Aistė Čelkytė

Galen of Pergamum, known as 'the prince of medicine', is an important figure not only for the history of medicine but also for ancient philosophy, history of ideas and cultural history. In this book, Aistė Čelkytė explores Galenic physiology and examines how this highly influential figure theorised the unity of the multi-part, ever-moving and ever-changing human body. She approaches this question by first studying how Galen 'takes the body apart', that is, the different divisions of the body into parts that he proposes, and then how he 'puts it back together', that is, his use of philosophical tools to posit the vital unity among these parts. She then looks at Galen's theorisation of human nature, his understanding of parthood, the hierarchies between the parts that underpin vital functions, the 'mechanisms' that make the body one, and Galen's understanding of the body as a multifaceted but unified whole.

In this paper, I argue that Bryson’s Oikonomikos is a fascinating example of the oikonomia genre in several different respects. Although the problematic transmission of this Neopythagorean text makes studying it a challenge, such effort is well-rewarded with an elaborate argument which paints the human bodily constitution, the central bodily functions and oikonomic activities as intrinsically linked. Focusing on Bryson’s argument which roots oikonomic behaviour in human biology, I explore the underlying conceptualisation of human nature and contextualise it within relevant philosophical and scientific traditions.

When it comes to the discussions of ancient economic thought, the Stoics rarely come to the forefront. By and large, the lack of focus on this Hellenistic philosophical school is understandable: there is no evidence of the Stoics writing treatises entitled oikonomikos or similar or, in fact, showing any substantial interest in the matters pertaining to wealth management or money acquisition. There is an extant fragment, however, depicting a debate between Diogenes of Babylon and Antipater of Tarsus in which the latter advocates for the moral permissibility of the behaviour that comes very close to exhibiting economic rationality. In this paper, I analyse this passage and, noting its complex transmission history, I argue that it reveals an engagement with various ideas pertaining to the oikonomia genre. Although some of them resemble the contemporary notion of economic rationality, ultimately, the Stoic argument is embedded in ethical debates with the Peripatetics and it concerns moral value rather than the homo economicus style of reasoning about maximizing gains.

In this paper, I argue that Bryson’s Oikonomikos is a fascinating example of the oikonomia genre in several different respects. Although the problematic transmission of this Neopythagorean text makes studying it a challenge, such effort is well-rewarded with an elaborate argument which paints the human bodily constitution, the central bodily functions and oikonomic activities as intrinsically linked. Focusing on Bryson’s argument which roots oikonomic behaviour in human biology, I explore the underlying conceptualisation of human nature and contextualise it within relevant philosophical and scientific traditions.

Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print. This paper is dedicated to exploring the alleged difference between Cleanthes’ and Chrysippus’ accounts of the post-mortal survival of the souls and the conceptions of personal identity that these accounts underpin. I argue that while Cleanthes conceptualised the personal identity as grounded in the rational soul, Chrysippus conceptualised it as an embodied rational soul. I also suggest that this difference between the two early Stoics might have been due to Chrysippus' metaphysical commitments arising from his response to the Growing Argument put forth by the Academics rather than the critique of his teacher.

The Stoa might be not the first philosophical school that comes to mind when considering the most important ancient contributions to aesthetics, yet multiple extant fragments show that the Stoics had a non-marginal theoretical interest in aesthetic properties. Probably the most important piece of evidence for the Stoic attempts to theorize beauty is the definition of beauty as summetria of parts with each other and with the whole. In the first half of this article, I present and analyse the main evidence for this definition. Then I discuss Plotinus' critique of the definition and argue that it contains some pertinent remarks that, with support of additional evidence, lead to the conclusion that the Stoics conceptualized aesthetic properties as supervening on functional composition.

ABSTRACT: Aesthetic disinterestedness is one of the central concepts in aesthetics, and Jerome Stolnitz, the most prominent theorist of disinterestedness in the 20th century, has claimed that (i) ancient thinkers engagement with this notion was cursory and undeveloped, and consequently, (ii) the emergence of disinterestedness in the 18th century marks the birth of aesthetics as a discipline. In this paper, I use the extant works of Epicurus to show that the ancient philosopher not only had similar concepts, but also motivated them in careful and complex ways. I argue that, in the Epicurean theoretical framework, arts belong to the category of ‘merely natural’ desires, and this classification, combined with what we know of Epicurus’ rejection of art criticism, shows he had carefully worked out reasons supporting the idea that art ought to be approached terminally, rather than instrumentally. Finally, I compare the notion of aesthetic disinterestedness with Epicurus’ views on arts and argue that in many ways the latter are not inferior to the former, and therefore ought to belong to the history of aesthetics.

This entry is a comprehensive study of ancient Greek and Roman aesthetic theories. The history of ancient aesthetics covers centuries, and during this time numerous nuanced arguments and positions were developed. In terms of theories of beauty it is possible to classify the theories into three distinct groups: those that attribute the origin of beauty to proportion, those that attribute it to functionality and those that attribute the Form as the cause of beauty. Ancient philosophers were also the authors of some of the more notable concepts in the philosophy of art. The notions of catharsis, sublimity and mimesis originated in antiquity and have played a role in aesthetics ever since then.