Published by De Gruyter

Volume 41 Issue 2

Issue of Elenchos

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available December 1, 2020

Frontmatter

Page range: i-iv

Download PDF

Articles

December 1, 2020

Rhetoric beyond Arguments: Thinking about the Role of Fictional Audiences in Plato’s Gorgias

Dora Suarez

Page range: 217-243

Abstract

In this piece, I propose a reading of Plato’s Gorgias that pays special attention to the role that the fictional audience plays in the unfolding of the dialogue. To this end, I use some of the insights that Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts–Tyteca conveyed in their seminal work, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation in order to argue that thinking about the way in which Socrates’ arguments are shaped by the different audiences that Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles aim to address and represent provides us with a new hermeneutical understanding of what is at stake in each of the different interactions Socrates engages in throughout the dialogue. In unpacking the way in which Socrates appropriates Gorgias’ particular audience , transforms Polus’ universal audience , and challenges Callicles’ elite audience, I provide an outline of the difficulties that Plato’s Socrates has to overcome in order to achieve the ‘community of minds’ that Perelman and Olbrechts–Tyteca identify as the bedrock of fruitful argumentation. Having done this, in the last section I turn to Plato’s Phaedrus , for the purpose of making evident that thinking about Plato’s deployment of rhetorical audiences is a crucial step in the effort to expose the implicit continuity that links the discussion of rhetoric delivered by the Gorgias to that of the Phaedrus .

December 1, 2020

Aristotle on the Soul as Harmony

Melpomeni Vogiatzi

Page range: 245-268

Abstract

A topic common to both Plato’s and Aristotle’s discussions of theories of the soul is the doctrine of the soul as a harmony of the parts of the body. Plato’s Phaedo as well as Aristotle’s De anima and Eudemus present this theory and argue against the identification of the soul as a harmony. This paper has two focuses, one philosophical and one historical. First, I will focus on the argumentation used by Aristotle in his dialogue Eudemus, which is often associated with Aristotle’s early attachment to Plato. On the basis of the argumentation against the harmonia theory, I will try to show that the Eudemus is not a dialogue that depicts Aristotle’s Platonic phase. Instead, by comparing the arguments of the Eudemus with both Plato and Aristotle’s mature thought, I will argue that the argumentation of the Eudemus seems to be an indirect attack on Plato’s view on the Forms and on the nature of the soul, and that it seems to be consistent with Aristotle’s mature work On the Soul . Second, given that Aristotle discusses this topic twice, I will try, also on the basis of conclusions about the Eudemus and on later reception of Aristotle’s arguments, to show why this is the case.

December 1, 2020

Un tournant majeur de l'acculturation du cynisme à Rome : le De philosophia de Varron

Jordi Pià-Comella

Page range: 269-296

Abstract

In his De philosophia , Varro lists 288 philosophical schools on the highest good before presenting Antiochus’s doctrine as the only true one. One of the particularities of his moral doxography consists in including cynicism which has never been mentioned in the previous moral sources. This paper therefore aims to show that the De philosophia represents a major turning point for the Roman reflection on cynicism. First, Varro defines cynicism as a simple way of life ( habitus ) and not a doctrine ( ratio ) so that it could be adopted by all other philosophies. In fact, by ‘reducing’ cynicism to a way of life Varro makes it compatible with his conception of the highest good based on social duties. In that respect, his position on cynicism is opposite to Cicero’s who, in his De officiis , considers cynicism as a dangerous philosophy for Roman values. Finally, Varro uses cynicism as a conceptual tool for thinking, in philosophical terms, one of the most important issues that run through all his work: the relationship between happiness and Ancient Roman simplicity, especially in the context of Roman decadency. For instance, in Varro’s Menippean Satires , Cynics’s destitution partly reminds of the Ancient Romans’ austerity. Therefore, by mentioning cynicism in his moral doxography, Varro gives an original and Roman treatment of the Antiochian inquiry into the concept highest good.

December 1, 2020

Our Atoms, Ourselves: Lucretius on the Psychology of Personal Identity (DRN 3.843–864)

Maeve Lentricchia

Page range: 297-328

Abstract

In Epicurean cosmology, material reconstitution, or palingenesis (παλιγγενεσία) is the necessary consequence of the infinity of time and the eternity of atoms. I examine Lucretius’ treatment of this phenomenon ( DRN 3.843–864) and consider the extent to which his view enables us to develop an Epicurean response to the question: what makes a person at two different times one and the same person? I offer a reading of this passage in the light of modern accounts of persistence and identity, and what Lucretius states in Books 3 and 4 about memory and the soul’s motions. Guided by the metaphysical implications of this analysis, I determine the type of relation which, according to Lucretius, holds between the mental and the physical.

December 1, 2020

The Elusive Third Way: The Pyrrhonian Illumination in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty

Roger E. Eichorn

Page range: 329-362

Abstract

I argue in this paper that, like the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus, Wittgenstein’s response to negative–dogmatic skepticism in On Certainty turns on the attempt to free us from the demands of traditional philosophy and is therefore not a philosophical position, strictly speaking. Rather, it is a therapeutic metaphilosophy designed to bring into view (i.e., to illumine) the relationship between our everyday epistemic practices and those of philosophy such that we simultaneously come to recognize ( a ) what I call the pragmatic–transcendental self–standingness of the everyday and ( b ) its philosophical–rational groundlessness . The Pyrrhonian illumination of the everyday is therapeutic in that it aims to purify our metadoxastic attitudes of dogmatism.

Note

December 1, 2020

Der Kosmos als schweigender Prophet: Zu Plotin, Enn. II 9 [33],9,39–42

Felix Herkert

Page range: 363-376

Abstract

In Ennead II 9,9,39–42 we find a singular passage in which Plotinus asserts that the cosmos ‘proclaims’ (προφητεύει) the divine order. It is the only passage in the Enneads where the verb προφητεύειν is used. In this paper the ‘prophetic function’ of the cosmos will be examined. It will be demonstrated how the mentioned passage – despite its unique character in the Enneads – points to the centre of Plotinus’ thought, namely his theory of the causality of intelligible beings. As a sensual product of transcendent causes, the cosmos ‘proclaims’ these causes. In consideration of other relevant passages, the implications of this notion will be delineated to deliver a more comprehensive interpretation of the cosmic προφητεύειν, not least in the context of Plotinus’ remarks about the genesis of time and the fundaments of astrology. It will be shown how Plotinus can articulate his theory of manifestation in terms of a ‘sigetic prophecy’ – ‘sigetic’ in the sense that manifestation unfolds ‘silently’.

Reviews

December 1, 2020

Clémence Ramnoux, Œuvres. Tomes I et II

Carlo Santaniello

Page range: 377-383

December 1, 2020

Interconnectedness. The Living World of the Early Greek Philosophers

Lorenzo Perilli

Page range: 385-391

December 1, 2020

Von Pflanzen und Pflichten: Zum naturalistischen Ursprung des stoischen kathēkon

Jula Wildberger

Page range: 393-399

December 1, 2020

«Nessun dio è mai sceso quaggiù». La polemica anticristiana dei filosofi antichi

Maria Carmen De Vita

Page range: 401-411

About this journal

Elenchos was founded in 1980 with the aim of promoting specialized and innovative research in the field of the history of ancient philosophy and serving as a venue for different approaches and methodologies. It welcomes articles, critical surveys, and reviews on the most various aspects of Greek and Roman thought, covering all the ages of Antiquity. Each issue consists of three parts: articles and essays; discussions; reviews and short notes. Articles are peer-reviewed on a double-blind basis.