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The argument Socrates employs to refute Polus in Plato’s Gorgias (474c4-475e6) has long been considered problematic [see, for example, Vlastos. 1967. “Was Polus Refuted?” The American Journal of Philology 88:454–60, Stemmer. 1985. “Unrecht tun ist schlechter als Unrecht leiden. Zur Begründung moralischen Handelns im platonischen Gorgias ,” Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 39:501–22, Tarnopolsky. 2010. Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame . Princeton: Princeton University Press]. This paper suggests that it is not fallacious but incomplete; when examined in the context of the dialogue in which it is situated, it appears much more plausible. Such an approach to Plato is not new, but the Gorgias has so far benefited very little from it. I argue that one of the argument’s main premises requires further elaboration before it can be accepted, and this is indeed offered in the Callicles section (481b6-522e8), as well as the “myth” The concluding narrative of the Gorgias is, of course, a myth, but it is persistently identified by Socrates as a logos (see section III below). I have therefore opted for the term “myth” in quotation marks to refer to it here, and throughout, in order to indicate the ambiguous nature of the relevant portion of the dialogue. Calling it a myth, without quotation marks, would decide the matter: the narration would have no claim to the truth, when in fact Socrates repeatedly suggests the opposite. (523a1-527a4) with which the dialogue is concluded. Whether the argument proves not only internally plausible but also convincing ultimately depends on whether one is willing to grant the justification Socrates offers for this main premise.

Aristotle claims that in some extenuating circumstances, the correct response to the wrongdoer is sungnōmē rather than blame. Sungnōmē has a wide spectrum of meanings that include aspects of sympathy, pity, fellow-feeling, pardon, and excuse, but the dominant interpretation among scholars takes Aristotle’s meaning to correspond most closely to forgiveness. Thus, it is commonly held that the virtuous Aristotelian agent ought to forgive wrongdoers in specific extenuating circumstances. Against the more popular forgiveness interpretation, I begin by defending a positive account of sungnōmē as the correct judgment that a wrongdoer deserves excuse since she was not blameworthy. I will then argue that as sungnōmē is merited on the grounds of fairness, this shows that both the forgiveness interpretation and a third, alternative interpretation of sungnōmē as sympathy mischaracterize both the justification for sungnōmē and its nature. Moreover, I will argue that Aristotle not only lacks an account of forgiveness but in fact, his account of blame is incompatible with forgiveness altogether.

This paper attempts a reconstruction of the views of Pyrrho of Elis. Many recent commentators, most notably Richard Bett, have made Pyrrho out to a metaphysical dogmatist who thinks the world is fundamentally indeterminate. Despite some criticisms of this view by Brennan and others, this metaphysical reading has continued to gain adherents. But there are serious textual and logical problems with these dogmatic interpretations. According to the evidence we have, a better view is that Pyrrho was an agnostic skeptic, i.e. one who refused to make assertions about the world outside of perceptual or intellectual appearances. But this does not mean that the traditional view of Pyrrho is correct either: the kind of skepticism Pyrrho endorsed is not Pyrrhonian, because it is grounded in the nature of our epistemic faculties rather than opposition between equally plausible theories, arguments, beliefs, or appearances. A secondary thesis of this paper is about methodology. Rather than focus on the most ambiguous and contentious passages in isolation, we should base our interpretation on the whole corpus, beginning with the easiest passages. Faulty interpretations of Pyrrho go wrong, I argue, partly by failing to follow this method.

Throughout his ethical and psychological works, Galen is emphatic about his support for tripartite Platonic psychology; however, for the most part, his works offer rather little detail on the character of each of the three parts and especially of their interaction with each other. His fullest extant account of the interrelationship of the three parts of the soul is found in the Arabic epitome of his lost treatise On Character Traits (Περὶ ἠθῶν). Although the epitome, as it survives, is neither as complete nor often as clear as we might like, I argue that it is an invaluable source for Galen’s philosophical psychology and shows that he made significant innovations in his Platonic model. Perhaps most importantly, it provides strong evidence that he held that the rational part of the soul is incapable on its own of generating full-blown and effective desires for appetitive goods such as food, drink, and sex, which is a significant departure from Platonic theory. As I show, this position has significant and far-reaching implications for Galen’s account of the interaction of the rational and non-rational parts of the soul. Moreover, I argue that his innovations in Platonic philosophical psychology also have significant implications for his ethical theory.

The oration preserved in Papyrus Hibeh I 13 consists in a harsh attack on some self-appointed harmonikoi . Although the importance of the speech for the knowledge of ancient Greek musical culture has been widely recognised, the role of this polemic in ancient philosophy, and in the interplay between music and philosophy, should be more properly defined. By attempting to reconstruct the intellectual context from which the Hibeh speech emerges, the paper argues that the text is a significant part of the debate on the notion of τέχνη in the fifth and fourth centuries BC and should be considered together with other evidence at the intersection between technical content and rhetorical strategies.