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12Cicero, Academica 1.45 : Interpreting academic historyBochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch Fur Antike Und Mittelalter 24 (1): 18-34. 2021.Focused on the reference to Socrates’ confession of ignorance at Academica 1.45, this paper challenges the common assumption that the passage transmits Arcesilaus’ conception of Socrates. This paper develops in two steps a more plausible reading of the passage. According to this reading, Cicero presents an interpretation of Arcesilaus’ historical relation to Socrates. In conclusion, the paper argues that traditional readings of Acad. 1.45 underestimate not only Cicero’s originality as an histori…Read more
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12Cicero, Academica 1.45 : Interpreting academic historyBochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch Fur Antike Und Mittelalter 24 (1): 18-34. 2021.Focused on the reference to Socrates’ confession of ignorance at Academica 1.45, this paper challenges the common assumption that the passage transmits Arcesilaus’ conception of Socrates. This paper develops in two steps a more plausible reading of the passage. According to this reading, Cicero presents an interpretation of Arcesilaus’ historical relation to Socrates. In conclusion, the paper argues that traditional readings of Acad. 1.45 underestimate not only Cicero’s originality as an histori…Read more
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23Foucault and the Historiography of Early Hellenistic PhilosophyCritical Horizons 22 (3): 272-286. 2021.ABSTRACT In his 1981–82 lectures The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Michel Foucault claims that a significant portion of the modern historiography of ancient philosophy tends to discredit the ethical framework of epimeleia heautou (“care of the self”). The thematic analysis of knowledge in the historiography of ancient philosophy overshadows the theme of care of the self. Taking Foucault’s claim as a point of departure, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, the paper provides a genealogy of the…Read more
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8Beyond Hellenistic Epistemology: Arcesilaus and the Destruction of Stoic MetaphysicsBloomsbury Publishing. 2021.Charles E. Snyder considers the New Academy's attacks on Stoic epistemology through a critical re-assessment of the 3rd century philosopher, Arcesilaus of Pitane. Arguing that the standard epistemological framework used to study the ancient Academy ignores the metaphysical dimensions at stake in Arcesilaus's critique, Snyder explores new territory for the historiography of Stoic-Academic debates in the early Hellenistic period. Focusing on the dispute between the Old and New Academy, reveals the…Read more
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Concepts of Love in AugustineIn Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari (ed.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt. pp. 29-33. 2020.This article is an examination of Hannah Arendt's 1929 dissertation.
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22American Dionysia: Violence, tragedy and democratic politicsContemporary Political Theory 15 (4): 501-504. 2015.
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38Arcesilaus and the Ontology of Stoic CognitionReview of Metaphysics 73 (March): 455-493. 2020.The focus of this paper is the dispute between the Academic Arcesilaus of Pitane (ca. 316–240 BC) and the philosophy of Zeno of Citium. Scholars typically claim that Arcesilaus set out to attack Zeno’s epistemology or theory of knowledge. The framework of epistemology prevails in the modern reconstruction of Arcesilaus’s arguments. Proponents of this framework usually contend that the epistemic possibility of Stoic “cognition” or “apprehension” (κατάληψις) is the principal aim of Arcesilaus’s at…Read more
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Plato and the Freedom of the New AcademyIn Harold Tarrant, Danielle A. Layne, Dirk Baltzly & François Renaud (eds.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquity, Brill. 2017.Scholars of Greek and Roman antiquity advance a variety of reasons to explain why the study of Hellenistic philosophy remains dependent on fragments and testimonies. Mansfeld observes such dependence in his use of the premise that philosophers of late antiquity based philosophical instruction and school curricula on a core set of writings from the classical period. On this basis, Mansfeld infers that schools of late antiquity continually transcribed and preserved writings of instructional sign…Read more
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On the Teaching of Ethics from Polemo to ArcesilausÉtudes Platoniciennes 14. 2018.Less than a century after Plato’s death, the Academy’s scholarch Arcesilaus of Pitane inaugurates a peculiar oral phase of Academic philosophy, deciding not to write philosophical works or openly teach his own doctrines. Scholars often attribute a radical change of direction to the school under his headship, taking early Stoic epistemology to be the primary target of the New Academy’s attack on Stoic philosophy. This paper defends a rival view of Arcesilaus’ Academic revolution. Shifting the foc…Read more
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17Becoming Like a Woman: Philosophy in Plato's TheaetetusEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (4): 1-21. 2016.Interpreters of Theaetetus are prone to endorse the view that a god gave Socrates maieutic skill. This paper challenges that view. It provides a different account of the skill’s origins, and reconstructs a genealogy of Socratic philosophy that begins and has its end in human experience. Three distinct origins coordinate to bring forth a radically new conception of philosophy in the image of female midwifery: the state of wonder (1. efficient origin), the exercise of producing, examining and disa…Read more
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19Two Kinds of Belief for Classical Academic ScepticismIn Bill Rebiger (ed.), Yearbook of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies: 2016, De Gruyter. pp. 7-22. 2016.
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236Blinded by Her Own Petards: K.T. Gines' Hannah Arendt and the Negro QuestionJournal of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities 3 152-7. 2015.
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28Becoming Like a WomanEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (1): 1-19. 2016.Interpreters of Theaetetus are prone to endorse the view that a god gave Socrates maieutic skill. This paper challenges that view. It provides a different account of the skill’s origins, and reconstructs a genealogy of Socratic philosophy that begins and has its end in human experience. Three distinct origins coordinate to bring forth a radically new conception of philosophy in the image of female midwifery: the state of wonder, the exercise of producing, examining and disavowing beliefs in the …Read more
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20Review of D. Ambuel, Turtles All the Way Down: On Plato's Theaetetus, a Translation, and Commentary (review)Bryn Mawr Classical Review 201608 (online). 2016.Book Review