•  527
    The paper argues that thumos, which is never explicitly mentioned as a part of the soul in the Symposium, plays a major role in the dialogue. In light of the Republic’s characterization of thumos as the source of emotions such as of love of honor, love of victory, admiration for courage, shame, anger, and the propensity to become indignant at real or imaginary wrongs, the paper argues that both Phaedrus’ speech and the speech of Alcibiades are shaped by thumoeidetic motivations. While Phaedrus’ …Read more
  •  86
    Love of the Good, Love of the Whole
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 13 (2): 267-290. 2009.
    Diotima criticizes, but does not refute, Aristophanes’ thesis that love is desire for completeness. Her argument incorporates that thesis within a more complextheory: eros is desire for the permanent possession of the good, and hence also desire for immortality. Aristophanes cannot account for the aspirations entailed in the desire for fame or in the desire for knowledge. Such aspirations can be understood only with reference to the good. However, the paper shows how time plays a fundamental rol…Read more
  •  63
    Love of the Good, Love of the Whole
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 13 (2): 267-290. 2009.
    Diotima criticizes, but does not refute, Aristophanes’ thesis that love is desire for completeness. Her argument incorporates that thesis within a more complextheory: eros is desire for the permanent possession of the good, and hence also desire for immortality. Aristophanes cannot account for the aspirations entailed in the desire for fame or in the desire for knowledge. Such aspirations can be understood only with reference to the good. However, the paper shows how time plays a fundamental rol…Read more
  •  61
    As the Wolf Loves the Lamb
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (1): 51-80. 2006.
    The Phaedrus’s Palinode ascribes to the wing the double function of lifting the soul towards truth while itself being nourished by truth. The paper concentrates on the role Socrates ascribes to the wing in the structure and ‘physiology’ of the soul—mortal and divine—as well as on the role it plays in Socrates’ subsequent phenomenological description of falling in love. The experience of love described in Socrates’ first speech—an experience dominated by envy—is examined in light of Socrates’ Pal…Read more
  •  60
    Why Is the Gorgias so Bitter?
    Philosophy and Rhetoric 33 (1). 2000.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Is the Gorgias so Bitter?1Alessandra FussiMihi in oratoribus irridendis ipse esse orator summus videbatur.-Cicero, De Oratore 1.471. The hand of an apprentice?Commentators have often responded with uneasiness to Plato's Gorgias. E. R. Dodds speaks of the "disillusioned bitterness" of the criticisms leveled against Athenian politics and politicians and of the tragic tone of the dialogue's last part, which culminates in a predictio…Read more
  •  58
  •  47
    Callicles’ Examples of ϙὄπρζ ς ζ ιὔωηθζ in Plato’s Gorgias
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 19 (1): 119-149. 1996.
    The Gorgias has been delivered to us in medieval manuscripts with the subtitle ἢ περὶ ‘ρητορικῆσ. As a matter of fact, the starting point of the dialogue is the question concerning the nature of rhetoric. In the course of the dialogue, however, this question gives rise to a more fundamental inquiry: how should one live? By the time Callicles starts his long speech the theme of εὐδαιμονία has already been introduced by Polus. Callicles takes a radical stand by reducing εὐδαιμονία to a choice betw…Read more
  •  47
    Plato's symposium: The ethics of desire
    International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 2 (2): 209-211. 2008.
  •  40
    The Myth of the Last Judgment in the "Gorgias"
    Review of Metaphysics 54 (3). 2001.
    AT THE END OF A VERY LONG DISCUSSION with interlocutors who grow angrier and angrier with him, Socrates tells a story about the judgment of souls in the afterlife. He addresses the myth to Callicles, his final interlocutor, in the explicitly stated belief that the young man will not take it any more seriously than he would take a bunch of old wives tales. Socrates prophecy about Callicles response is likely to be correct. What is surprising, however, is that it also turns out to describe well th…Read more
  •  34
    Tempo, desiderio, generazione: Diotima e Aristofane nel simposio di Platone
    Rivista di Storia Della Filosofia 63 (1). 2008.
  •  26
    Literary Form and Philosophical Discourse: The Problem of Myth in the Platonic Dialogues
    International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 7 (2): 221-228. 2013.
    A DISCUSSION OF: CATHERINE COLLOBERT, PIERRE DESTRÉE, FRANCISCO J. GONZALEZ , PLATO AND MYTH: STUDIES ON THE USE AND STATUS OF PLATONIC MYTHS. MNEMOSYNE. SUPPLEMENTS, 337. LEIDEN/BOSTON: BRILL, 2012. PP. VIII + 476. ISBN 9789004218666. $222.00
  •  23
    Commentary on Gerson
    Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 15 (1): 254-262. 1999.
  •  20
    Envy and its objects
    Humana Mente 12 (35). 2019.
    The paper critically discusses the thesis, originally put forth by Taylor, that there is a form of envy whose target is the good possessed by someone else. Section 2 analyzes the distinction between object-envy and state-envy, discusses the connection between object-envy and benign envy, and develops the ethical consequences that follow from the thesis that envy is never benign. Section 3 presents a thought experiment with five variations developed from the basic elements of object-envy: an agen…Read more
  •  20
    The Moral Psychology of Shame (edited book)
    Moral Psychology of the Emotions. 2023.
    Few emotions have divided opinion as deeply as shame. Some scholars have argued that shame is essentially a maladaptive emotion used to oppress minorities and reinforce stigmas and traumas, an emotion that leaves the self at the mercy of powerful others. Other scholars, however, have argued that the absence of a sense of shame in a subject--their shamelessness--is tantamount to a vicious moral insensitivity. As the twelve original chapters in this collection attest, however, shame scholars are e…Read more
  •  17
    Leo Strauss on Collingwood
    Idealistic Studies 44 (2-3): 149-162. 2014.
    Strauss’s invitation to understand Greek authors as they understood themselves was attacked by influential scholars as anti-historical. In the first part of the paper, I argue that the charge is due to a misunderstanding of Strauss’s position on the respective role of interpretation and criticism in historicism. In the second part, I highlight Strauss’s view of the tension between scientific history as the manifestation of a certain age, and scientific history as the culmination of historical pr…Read more
  •  16
    This paper identifies major inconsistencies in the threefold argument that Glaucon presents in defence of Thrasymachus in the second book of Plato’s Republic. Specifically, the paper argues for three claims. Firstly, it argues that in his account of the origin of justice Glaucon treats the consequences of justice as necessary, while in the test case he merely emphasizes incidental consequences. Secondly, the paper argues that in setting up the test case of the perfectly unjust man and the perfec…Read more
  •  15
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aux marges des dialogues de Platon: Essai d'histoire anthropologique de la philosophie ancienneAlessandra FussiMarie-Laurence Desclos. Aux marges des dialogues de Platon: Essai d'histoire anthropologique de la philosophie ancienne. Grenoble: Millon, 2003. Pp. 286. Paper, €27,00.The book takes its bearings from Plato's knowledge of Herodotus's and Thucydides' writings as it is witnessed in such dialogues as the Menexenus, …Read more
  •  14
    Why is the
    Philosophy and Rhetoric 33 (1): 39-58. 2000.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Is the Gorgias so Bitter?1Alessandra FussiMihi in oratoribus irridendis ipse esse orator summus videbatur.-Cicero, De Oratore 1.471. The hand of an apprentice?Commentators have often responded with uneasiness to Plato's Gorgias. E. R. Dodds speaks of the "disillusioned bitterness" of the criticisms leveled against Athenian politics and politicians and of the tragic tone of the dialogue's last part, which culminates in a predictio…Read more
  •  11
    Che cos’è la filosofia politica? Il dibattito fra Strauss e Kojève sulla tirannide
    Rivista di Storia Della Filosofia 66 (2): 231-247. 2011.
    On Tyranny, by Leo Strauss and Alexander Kojève, is now available in Italian. The article examines the debate between the two philosophers, focussing primarily on their respective views of political philosophy and the opposition between ancients and moderns concerning such issues as the role of luck, the gap between theory and practice, and whether or not history is meaningful, teleologically oriented, able to prove political theory or, on the contrary, itself subject to theoretical judgment. Th…Read more
  •  9
    This paper identifies major inconsistencies in the threefold argument that Glaucon presents in defence of Thrasymachus in the second book of Plato's Republic. Specifically, the paper argues for three claims. Firstly, it argues that in his account of the origin of justice Glaucon treats the consequences of justice as necessary, while in the test case he merely emphasizes incidental consequences. Secondly, the paper argues that in setting up the test case of the perfectly unjust man and the perfec…Read more
  •  8
    The Dramatic Setting of the Gorgias
    The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 3 132-139. 1998.
    I analyse the dramatic setting of the Gorgias by contrasting it with that of the Protagoras. The two dialogues are closely related. In the Gorgias Socrates states that the rhetorician and the sophist are basically indistinguishable in everyday life. In both the Protagoras and the Gorgias, his confrontation with his interlocutors is metaphorically related to a descent to Hades. However, while the events in the Protagoras are narrated by Socrates himself, the Gorgias has readers face the unfolding…Read more
  •  7
    Affective responses to robots
    Passion: Journal of the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotion 1 (1): 85-102. 2023.
    The traditional distinction between social robots and service robots is gradually being eroded in the design, planning and public presentation of physically embodied artificial intelligence. The paper is mainly concerned with two case studies: a service robot named Spot, from Boston Dynamics, and two social robots named Kaspar and Zeno, advertised as useful therapeutic tools for children in the autistic spectrum. The discussion centers on three key factors that play a role in the affective respo…Read more
  •  6
  •  5
    Callicles’ Examples of ϙὄπρζ ς ζ ιὔωηθζ in Plato’s Gorgias
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 19 (1): 119-149. 1996.
    The Gorgias has been delivered to us in medieval manuscripts with the subtitle ἢ περὶ ‘ρητορικῆσ. As a matter of fact, the starting point of the dialogue is the question concerning the nature of rhetoric. In the course of the dialogue, however, this question gives rise to a more fundamental inquiry: how should one live? By the time Callicles starts his long speech the theme of εὐδαιμονία has already been introduced by Polus. Callicles takes a radical stand by reducing εὐδαιμονία to a choice betw…Read more
  •  3
    Lasciare tracce, controllare il mondo
    Rivista di Estetica 50 275-286. 2012.
    In this paper I discuss some moral implications of Ferraris’ theory of documents. I address, firstly, his theory of knowledge and its relationship with the concepts of freedom and responsibility; secondly, the notion of “leaving trace” in its connection with memory, identity, and the desire for honour and recognition. Finally, I surmise that the anthropological basis of “leaving trace” is the desire to gain control over the environment (as in animals marking their territory) as well as over the …Read more
  •  1
    Images of the Soul in Plato's Gorgias
    Dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University. 1997.
    This dissertation is a study of the images of the soul in the Gorgias. I analyze the relationship between power and omnipotence in the conceptions of the soul defended and/or exemplified by the characters of the dialogue. ;In chapter 1 I focus on the dramatic setting of the Gorgias, which lacks clear temporal and spatial indications. I show that the three conversations are dramatically linked to the last myth of judgment. My hypothesis is that Gorgias and his followers are seen by Socrates as th…Read more
  •  1
    Emozioni, corpi, conflitti (edited book)
    with Vinzia Fiorino
    Edizioni ETS. 2016.
  • What Is Political Philosophy? The Strauss-Kojeve Debate On Tyranny. On Tyranny
    Rivista di Storia Della Filosofia 66 (2): 231-247. 2011.
  • Lasciare tracce, controllare il mondo
    Rivista di Estetica 50 275-286. 2012.
    In this paper I discuss some moral implications of Ferraris’ theory of documents. I address, firstly, his theory of knowledge and its relationship with the concepts of freedom and responsibility; secondly, the notion of “leaving trace” in its connection with memory, identity, and the desire for honour and recognition. Finally, I surmise that the anthropological basis of “leaving trace” is the desire to gain control over the environment (as in animals marking their territory) as well as over the …Read more