Volume 48, Issue 1

This paper examines the second geometrical problem in the Meno . Its purpose is to explore the implication of Cook Wilson’s interpretation, which has been most widely accepted by scholars, in relation to the nature of hypothesis. I argue that (a) the geometrical hypothesis in question is a tentative answer to a more basic problem, which could not be solved by available methods at that time, and that (b) despite the temporary nature of a hypothesis, there is a rational process for formulating it. The paper also contains discussion of the method of analysis, problem reduction and a diorism, which have often been ambiguously explained in relation to the geometrical problem in question.

This paper explores what Epictetus thinks we need to learn in order to acquire the art of living, and, in doing so, illuminates the central tenets of Epictetus’ epistemology. It argues that we need to have cognition of preconceptions – innate, self-evident, general, ethical truths – and we need to know how to apply them. We acquire this “know-how” through habituation and, with it, are able to have cognition of correct applications.

In Physics I.7, Aristotle claims that plants and animals are generated from sperma. Since most understood sperma to be an ovum, this claim threatens to undermine the standard view that, for Aristotle, the matter natural beings are generated from persists through their generation. By focusing on Aristotle’s discussion of sperma in the first book of the Generation of Animals , I show that, for Aristotle, sperma in the female is surplus blood collected in the uterus and not an ovum. I subsequently argue that, for Aristotle, this blood does persist through the production of the fetus.

The three parts of the soul in the Myth of the Chariot are most often understood to correspond to the three parts of the soul in the Republic , with the charioteer representing the rational part of the soul, the white horse the spirited part and the black horse the appetites. Such an interpretation, however, is at odds both with the suggestion at the end of the Republic that the soul is a unity when it is free of the body and with the creation of the human soul in the Timaeus , where the soul receives its spirited and appetitive parts only after embodiment. Further, this interpretation causes problems with the elements of the Myth of the Chariot itself. In this paper I argue that it is better to understand the elements in the Phaedrus myth as representing divisions within rational soul.

The ways in which the Aristotelian sciences are related to each other has been discussed in the literature, with some focus on the subalternate sciences. While it is acknowledged that Aristotle, and Plato as well, was concerned as well with how the arts were related to one another, less attention has been paid to Aristotle’s views on relationships among the arts. In this paper, I argue that Aristotle’s account of the subalternate sciences helps shed light on how Aristotle saw the art of rhetoric relating to dialectic and politics. Initial motivation for comparing rhetoric with the subalternate sciences is Aristotle’s use of the language of boundary transgression, germane to the Posterior Analytics , when discussing rhetoric’s boundaries, as well as the language of “over” and “under” found in APo . First, I discuss three passages in Rhetoric Book I and argue that Garver’s (1988) account cannot be correct. Second, I look to the subalternate sciences, especially focusing on optics and the distinction between “unqualified” optics and mathematical optics. Third, I discuss rhetoric’s dependence on both dialectic and politics.