Volume 13, Issue 1

This article focuses on the first part of Meno’s paradox, i.e. on the problem of initiating inquiry. I argue that the Platonic concept of inquiry (ζήτησις), unlike our modern notion, encompasses a process of deep transformation at the intellectual, ethical, and desiderative levels. However, the Socratic elenchus alone is insufficient to initiate inquiry; recollection is needed as well.

Plato is the first philosopher to provide a robust account of the mathematical structure of the world; in this framework, the idea that the elements are proportionally arranged plays a crucial role. However, scholars agree nowadays that the proportional relation of the elements is not to be read at face value since no mathematical criterion has been found for which the proportion is appropriate. By contrast, this paper aims, on the one hand, to explain the mathematical reasons allowing Plato to state that the elements, each of which is to be associated with a perfect solid, are in proportion to one another ( Ti . 31 b 4–32 c 5) and, on the other, to highlight the philosophical importance of ascribing to Plato the awareness of these reasons. More specifically, we show that Plato can arrange the solids in proportion ‘as far as it is possible’ by considering as a parameter the radius of the sphere into which each body is inscribed. This parameter establishes the proportion with a very low deviation, whose presence and tolerability can be explained from a technical point of view and exploited from a philosophical point of view. Thus, our solution not only ensures the overall consistency of Plato’s account of elementary bodies but also justifies the fundamental role he ascribes to the spherical shape of the world and, more generally, the geometrical foundation of the goodness of the world’s structure.

Six types of value have important interrelated roles in Aristotle’s practical and theoretical philosophy. The six are: value expressed in terms of goodness (agathonic value), that expressed in terms of happiness (eudaimonic value), that expressed in terms of pleasure (hedonic value), that expressed in terms of the noble (kalonic value), that expressed in terms of aptness, and that expressed in intrinsic terms (intrinsic value). In the present paper the nature of these types of value and of their interrelations are explored and explained. The central importance of hedonic value to the other sorts of value is shown, and hedonic value is explained in terms of aptness value, which stems from the relation between a mode of cognition or perception and its object. Intuitively put, an object (O) has the highest aptness value when the active cognition or perception of O is identical to O. Identity, as we might put it, is the maximum of aptness.

Michael Frede has argued that there is a minimum belief for a Stoic to have a notion of a will and that Epictetus and the late Stoics were the first to have this belief. Against Frede’s interpretation, I argue for a new understanding of what the Stoics believed. Epictetus did not believe, as Frede argues, that adult human beings choose to assent to impulsive impressions. This gets the object of choice wrong in the minimum belief. He believed that the choice adult human beings make is to exercise their ability to use their impressions, and I argue that the early Stoics probably believed this too.