Carolina Araujo

A coletânea apresenta, sob a forma de artigos, problemas e soluções associados ao conceito e substância ao longo da história da filosofia. Sem pretender exaurir esse percurso, a coletânea contém 29 artigos redigidos por diversos especialistas brasileiros em Filosofia. Sua proposta é oferecer uma visão clara, acessível, precisa e atualizada desse recorte da história do conceito de filosofia, na expectativa de contribuir para o aperfeiçoamento do ensino e debate de filosofia no país. The anthology presents, through a series of articles, the intricacies of problems and solutions intertwined with the concept of substance across the annals of philosophical history. While not seeking to comprehensively cover this vast terrain, the collection comprises 29 articles penned by a diverse array of Brazilian specialists in Philosophy. Its overarching aim is to furnish a lucid, accessible, precise, and contemporaneous perspective on this facet of philosophical inquiry, with the aspiration of enriching the landscape of philosophical education and discourse in Brazil.

This chapter is about the movement of sunlight and the concept of time in Timaeus’ cosmology in Plato’s Timaeus. It argues for three connected theses: (i) that light is a grounding principle of his account; (ii) that Timaeus puts forward a proposal for the calculation of a cosmic calendar, i.e., the counting of time according to the movement of sunlight throughout the whole world; and (iii) that he understands time (chronos) as the movement of all heavenly bodies relative to the motion of light streaming from the sun.

Cambridge University Press presents its new series of scholarly guides dedicated to specific philosophical works and the Republic is the first work of Plato to receive a volume. The 273 pages constitute a remarkable piece of contemporary scholarship, both when it comes to the valuable (although unevenly distributed) contribution to the present state of Platonic studies, and when it comes to the (poor) cooperative and dialogical work this scholarship is able to produce. As is now customary (…) - 12. Plato 12 (2012)

Este trabalho argumenta que há dois conceitos de ginástica envolvidos na proposta educativa da República de Platão: a ginástica da temperança e a ginástica para a coragem. A ginástica da temperança é uma autoeducação sobre o cuidado do corpo. Ela depende da educação pela poesia e consiste em um regime pessoal. Todos os cidadãos devem praticá-la. A ginástica para a coragem é uma prática funcionalmente especializada dos guardiões e consiste em treinamento atlético. Ela visa o fortalecimento da parte impetuosa e a preparação para o regime de resistência que lhes é demandado ao longo de toda a vida.

A large amount of contemporary literature on Plato’s Republic deals with Glaucon’s speech as the major challenge Socrates is to face in his defense of justice, seeing in Adeimantus’ speech nothing but a restating of the matter. However, Plato is very clear in stating both that Glaucon’s argument was not enough and that he did not make the most relevant point to the matter. The aim of this paper is to present Adeimantus’ contribution to the problem in two general theses: first the objection to piety as a virtue, submitting it to justice; second the argument about the power of collective concealment as a device for breaking the cause/effect pattern that sustains the logic of retribution. The conclusion is that, while Glaucon presents an account that would grant justice to members of a community that obey its laws, Adeimantus considers this only an appearance of justice that would still produce collective unjust actions. By means of Glaucon’s challenge, Socrates is expected to prove that justice has a power in the soul besides its communitarian function, but by Adeimantus’ challenge, he is to demonstrate that it has a power in the soul despite the injustice that constitutes a community.

Plato’s Republic has the Greek name of Politeia that Araújo translates as “the way of life of the citizens,” not “the State” or “the form of government” as it more traditionally rendered. Plato’s treatise, Politeia, depicts the rich array of patterns emerging from human interaction and enquires into the best amongst them. Cooperative Flourishing in Plato’s Republic returns to these important questions about society – how to live with a vast diversity of personalities, with different interests and abilities, all of them trying to flourish – and asks how best can we share our environment? With rigorous philosophical analysis of the Greek text, accompanied by original translations of the most important passages, Araújo upends mainstream scholarship to progress Socrates’ “bottomup” view of politics and rejects previous readings of the Republic as a proto-totalitarian text, psychological study or lengthy analogy. By defending a theory of Platonic justice that is rooted in cooperative flourishing, the public education of all citizens and the contribution of philosophers to political life, “the beautiful city”, which Plato called Kallipolis, emerges as a hopeful possibility.

This chapter intends to explain knowledge according to the aviary model proposed in Plato’s Theaetetus (195c5-200d4), calling attention to the risk of employing some Aristotelian assumptions in its reading. In section 1, I claim that the argument is committed to provide an account on both conceptual mistakes (or false beliefs) and dispositional knowledge. In section 2, I show that the argument develops along three different cases: (i) the coat model introduces the distinction between having knowledge and using it, intermediated by the power of choice; (ii) the aviary model adds a variety of objects of knowledge as well as the power of ceasing to use them; (iii) the arithmetic model introduces an art of choosing among the objects of knowledge. This leads us to the description of dispositional knowledge as learning from oneself, i.e., as specification of items from previously known kinds. I show that this is incompatible with Aristotle’s notion of potential knowledge for three basic reasons: (i) it involves a power of selection of the right items, which would correspond to an Aristotelian rational power and not to the activation of a potential knowledge; (ii) it involves individuation of items learnt in general and not simply the update of a latent item of memory; (iii) it involves inquiry and learning, and not simply knowing. In section 3, I turn to the reason Socrates gives to dismiss the model: that the knowledge of an item cannot be the explanation of a mistake concerning this item (199d2). I offer three arguments against its cogency, emphasizing that mistakes should be explained as a failure in knowing how to select an item, instead of not having the knowledge of it. In section 4, I respond to the objection that the model leads to a regress regarding truth-makers. I argue that Socrates’s midwifery turns the dialogue into a performative argument against the objection, for that cross-examination provided the truth-makers.

Este artigo apresenta tradução – a primeira para o português – e análise dos argumentos dos dois fragmentos supérstites de Sobre a Harmonia Feminina (Peri gunaikos harmonias), atribuído a Perictione, dita filósofa pitagórica. Ele pretende contribuir ao debate sobre o feminino na Antiguidade ­– tema do presente dossiê – ao discutir a autoria feminina de um discurso sobre a virtude das mulheres e argumentar que este é plausivelmente o mais antigo texto a atribuir às mulheres a tarefa de gerar a afeição (philia) na família e em suas extensões em todas as circunstâncias. Palavras-chave: Perictione; harmonia; pitagorismo; mulheres; filósofas.

This chapter argues that generation (γένεσις) is a bona fide principle in Timaeus’ cosmology, as opposed to an outcome of the interaction of the other principles. In order to make this claim, it offers a programmatic plan of the beginning of the second part of Timaeus’s speech. It concludes that powers are the prime agents of generation. Whilst generation in the absence of the world amounts to powers causing different properties in portions of the bearer; in crafting the world the demiurge gives depth to these portions, turning them into prime bodies, which did not exist before the world was generated. Bodies are endowed with both the properties received by the bearer and the power to generate these properties; therefore, generation is the cause of the bodily motion of the world.