EpochPub Date : 2009-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE20091329
Pascal J. Massie
{"title":"Between Past and Future : Aristotle and the Division of Time","authors":"Pascal J. Massie","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE20091329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE20091329","url":null,"abstract":"Time prevents being from forming a totality. Whenever there is time fragmentation and multiplicity occur. Yet, there also ought to be continuity since it is the same being that was, is and will be. Because of time, being must be both identical and different. This is the key problem that Aristotle attempts to resolve in his discussion of time in Book IV of the Physics. This essay considers three privileged notions: limit, number and ecstasies on which Aristotle relies at crucial moments of his inquiry and shows (1) that limit, number, and ecstasies are actually three ways of approaching the same phenomenon, and (2) how they allow Aristotle to reconcile divisibility and indivisibility.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129085499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2009-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE20091323
D. Post
{"title":"Heraclitus's Hope for the Unhoped","authors":"D. Post","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE20091323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE20091323","url":null,"abstract":"The Concept \"hope,\" ∈'λ πis, appears in two of Heraclitus's fragments. This essay offers an attentive reading of these fragments and examines the role of hope in Heraclitus's thinking. The essay is divided into two parts. The first part examines the meaning of the Greek notion for hope, ∈'λπis, by looking into archaic and classical sources, particularly the myth about the origin of hope in Hesiod's Works and Days. Based upon the renewed understanding of the concept, the second part of the essay examines Heraclitus's use of the concept of hope and demonstrates the central role of hope in Heraclitus's thinking.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123641812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2009-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE200913211
D. Layne
{"title":"Refutation and Double Ignorance in Proclus","authors":"D. Layne","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE200913211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE200913211","url":null,"abstract":"Regardless of the inconsistencies between Plato and his inheritors, the late neo-Platonist Proclus offers poignant answers to several contemporary debates imbedded in Socratic scholarship. In the following, we will concentrate on Proclus's interpretation of the Socratic elenchos and the provocative concept of double ignorance by clarifying their appearance in The Commentary on Plato's Parmenides and The Commentary on the Alcibiades I. In this endeavor we shall unpack how Proclus characterizes the elenchos as an authentic dialectic purifying its recipients from an evil caused by the conceit to knowledge, a condition which unfortunately almost all men suffer and require treatment.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116767245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2009-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE20091322
Philippa Hopkins
{"title":"Weaving the Fish Basket: Heraclitus on Riddles and the Relation of Word and World","authors":"Philippa Hopkins","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE20091322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE20091322","url":null,"abstract":"Heraclitus stands in opposition to the general systematic tendency of philosophy in that he insisted that the contents of philosophy are such as to require expositional strategies whose goal it is to do something with and to the reader rather than merely say something. For him, the questions of philosophy and, indeed, the mat- ters of the world such questions take up are not best approached by means of discursive propositions. His view of the relation of the structures of reality to the structures of language requires procedures for understanding the world and talking about it that recognize and exploit the essentially riddle-like nature of both things and words.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133116126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2009-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE200913212
John Sallis
{"title":"Speaking of the Earth: Figures of Transport in the Phaedo","authors":"John Sallis","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE200913212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE200913212","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126403180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2009-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE20091324
M. R. Romero
{"title":"Without the Least Tremor: Ritual Sacrifice as Background in the Phaedo","authors":"M. R. Romero","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE20091324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE20091324","url":null,"abstract":"Sacrifice haunts the Phaedo. In this article, I argue that the mise-en-scene of the death scene of the Phaedo, as well as other sacrificial elements in the background of the dialogue, creates a nexus that positively integrates the birth, philosophical practice, and death of Socrates into the ritualized rhythm of the life of the city of Athens. A close reading of the death scene presented as a synopsis with Walter Burkert's well-known analysis of Greek sacrifice reveals convergences and divergences between the Phaedo and Greek sacrificial practice. Socrates appears as a willing victim who accepts the city's sacrificial practice while remaining on his own terms.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121851398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2009-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE200913216
Walter A. Brogan
{"title":"Generosity and Reserve : The Choric Space of the Good in Plato's Philosophy","authors":"Walter A. Brogan","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE200913216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE200913216","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129345338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2009-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE200913210
S. Stern-Gillet
{"title":"Dual Selfhood and Self-Perfection in the Enneads","authors":"S. Stern-Gillet","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE200913210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE200913210","url":null,"abstract":"Plotinus's theory of dual selfhood has ethical norms built into it, all of which derive from the ontological superiority of the higher (or undescended) soul in us over the body-soul compound. The moral life, as it is presented in the Enneads, is a life of self-perfection, devoted to the care of the higher self. Such a conception of morality is prone to strike modern readers as either 'egoistic' or unduly austere. If there is no doubt that Plotinus's ethics is exceptionally austere, it will be argued below that it is not'egoistic.' To that effect, the following questions will be addressed: Are the virtues, civic as well as purificatory, mere means to Plotinus's metaphysically conceived ethical goal? To what extent must the lower self abnegate itself so as to enable the higher self to ascend to Intellect and beyond? And if self-perfection lies at the centre of the Plotinian moral life, is there any conceptual room left in it for other-regarding norms of conduct? A close reading of selected passages from Plotinus's tractate I.2[19] On Virtues and tractate VI.8[39] On Free Will and the Will of the One will, it is claimed, bring elements of answer to these questions.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125063323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2009-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE20091326
Alessandra Fussi
{"title":"Love of the Good, Love of the Whole: Diotima’s Response to Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium","authors":"Alessandra Fussi","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE20091326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE20091326","url":null,"abstract":"Diotima criticizes, but does not refute, Aristophanes' thesis that love is desire for completeness. Her argument incorporates that thesis within a more complex theory: eros is desire for the permanent possession of the good, and hence also desire for immortality. Aristophanes cannot account for the aspirations entailed in the desire for fame or in the desire for knowledge. Such aspirations can be understood only with reference to the good. However, the paper shows how time plays a fundamental role in the original pursuit of wholeness at the center of Aristophanes' myth of the two halves. Diotima appropriates his thesis when she describes the urge to leave behind something similar to what one has been. The desire for immortality is nothing but a desire for completeness pursued by mortal nature against the never-ending destruction of time.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122035272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}