Malcolm Schofield

Discussion of the confrontation between Socrates and Callicles in the Gorgias has mostly focused on its first two phases: Callicles’ statement of his views and Socrates’ attempted refutations (481-500) and Socrates’ subsequent attempt to substitute his own conception of the good life (501-9). Much less attention has been paid to the final phase (509-22). But this is where Plato stages the most sustained debate in the dialogue between alternative answers – with their consequences – to what has by now proved to be its central question: is committing injustice or falling victim to it the greatest evil? This article examines in detail the key moves in the debate, in which Callicles is again tempted by Socrates to participate, after refusing to continue midway through the second phase of the dialectic. It is argued that Plato’s aim in this final section of the conversation is to show just why and how Socrates might successfully initiate and sustain intellectual engagement with an intelligent young politician hoping to rise within the Athenian democracy, such as Callicles is portrayed as being. He fails to persuade him. But this is not, as is sometimes supposed, a failure of intellectual communication. It is a matter of what Plato wants us to understand as different fundamental commitments.

This essay explores Aristotle’s treatment of imagination. It argues that Aristotle need not be charged with the radical inconsistency in his treatment of phantasia diagnosed by Hamlyn. Although a conceptual link can be made between imagination and a use of ‘appears’, the link is not as close as the connection between phantasia and phainesthai, nor does ‘appears’ provide the natural entree to the study of imagination which phainetai provides to that of phantasia. A little lexicography will show that the syntactic behaviour and semantic range of phantasia are different from those of imagination.

This book presents an up-to-date overview of the main new directions taken by ancient philosophy in the first century BC, a period in which the dominance exercised in the Hellenistic age by Stoicism, Epicureanism and Academic Scepticism gave way to a more diverse and experimental philosophical scene. Its development has been much less well understood, but here a strong international team of leading scholars of the subject reconstruct key features of the changed environment. They examine afresh the evidence for some of the central Greek thinkers of the period, as well as illuminating Cicero's engagement with Plato both as translator and in his own philosophising. The intensity of renewed study of Aristotle's Categories and Plato's Timaeus is an especially striking outcome of their discussions. The volume will be indispensable for scholars and students interested in the history of Platonism and Aristotelianism.

This essay explores Aristotle’s treatment of imagination. It argues that Aristotle need not be charged with the radical inconsistency in his treatment of phantasia diagnosed by Hamlyn. Although a conceptual link can be made between imagination and a use of ‘appears’, the link is not as close as the connection between phantasia and phainesthai, nor does ‘appears’ provide the natural entree to the study of imagination which phainetai provides to that of phantasia. A little lexicography will show that the syntactic behaviour and semantic range of phantasia are different from those of imagination.

In recent years a great deal of scholarly and philosophical discussion has been devoted to the interpretation and evaluation of the regress arguments which Parmenides is made to deploy against the theory of Ideas in the first part of the dialogue which takes its name from him. By contrast, scarcely anything has been written about the infinite regress argument which Parmenides presents at the start of the second of the deductions which make up the dialogue's second part. Yet while it may contain less to reward the philosopher than the earlier regresses, it can hardly fail to perplex the scholar

In Aristotle's view, Anaxagoras stood out from the other Presocratics as a sober man among the incoherent. This book explores the fragmentary evidence both for Anaxagoras' concept of mind - to which Aristotle was particularly referring - and for his subtle, complex and elusive theory of matter and change. It is concerned with two aspects of his writing in particular: its comparatively high ratio of dogmatic assertion to argument, and a pervasive ambiguity or indeterminacy in the presentation of Anaxagoras' philosophical theses. The problems posed by Anaxagoras' work are examined not only by means of philosophical comparison with what survives of other Presocratics, but in the light of the development of the prose book as a vehicle for the communication of ideas in early Greece. A book for the scholar of ancient philosophy.

This book, first published in 2000, is a general and comprehensive treatment of the political thought of ancient Greece and Rome. It begins with Homer and ends in late antiquity with Christian and pagan reflections on divine and human order. In between come studies of Plato, Aristotle and a host of other major and minor thinkers - poets, historians, philosophers - whose individuality is brought out by extensive quotation. The international team of distinguished scholars assembled by the editors includes historians of law, politics, culture and religion, and also philosophers. Some chapters focus mostly on the ancient context of the ideas they are examining, while others explore these ideas as systems of thought which resonate with modern or perennial concerns. This clearly written volume will long remain an accessible and authoritative guide to Greek and Roman thinking about government and community.