•  4
    Aporetic Discourse and Protreptic in Plato’s Lysis
    Archai: Revista de Estudos Sobre as Origens Do Pensamento Ocidental 32. 2023.
    In the Lysis, Socrates claims to be looking for an account of what kind of quality in another person or object stimulates friendship or love (philia). He goes through a series of proposals, refuting each in turn. In the end, he throws us back to the point from where the arguments started, declaring an aporetic outcome. What is the purpose of this apparently futile and circular inquiry? Most interpreters try to reconstruct a theory of friendship or love from the arguments of this dialogue. Agains…Read more
  •  11
    Introduction to Studies on Plato’s Lysis
    with David Jennings
    Archai: Revista de Estudos Sobre as Origens Do Pensamento Ocidental 32. 2023.
    Plato’s Lysis shows Socrates in conversation with two boys he has met at a wrestling school, Lysis and Menexenus. Their debate revolves around the notion of philia, seeking to pin down the nature of this relation, who or what takes part in it, and what causes it. The word philiahas usually been translated as “friendship” but has a wider application in this dialogue, as it encompasses a variety of friendly and loving attitudes toward both people and things. The kinds of interpersonal philia evoke…Read more
  •  25
    The Philebus describes the “good” that enables human eudaimonia as a “mixture” in which cognitive states have to be combined with certain types of pleasure. This essay investigates how the various senses of falsehood that Plato distinguishes are applied to the question of the hedonic “ingredients” of the good. It argues that his theory allows for the inclusion of certain virtuous pleasures that are deficient with respect to truth: either qua “mixed pleasures” lacking in truth on account of the c…Read more
  •  12
    The beginnings of greek ontology and the question of temporal being
    In Benedikt Schick, Edmund Runggaldier & Ludger Honnefelder (eds.), Unity and Time in Metaphysics, Walter De Gruyter. 2009.
  •  7
    Dorothea Frede: Platons Phaidon Der Traum von der Unsterblichkeit der Seele
    History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 6 (1): 239-244. 2003.
  •  6
    This study analyses the theoretical connections between the conception of happiness, the theory of the good, and an ethical-practical conception of human nature in Aristotle's Ethics and his late-Hellenistic followers. The further development of Aristotelian views in the late Hellenistic context is a long-neglected field of research. The Aristotelian view is further developed systematically in the final chapterthrough an exploration of the relationship between prudential and moral rationality.
  •  27
    Colloquium 5 Aristotle on What to Praise and What to Prize: An Interpretation of Nicomachean Ethics I.12
    Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 34 (1): 149-178. 2019.
    This essay offers an analysis and interpretation of the rarely commented-on chapter I.12 of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle’s goal in this chapter is to prove that human happiness belongs to the class of prized goods, also characterized as divine goods, whereas virtue ranks lower, being a merely praiseworthy good. It is not easy to see why this chapter is placed at the end of Aristotle’s general discussion of the highest human good in Book I or why he included it at all. My goal is to show tha…Read more
  •  6
    This essay on “The Status of Health in Plato’s Theory of Goods” discusses how health figures as a “good” in the framework of Plato’s general theory of human goods. It starts with meta-ethical distinctions regarding how things can be classified as “good,” including the conceptual distinctions between intrinsic, final, and constitutive goods. I then discuss passages in Plato that shed light on the function of health as an “instrumental good” that contributes to an undisturbed mode of existence fre…Read more
  •  2
    Socrates and the Benefits of Puzzlement
    In George Karamanolis & Vasilis Politis (eds.), The Aporetic Tradition in Ancient Philosophy, . pp. 29-47. 2018.
    This essay addresses the role of aporetic thinking and aporetic dialogue in the early “Socratic” dialogues of Plato. It aims to provide a new angle on why and how puzzlement induced by Socrates should benefit his interlocutors but often fails to do so. After discussing criteria for what is to count as an aporetic dialogue, the essay explains how and why Socrates’ aporia-inducing conversations point to a conception of virtue as grounded in a form of self-transparent wisdom. In combination with a …Read more
  •  1
    Starting from an abstract sketch of scenarios for philosophical reception stimulated by disagreement and school rivalry, part one of this chapter highlights the case of an older, marginalized position that tries to reinsert itself into the debate through radical modernization of its terminology and argumentative strategies and thereby triggers various forms of orthodox response. Part two discusses examples for this scenario extracted from some of the remains of the Peripatetic ethical literature…Read more
  •  13
    Die ethischen Herausforderungen der Gegenwart haben die Grenzen der gegenwärtig dominierenden Regel- und Prinzipienethik gezeigt, weshalb Ansätze zu einer Ethik der Tugenden und des guten Lebens international wieder an Bedeutung gewonnen haben. Dadurch erlebt auch die Frage eine Renaissance, welche Rolle der Reflexion auf die menschliche Natur für die Ethik zukommt. Der Band vereint philosophiehistorische Untersuchungen namhafter amerikanischer, britischer und deutscher Forscher zur antiken und …Read more
  •  13
  • Platon, Politeia, hg. Von O. Hoffe (review)
    Philosophisches Jahrbuch 107 (1): 219-221. 2000.
  •  21
    Die Geschichte des philosophischen Begriffs der Wahrheit (edited book)
    with Markus Enders
    De Gruyter. 2006.
    This reference work offers a representative and reliable survey of classical, medieval, and modern history in regards to the philosophical term, truth .
  •  1
    Die ethischen Herausforderungen der Gegenwart haben die Grenzen der gegenwärtig dominierenden Regel- und Prinzipienethik gezeigt, weshalb Ansätze zu einer Ethik der Tugenden und des guten Lebens international wieder an Bedeutung gewonnen haben. Dadurch erlebt auch die Frage eine Renaissance, welche Rolle der Reflexion auf die menschliche Natur für die Ethik zukommt. Der Band vereinigt unter diesen Themenstellungen philosophiehistorische Untersuchungen namhafter amerikanischer, britischer und deu…Read more
  • Rezension "Platon: Phaidros. Übersetzung und Kommentar von Ernst Heitsch" (review)
    Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 49 (4): 620-624. 1995.
  •  1
    Aristotle on the benefits of virtue (Nicomachean Ethics 10.7 and 9.8)
    In Burkhard Reis & Stella Haffmans (eds.), The Virtuous Life in Greek Ethics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 167--193. 2006.
  •  34
    Platon über Wahrheit und Kohärenz
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 82 (2): 119-148. 2000.
  •  1
    Sprache, Bedeutung, Wahrheit. Überlegungen zu Platon und seinem Dialog Kratylos
    Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie 26 (1): 45-60. 2001.
  •  11
    Doxa and Epistêmê as Modes of Acquaintance in Republic V
    Les Études Platoniciennes. Paris: Les Belles Lettres 4 253-272. 2007.