Melle van Duijn

Xenophon was a Greek historian, soldier, and philosopher who studied under Socrates in Athens. In his Apology of Socrates, Xenophon offers a portrait of Socrates' trial and death. Xenophon frames Socrates' antagonistic defense as the expression of a pious man who came to believe, on divine authority, that it was the right time for him to die. In this piece, we will examine Socrates' reasoning: Why he refused to prepare a formal defense, why he took his divine sign as endorsing his death, and how he understood aging, virtue, and the value of life itself. In doing so, we will examine one of the earliest philosophical models of what it might mean to die well.

This paper addresses a puzzle about death in neo-Aristotelian metaphysics. We begin by outlining the explanatory requirements any solution to the puzzle must meet. Drawing from both classical Aristotelian and contemporary neo-Aristotelian traditions, we examine candidates for each of these requirements. Situating these candidates within broader neo-Aristotelian commitments, key doctrines which motivate the recent claims that neo-Aristotelianism is able to better make sense of the world than physicalism or Cartesian Dualism, we then test the proposed solutions. We show that the neo-Aristotelian faces a dilemma. Either they must leave the puzzle unsolved or endorse a solution that deflates their key doctrines. Both options, we maintain, are detrimental to the neo-Aristotelian project.

Heraclitus is famous for claiming that “all things are one,” (ἓν πάντα εἶναι). But what does this mean? In this thesis, I offer a novel, ground-theoretic model for unity in Heraclitus: Cosmic unity through priority monism. I will argue that all things are one through their shared metaphysical ground in the cosmos. My approach is novel in that it diverges from the standard translation of “ἓν πάντα εἶναι” as a means of explaining the unity of conceptual entities. The Greek is ambiguous and can be translated as “all things (conceptual entities) are one” or “all things (material entities) are one”. In taking this claim to be related to both conceptual and material entities, I offer an account that takes seriously Heraclitus’s representation of unity between material entities. First, I present what I will call the ‘Problem of Unity’ in Heraclitus. Then, I give an account of historical interpretations that have attempted to solve the problem of unity, and highlight their theoretical limitations. Next, I turn to my proposed solution through an analysis of metaphysical priority throughout Heraclitus’s fragments. In doing so, I show that Heraclitus’s cosmos appears to be the most metaphysically basic entity. Thus, I argue that Heraclitus’s cosmos grounds its proper parts. Lastly, I show that Heraclitus’s cosmology coincides with a contemporary argument for priority monism through the internal relatedness of all the parts of the cosmos (Schaffer, 2010a; Schaffer, 2010b). I conclude that the claim “all things are one” means that the proper parts of the cosmos share a metaphysical ground: the cosmos itself.