Dirk Baltzly

In the present volume Proclus describes the 'creation' of the soul that animates the entire universe. This is not a literal creation, for Proclus argues that Plato means only to convey the eternal dependence of the World Soul upon higher causes. In his exegesis of Plato's text, Proclus addresses a range of issues in Pythagorean harmonic theory, as well as questions about the way in which the World Soul knows both forms and the visible reality that comprises its body. This part of Proclus' Commentary is particularly responsive to the interpretive tradition that precedes it. As a result, this volume is especially significant for the study of the Platonic tradition from the earliest commentators onwards.

In the present volume Proclus describes the 'creation' of the soul that animates the entire universe. This is not a literal creation, for Proclus argues that Plato means only to convey the eternal dependence of the World Soul upon higher causes. In his exegesis of Plato's text, Proclus addresses a range of issues in Pythagorean harmonic theory, as well as questions about the way in which the World Soul knows both forms and the visible reality that comprises its body. This part of Proclus' Commentary is particularly responsive to the interpretive tradition that precedes it. As a result, this volume is especially significant for the study of the Platonic tradition from the earliest commentators onwards.

It is sometimes claimed that the Kantian Ought Implies Can principle (OIC) rules out the possibility of moral dilemmas. A certain understanding of OIC does rule out the possibility of moral dilemmas in the sense defined. However I doubt that this particular formulation of the OIC principle is one that fits well with the eudaimonist framework common to ancient Greek moral philosophy. In what follows, I explore the reasons why Aristotle would not accept the OIC principle in the form in which it rules out the possibility of moral dilemmas.

Stoicism was one of the new philosophical movements of the Hellenistic period. The name derives from the porch (stoa poikilê) in the Agora at Athens decorated with mural paintings, where the members of the school congregated, and their lectures were held. Unlike ‘epicurean,’ the sense of the English adjective ‘stoical’ is not utterly misleading with regard to its philosophical origins. The Stoics did, in fact, hold that emotions like fear or envy (or impassioned sexual attachments, or passionate love of anything whatsoever) either were, or arose from, false judgements and that the sage—a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection—would not undergo them. The later Stoics of Roman Imperial times, Seneca and Epictetus, emphasise the doctrines (already central to the early Stoics' teachings) that the sage is utterly immune to misfortune and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Our phrase ‘stoic calm’ perhaps encapsulates the general drift of these claims. It does not, however, hint at the even more radical ethical views which the Stoics defended, e.g. that only the sage is free while all others are slaves, or that all those who are morally vicious are equally so. Though it seems clear that some Stoics took a kind of perverse joy in advocating views which seem so at odds with common sense, they did not do so simply to shock. Stoic ethics achieves a certain plausibility within the context of their physical theory and psychology, and within the framework of Greek ethical theory as that was handed down to them from Plato and Aristotle. It seems that they were well aware of the mutually interdependent nature of their philosophical views, likening philosophy itself to a living animal in which logic is bones and sinews; ethics and physics, the flesh and the soul respectively (another version reverses this assignment, making ethics the..