David Sedley

This comprehensive sourcebook makes available in the original Latin and Greek the principal extant texts required for the study of the Stoic, Epicurean and sceptical schools of philosophy. The material is organised by schools, and within each school topics are treated thematically. The volume presents the same texts as are translated in The Hellenistic Philosophers, Volume 1. The authors provide their own critical apparatus, and also supply detailed notes on the more difficult texts. This volume is equipped with a large annotated bibliography.

Plato's Theaetetus is an acknowledged masterpiece, and among the most influential texts in the history of epistemology. Since antiquity it has been debated whether this dialogue was written by Plato to support his familiar metaphysical doctrines, or represents a self-distancing from these. David Sedley's book offers a via media, founded on a radical separation of the author, Plato, from his main speaker, Socrates. The dialogue, it is argued, is addressed to readers familiar with Plato's mature doctrines, and sets out to show how these doctrines, far from being an abandonment of his Socratic heritage, are its natural outcome. The Socrates portrayed here is the same Socrates as already portrayed in Plato's early dialogues. While not a Platonist, he is exhibited - to put it in terms of an image made famous by this dialogue - as having been Platonism's midwife. In a comprehensive rereading of the text, Sedley tracks the ways in which Socrates is shown unwittingly preparing the ground for Plato's mature doctrines, and reinterprets the dialogue's individual arguments from this perspective. The book is addressed to all readers interested in Plato, and does not require knowledge of Greek.

This book is designed to appeal both to those interested in Roman poetry and to specialists in ancient philosophy. In it David Sedley explores Lucretius ' complex relationship with Greek culture, in particular with Empedocles, whose poetry was the model for his own, with Epicurus, the source of his philosophical inspiration, and with the Greek language itself. He includes a detailed reconstruction of Epicurus' great treatise On Nature, and seeks to show how Lucretius worked with this as his sole philosophical source, but gradually emancipated himself from its structure, transforming its raw contents into something radically new. By pursuing these themes, the book uncovers many unrecognised aspects of Lucretius ' methods and achievements as a poetic craftsman

Plato's Cratylus is a brilliant but enigmatic dialogue. It bears on a topic, the relation of language to knowledge, which has never ceased to be of central philosophical importance, but tackles it in ways which at times look alien to us. In this reappraisal of the dialogue, Professor Sedley argues that the etymologies which take up well over half of it are not an embarrassing lapse or semi-private joke on Plato's part. On the contrary, if taken seriously as they should be, they are the key to understanding both the dialogue itself and Plato's linguistic philosophy more broadly. The book's main argument is so formulated as to be intelligible to readers with no knowledge of Greek, and will have a significant impact both on the study of Plato and on the history of linguistic thought.

In Empedocles’ zoogony, an original set of single-specialism organisms – solitary hands, eyes, etc. – combined into complex organisms, of which the fittest survived. A less recognized anticipation of (one strand of) the Darwinian tradition relates to the superorganism theory: what is naturally selected for is not the individual and/or its kin, but, as most manifestly in insect colonies, the cooperative group. Empedocles’ Love likewise works by promoting co-operation, whose emergence in complex organisms reflects her growing power, and the periodic world-organism, Sphairos, her ultimate triumph. This latter divinity is not a homogeneous blend of the elements, but a single self-sufficient superorganism.

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. OSAP is published twice yearly, in both hardback and paperback. This volume features essays on Empedocles, Xenophon, and Socrates, with several on each of Plato and Aristotle.'unique value as a collection of outstanding contributions in the area of ancient philosophy.' Sara Rubinelli, Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

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. From 2000 OSAP is being published not once but twice yearly, to keep up with the abundance of good material submitted; and it is being made available in paperback as well as hardback, in response to demand from scholars wishing to purchase it. This volume, the second of 2000, features contributors from Michael Wedin and Dominic Scott, and discusses issues ranging from Socratic Intellectualism to Aristotle on animal psychology. 'standard reading among specialists in ancient philosophy' Brad Inwood, Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

Le chapitre 4 du premier livre des Mémorables de Xénophon était quasiment un texte canonique pour la théologie des premiers stoïciens : il contient la première version de « la preuve par la providence » (the Argument from Design) et constitue un témoignage capital et négligé concernant la théologie de Socrate. Les idées qui y sont exposées ne dérivent en effet pas de Diogène d'Apollonie, dont le rôle dans l'histoire de la pensée téléologique a été largement surestimé. Je défends la thèse que le texte du Contre les savants IX, 88-110 de Sextus Empiricus constitue un témoignage unique qui permet de comprendre comment les premiers stoïciens se sont efforcés d'extraire une preuve rigoureuse de l'existence de dieu du chapitre de Xénophon ainsi que du Timée de Platon (29b-30b), et comment ils ont ensuite corrigé leurs syllogismes pour les soustraire aux réfutations parodiques (parabolai) d'Alexinus. On peut ainsi observer la manière dont les stoïciens ont forgé leurs armes théologiques à partir de la tradition dont ils prétendaient être les héritiers.

‘Atheism’ is a term that has historically carried a wide range of meanings and connotations. Popular speech, in particular, admits of a range of definitions, but the same is true of contemporary scholarly usage also. This chapter therefore surveys the sheer variety of ways of defining ‘atheism’, before outlining the pressing need for a generally agreed-upon usage in the growing—and, thus far, Babel-like—field of scholarship on atheism. It then outlines and explains the precise definition used throughout the Handbook: an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods. The utility of such a broad definition, taking atheism to be an ‘umbrella concept’ that admits of a range of subdivisions, is then explored and defended at length.