The Cyrenaic school was a fourth-century BC philosophical movement, related both to the Socratic tradition and to Greek Scepticism. In ethics, Cyrenaic hedonism can be seen as one of many attempts made by the associates of Socrates and their followers to endorse his ethical outlook and to explore the implications of his method. In epistemology, there are close philosophical links between the Cyrenaics and the Sceptics, both Pyrrhonists and Academics. There are further links with modern philosophy as well, for the (...) Cyrenaics introduced a form of subjectivism which in some ways preannounces Cartesian views, endorsed by Malebranche and Hume and developed by Kant. This book reconstructs Cyrenaic epistemology, explains how it depends on Cyrenaic hedonism, locates it in the context of ancient debates, and discusses its connections with modern and contemporary epistemological positions. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy is an annual publication which includes original articles, which may be of substantial length, on a wide range of topics in ancient philosophy, and review articles of major books. Contributors to this volume; Jonathan Barnes, Roger Crisp, T.H. Irwin, Christopher Janaway, Richard J. Ketchum, Voula Tsouna McKirahan, Martha Nussbaum, Dirk Obbink, and Allan Silverman.

Voula Tsouna presents a comprehensive study of the ethics of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, who taught Virgil, influenced Horace, and was praised by Cicero. His works have only recently become available to modern readers, through the decipherment of a papyrus carbonized by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Tsouna examines Philodemus's theoretical principles in ethics, his contributions to moral psychology, his method, his conception of therapy, and his therapeutic techniques. The Ethics of Philodemus will be of (...) considerable interest to scholars and students of classics, ancient philosophy, and ethics. (shrink)

Most ancient philosophers accept that dreams have prophetic powers enabling humans to relate somehow to a world beyond their own. The only philosophers known to make a clean and explicit break with that tradition are the Epicureans, beginning with Epicurus himself and reaching his last eminent follower, Diogenes of Oinoanda. They openly reject the idea that dreams mediate between the divine and the human realms, or between the world of the living and the world of the dead. They demystify the (...) phenomenon of dreaming by explaining sleeping and dreaming in terms of their materialistic physical theory. Importantly, they examine dreams and their content from different perspectives and explore their relevance to our lives. The general aim of this paper is to offer a synthetic account of the Epicurean view about dreaming and dreams, advance certain new hypotheses that seem worthy of consideration, and show how Epicurus and his followers integrate dream theory into their philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

This paper outlines the Epicurean conception of rationality and then tries to assess the merits of the notorious contention of the Epicurean philosophers that it is irrationalto fear death. At the outset, I talk about the nature of harmful emotions or passions, of which the fear of death is an outstanding example: their dependence on one‘s disposition, their cognitive and non-cognitive components, the ways in which these elements may be related to each other, and the healthy counterparts of the passions, (...) namely the ‚bites‘. Next, I distinguish different kinds of fears involving the thought of death and I examine the Epicurean arguments against each one of them: fears about the state of being dead, others about dying prematurely, yet others concerning the dying process and especially the moment when the soul leaves the body and, finally,the fear that we must die sometime. Much of the discussion focuses on the writings of Philodemus . Philodemus offers the most sustained discussion of the fear of premature death and of the fear of dying that survive in the Epicurean literature. In addition, in the peroration of his treatise On Death, he gives a brilliant example of how we can reconcile ourselves with the fact that we shall die sometime and accept our own mortality. My provisional conclusion is that although the Epicurean philosophers often succeed in appeasing our fears about death, for the most part they fail to prove that these fears are irrational. (shrink)

Voula Tsouna provides a translation, extensive introduction, and notes on Philodemus' treatise "On Property Management." A fragmentary version of this treatise was recovered from the Epicurean library at Herculaneum, which was buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

La présente étude suggère que l’analyse aristotélicienne de la sōphrosunē dans l’ Éthique à Nicomaque II 7 et surtout III 13-15 (ou : III x-xii) gagne à être comprise sous l’angle de son héritage platonicien et, en particulier, de l’examen de la conception de la sōphrosunē comme « science de la science » défendue par Critias dans le Charmide et de la définition de la sōphrosunē en termes de tripartition de la cité et de l’âme dans la République. La première (...) partie présente les objections soulevées par Socrate contre la notion de la sōphrosunē comme science réflexive défendue par Critias dans le Charmide, et suggère comment Aristote pourrait avoir pris ces objections en compte. La deuxième partie discute quelques caractéristiques choisies de la sōphrosunē en République IV et soutient que cette dernière conception s’éloigne du Charmide mais se rapproche de la conception aristotélicienne de cette vertu. La troisième partie positionne la conception aristotélicienne de la sōphrosunē d’une part relativement à sa conception des vertus de caractère et de sa propre méthode d’analyse et d’autre part relativement à ces deux dialogues de Platon. En conclusion, la présente étude identifie des différences cruciales entre les traitements platonicien et aristotélicien de la sōphrosunē et indique comment Aristote tient compte des arguments de Platon tout en se distanciant suffisamment de son aîné pour offrir sa propre analyse distinctive de cette vertu spécifique. (shrink)

The Charmides is a difficult and enigmatic dialogue traditionally considered one of Plato's Socratic dialogues. This book provides a close text commentary on the dialogue which tracks particular motifs throughout. These notably include the characterization of Critias, Charmides, and Socrates; the historical context and subtext, literary features such as irony and foreshadowing; the philosophical context and especially how the dialogue looks back to more traditional Socratic dialogues and forward to dialogues traditionally placed in Plato's middle and late period; and most (...) importantly the philosophical and logical details of the arguments and their dialectical function. A new translation of the dialogue is included in an appendix. This will be essential reading for all scholars and students of Plato and of ancient philosophy. (shrink)

This paper provides a comprehensive study of the Epicurean theory of ‘preconception’. It addresses what a preconception is; how our preconception of the gods can be called innata, innate; the role played by epibolai ; and how preconceptions play a semantic role different from that of ‘sayables’ in Stoicism. The paper highlights the conceptual connections between these issues, and also shows how later Epicureans develop Epicurus’ doctrine of preconceptions while remaining orthodox about the core of that doctrine.

The Cyrenaic school was a fourth-century BC philosophical movement, related both to the Socratic tradition and to Greek Scepticism. In ethics, Cyrenaic hedonism can be seen as one of many attempts made by the associates of Socrates and their followers to endorse his ethical outlook and to explore the implications of his method. In epistemology, there are close philosophical links between the Cyrenaics and the Sceptics, both Pyrrhonists and Academics. There are further links with modern philosophy as well, for the (...) Cyrenaics introduced a form of subjectivism which in some ways preannounces Cartesian views, endorsed by Malebranche and Hume and developed by Kant. This 1998 book reconstructs Cyrenaic epistemology, explains how it depends on Cyrenaic hedonism, locates it in the context of ancient debates, and discusses its connections with modern and contemporary epistemological positions. (shrink)

Concepts are basic features of rationality. Debates surrounding them have been central to the study of philosophy in the medieval and modern periods, as well as in the analytical and Continental traditions. This book studies ancient Greek approaches to the various notions of concept, exploring the early history of conceptual theory and its associated philosophical debates from the end of the archaic age to the end of antiquity. When and how did the notion of concept emerge and evolve, what questions (...) were raised by ancient philosophers in the Greco-Roman tradition about concepts, and what were the theoretical presuppositions that made the emergence of a notion of concept possible? The volume furthers our own contemporary understanding of the nature of concepts, concept formation, and concept use. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details. (shrink)

: The Republic is notorious for its attack against poetry and the final eviction of the poets from the ideal city. In both Book III and Book X the argument focuses on the concept of mimêsis, frequently rendered as ‘imitation’, which is partly allowed in Book III but unqualifiedly rejected in Book X. However, several ancient authors view Plato’s dialogues as products of mimêsis and Plato as an imitator. Plato himself acknowledges the mimetic character of his enterprise and invites us (...) to compare and contrast his own mimêsis with the imitations of painters and poets. The main issue addressed in this paper is both systematic and historical: just what sort of mimêsis occurs in Plato’s dialogues and, moreover, whether and why, by the criteria that Plato’s Socrates sets out in the Republic, Platonic mimêsis may not be subject to the very same criticisms directed against Homer and the tragedians. There will emerge a radical and systematic contrast between the works of the poets, as they are assessed in the Republic, and Plato’s own writings, as they present themselves to their readers. That contrast appears to be deliberate and suggestive of the view that Plato’s dialogues ought to replace poetry as elements of proper education and civic cohesion. (shrink)

Most ancient philosophers found access to the mental states of people other than the perceiver less problematic than the moderns did. But there is evidence, however scarce, that some groups of ancient sceptics raised questions which I shall call, for brevity's sake, doubts about other minds.

The surviving writings of Epicurus and his followers contain several references to epibolê – a puzzling notion that does not receive discussion in the extant Epicurean texts. There is no consensus about what epibolê is, what it is of, and what it operates on and, moreover, its epistemological status is controversial. This article aims to address these issues in both Epicurus and later Epicurean authors. Part One focuses mainly on Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus, highlights a crucial distinction hitherto unnoticed in (...) the literature between two different types of epibolê, and brings out he necessary connection between epibolê and the application of the criteria of truth. Part Two considers the philosophical merits of the traditional interpretation of epibolê as projection and/or attention. Part Three examines the two aforementioned types of epibolê in Lucretius and Philodemus and shows that these authors accord epibolê paramount epistemological and ethical importance. (shrink)

Cet article est ma contribution au débat sur la nature du moi idéal chez Platon ; débat commencé dans l’antiquité, mais qui se poursuit jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Les positions sont à peu près les suivantes. D’un côté, à la suite du platonicien Numénius, de nombreux interprètes (que j’appellerai universalistes) soutiennent que, puisque le moi chez Platon est un élément rationnel immatériel, ce ne peut être un moi personnel et individuel, mais il doit être impersonnel et universel. Dans cette perspective, l’âme contemplative (...) n’est pas à proprement parler un moi ; elle se confond plutôt, selon les termes du Premier Alcibiade – un texte clé pour les universalistes – avec « Dieu et la sagesse » (Alc. 133c). De l’autre côté, quelques commentateurs (que j’appellerai individualistes ou particularistes) suivent Plotin et supposent ou affirment l’individualité du moi platonicien. Mais, à la différence de Plotin, les particularistes n’ont jamais reconnu qu’il y a là matière à controverse et n’ont jamais réellement affronté le problème de savoir de quelle façon le moi est individuel et ce que son individualité pourrait impliquer. C’est donc une nouvelle défense de l’individualité du moi que je présente ici. En outre, je suggère que son individualité n’est pas incompatible avec la sorte d’universalité qu’implique la contemplation et même qu’elle constitue une précondition de sa propre transcendance. Cependant, mon argumentation se tient dans les limites du Phèdre ; je ne prétends pas tirer de conclusions pour l’ensemble du corpus platonicien. Dans la première partie, j’expose l’aporie à laquelle est confronté Socrate, l’énigme qui motive l’enquête qui va suivre ; j’avance également l’hypothèse que les deux discours qui précèdent le Grand Discours de Socrate, sa palinodie – le premier étant censément composé par Lysias, le second par Socrate –, frayent la voie à la palinodie elle-même en avançant des conceptions rivales de l’amour-eros, de la connaissance de soi et de la rationalité. Dans la seconde partie, je défends une lecture particulariste de la palinodie et plus spécialement du mythe sur la nature de l’âme. (shrink)

Depuis Homère, les penseurs de l’antiquité se sont intéressés à la nature, à l’usage et au contrôle de la colère. Cet article porte sur le plus ancien ouvrage sur le sujet qui ait survécu de l’antiquité jusqu’à nous, à savoir le traité Sur la Colère de Philodème, un important philosophe épicurien, actif en Italie du Sud au ier siècle av. J.-C. De façon générale, il s’agit dans cet article de présenter, du point de vue historique, sémantique et méthodologique, le contexte (...) de l’analyse par Philodème de la colère, ainsi que de reconstruire l’essentiel de son argumentation contre différents adversaires. La question comporte un débat sur la bonne façon de traiter la colère ; l’explication que donne Philodème de la nature, des symptômes et des conséquences de cette émotion ; la distinction qu’il opère entre colère naturelle (orge) et non naturelle (thymos), ainsi que son affirmation, que le sage peut à l’occasion resssentir la première, mais jamais la seconde ; enfin, sa réfutation de trois arguments en forme d’epilogismos qui soutiennent que le sage ne sera pas moins sujet à la colère que n’importe qui. (shrink)

La plupart des philosophes de l’Antiquité pensent que les rêves ont des capacités prophétiques. Les seuls philosophes à s’écarter de cette tradition sont les épicuriens. Ils démystifient le phénomène du rêve en l’expliquant dans les termes de leur théorie physique matérialiste. Ils soulignent le lien entre le contenu du rêve et les activités diurnes, entre ce même contenu et la qualité d’âme du rêveur. Parce que l’identité de chacun persiste lorsqu’il rêve, les épicuriens attribuent à l’activité onirique une signification psychologique (...) et morale considérable : quoique non véridique, le rêve n’en reste pas moins révélateur. Il est l’expression des recoins intimes de la personnalité du dormeur. (shrink)

Self-knowledge occupies a central place in the thought of the Socratics. As he makes it the characteristic feature of the figure of Socrates and of his search for the good life, Plato develops in his own right Socrates’ views on self-knowledge in a variety of ways, all of which incorporate the intuition that proper awareness of ourselves is determined, at least partly, by factors external to the individual. The aim of the pre­sent paper is to substantiate precisely this claim.The first (...) part outlines an interpretation of certain features of the Apology, where Plato appears convinced that full knowledge of oneself involves ele­ments of objectivity. The second and the third sections are devoted, respecti­vely, to the Charmides and to the first Alcibiades, both of which imply that the individual needs to turn away from himself and towards objective facts and values in order to acquire complete understanding of his own self. The fourth part applies that conclu­sion to a puzzle raised by the metaphor of the Cave in the seventh book of the Republic and proposes a tentative solution to that puzzle. The last part compares Plato’s account to that of another group of Socratics, the Cyrenaics, who hold that self-knowledge is achieved introspec­tively through inner sense. The paper ends with a few remarks concerning the importance of self-knowledge for morality and the pertinence of Plato’s account to contemporary ethics and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

L’éthique de Philodème de Gadara est aujourd’hui accessible, en langue anglaise, dans une présentation thématique qui met en perspective toutes les œuvres actuellement publiées de l’épicurien d’Herculanum, protégé du beau-père de César, Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, et ami de Virgile et d’Horace. Les trois cent cinquante pages du livre de Voula Tsouna, The Ethics of Philodemus, offrent en effet enfin au public la réorganisation et le commentaire, en un seul volume, de larges et très nombreux ex...

A review of James Warren, Facing Death. Epicurus and his Critics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2004.

Sur le modèle du On Death IV (De morte) de Philodème, publié chez le même éditeur en 2009 par W. B. Henry, cet ouvrage propose, après une introduction de trente-quatre pages, une traduction – fondée sur l’édition donnée par Christian Jensen en 1906 pour Teubner – de cet écrit de Philodème tenu par lui comme un livre sur l’économie. Même si dans les « Acknowledgements » (p. vii) V. Tsouna rappelle qu’elle a participé à la traduction de L’Économie pour (...) Les Épicuriens co-édité par Daniel Delattr... (shrink)

En 2007, Voula Tsouna offrait avec The Ethics of Philodemus une présentation ambitieuse de l’éthique du philosophe épicurien, rendue possible par l’accroissement de nos connaissances sur son œuvre depuis les années 1970. L’exploration du vaste ensemble papyrologique figé dans les cendres de la villa d’Herculanum qui abritait sa bibliothèque n’a pas cessé : elle a donné lieu à l’étude, l’édition ou la traduction de fragments significatifs de ses œuvres éthiques. Wim Nijs (W. N.) perpétue ce mo...

In this special issue, our goal is to ... show that the distinguished history of philosophical reflection on attention, insofar as the Western tradition is concerned, has at least some of its roots in Classical Greek and Roman philosophy. This is offered as a partial corrective to historical overviews of the Western discourse, which rarely reach further back than René Descartes. Furthermore, we wish to emphasize that ancient treatments of attention are especially concerned with its role in the context of (...) ethics and human agency. Even when they take their departure from an analysis of selective perceptual attention, their intention is not only to account for this phenomenon as part of a naturalistic science of the mind but also to motivate the view that the capacity to focus or to shift our attention is indispensable to human flourishing. Moral training is to a large extent conceived of as a matter of acquiring and sustaining the mental strength required for maintaining an attentive state of mind while resisting the interference of competing stimuli. -/- TABLE OF CONTENTS Pauliina Remes: From Natural Tendencies to Perceptual Interests and Motivation in Plato’s Timaeus Voula Tsouna: The Epicurean Notion of epibolê Katerina Ierodiakonou: The Stoic Provenance of the Notion of Prosochê Charles Brittain: A Stoic Ethics for Attention (Seneca Letter 56) Lenka Karfíková: Attention in Augustine. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy is a volume of original articles on all aspects of ancient philosophy. The articles may be of substantial length, and include critical notices of major books. Contributions in this volume range from Sarah Broadie on Plato's Timaeus, to Voula Tsouna on Philodemus. 'standard reading among specialists in ancient philosophy' Brad Inwood, Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

Since its publication in 1994, Richard McKirahan's _Philosophy Before Socrates_ has become the standard sourcebook in Presocratic philosophy. It provides a wide survey of Greek science, metaphysics, and moral and political philosophy, from their roots in myth to the philosophers and Sophists of the fifth century. A comprehensive selection of fragments and testimonia, translated by the author, is presented in the context of a thorough and accessible discussion. An introductory chapter deals with the sources of Presocratic and Sophistic texts (...) and the special problems of interpretation they present. In its second edition, this work has been updated and expanded to reflect important new discoveries and the most recent scholarship. Changes and additions have been made throughout, the most significant of which are found in the chapters on the Pythagoreans, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles, and the new chapter on Philolaus. The translations of some passages have been revised, as have some interpretations and discussions. A new Appendix provides translations of three Hippocratic writings and the Derveni papyrus. (shrink)

An astounding project of analysis on more than one hundred translations of ancient philosophical texts, this index of words found in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series comprises some 114,000 entries. It forms in effect a unique dictionary of philosophical terms from the post-Hellenistic period through to late antiquity and will be an essential reference tool for any scholar working on the meaning of these ancient texts. As traditional dictionaries have usually neglected to include translation examples from philosophical texts of (...) this period, scholars interested in how meanings of words vary across time and author have been ill served. This index fills a huge gap, therefore, in the lexical analysis of ancient Greek and has application well beyond the reading of ancient philosophical commentaries. Bringing together the full indexes from 110 of the volumes published in Bloomsbury's Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, McKirahan has combined each word entry and analysed how many times particular translations occur. He presents his findings numerically so that each meaning in turn has a note as to the number of times it is used. For meanings that are found between one and four times the volume details are also given so that readers may quickly and easily look up the texts themselves. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 217 [Access article in PDF] Bogoljub Sijakovic. Bibliographica Praesocratica: A Bibliographical Guide to the Studies of Early Greek Philosophy in its Religious and Scientific Contexts with an Introductory Bibliography on the Historiography of Philosophy. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2001. Pp. 700. Cloth, €18,00. Professor Sijakovic has given us an invaluable reference work for the Presocratics and for early Greek thought generally: (...) a bibliography of 17,664 entries covering the period 1450-2000. It has some advantages over its principal predecessor, Paquet et al., Les Présocratiques: Bibliographie Analytique (Montreal and Paris, 1988-95), which covers work up to 1980. Sijakovic includes more recent material and aims at complete coverage of works in the Slavic languages and Modern Greek. He does not cover the Sophists, but does include works on topics that extend more widely than the Presocratics. Unlike Paquet, Sijakovic does not provide summaries of articles nor does he list reviews of books, unless they have interest in their own right, or include translations of works into other modern languages. He provides indexes of subjects, Greek terms, proper names, and authors.The ambition of the work is revealed by the subject headings other than those on familiar Presocratic thinkers and the issues they treated. The bibliography begins with a long section on Historiography and Philosophy of the History of Philosophy (with 932 entries) and concludes with one on Presocratics in the Intellectual Tradition (590) from before Plato to the present, with subsections on figures such as Francis Bacon (5), Nietzsche (74), Heidegger (56), and Popper (6). Other sections are labelled Theories of Myth (550), Greek Mythmaking and Religion (667), Orpheus and Orphism (642), Homer (154), Hesiod (147), Theogonies, Greek and Oriental (159), From Myth to Philosophy (365), Mathematics (137), Medicine (86), and Hippocrates of Cos (199). It is here that ambition leads to weakness, since the section on Homer, for example, is obviously not a complete bibliography of Homeric studies, and yet it is not restricted to works on Homer that bear on "presocratic" topics. The absence of an explanatory preface to these sections leaves the principles of selection mysterious and decreases their usefulness.Another feature that limits the value of the book is the arrangement within sections. This is generally chronological, but not always. The irregularities are so pervasive that the cause must be due to some unannounced division into unlabelled subsections, and the result is that we must read through more entries than we should have to. Two other minor complaints: the language of the book is English (aside from the trilingual prefatory material), but there are mistakes of usage and grammar which a copyreader should have caught; and there are occasional unexplained words at the end of entries, frequently in a different type-face, that are not part of the bibliographical entry.I do not mean to detract from the great service Professor Sijakovic has done (seemingly laboring alone over many years) for all who work in the area of early Greek thought—and principally, he notes in a preface, written as NATO was bombing his country, scholars from Western Europe and the United States. We are deeply indebted to him. The book has replaced Paquet as my primary bibliographical resource on the Presocratics. Richard McKirahan Pomona College... (shrink)

David Sedley recently complained that despite the enormous amount of work on Parmenides in the past generation, the details of Parmenides' arguments have received insufficient attention. It is universally recognized that Parmenides' introduction of argument into philosophy was a move of paramount importance. It is also recognized that the arguments of fragment B8 are closely related. At the beginning of B8, Parmenides asserts that what-is has several attributes; he offers a series of proofs that what-is indeed has those attributes. This (...) article undertakes a close analysis of fragment B8, teasing out the structure of the arguments, and showing what parts of the traditional and new interpretations of Parmenides those arguments do support. It presents some surprising conclusions and opens up spaces for new interpretations. (shrink)