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5Literary genres and judgements of taste: some remarks on Aristotle’s remarks about the poetry of EmpedoclesIn Michael Erler & Jan Erik Heßler (eds.), Argument Und Literarische Form in Antiker Philosophie: Akten des 3. Kongresses der Gesellschaft Für Antike Philosophie 2010, De Gruyter. pp. 305-314. 2013.
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7Marwan Rashed, La Jeune Fille et la Sphère. Études sur EmpédoclePhilosophie Antique 21 269-272. 2021.This book is an amazing treasure trove of riches, and my response, done properly, would probably occupy three monographs. Naturally, Rashed is addressing quite a few controversial issues concerning the interpretation of Empedocles, and on some of these I would heartily disagree with his conclusions, or have minor quibbles; but all his contributions are welcome and reflect a most impressive breadth of learning and scholarship. Where I disagree, it is mostly not that Rashed’s reports of the tex...
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30Philosophical Reflections on the Idea of a Universal Basic IncomeRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 91 81-102. 2022.A universal basic income is an unconditional allowance, sufficient to live on, paid in cash to every citizen regardless of income. It has been a Green Party policy for years. But the idea raises many interesting philosophical questions, about fairness, entitlement, desert, stigma and sanctions, the value of unpaid work, the proper ambitions of a good society, and our preconceptions about whether leisure or jobs are the thing we should prize above all for free citizens. Coming from the perspectiv…Read more
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63Analytic Philosophy, the Ancient Philosopher Poets and the Poetics of Analytic PhilosophyRhizomata 8 (2): 158-182. 2021.The paper starts with reflections on Plato’s critique of the poets and the preference many express for Aristotle’s view of poetry. The second part of the paper takes a case study of analytic treatments of ancient philosophy, including the ancient philosopher poets, to examine the poetics of analytic philosophy, diagnosing a preference in Analytic philosophy for a clean non-poetic style of presentation, and then develops this in considering how well historians of philosophy in the Analytic tradit…Read more
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17Heraclitus: Fragments: A Text and Translation With a Commentary (review)Philosophical Review 99 (1): 104-106. 1990.
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42On being reminded of Heraclitus by the motifs in Plato’s PhaedoIn Enrica Fantino, Ulrike Muss, Charlotte Schubert & Kurt Sier (eds.), Heraklit Im Kontext, De Gruyter. pp. 373-414. 2017.In this paper I argue that we can better understand Plato’s Phaedo, if we don’t concentrate solely on the hints of Pythagoreanism among the characters and their doctrines, as though that were the principal key to the dialogue’s dialec- tical targets. I suggest that the dialogue is intended to make us think of the meta-physics of at least one other Presocratic predecessor, besides any Pythagorean influence (which may be much less than has been thou…Read more
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8Matter, Space, and Motion: Theories in Antiquity and Their Sequel by Richard Sorabji (review)Isis 81 97-98. 1990.
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2747Successors of Socrates, Disciples of Descartes, and Followers of Freud (review)Apeiron 34 (2). 2001.All three books reviewed here are turning over again for us the pages of perennially irresistible thinkers whose ideas never cease to hold us transfixed; all three are inviting us to notice that the material that we thought we knew has got more to do with what Nehamas calls 'the art of living' than we might have realised; and all three are making space for attitudes, responses and areas of self-understanding that are, by traditional classifications, irrational and hence sometimes inadequately ac…Read more
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32Knowledge and Truth in Plato: Stepping Past the Shadow of SocratesOxford University Press. 2018.Catherine Rowett presents an in depth study of Plato's Meno, Republic and Theaetetus and offers both a coherent argument that the project in which Plato was engaging has been widely misunderstood and misrepresented, and detailed new readings of particular thorny issues in the interpretation of these classic texts.
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Why the Philosopher Kings will Believe the Noble LieOxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 50 67-100. 2016.
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66XI*—Perceiving Particulars and Recollecting the Forms in the PhaedoProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95 (1): 211-234. 1995.I ask whether the Recollection argument commits Socrates to the view that our only source of knowledge of the Forms is sense perception. I argue that Socrates does not confine our presently available sources of knowledge to empirically based recollection, but that he does think that we can't begin to move towards a philosophical understanding of the Forms except as a result of puzzles prompted by the shortfall of particulars in relation to the Forms, and hence that our awareness of the Forms is …Read more
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48David Furley. Cosmic Problems: Essays on Greek and Roman Philosophy of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. xiv + 258. ISBN 0-521-33330-X (review)British Journal for the History of Science 23 (3): 367-368. 1990.
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31Matter, Space, and Motion: Theories in Antiquity and Their Sequel. Richard Sorabji (review)Isis 81 (1): 97-98. 1990.This is a book review of the book by Sorabji.
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135Aristotle, De anima 3. 2: How do we perceive that we see and hear?Classical Quarterly 33 (02): 401-411. 1983.The most important things in this seminal paper are (a) showing that the first part of the chapter is only setting up the aporia and does not provide the solution; (b) showing that the rest of the chapter provides the material for resolving the aporia; (c) showing that the question is not about how we perceive that we perceive, but how we can distinguish between seeing and hearing—how we are aware that we are seeing rather than hearing; (c) showing that this is reducible to how we are aware that…Read more
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29Philoponus on the origins of the universe and other issuesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 20 (3): 389-395. 1989.
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158Socrates in the platonic dialoguesPhilosophical Investigations 29 (1). 2005.If Socrates is portrayed holding one view in one of Plato's dialogues and a different view in another, should we be puzzled? If (as I suggest) Plato's Socrates is neither the historical Socrates, nor a device for delivering Platonic doctrine, but a tool for the dialectical investigation of a philosophical problem, then we should expect a new Socrates, with relevant commitments, to be devised for each setting. Such a dialectical device – the tailor-made Socrates – fits with what we know of other …Read more
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57Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short IntroductionOxford University Press. 2004.This is a book about the invention of Western philosophy, and the first thinkers to explore ideas about the nature of reality, time, and the origin of the universe. Generations of philosophers, both ancient and modern, have traced their inspiration back to the presocratics, even though we have very few of their writings left. In this book, Catherine Osborne invites her readers to dip their toes into the fragmentary remains of thinkers from Thales to Pythagoras, Heraclitus to Protagoras, to try t…Read more
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42Philosophy's numerical turn: why the Pythagoreans' interest in numbers is truly awesomeIn Dirk Obbink & David Sider (eds.), Doctrine and Doxography: Studies on Heraclitus and Pythagoras, De Gruyter. pp. 3-32. 2013.Philosophers are generally somewhat wary of the hints of number mysticism in the reports about the beliefs and doctrines of the so-called Pythagoreans. It's not clear how much Pythagoras himself (as opposed to his later followers) indulged in speculation about numbers, or in more serious mathematics. But the Pythagoreans whom Aristotle discusses in the Metaphysics had some elaborate stories to tell about how the universe could be explained in terms of numbers—not just its physics but perhaps mor…Read more
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41Holding the centre and untied kingdom – by Ian Robinson (review)Philosophical Investigations 33 (3): 266-270. 2010.
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2On Aristotle's Physics 1.4-6Duckworth. 2009.Aristotle's Physics 1.4-9 explores a range of questions about the basic structure of reality, the nature of prime matter, the principles of change, the relation between form and matter, and the issue of whether things can come into being out of nothing, and if so, in what sense that is true. Philoponus' commentaries do not merely report and explain Aristotle and the other thinkers whom Aristotle is discussing. They are also the philosophical work of an independent thinker in the Neoplatonic trad…Read more
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84Dumb beasts and dead philosophers: humanity and the humane in ancient philosophy and literatureOxford University Press. 2007.The book is about three things. First, how Ancient thinkers perceived humans as like or unlike other animals; second about the justification for taking a humane attitude towards natural things; and third about how moral claims count as true, and how they can be discovered or acquired. Was Aristotle was right to see continuity in the psychological functions of animal and human souls? The question cannot be settled without taking a moral stance. As we can either focus on continuity or on discontin…Read more
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14The Greek Cosmologists. Volume I: The Formation of the Atomic Theory and Its Earliest Critics. David Furley (review)Isis 79 (3): 536-537. 1988.
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3André Laks, Le vide et la haine: éléments pour une histoire archaïque de la négativité; Introduction à la “philosophie présocratique” (review)Rhizai. A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 339-344. 2008.Review of André Laks, Le vide et la haine: éléments pour une histoire archaïque de la négativité, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 2004 ; Introduction à la “philosophie présocratique”, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 2006
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University of East AngliaSchool of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication StudiesRetired faculty
Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Plato |
Areas of Interest
13 more