•  2
    On Aristotle's Physics 1.4-6
    with John Philoponus
    Duckworth. 2009.
    Aristotle's Physics 1.4-9 explores a range of questions about the basic structure of reality, the nature of prime matter, the principles of change, the relation between form and matter, and the issue of whether things can come into being out of nothing, and if so, in what sense that is true. Philoponus' commentaries do not merely report and explain Aristotle and the other thinkers whom Aristotle is discussing. They are also the philosophical work of an independent thinker in the Neoplatonic trad…Read more
  •  3
    Review of André Laks, Le vide et la haine: éléments pour une histoire archaïque de la négativité, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 2004 ; Introduction à la “philosophie présocratique”, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 2006
  •  43
    Scott Austin: Parmenides, Being, Bounds and Logic (review)
    Ancient Philosophy 11 (2): 393-396. 1991.
    This is a book review of the work by Scott Austin.
  •  46
    "No" means "Yes": The Seduction of the Word in Plato's Phaedrus
    Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 15 (1): 263-281. 1999.
    The motifs of love and seduction in the Phaedrus are not about sexual love but about philosophy, and particularly about two different approaches to philosophy, one engaged and emotionally, even poetically, involved and one cold, rational and detached. Socrates' palinode speech in the Phaedrus contrasts the lover of beauty whose philosophical sensitivities enable the wings to grow and intellectual vision to occur, with the cool rational character of the non-lover who has no place for love of beau…Read more
  •  5
    Three Studies On Anaximander (review)
    The Classical Review 54 (2): 288-289. 2004.
  •  45
    I start by asking what Aristotle knew (or thought) about Heraclitus: what were the key features of Heraclitus's philosophy as far as Aristotle was concerned? In this section of the paper I suggest that there are some patterns to Aristotle's references to Heraclitus: besides the classic doctrines (flux, ekpyrosis and the unity of opposites) on the one hand, and the opening of Heraclitus's book on the other, Aristotle knows and reports a few slightly less obvious sayings, one of which is in my tit…Read more
  •  19
    L'A. étudie l'oeuvre d'Hippolyte de Rome qui présente, moins qu'un véritable intérêt philosophique, l'avantage d'une certaine connaissance de l'histoire de la philosophie, sur laquelle il fonde sa défense de la doctrine chrétienne. Le débat s'articule autour de l'originalité de l'interprétation de la philosophie grecque, des Présocratiques en particulier, par Hippolyte. Il s'agit, par comparaison avec Plotin, de délimiter les sources philosophiques de son oeuvre empreinte d'un moyen platonisme t…Read more
  •  38
    Perceiving white and sweet (again) : Aristotle, De Anima 3.7, 431a20-b1
    Classical Quarterly 48 (2): 433-446. 1998.
    In chapter 7 of the third book of De anima Aristotle is concerned with the activity of the intellect, which, here as elsewhere in the work, he explores by developing parallels with his account of sense-perception. In this chapter his principal interest appears to be the notion of judgement, and in particular intellectual judgements about the value of some item on a scale of good and bad. In this paper I shall argue, firstly that there is in fact a coherent structure and focus to this chapter, wh…Read more
  •  27
    Indices Chrysostomici, II: De Sacerdotio (review)
    The Classical Review 40 (2): 482-483. 1990.
  •  2
    In this paper I argue, controversially, that Plato's Meno anticipates Wittgenstein's critique of essentialism. Plato is usually read as an essentialist of the very kind that Wittgenstein was challenging, and the Meno in particular is usually taken as evidence that Plato thought that to know something you must be able to define it, and that if you can't define it you can't investigate any other questions on the topic. I suggest instead that Plato shows Socrates proposing such a position (much as …Read more
  •  73
    Empedocles Recycled
    Classical Quarterly 37 (01): 24-. 1987.
    It is no longer generally believed that Empedocles was the divided character portrayed by nineteenth-century scholars, a man whose scientific and religious views were incompatible but untouched by each other. Yet it is still widely held that, however unitary his thought, nevertheless he still wrote more than one poem, and that his poems can be clearly divided between those which do, and those which do not, concern ‘religious matters’.1 Once this assumption can be shown to be shaky or actually fa…Read more
  •  31
    A Portable Presocratics Primer? (review)
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (4): 791-797. 2013.
    No abstract
  •  24
    Aristotle on ΦΙΛΙΑ (review)
    Classical Review 46 (1): 73-75. 1996.
  • Topography in the Timaeus: Plato and Augustine on Mankind's Place in the Natural World
    Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 34 104-111. 1988.
    I consider the relation between the shape or structure of the world and the moral position occupied by human beings, and show that a cosmology that places earth at the centre does not give the centre of the universe pride of place but the lowest place, so any reluctance to move the earth from the centre of the universe was not due to thinking that humans must be in the most important position. From Plato on, the surface of the earth is at the bottom and the outer heaven is the highest place. Thi…Read more
  •  32
    Selves and Other Selves in Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics vii 12
    Ancient Philosophy 29 (2): 349-371. 2009.
    Osborne argues against the idea that Aristotle thinks that friends are useful for assisting us towards self-knowledge, and defends instead the idea that friends provide an extension of the self which enables one to obtain a richer view of the shared world that we view together. She then examines similar questions about why the good person would gain from encountering fictional characters in literature, and what kinds of literature would be beneficial to the good life.
  •  54
    This is a review of the book by Kirk, Raven and Schofield.
  •  40
    On Calling the Gods by the Right Names
    Rhizomata 1 (2): 168-193. 2013.
    Do you need to know the name of the god you're praying to? If you get the name wrong what happens to the prayer? What if the god has more than one name? Who gets to decide whether the name works (you or the god or neither)? What are names anyway? Are the names of the gods any different in how they work from any other names? Is there a way of fixing the reference without using the name so as to avoid the problems of optional names? There is a type of formula used in prayer in ancient Greece whic…Read more
  •  10
    Companionable Aristotle (review)
    The Classical Review 49 (1): 115-116. 1999.
  •  63
    I argue that philosophy was naturally conceived and written in verse, not prose, in the early years of philosophy, and that prose writing would be the exception not the norm. I argue that philosophers developed their ideas in verse and did not repackage ideas and thoughts first formulated in non-poetic genres, so there is no adaptation or modification involved in "putting it into poetry". This also means that the content and the form are interdependent, and the poetic details are part of the mes…Read more
  •  64
    Ralph Cudworth (1617-88) was one of the Cambridge Platonists. His major work, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, was completed in 1671, a year after Spinoza published (anonymously) the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus. It was published a few years later, in 1678. Cudworth offers a spirited attack against the materialism and mechanism of Thomas Hobbes. His work is couched as a search for truth among the ancient philosophers, and this paper examines his use of the Presocratics as a tool f…Read more
  •  82
    Space, time, shape, and direction: creative discourse in the Timaeus
    In Christopher Gill & Mary Margaret McCabe (eds.), Form and Argument in Late Plato, Oxford University Press. pp. 179--211. 1996.
    There is an analogy between Timaeus's act of describing a world in words and the demiurge's task of making a world of matter. This analogy implies a parallel between language as a system of reproducing ideas in words, and the world, which reproduces reality in particular things. Authority lies in the creation of a likeness in words of the eternal Forms. The Forms serve as paradigms both for the physical world created by the demiurge, and for the world in discourse created by Timaeus: his discour…Read more
  •  69
    A study of Hippolytus of Rome and his treatment of Presocratic Philosophy, used as a case study to argue against the use of collections of fragments and in favour of the idea of reading "embedded texts" with attention to the interpretation and interests of the quoting author. A study of methodology in early Greek Philosophy. Includes novel interpretations of Heraclitus and Empedocles, and an argument for the unity of Empedocles's poem.
  •  40
    I explore the connections between love, resentment and anger, and challenge Nussbaum's assumption that love is self-seeking, leads to resentment when the benefits are withdrawn, and that anger is invariably a vicious response. I sketch an alternative view of genuine love, and of the importance of the anger that springs from seeing a loved one unjustly treated.
  •  6
    Relativism in Plato's Protagoras
    In Verity Harte & Melissa Lane (eds.), Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 191-211. 2013.
    The character Protagoras in Plato's Protagoras holds similar views to the one in the Theaetetus, and faces similar problems. The dialogue considers issues in epistemology and moral epistemology, as a central theme. The Protagorean position is immune from Socrates' attacks, and Socrates needs Protagorean methods to make any impact.
  •  365
    Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love
    Oxford University Press. 1994.
    This unique book challenges the traditional distinction between eros, the love found in Greek thought, and agape, the love characteristic of Christianity. Focusing on a number of classic texts, including Plato's Symposium and Lysis, Aristotle's Ethics and Metaphysics,, and famous passages in Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, Dionysius the Areopagite, Plotinus, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, the author shows that Plato's account of eros is not founded on self-interest. In this way, she restores the place…Read more