Philosophy is often taken to be something that is always possible, so that everyone is fully entitled sketching a ‘philosophy’ of his/her own. Nevertheless, it is widely assumed that philosophy began in Miletus with Thales. But it is equally well known that the Presocratics remained unaware of being philosophers, and therefore could not even have wanted to be identified that way. These three points are not mutually compatible. So, what lies behind them? What is escaping our attention when we state (...) them? Probably an event in Plato’s life that has too often gone unnoticed: the key role he played in giving form and substance to philosophy, and in getting it to take root once and for all. Failure to acknowledge how, when, and on whose initiative philosophy came to occupy a very important place in Western culture and education for two and a half millennia; not including a note on this process in biographies of Plato; and overlooking another key event that probably occurred about 350-45 BC - these are just some of the unwelcome effects linked to the usual silence about the period in which philosophy took form. (shrink)
Our «universal» perception of Parmenides’ poem is biased by traditional readings to a considerable degree, at least if the poem actually included two different doctrinal bodies, one on being and another peri physeōs properly, the latter encompassing a number of short treatises on the physical world and living organisms.What I plan to offer in support of this claim is, to begin with, an inventory of the topics dealt with in the section devoted to physical world and living creatures. Something on (...) Parmenides’ way of studying and understanding different aspects of the physical world and living organisms follows.Once acknowledged the above, the poem comes to look quite differently and some principles of interpretation are likely to collapse : first of all, the customary assumption that frgs. 1‑9 include definite ideas on the doctrines to be found in the second main body, and tell us that they are not of great value. Indeed, the very high quality of several among these doctrines seems to imply that no devaluation of the second main doctrinal body is tenable.Several corollaries are likely to follow. Among them : once concluded the section on being, no further group of verses, meant to establish a convenient relation between the first and the second main doctrinal body, surfaces ; Parmenides was a polymath, and he may have been aware of that, or at least some evidence in support of the awareness thesis is available. (shrink)
Philosophy is often taken to be something that is always possible, so that everyone is fully entitled sketching a ‘philosophy’ of his/her own. Nevertheless, it is widely assumed that philosophy began in Miletus with Thales. But it is equally well known that the Presocratics remained unaware of being philosophers, and therefore could not even have wanted to be identified that way. These three points are not mutually compatible. So, what lies behind them? What is escaping our attention when we state (...) them? Probably an event in Plato’s life that has too often gone unnoticed: the key role he played in giving form and substance to philosophy, and in getting it to take root once and for all. Failure to acknowledge how, when, and on whose initiative philosophy came to occupy a very important place in Western culture and education for two and a half millennia; not including a note on this process in biographies of Plato; and overlooking another key event that probably occurred about 350-45 BC - these are just some of the unwelcome effects linked to the usual silence about the period in which philosophy took form. (shrink)
Walter Kohan has recently observed that Socrates does not seem particularly interested in the opinions of his interlocutors. Consequently, the philosopher is not really involved in a peer to peer relation with them, but rather embarks upon the task of annihilating their ideas. With the situation being as it is, the image of Socrates as a champion of dialogue begins to wobble. While the present paper aims to discuss these claims, a number of issues needs to be accounted for. First (...) of all, the Socratic dialogue does begin in a characteristically symmetrical way, but it becomes more and more asymmetric as the elenchos begins to appear. This is due to the fact the elenchos makes the interlocutors defensive, whereas Socrates can attack freely. Given that, Kohan’s claims seem justified and enlightening, but they should not be regarded as conclusive, since one must neither forget nor undervalue how innovative it was to replace monologue speeches with one-to-one dialogues which offered the opportunity of being involved in unforeseeable conversations. (shrink)
The present paper argues that the teachings of Anaximander are much better knowable than they actually appear, since a number of his teachings have the privilege of being almost transparent in their predicative content as well as in their logic. As a matter of fact, one can quite easily come to understand the train of thought which lies behind Anaximander’s most momentous conjectures. Thus, a largely unexpected Anaximander comes to light despite the availability of the majority of the relevant sources (...) since 1903. Two main areas appear to be particularly prominent: on the one hand, the complex body of various conjectures and doctrines that helps to understand the system of spatial relationships from Miletus to the stars and, on the other hand, the equally complex body of conjectures and doctrines whose primarily concern is the macro-story of the Earth from its most remote past to its predictable future. The merits of Anaximander as an earth-researcher are much greater than one could actually imagine. It is suggested here that what philosophy owes to him in particular lies in his quest for knowledge, his method, his cognitive hybris, and his intellectual discipline, rather than individual doctrines. A comparison with Thales follows in the last paragraph. (shrink)
In Plato’s Laws several passages have been clearly conceived of as preambles. The most extended, and prominent, is the one we find at the beginnings of Book five. It amounts to a complicate tour de force, not easy to be accounted for.What surfaced during the present investigation is a meandrical line of thought which ends with the unexpected adoption of a proto-utilitarianist point of view. This turn is not only interesting per se, since it implies that the author fully acknowledges (...) the role of subjective evaluations that may well ignore the ontological hierarchy between gods-souls-bodies as well as the force of persuasion a wise legislator avails of. (shrink)
Was Parmenides a distinguished ‘astronomer’ and ‘biologist’ other than the great ‘philosopher’ he has been unanimously considered from the times of Plato onwards? Many admirers of the ‘philosopher’ are not just refractory to consider this possibility: they simply ignore what Parmenides was able to discover in the additional domains I have just mentioned. But he was great as an ‘astronomer’ and a ‘biologist’ too, probably not less great than as a ‘philosopher’.The aim of this paper is to supply the basic (...) information about Parmenides' achievements in these domains, that were of the highest order, I presume.Presocratic Philosophy and ‟Natural Theology”. (shrink)
The present paper makes the following points. The summary given in Sextus Emp. Math. VII is of much greater value than usually acknowledged, since it preserves several key elements of Gorgias’ communicational strategy. A sketchy trilemma is available in the opening sentence of Philolaos as well as in a passage of Plato’s Parmenides. This is evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the very first known trilemma was devised by Gorgias and not by Sextus himself or Aenesidemus. Not unlike Zeno, (...) Gorgias enjoyed to be neither serious nor joking, but remained somewhat halfway. This point is seldom acknowledged, though it is crucial in order to understand that he pretends to claim, but his claims do not amount to any points of doctrine. That he remains halfway should not prevent us from appreciating some of his ideas, but, at the same time, we should not expect full intellectual adhesion to what he tells us. Besides, something similar occurs in most of Plato’s dialogues.. Gorgias owes a lot to Melissus. (shrink)
A whole set of rhetorical maneuvers are at work in zeno's subtle logical creatures. Specially prominent (and unquestionably rhetorical in character) is a rather perverse move allowing zeno to persuade his potential audience that it is up to the reader to supply the missing qualifications without which no paradoxicality could emerge from his 'banal' stories, And to find good reasons for dismissing the most intuitive objections. Foundations for something like a 'rhetoric of paradoxicality' are given.
The first part of the present paper argues against any attempts to find a set of fixed points of a doctrine that could be ascribed to Socrates. The main thesis of the article has it that Socrates was part of a cultural movement that was marked by a tendency to rather raise questions than merely provide answers and boast about having a number of doctrines or doxai of their own. The second part of the paper concentrates on a number of (...) memorable innovations that eventually constituted Greek culture, e.g., the idea that it is possible and desirable to be in full control of oneself and, consequently, to shoulder responsibility for one’s deeds rather than merely avoid and deny it. Thus, Socrates and ancient Socratic literature are shown here to be a probable source of numerous ideas that the western civilization has built on for centuries, these being, for instance, the idea of the limits of our powers. Hence, the conclusion of the article is that it would be a serious mistake to exclude Socrates from this major cultural development, even though the thinker did produce neither a theory nor a body of theories. (shrink)
It is no surprise if a good quality communication unit succeeds in seizing the attention of the intended audience (or readership) and is able to let people see precisely what the author wanted them to see, while avoiding that the average addressee become aware of what the author wants to convey in an almost subliminal way. In this respect Plato is no exception. Nevertheless the study of these resources, far from having been somewhat systematic, still is largely neglected, and only (...) a minority of commentators find it important to pay head to the communicational strategies which are at work in Plato's dialogues. It will be argued that the shades of meaning and the contextualization of thought (a) systematically grant to Plato ample room for affecting the way a reader comes to perceive his points of doctrine and (b) often let him convey a biased perception of his arguments.The paper includes an outline of the already longstanding debate on these matters, a case study (Memo 80–82), and a sketchy typology of how the literary working-out is able to affect the reader's perception of the line of thought, esp. within the aporetic dialogues. (shrink)
