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11366 results in Ancient philosophy

Page 135 of 569

Melissus and Eleatic Monism
  • Benjamin Harriman
  • Published online:
    16 November 2018
    Print publication:
    06 December 2018
  • In the fifth century BCE, Melissus of Samos developed wildly counterintuitive claims against plurality, change, and the reliability of the senses. This book provides a reconstruction of the preserved textual evidence for his philosophy, along with an interpretation of the form and content of each of his arguments. A close examination of his thought reveals an extraordinary clarity and unity in his method and gives us a unique perspective on how philosophy developed in the fifth century, and how Melissus came to be the most prominent representative of what we now call Eleaticism, the monistic philosophy inaugurated by Parmenides. The rich intellectual climate of Ionian enquiry in which Melissus worked is explored and brought to bear on central questions of the interpretation of his fragments. This volume will appeal to students and scholars of early Greek philosophy, and also those working on historical and medical texts.

  • Chapter 8 - Terminology and Practice of Dialectic in Cicero’s Letters

  • Edited by Thomas Bénatouïl, Université de Lille, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle
    Published online:
    26 October 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 254-282

  • Summary

    Cicero’s practice of dialectic has been analyzed in his philosophical or rhetorical treatises, but not in his letters. While the letters sometimes offer very technical developments, they do not constitute a theoretical corpus and the dialectic we find there, which has an Academic, a Peripatetic or a Stoic origin, is often a soft echo of something he has discussed in his rhetorical or philosophical books, either to praise it or to criticize it, particularly in his polemic against the Stoics. In this chapter, I study the heterogeneous, diffuse and sometimes tenuous presence of dialectic, upon which Cicero himself made a balanced judgement, considering it sometimes as a tool (albeit an important one) with which the orator could make his style richer, sometimes as an instrument necessary to the intellectual rigor of philosophical reasoning. In order to define more precisely my field of investigation, I begin with a study of Cicero's vocabulary and practice of dialectic in most of his works and in his letters. Then I analyze the influence of jin utramque partem on the correspondence as well as its dialogical, and sometimes agonistic, nature.

  • Introduction: Dialectics in Dialogue

  • Edited by Thomas Bénatouïl, Université de Lille, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle
    Published online:
    26 October 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 1-16

  • Summary

    This introduction summarizes the main questions concerning dialectic and its study after Plato and Aristotle, starting from the general problem of the unity of dialectic from Antiquity to contemporary philosophy. After distinguishing the practice(s) of dialectic and its rival definitions from Plato to Stoicism, the question whether Plato's and Aristotle's conceptions of dialectic influenced Hellenistic and Imperial philosophers is raised, together with the problem of the epistemological status and metaphysical underpinning of dialectic.

  • Chapter 7 - Pithana and probabilia

  • Edited by Thomas Bénatouïl, Université de Lille, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle
    Published online:
    26 October 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 218-253

  • Summary

    This chapter looks again at the Carneadean pithanon. It is proposed that in the Carneadean scheme an impression's initial persuasiveness, prior to any testing or scrutiny, is taken to be due to the fact that its propositional content is consistent with views antecedently held by the subject, and that an impression's phenomenal clarity is an enabling not a constitutive property of persuasiveness as conceived by Carneades. Alternative interpretations are rejected: that the initial persuasiveness of a persuasive impression is a brute fact, not capable of explanation; that it is exclusively or primarily due to the phenomenal clarity of an impression; or that it is linked to probability, pre-theoretical or otherwise. The argument is developed with reference to evidence from Sextus and then tested against evidence from Cicero; the Stoic conception of the pithanon is considered for comparison.

  • Chapter 5 - Stoic Dialectic and Its Objects

  • Edited by Thomas Bénatouïl, Université de Lille, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle
    Published online:
    26 October 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 134-167

  • Summary

    The Stoics defined dialectic as ‘the science of what is true, what is false and what is neither true nor false’. This means that dialectic is a science with a specific object, the lekta or sayables. There seem to be conflicting sources concerning their status. According to Sextus, lekta are meanings correlated to thought and language. An alternative theory attributed to Diogenes of Seleucia, introduces them as predicates. In addition, the theory of complete sentences presents them as items combined by the expressions of vocal sound that signify them. Finally, sayables seem first to appear in physics as the incorporeal effects of corporeal causes and do not belong to dialectical contexts alone. These different aspects of the sayables are shown to be different moments of one process, from what happens to a body to its expression understood through cognition and language communication. Thus the notion of a sayable shaped Stoic dialectic not only as a science of signifying sounds and sayables, but also as a technique of argumentation by question and answer that reflects the asymmetry of cause and effect in physics by the asymmetry of name and verb in logic.

  • Chapter 4 - Dialectic as a Subpart of Stoic Philosophy

  • Edited by Thomas Bénatouïl, Université de Lille, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle
    Published online:
    26 October 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 114-133

  • Summary

    This chapter studies the place of dialectic within Stoicism, where it is understood as a part of logic and a subpart of philosophy. By drawing on comments by Alexander of Aphrodisias, the chapter contrasts the Stoic conception of dialectic to those of Plato and, particularly, Aristotle. It is argued that what makes dialectic a part of logic, and hence a subpart of philosophy, in opposition to the Aristotelian view, is not its utility but its subject-matter, a particular domain of reality, and its purpose, a concern with truth. In support of this, the Stoic position on mathematics, which was not a part of philosophy, and on rhetoric, which was a part of philosophy side by side with dialectic, is considered.

  • Chapter 3 - Epicurus on Dialectic

  • Edited by Thomas Bénatouïl, Université de Lille, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle
    Published online:
    26 October 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 82-113

  • Summary

    This chapter offers an overview of Epicurus’ attitude to dialectic, with particular focus on his critical treatments of fallacy, taxonomy, fatalism and definition. It offers previously unnoticed evidence that Epicurus was engaged in a confrontation with the contemporary Peripatetic Clearchus, the two of them debating the riddle about the eunuch and the bat (Plato, Republic 5) through the lens of Aristotle’s De interpretatione 7. The chapter's findings, if accepted, would have wider implications for the nature and extent of Aristotelian influence on early Hellenistic philosophy.

  • Chapter 6 - Dialectic in the Hellenistic Academy

  • Edited by Thomas Bénatouïl, Université de Lille, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle
    Published online:
    26 October 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 168-217

  • Summary

    The chapter investigates the nature, function and extent of dialectic and dialectical arguments within the Hellenistic Academy, with special focus on Arcesilaus and Carneades. Section 6.1 reconstructs Arcesilaus’ and Carneades’ attitudes towards what they, and their contemporaries, called ‘διαλεκτική’. Section 6.2 examines some key ancient testimonies on their philosophical method, and ask whether, and in what sense exactly, it should be characterized as ‘dialectical’. Section 6.3 analyzes the structure of Arcesilaus’ and Carneades’ ‘core argument’ for suspension of judgement, and surveys a number of examples of Academic arguments, asking in what sense, if any, all these arguments were ‘dialectical’. Finally, Section 6.4 asks whether any exegetical and logical space is left to interpret the philosophy of Arcesilaus and Carneades as an exercise in ‘pure dialectic’, as argued by Pierre Couissin in his influential article on ‘The Stoicism of the New Academy’.

  • Chapter 9 - The Sceptic’s Modes of Argumentation

  • Edited by Thomas Bénatouïl, Université de Lille, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle
    Published online:
    26 October 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 283-319

  • Summary

    Sextus Empiricus' Ten Modes of Scepticism seem to be devices to generate equal and opposing arguments to dogmatic arguments. An account is proposed of Sextus' Five Modes (the Modes of Agrippa) according to which they should be viewed in the same way. This contrasts with the usual interpretation of them, where they are thought of as codifying the sceptic’s rejection of certain types of argumentation on the basis of the sceptic’s taking a view about the epistemic inadequacy of those types of argumentation. On the proposed interpretation, when the sceptic deploys the Five Modes, he finds himself unmoved by a certain dogmatic argument because he finds himself in a state of suspension of judgement in the face of equal and opposing arguments, and not because he rejects on epistemic grounds the way in which the dogmatist argued. An analogy is suggested between the the Aristotelian topoi and the sceptical modes as being devices for generating arguments.

  • Chapter 2 - Dialectic in the Early Peripatos

  • Edited by Thomas Bénatouïl, Université de Lille, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle
    Published online:
    26 October 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018, pp 47-81

  • Summary

    The sources for the early Peripatetic views on dialectic are scarce. They enable us conjecturally to credit Theophrastus with six main contributions to this area: (1) a new grouping of the predicables; (2) the inclusion of the problems pertaining to sameness among those pertaining to genera; (3) an examination of issues pertaining to division and classification; (4) a definition of ‘place’ (absent from Aristotle’s Topics); (5) an interest in inferences that look like instances of modus ponens; (6) a detailed examination of ‘precepts’ (i.e., instructions about how to proceed in a dialectical discussion). The evidence for Eudemus and Strato is even poorer: Eudemus appears to have emphasized the destructive character of dialectic and to have reflected on the status of dialectical propositions; Strato seems to have studied rather technical issues and to have added some ‘places’ concerning priority.

Page 135 of 569