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Volume 54 Issue 3

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Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available July 8, 2021

Frontmatter

Page range: i-iii

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Research Articles

November 21, 2019

Xenocrates and the Two-Category Scheme

Roberto Granieri

Page range: 261-285

Abstract

Simplicius reports that Xenocrates and Andronicus reproached Aristotle for positing an excessive number of categories, which can conveniently be reduced to two: τὰ καθ᾽αὑτά and τὰ πρός τι. Simplicius, followed by several modern commentators, interprets this move as being equivalent to a division into substance and accidents. I aim to show that, as far as Xenocrates is concerned, this interpretation is untenable and that the substance-accidents contrast cannot be equivalent to Xenocrates’ per se -relative one. Rather, Xenocrates aimed to stress the primacy of Plato’s binary distinction of beings, as presented at Sophist 255c13–4, over Aristotle’s list of the categories.

March 28, 2020

Plato’s Medicalisation of Ethics

Jorge Torres

Page range: 287-316

Abstract

I argue for the view that the scientific model which Plato consistently had in mind when sharpening his main ethical theory was medicine. Moreover, I ascribe to Plato a “medical model of ethics”. A careful examination of this model reveals how Plato appropriates several medical concepts and ideas by employing two central methodological devices in his thought: dialectical transposition and analogical characterisation. In discussing them, I identify different kinds of medical references in the dialogues –not all medical references in Plato have the same methodological status– and draw greater attention to the most recurrent medical analogies in them. More generally, the paper is also meant to provide a case study of the complex relationship between medicine and philosophy in Antiquity by examining in a new light the various ways in which the former served as an epistemological and ethical model for the latter.

August 19, 2020

Replenishment and Maintenance of the Human Body (Timaeus 77a–81e)

Lea Aurelia Schroeder

Page range: 317-346

Abstract

Scholarship on Plato's Timaeus has paid relatively little attention to Tim . 77a–81, a seemingly disjointed passage on topics including plants, respiration, blood circulation, and musical sounds. Despite this comparative neglect, commentators both ancient and modern have levelled a number of serious charges against Timaeus' remarks in the passage, questioning the coherence and explanatory power of what they take to be a theory of respiration. In this paper, I argue that the project of 77a–81e is not to sketch theories of respiration, circulation, and digestion ( inter alia ), but to explain how the human body is maintained in light of and despite constant environmental depletion. Further, I argue that in order to understand this account of “the replenishing system,” we need to understand Timaeus' striking analogy of the fish trap or nassa . Commentators have generally focused directly on the workings of the bodily construction that Timaeus likens to a fish trap, but without considering how we should understand the analogy qua analogy. I develop a functional reading of the analogy that yields a coherent account of the replenishing system on which previous criticisms of Timaeus' remarks on respiration do not arise. Aside from lending greater unity to the passage, both internally and within its immediate context in the dialogue, this account of the replenishing system contributes to our understanding of Timaeus' reason-and-necessity explanatory framework as applied to the human body and has noteworthy implications for specific explanatory principles, in particular like-to-like motion and circular thrust.

April 16, 2020

Plato’s Master Argument for a Two-Kind Ontology in the Sophist: A New Reading of the Final Argument of the Gigantomachia Passage (249b5–249c9)

Pauline Sabrier

Page range: 347-366

Abstract

In this paper I defend a new reading of the final argument of the Gigantomachia passage of Plato’s Sophist (249b5–249c9), according to which it is an argument for a two-kind ontology, based on the distinction between the changing beings and the unchanging beings. This argument, I urge, is addressed not only to Platonists but to all philosophers – with one exception. My reading is based on the claim that this argument does not rely on the view that nous requires unchangeable objects – what I call the traditional reading – but on the view that nous itself is unchanging. The difference between the traditional reading and my reading is that on the former, Plato’s argument relies on a distinctive epistemological assumption, whereas on the latter, Plato’s argument is free from any such commitments. If the argument of this paper is along the right lines, then this implies that this argument has a much more far-reaching scope than critics have usually assumed. It also invites us to reconsider Plato’s approach to the question of being in the Sophist.

August 14, 2020

A Peripatetic Argument for the Intrinsic Goodness of Human Life: Alexander of Aphrodisias' Ethical Problems I

Javier Echeñique

Page range: 367-384

Abstract

In this article I argue for the thesis that Alexander's main argument, in Ethical Problems I, is an attempt to block the implication drawn by the Stoics and other ancient philosophers from the double potential of use exhibited by human life, a life that can be either well or badly lived. Alexander wants to resist the thought that this double potential of use allows the Stoics to infer that human life, in itself , or by its own nature , is neither good nor bad (what I call the Indifference Implication). Furthermore, I shall argue that Alexander's main argument establishes that human life, despite exhibiting a double potential of use, is by its own nature or intrinsically good. Finally, given that this is not a conclusion that the Stoics are likely to accept, I shall also contend that the argument should be regarded as conducted for the most part in foro interno , as a way of persuading the Peripatetics themselves of the falsity of the Indifference Implication, precisely because of the risk that such an implication be derived from their own theoretical framework.

June 29, 2020

Keeping the Friend in Epicurean Friendship

Thomas Carnes

Page range: 385-410

Abstract

There seems to be universal agreement among Epicurean scholars that friendship characterized by other-concern is conceptually incompatible with Epicureanism understood as a directly egoistic theory. I reject this view. I argue that once we properly understand the nature of friendship and the Epicurean conception of our final end, we are in a position to demonstrate friendship’s compatibility with, and centrality within, Epicureanism’s direct egoism.

About this journal

Objective
Apeiron was founded in 1966 and has developed into one of the oldest and most distinguished journals dedicated to the study of ancient philosophy, ancient science, and, in particular, of problems that concern both fields. Apeiron is committed to publishing high-quality research papers in these areas of ancient Greco-Roman intellectual history; it also welcomes submission of articles dealing with the reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition. The journal appears quarterly. Articles are peer-reviewed on a double-blind basis.

Topics

ancient philosophy
ancient science
reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition

Article formats
Original Articles