Volume 96, Issue 3

Abstract: Why is the Protagoras ’ final argument premised on Hedonism? I argue for a new interpretation that shows Plato to be concerned with the very issues that motivate the Republic ’s tripartite psychology. Socrates introduces Hedonism to deflect a threat to his view that virtue is knowledge. If the pleasant is an end – an ultimate object of desire – distinct from the good, then desires for the pleasant are different in kind from, and can potentially conflict with and overwhelm, desires for the good. Socrates attempts to neutralize this threat through the hypothesis that there is only one end of human desire: in desiring what they think of as the pleasant, people are in fact desiring the good. In the Republic he will reject this hypothesis: there are three distinct ends, the pleasant, the beneficial, and the noble, and with them three distinct species of desire; hence motivational conflict is possible, and virtue involves more than just knowledge.

Abstract: This paper is devoted to an examination of Bolzano’s notion of necessary existence, which has so far received relatively little attention in the literature. We situate Bolzano’s ideas in their historical context and show how he proposed to correct various flaws of his predecessors’ definitions. Further, we relate Bolzano’s conception to his metaphysical and theological assumptions, arguing that some consequences of his definition which have been deemed counterintuitive by some of his interpreters turn out to be more reasonable given the broadly Leibnizian background of his metaphysics. Finally, we consider some difficulties that arise from Bolzano’s evolving views on freedom, which, at least in his early thought, was intimately linked with contingency. In an appendix, we discuss a recent debate on Bolzano’s notion of necessary truth between Textor and Rusnock that has some bearing on our overall line of interpretation of Bolzano’s notion of necessary existence .

Abstract: According to current interpretation of their ethics the Stoics incorporated in the theory of happiness the conception of attachment to oneself (οἰκείωσις πρὸς ἑαυτόν) supposed to be changed into attachment to reason. This article aims to show that there is no textual evidence to corroborate this idea, and that, on the contrary, several texts and conceptual configurations tell against it. The same seems to hold true for the life of human adults who are not wise and keep their animal attachment to themselves (Hierocles): as Cicero apparently suspected, the moral maxim of this life, i.e. self-preservation in natural circumstances , is incompatible with the consequence of animal attachment to oneself which is the impulse of self-preservation tout court .