Theodore Metochites, a distinguished figure in the intellectual and political landscape of the early Palaiologan period (1261-1341), was born in Constantinople in 1270. The On Morals or Concerning Education is an extensive disquisition about the significance and status of cultural education (paideia) in the context of Palaiologan society. The oration might also be seen at least partly as an autobiographical narrative exposing Metochites's inner reflections and anxieties. The On Morals belongs to the genre of the protreptikos, a hortatory speech designed (...) to encourage its readers to study philosophy and attain virtue. With the On Morals Metochites sought to establish himself as a continuator of ancient moral philosophy in late Byzantium. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 1 Seiten: 1-36.

Focussing on the thirteenth-century endings of Byzantine writings against the Latin innovation of the Filioque, the present study aims, on the basis of the work De processione Spiritus sancti (1283), to provide the reader with an insight into the nature of the Orthodox argumentation refuting the Filioque. The work was until now attributed to Gregorios Kyprios Patriarch of Konstantinople (1283–1289). However, it is not a product of his pen, but a compiled version of his earlier work, the “Antirrheticos against Bekkos”. (...) Throughout the study the writer follows step by step Kyprios' reasoning and tries to control the validity and soundness of the arguments advanced, making at the same time specific references to the patristic and philosophical background of Kyprios' thinking. The study shows beyond any doubt that Kyprios is indebted to his predecessors, mostly to the Cappadocians and Dionysius Areopagites, and that he argues on the same line of reasoning with them in respect to the idea of the “Monarchy” of the Father, of the incommunicable of hypostatic properties, and of the possibility of beings to be in communion with God only through the divine energies. On the ground of these three fundamental ideas, a procession of the Spirit also from the Son is categorically rejected. Only the mission of the Spirit (what is implied here, are the gifts of the Spirit and not the Spirit itself) into the world through the Son is acceptable. (shrink)

Summary Among the whole burden of the written sources dealing with the urban appearance of Ptolemaic and Roman Alexandria, five or six ancient authors give us precious information which could finally offer a lead to the reconstruction of the monumental center of Alexandria: 1) Strabo, 2) Diodorus, 3) Zenobius, 4) Achilles Tatius, 5) Pseudo-Libanius and 6) Pseudo-Callisthenes. Nowadays, the written testimonia concerning the historical topography of Alexandria are severely withstanding to a hypercritical treatment, to a disapproval instead of a reappraisal.Tkazcow (...) 2013, 687: The reconstruction of the topography of the city in the Ptolemaic and Early Roman Periods was, for a long time, based exclusively on Strabo's description ; the critic is moved against Adriani 1966 and Fraser 1972, 13–34; McKenzie 2007. Yet, there is no other way to solve the puzzle of the monumental center of Ptolemaic Alexandria, but to explain the thinking behind what the ancient authors, principally Strabo, may have seen in Alexandria as eyewitnesses. (shrink)

Αντικείμενο της παρούσας μελέτης είναι η ταύτιση του οικοδομήματος γνωστότερου με το όνομα «naïsque ionique», που βρίσκεται στην βόρεια πλευρά της επονομαζόμενης Αγοράς των Ερμαϊστών ή Αγοράς των Κομπεταλιαστών. Ο αρχιτεκτονικός τύπος της μνημειακής κόγχης, ομοιά- ζων με πρόσοψη ναού, η παρουσία στο σηκό δύο μικρών βάσεων ιδίων διαστάσεων, καθώς επίσης η τοποθέτηση του ναίσκου σε θέση προπύλαιας λατρείας στο συγκεκριμένο αυτό χώρο, όπου συγκλίνουν τουλάχιστον τέσσερις οδοί, αποτελούν στοιχεία που εμφανίζουν ομοιότητες με ανάλογες μνημειακές και χωροταξικές διαρρυθμίσεις στη Ρώμη (...) και μας επιτρέπουν να αναγνωρίσουμε στο ναίσκο της Δήλου μια λατινική aedicula, αφιερωμένη από τους Ερμαϊστές - Mercuriales στους προστάτες θεούς των σταυροδρομιών (compila), τους απεικονιζόμενους ως δίδυμους αδελφούς Lares Compilâtes. Στη συνέχεια εκθέτονται σκέψεις και υποθέσεις σχετικά με τη νομική φύση, τη δομή και τη λειτουργία των collegia και των magistri στη Δήλο. (shrink)

Research in recent history has neglected to address the moral foundations of particular kinds of public policy such as the protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs). On the one hand, nation-states have enforced a tightening of the IPR system. On the other, only recently have national government and international institutions recognised that the moral justification for stronger IPRs protection is far from being plausible and cannot be taken for granted. In this article, IPRs are examined as individual rights founded upon (...) natural law, personality development, just reward and social utility. It is argued that these foundations cannot be philosophically sustained. IPRs constitute morally indefensible political developments which aim to reproduce the capitalist division of knowledge and labour at national, international and global levels. The need for such a critical approach to the moral foundations of IPRs has increased in importance as a consequence of their role in justifying corporate power, globalisation policies and harmonisation of such. (shrink)

Theodore Metochites’ Aristotelian paraphrases (c. 1312), covering all 40 books of the Stagirite’s extant works on natural philosophy, constitute one of the major achievements of late Byzantine learning. This volume offers the first critical edition of Metochites’ paraphrases of the three books of the De anima, accompanied by an introduction and an English translation with an apparatus of parallel passages in Aristotle’s ancient commentators. The first part of the introduction presents and evaluates the sources for the text, consisting of thirteen (...) Greek manuscripts, a 15th-century Greek epitome and a 16th-century Latin translation. The genealogical relationships between these are established on the basis of separative and conjunctive errors, identified, inter alia, through critical discussions of more than 300 passages. The second part of the introduction discusses the nature, purpose and sources of the paraphrases as well as several linguistic questions with implications for editing and translating the text. The third part of the introduction sets out the principles of this edition and translation. (shrink)

The speculative, according to Hegel, coincides with the absolute proportion as the logos, which is self-referential in the different. This is the self-manifestation in the logos, which is, simultaneously, with its endless defining one and the same. The obviousness of absolute certainty addressed in this way is its own cognition as endlessness, in which it produces the affirmative in the content from the absolute action of representing-itself-in-its-moments. In this regard, Hegel’s concept of the speculative corresponds to the total of-being-in-the relation, (...) which is primarily immediacy, then specification of immediacy through the connection with its own ideal action and, finally, self-appropriation of the self-relation – that is cognition mediated in and with itself as a real method of being in itself and for itself. Theōría is then a logical view, through which the return of logos in its own self-being can be conceived, but is also manifestation of this self-being. However, it is in the selfness of logos where substance – that is self-appropriation, presence in the self possession of logos – originates. (shrink)

Das Spekulative fällt nach Hegel mit dem absoluten Verhältnis als dem im Differenten sich beziehenden Logos zusammen. Es ist das Sich-Zeigen des Logos, das zugleich mit seinem unendlichen Bestimmen ein und dasselbe ist. Die damit angesprochene Offenbarkeit der absoluten Bestimmtheit ist deren eigenes Erkennen als die Unendlichkeit, in welcher sie das Affirmative des Inhalts aus der absoluten Tätigkeit ihres Sich-selbst-an-ihren-Momenten- Darstellens hervorbringt. Dem Hegelschen Begriff des Spekulativen entspricht insofern ein totales In-Beziehung-Sein, das zunächst Unmittelbarkeit, dann Besonderung derselben durch die Verknüpfung (...) ihrer selbst mit der eigenen ideellen Tätigkeit und schließlich Selbstaneignung des Sich-Beziehens, Erkennen ist, das als die eigentliche Methode des Anundfürsichseins sich mit sich selbst vermittelt. Die Theoria ist dann die logische Sicht, unter der die Rückkehr des Logos in sein Selbstsein gedacht ist, aber sie ist zugleich die Manifestation dieses Selbstseins. In der Seinigkeit des Logos aber entsteht die Substanz, was bedeutet: das Sich zueigen-Sein, die Präsenz des Im-Eigenen-Anwesens des Logos. (shrink)

Chez Hegel le spéculatif consiste à la proportion absolue, comme le logos, qui est autoréférentiel dans le différent. Il s’agit de l’auto manifestation du logos, qui est en même temps une seule et même chose avec sa détermination infinie. Ainsi, l’évidence de la certitude absolue qui en résulte est sa propre connaissance en tant qu’infini, dans lequel elle produit l’affirmatif du contenu de l’activité absolue elle-même-dans-ses-moments-de-représentation. De cette façon, le concept hégélien du spéculatif correspond à un être-en-relation total, qui est (...) d’abord immédiateté, puis spécification de l’immédiateté par la connexion à sa propre activité d’idée et, enfin, auto-appropriation du rapport-à-soi, c’est-à-dire connaissance qui sert d’intermédiaire à soi-même, en tant que méthode réelle d’être-en-soi et d’être-pour soi. Theôria est alors un point de vue logique par lequel peut être conçu le retour du logos à son être-en-soi, mais c’est en même temps la manifestation de cet être-en-soi. Cependant, dans l’essence du logos apparaît la substance, c’est-à-dire l’appropriation de-soi, la présence dans-le-domaine-propre du logos. (shrink)

Although the use of pronouns has been extensively investigated in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), most studies have focused on English, and no study to date has investigated the use of subject pronouns in null subject languages. The present study aims to fill this gap by investigating the use of subject and object pronouns in 5- to 8-year-old Greek-speaking high-functioning children with ASD compared to individually matched typically developing age and language controls. The ‘Frog where are you’ (Mayer, 1969) (...) narrative task was used to elicit subject and object pronouns as well as DPs. Greek is a null subject language, and as a result, subject pronouns most often remain without phonological content. The results showed that both groups used more null than overt subject pronouns, indicating that children with ASD know that Greek is a null subject language. TD children used more null subjects than subject DPs, whereas children with ASD used an equal proportion of null subjects and subject DPs. In terms of object pronouns, both groups produced more clitics and object DPs than strong object pronouns, but the difference between clitics and DPs did not reach significance in either of the groups. Importantly, the groups did not differ from each other in the use of ambiguous pronouns in both the subject and object position. The ASD children’s avoidance to use pronominal subjects can be taken as evidence that they use a strategy to avoid infelicitous reference. This would suggest that the ASD children’s difficulties with pronouns is not due to difficulties in core grammar. (shrink)

The essay is a quantitative analysis of a questionnaire distributed to a sample of 775 worshipers immediately after the Sunday Liturgy in a random number of churches in Athens, Thessaloniki and Mytilini. The questions addressed to them try to grasp feelings and thoughts felt during liturgical experience and effervescence as such, as well as reflections concerning the religious and the political self. The findings suggest that the liturgy has profound effects on those who attend service often, but it is not (...) irrelevant even to those who attend service less often. Those who attend service often and feel strongly the liturgical rite tend to identify religion, both doctrinal and vernacular, with politics, consider themselves to be rightist and hold political beliefs revolving around antinomian egotism and authoritative paternalism. Those who attend service rarely and do not experience any effervescence, as the mirror-image of the former, tend to identify themselves as leftist and hold political beliefs revolving around revolution, defiance and the like, and reject democratic institutions. The study underlines the very close connection of church attendance to ‘magical’ aspects of the Orthodox religion, as well as the very strong presence of icons in the life of the believers irrespective of their frequency of liturgical attendance. (shrink)

Our purpose in this paper is to bring about a new meaning of the term λόγοϛ used in the fragments of Heraclitus' work. In ancient Greek literature this term hasmany different meanings. We are going to restrict our interest in those meanings that Heraclitus used in his fragments, where the term λόγοϛ appears ten times.

Bergson's views on time are supported by the time operator qualifying complex systems with a concept of time that is essentially difierent from the clock time used to register the events. Irreversibility, unpredictability, and innovation characterize complex systems in contrast with the reversibility, predictability and lack of novelties of the regular motions of integrable systems. The idea for this work came from our teacher Ilya Prigogine who pointed out repeatedly that the time operator actually incorporates Bergson's views on time. We (...) construct a time operator which incorporates Bergson's intuitive views on durations, indeterminism, innovations and irreversibility and the significance of events in terms of inno- vation and aging. In addition, Bergson emphasized that the signif- icance of durations depends on consciousness and memory, a discussion beyond the proposed time operator. Moreover we discuss the relation of Bergson's time with the internal time concepts of Husserl and Heidegger. (shrink)

"A critical edition, with English translation and notes, of chapters 27-60 of the Semeioseis gnomikai ("Sententious notes"), a collection of 120 essays by the Byzantine statesman and scholar Theodore Metochites (1270-1332).The edition is based on three manuscripts, which are briefly presented in the introduction. P (Par. gr. 2003, Paris) and M (Marc. gr. 532, Venice) were both written in the early fourteenth century; E (Scor. gr. 248, Escorial) is a sixteenth-century copy of M.After the edition, with accompanying English translation and (...) notes, the book is concluded with a bibliography and three indexes: of quoted passages, Greek words, and Greek names.Several of the essays in this volume contain laments on the reduced state of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), and on the vicissitudes of human life and fortune. A group of short essays describe the pleasure of beholding Creation and one of the longest discusses the pros and cons of having been born, i.e. of life. (shrink)

Our purpose in this paper is to bring about a new meaning of the term λόγοϛ used in the fragments of Heraclitus' work. In ancient Greek literature this term has many different meanings. We are going to restrict our interest in those meanings that Heraclitus used in his fragments, where the term λόγοϛ appears ten times.

Background End-of-life decisions for neonates with adverse prognosis are controversial and raise ethical and legal issues. In Greece, data on physicians’ profiles, motivation, values and attitudes underlying such decisions and the correlation with their background are scarce. The aim was to investigate neonatologists' attitudes in Neonatal Intensive Care Units and correlate them with self-reported practices of end-of-life decisions and with their background data. Methods A structured questionnaire was distributed to all 28 Neonatal Intensive Care Units in Greece. One hundred and (...) sixty two out of 260 eligible physicians answered anonymously the questionnaire. Demographic and professional characteristics, self-reported practices and opinions were included in the questionnaire, along with a questionnaire of 12 items measuring physicians’ attitude and views ranging from value of life to quality of life approach. Results Continuation of treatment in neonates with adverse prognosis without adding further therapeutic interventions was the most commonly reported EoL practice, when compared to withdrawal of mechanical ventilation. Physicians with a high attitude score were more likely to limit, while those with a low score were more likely for continuation of intensive care. Physicians’ educational level, involvement in research, religion and position on the existing legal framework were factors that affected the attitude score. Conclusions Physicians presented with varying end-of-life practices. Limiting interventions in neonates with poor prognosis was strongly related to their attitudes. The most important predictors for physicians' attitudes were religiousness and belief for Greek legal system reform. (shrink)