Volume 35, Issue 2

Since the editio princeps, PSI XI 1215 has been recognized as a fragment of a Socratic dialogue. After the first studies on its philological aspects and probable authorship, however, the text has not drawn the attention of historians of ancient philosophy, and this important Socratic evidence has long been totally neglected. This paper reviews the history of scholarship on the Florentine fragment and presents a new critical edition, on the basis of which it tries to give for the first time a historico-philosophical reading of the text. This interpretation aims to demonstrate: a) that the Socratic philosopher who is writing had not a low cultural level, and the fragment presupposes an accurate knowledge of Plato’s political thought, as Medea Norsa and Girolamo Vitelli already supposed with regard to Book 8 of Plato’s Republic; b) that the fragment in question can be attributed to a Socratic dialogue which was most likely composed in the first half of the 4th century BC; c) that both philosophical and textual arguments support the attribution of the fragment to a dialogue of Antisthenes.

The analogy between virtue and crafts is the core of Socratic ethics, whose fundamental principle is that virtue is a kind of knowledge similar to technical skills. Moral knowledge, however, is on a superior level and is different from other crafts since it concerns the ends of human action. This article aims to show that the main purpose of Laches, Charmides, Lesser Hippias and Protagoras is to bring out this distinction. More specifically, all the four dialogues follow a similar pattern, i.e. they lead to the conclusion that virtue is moral knowledge by means of preliminary argumentations which consider the opposite view, supposing that it consists in technical knowledge. Thus we are shown the difficulties arising if we fail to distinguish moral knowledge, before the dialogue reaches its positive conclusion.

In Republic 436a-c Plato introduces, for the first time, the problematic postulate of the tripartition of the species-functions of the soul to pass on to justify it by starting from the so-called “Principle of conflict” or “of the impossibility of opposites”. To reach this point in the dialogue, we will firstly place this passage in the conceptual architecture of the work, taking the topic of stasis (sedition, revolt, civil war) as the thread for the reconstruction of the argumentative sequence that leads into the psychological model of the parts in conflict. We actually start from the hypothesis that Plato gets to the tripartition of the soul from the evidence that in the psychological reality of the individual there exists a stasis that is produced in the soul due to injustice, contrasting to the concord and friendship that is a result of justice. On the basis of the psychological model of the parts in conflict, the psycho-political objective looked for in Republic, points to the achievement of the psychic unity as a condition for the political unity; since Plato’s political objective is to make citizens become better, which can only be reached through an improvement of the individual soul. Through the topic of stasis and the lexis of the conflict that derives from it, we uphold that Plato intends to prove not only the political and tripartite constitution of the soul, but first and foremost the priority that the psychic tripartition holds over the political order.

In this essay I defend a reconstruction of the epistemological theory that, in a metaphorical way, Plato develops in Philebus 38b-39d. This theory explains how the human beings are capable of considering the experience’s facts. At the core of this theory, the soul is the intermediate point of a general process that allows to emit a statement related to objects of the world. So this theory also registers as a part of the history of the philosophical contemporary semantics. I will argue that three analytically separable stages are distinguished in connection with this operational mediation of the soul. At the first stage, the human soul gets blindly the formal characters of those facts by means of a composite pathema, which corresponds to a hexis of doxazein (form an opinion) and produces a fundamental doxa-logos. The second stage is the moment of the doctrine that explains the reason why we are conscious of what we have grasped in the analytical previous level. At the third stage, one may emit the utterances of those facts. Every stage corresponds to a concept of doxa-logos which have different characteristics, and it is opportune that they are distinguished in the comprehension of that theory. I argue for this reading against a number of alternatives.

The aim of this paper is to examine the political implications of Sextus Empiricus’ neo-Pyrrhonism by considering two fundamental texts (PH I 23-24; AM XI 162- 165). Both texts are usually interpreted as endorsing political conformism insofar as Sextus allegedly claims that one should follow the laws and customs of one’s community. But it seems possible to interpret the reference to laws and customs merely as a description of what humans in fact do. What Sextus would therefore recommend is to abandon any theoretical approach to politics in favor of a pragmatic one.

The present short note focuses on Cicero’s De finibus IV 18, 51, a passage which preserves a testimony on Xenocrates (quoted here as magister of Polemon), neglected by the editors of the fragments of Academy’s second scholarch

Iamblichus took a clear stand in the late-antique debate on the origin of matter: in his view, matter is generated, in the sense that it is brought about by a higher principle (primary causes) outside physical time. Two passages testify to this conception: In Tim. fr. 38 Dillon (= Procl. In Tim. I , p. 386.8-13 D.) and Ad Porph. (De myst.) p. 196.14-19 Saffrey-Segonds (= VIII 3, p. 265.6-10 Parthey). The relation between the two, however, is rather problematic and scholars stand divided: some maintain that Proclus drew the conception expounded in In Tim. fr. 38 from Iamblichus’ commentary by the same title, others that he drew it from Ad Porph. The question is a far from marginal one. It is connected to the problem of the attribution of Ad Porph. and strongly bears upon the issues of Iamblichus’ work method and of his doctrine. Moreover, the very reconstruction of the text of Ad Porph. closely depends on how the analogy connecting it to In Tim. fr. 38 is understood. A reading of the two passages, first each in its own context and then in the light of one another, reveals that In Tim. fr. 38 is based on the lost commentary on the Timeaeus. Consequently, the two passages are seen to adopt a reverse perspective on the subject, so to speak: In Tim. fr. 38 elucidates Plato through Hermes, while Ad Porph. elucidates Hermes by introducing Platonic notions. Finally, with regard to Ad Porph. p. 196.14-19, a suggestion is made to retain the transmitted text.