George Boys-Stones

A debate between Proclus and Damascius over whether intellect ‘remembers’ the forms in contemplating them is explained by Professor Adamson as a disagreement over the nature of memory looking back to Plato and Aristotle. But I argue that it is rather symptomatic of a disagreement stretching back through Plotinus to Middle Platonism over the nature of the intellect. This gives the debate its urgency; and it coheres better with the fact that, Plato and Aristotle aside, there is vanishingly little evidence in ancient philosophy for a thematized interest in memory.

In chapters 30–1 of the de Stoicorum repugnantiis, Plutarch sets out to show that the Stoics involve themselves in self-contradiction if they claim that their philosophy allows them an intelligible notion of providence. In the first place, he says, this is so because the traditional boons which men expect to receive from the gods do not benefit them at all if they do not have wisdom. Indeed, the fool uses all things badly, so that to give him anything at all without giving him virtue should be positively harmful to him. Yet the gods never give virtue to anyone so, on this score, they benefit no one either.