, nous cherchons d’établir les conditions d’une définition de la philosophie qui contienne organiquement les éléments suivants: d’abord, la philosophie en tant qu’activité et en tant qu’ensemble de problèmes; deuxièmement, la philosophie et sa nature radicalement créatrice; en dernier lieu, l’identification de la philosophie avec un intérêt irréductiblement philosophique de la raison elle-même. Après la (...) présentation philosophique de la définition proposée, il y a lieu a une discussion de ses virtualités pédagogiques. (shrink)

In this article we try to demonstrate two theses concerning both the nature and the object of Aristotelian Metaphysics. These theses are the following: 1 - Substance has not in Aristotle a purely instrumental value: in fact it refers, by its own nature, the whole of those beings which really are, that is, to individuals', 2 -For this reason, Metaphysics, as science of ens qua ens, performs a specific and unique role within Aristotle’s thought and in this role it cannot (...) be replaced by any other science. We argue these theses through previous translation and commentary of Metaphysics Z1. Further discussion will then show how they both assume and implicate the fundamental difference between Plato’s and Aristotle's ontologies. (shrink)

O sentido deste ensaio é o de pensar o sentido e o lugar da filosofia na época da globalização, mas por via de um recuo histórico, por forma a desafiar a visão dominante segundo a qual a globalização é um fenômeno atual. Para o efeito, procurarei abordar quatro questões: 1) Em que ambiente sociocultural, melhor, em que civilização, se dá a ruptura que conhecemos aqui por “primeira globalização”? 2) Que modo de consciência veio ela perturbar e alterar? 3) Que efeitos (...) teve sobre a filosofia tal perturbação? 4) Que tem o homem moderno e a filosofia atual a aprender com a resposta às três questões anteriores? (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.