Volume 12, Issue 2

In this paper, I argue against the institutional reading of the persuasion of the laws in Plato’s Crito. My interpretation focuses on how the clause “persuade or obey” may be read such as to allow citizens to disobey the law or its commands without such actions being unjust. I first summarize the authoritarian position of the laws and present the existing interpretations of the persuasion of the laws. I then show why I believe that none of the existing interpretations is satisfactory. Finally, I present my own interpretation of the persuasion of the laws, which follows Socrates’ own rule of following reason and the strongest available argument.

Plato’s Republic is governed by an analogy drawn between the structures of cities and souls. Because the inner workings of souls are difficult to discern, we might better find the soul’s nature and virtues by looking at the city’s nature and virtues. Despite successfully using the analogy to discern the nature of the soul, its virtues, and its proper ordering, the Republic frequently obscures the very analogy that functions as its guiding thread, and it is not at all obvious whether the political material in Books V–VII has a psychological correlate. This essay develops a psychological reading of key moments in the dialogue where the city-soul analogy fades in favor of more apparently political content. Focusing on the Allegory of the Cave, it argues that when the Cave is read as a “psychic drama,” it discloses reason’s drama within the soul. Like the freed prisoner, reason must be liberated from imprisonment alongside the sub-rational elements of the soul so that it may see the truth by which it can be nourished. However, reason must also descend, like the prisoner, to the sub-rational elements of the soul in order to care for them, for its own sake and for theirs. Read this way, the Republic presents an account of reason which rules the passions in the “precise sense” of Book I, that is, for their sake, and not simply for its own liberation and well-being.

In GC  I.1 Aristotle criticizes the monists and pluralists for accepting positions that eliminate either generation or alteration, and in GC  I.4 he defends the existence of both. Thus, he must believe that his account is immune to those objections he raises against his predecessors, but it is difficult to reconstruct these objections, and so difficult to discern how Aristotle distinguishes his own account from theirs. In this paper, I propose a new reconstruction of these objections, and I show how Aristotle’s own account is immune to them so reconstructed. On my interpretation, Aristotle argues that neither the monists nor the pluralists can explain the generation of a substance. The monists cannot explain how an ultimate subject of predication–one mark of substance–is generated. The pluralists cannot explain how a being that can alter–another mark of substance–is generated. I subsequently show how Aristotle’s own account in GC  I.4 sufficiently diverges from his predecessors to allow something that is both generable and alterable.

Vain emotions are, according to Epicurus, the source of our mental disturbance. The aim of this paper is to discuss and analyze this connection by clarifying the structure of vain emotions in Epicurean philosophy. In order to achieve this, I present, first, the major lines of interpretation regarding the structure of epicurean emotions. Second, I highlight potential problems for each one of these interpretations. Third, I conclude that the existing interpretations cannot capture the whole picture regarding the epicurean structure of emotions and thus I propose an alternative reading of the latter which surpasses the problems facing the existing interpretations.