•  3
    Keaton's Yoke
    Arion 26 (3): 115-132. 2019.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Keaton’s Yoke ALEX PRIOU Love, looking at me meltingly under dark-lidded eyes, by all manner of charms throws me into the limitless fishing-net of the Cupridian [Aphrodite]. And I tremble as he approaches, just as an aged, yoke-carrying horse that has carried off victory unwillingly walks into contest with swift chariots. (Ibycus, frag. 287)1 The resurgence of love in his old age prompts a fearful reflection in the aged Ibycus. Love …Read more
  •  11
  •  4
    The Socratic Arc of Aristotle’s Metaphysics 3
    Review of Metaphysics 72 (3): 463-496. 2019.
    Scholars have typically viewed book 3 of Aristotle’s Metaphysics as an unsystematic array of different metaphysical problems. In this article, the author argues that Aristotle organizes them with great care. The principle behind his ordering of the problems stems from Aristotle’s concern with impressing upon his audience the difficulty of becoming thoroughly perplexed. This principle is found to make sense of the discrepancies between Aristotle’s list of the problems in 3.1 and his discussion of…Read more
  •  8
    Sophistry and Political Philosophy: Protagoras' Challenge to Socrates (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 71 (2). 2017.
  •  22
    Plato’s Minos and the Euthyphro
    Polis 35 (1): 145-163. 2018.
    At the start of Plato’s Minos an anonymous comrade argues that the variability of law according to time and place undermines the claim that it conveys moral truth. But by the end he has accepted Minos as the greatest of lawgivers because of his education by Zeus. How does he manage to slide so quickly from the moral laxity of conventionalism to the moral absolutism of divine revelation? Guided by this question, the author considers how the two divergent parts of the Minos form one whole, and so …Read more
  •  27
    Interpreters of Plato’s Parmenides have long agreed that it is a canonical work in the history of ontology. In the first part, the aged Parmenides presents a devastating critique of Platonic ontology, followed in the second by what purports to be a response to that critique. But despite the scholarly agreement as to the general subject matter of the dialogue, what makes it one whole has nevertheless eluded its readers, so much so that some have even speculated it to be a patchwork of two dimly r…Read more
  •  36
    Parmenides on Reason and Revelation
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy. 2018.
    In this paper, the author argues that the revelatory form Parmenides gives his poem poses considerable problems for the account of being contained therein. The poem moves through a series of problems, each building on the last: the problem of particularity, the cause of human wandering that the goddess would have us ascend beyond ; the problem of speech, whose heterogeneity evinces its tie to experience’s particularity ; the problem of justice, which motivates man’s ascent from his “insecure” pl…Read more
  •  41
    Irony and Opinion
    International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 10 (2): 151-167. 2016.
    _ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 2, pp 151 - 167 This paper considers the unity of Socrates’ twin apparitions of sophist and statesman, alluded to in the _Sophist_. Examining how these apparitions are at work in the _Theaetetus_, I argue that the difficulty is that of combining the nurturing or educative role of the statesman with the sophist’s practice of refutation. Beginning from Socrates’ shift in appearance early in the dialogue, I argue that the cause of this shift is Theaetetus’ character, tha…Read more
  •  358
    On Two Socratic Questions
    The St. John's Review 58 77-91. 2017.
    The most famous Socratic question—ti esti touto?—is often pre- ceded by a far less famous, but more fundamental question—esti touto ti? Though this question is posed in many dialogues with re- spect to myriad topics, in every instance it receives but one answer: it is something, namely something that is. The dialogue devoted to why this question always meets with an affirmative answer would appear to be the Parmenides, for there Parmenides throws into question whether the eidē are, only to esta…Read more
  •  1844
    Hesiod: Man, Law and Cosmos
    Polis 31 (2): 233-260. 2014.
    In his two chief works, the Theogony and Works and Days, Hesiod treats the possibility of providence. In the former poem, he considers what sort of god could claim to gives human beings guidance. After arriving at Zeus as the only consistent possibility, Hesiod presents Zeus’ rule as both cosmic and legalistic. In the latter poem, how- ever, Hesiod shows that so long as Zeus is legalistic, his rule is limited cosmically to the human being. Ultimately, Zeus’ rule emerges as more human than cosmic…Read more
  •  473
    ... Going Further on down the Road..
    Review of Metaphysics 70 (1): 03-31. 2016.
    Praised for its reliance on observation rather than myth, the Milesian school signals the dawn of science in the West. Whereas Hesiod appeals to the long ago and far away to explain the here and now, Thales and his cohorts do the reverse. In this reversal, we are their thankful, even faithful heirs. But with Hesiod not everything is myth and hearsay. Indeed, Hesiod singles himself out by name as the bearer of a powerfully poetic and distinctly human wisdom that he consistently contrasts with …Read more