Volume 88, Issue 2

Plato's Socrates famously claims that we want (βούλɛσθαı) rather than what we think good ( Gorgias 468bd); he also claims that we desire (ἐπıθυμɛĩν) things that we think are good, which are sometimes in fact bad ( Meno 77de). Drawing on similarities between Plato's treatment of conative and cognitive attitudes, this paper shows how Plato's various accounts of the relationship between our conative attitudes and the good account for the norm-responsiveness of our conative attitudes.

Ancient commentators like Ammonius and Boethius tried to solve Aristotle's “sea battle argument” in On Interpretation 9 by saying that statements about future contingents are “indefinitely” true or false. They were followed by al-Fārābī in his commentary on On Interpretation . The article sets out two possible interpretations of what “indefinitely” means here, and shows that al-Fārābī actually has both conceptions: one applied in his interpretation of Aristotle, and another that he is forced into by the problem of divine foreknowledge. It also explains the relevance of al-Fārābī's remarks as a link between the non-statistical modal theories of Philo and Avicenna.

Concerning the disputed doctrine of the eternity of mind in Spinoza's Ethics , the article argues that (1) Spinoza holds indeed the eternity or immortality of a part of the human mind, (2) that he holds a type of individual eternity and (3) that all this is completely coherent within his general approach. Several difficulties are resolved especially by distinguishing between the concept of a self as given to an epistemic subject and an ‚objective‘ self as produced by God.

This note shows how a logical gap in the Stoic theory of oikeiôsis diagnosed by S. G. Pembroke in his classic article on the theory (1971) can be filled in by means of a text in Dio Chrysostom: the Olympic Discourse ( Or . XII) sections 42–43.

Hellmut Flashar (Hrsg.): Ältere Akademie – Aristoteles – Peripatos . 2., durchgesehene und erweiterte Auflage. Basel: Schwabe 2004 (Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie; Die Philosophie der Antike, Bd. 3), 747 Seiten. ( Hermann Weidemann ) Lloyd P. Gerson: Knowing Persons: A Study in Plato . Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003. X + 308 pp. ( Ian Crystal ) Ann N. Michelini (ed.): Plato as Author: The Rhetoric of Philosophy . Leiden: Brill 2003. 359 pp. ( Edward C. Halper ) Paul Thom: Medieval Modal Systems: Problems and Concepts . Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. XIV + 216 pp. ( Hester Goodenough Gelber )