Band 46, Heft 3

The article argues that the doctrine that nous rules the world plays a decisive role in the development of Plato’s thought, despite the strong critique of Anaxagoras in the Phaedo and the absence of the doctrine in other middle dialogues such as the Republic. It addresses the Timaeus as a transformative rehabilitation of the nous doctrine, through the ‘world-soul,’ the demiurge, and the class of other gods. It then considers the ways this schema is modified in later dialogues (Statesman, Philebus, Laws) in light of the suppression of the problem of natural disaster in the Timaeus.

Parmenides’ exercise assists Socrates who is perplexed about forms and participation. The exercise assumes the one is and is not, and traces consequences for the one with respect to itself and the others and for the others with respect to themselves and the one. There appear to be eight or nine hypotheses. Counting the third makes all the odd-numbered hypotheses draw neither … nor … conclusions, while the even-numbered draw both … and … conclusions. Odd and even thus link with limit and unlimited principles, so the third hypothesis on the instant clarifies forms and all beings. We also cast light on the Presocratic origin of the theory of forms.

The present article investigates a passage of the Timaeus in which Plato describes the construction of the pyramid. Scholars traditionally interpreted it as involving that the solid angle at the vertex of the pyramid is equal, or nearly so, to 180°, a value which they took to be that of the most obtuse of plane angles. I argue that this interpretation is not warranted, because it conflicts with both the geometrical principles which Plato in all probability knew and the context of the Timaeus. As well as recalling the definitions and properties of plane angles and solid angles in Euclid’s Elements, I offer an alternative interpretation, which in my opinion improves the comprehension of the passage, and makes it consistent with both the immediate and wider context of the Timaeus. I suggest that the passage marks a transition from plane geometry to solid geometry within Plato’s account of the universe.

In Alcibiades 1, the object of self-knowledge is approached as a special case because of its interrelations within the polis. But can such a Platonic principle as the priority of definition - knowing what a thing is before one can say anything else that is auhoritative about it - be applied to the object of self-knowledge? The dialogue strives to individuate one aspect of human nature as focal. This is not a divinity outside human agency, but the soul under that aspect that makes it the agent of purposeful action and subject of her own talk and reasoning, worthy of our care.

The difference between ancient Greek medicine and ancient Greek philosophy has often been seen by scholars in terms of two targets of expertise: the body and the soul. In this paper, I argue that we can better understand the boundaries between medicine and philosophy in antiquity by focusing instead on the difference between causes and motivations (or causes and desires). The reason is this. It is not the case that the writers of the Hippocratic Corpus are uninterested in the soul (psychē). They are, however, reluctant to address their therapies to expressions of the patient’s own agency, despite tacitly acknowledging such agency as a causal force that cannot be reduced to the automatic behavior of the body. I go on to show how thinkers like Plato and Democritus zero in on the problem of perverted desires as part of a strategy of establishing a new domain of therapy, a domain that comes to be classified as the therapy of the soul.

This paper deals with Pyrrhonian skepticism. It argues that the central argument presented by Jonathan Barnes in favor of the view that skepticism precludes the possession of any belief fails. In brief, Barnes maintains that, because skepticism requires suspending judgment whether criteria of truth exist, no skeptic can, consistently with her skepticism, possess a criterion of truth; this entails, he argues, that no skeptic can make any judgments about anything and, hence, cannot come to possess any beliefs. I evaluate this argument in two ways: first, if we understand criteria of truth along the lines proposed by Sextus’ Hellenistic opponents, the argument fails because such criteria were introduced to guarantee that at least some of our beliefs could count as knowledge, and not to guarantee the very possibility of making judgments in the first place. Second, if we broaden our conception of a criterion of truth, such that a criterion is any standard against which an impression can be evaluated, the argument fails because it equivocates on the notion of ‘possession’. On the one hand, in the sense in which someone must possess such a criterion in order to make judgments, the skeptic’s suspension of judgment concerning their existence does not entail that she does not possess a criterion of truth. On the other hand, in the sense in which the skeptic does not possess such a criterion, possession of a criterion of truth is not a necessary condition for making judgments. Thus, I conclude that the skeptics’ epistemic attitude towards the existence of criteria of truth (i.e. suspension of judgment) does not entail that skeptics cannot possess any beliefs.