•  16
    Monism, Metaphysics, and Paradox
    In D. Bloom, L. Bloom & M. Byrd (eds.), Knowing and Being in Ancient Philosophy, . 2022.
    Heraclitus accepts as a principle that any particular insight into things is necessarily partial and perspectival. Edward Halper has discussed how, for this reason, it is in principle impossible for a particular thinker to attain the perspective of the Logos by which the whole can be made intelligible. So, metaphysics itself tells us that metaphysics is impossible. According to Halper, Heraclitus was wrong to take the Logos as applying to itself, as the Logos should properly be understood as app…Read more
  •  3
    Three key elements of Aristotle’s theory of demonstration have Pythagorean antecedents. Demonstration is a revelatory discourse that is 1) inferential, 2) explicitly based on premises that are not themselves demonstrated on the basis of more basic premises, and 3) explanatory, insofar as the premises express those basic facts that are explanatory of the conclusion. The Pythagorean Table of Opposites constitutes a kind of protologic making possible a kind of deduction, which Aristotle would have …Read more
  •  8
    The Greeks and the Environment (edited book)
    with Laura Westra, Thomas M. Robinson, Madonna R. Adams, Donald N. Blakeley, C. W. DeMarco, Alan Holland, Timothy A. Mahoney, Mohan Matten, M. Oelschlaeger, Anthony Preus, J. M. Rist, T. M. Robinson, Richard Shearman, and Daryl McGowan Tress
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1997.
    Environmental ethicists have frequently criticized ancient Greek philosophy as anti-environmental for a view of philosophy that is counterproductive to environmental ethics and a view of the world that puts nature at the disposal of people. This provocative collection of original essays reexamines the views of nature and ecology found in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Plotinus. Recognizing that these thinkers were not confronted with the environmental degradation that threatens…Read more
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  •  8
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Symbolic Classification and The Emergence of a Metaphysics of CausalityOwen Goldinwhat is distinctive about metaphysics as a mode of thought that emerged in the fifth century before the Common Era? How did it emerge out of early ways of conceptualizing the world as a whole, and why? Many answers have been proposed. One common view is that earlier modes of thought personify natural agencies; once this is abandoned, the way is open for…Read more
  •  1
    On National Identity
    with Wolfgang Streeck
    In response to “Trump and the Trumpists” (Vol. 3, No. 1).
  •  7
    This paper examines how within De Caelo Aristotle argues that the heavens rotate to the right, because this is best. I isolate and evaluate its presuppositions and show how it comprises both a dialectical argument to cosmological principles and a partial demonstrative explanation on the basis of such principles. Second, I consider the expressions of epistemological hesitation that Aristotle offers in regard to this (and similar) arguments, and draw conclusions concerning the status of cosmology …Read more
  •  28
    Pistis, Persuasion, and Logos in Aristotle
    Elenchos: Rivista di Studi Sul Pensiero Antico 41 (1): 49-70. 2020.
    The core sense of pistis as understood in Posterior Analytics, De Anima, and the Rhetoric is not that of a logical relation in which cognitively grasped propositions stand in respect to one another, but the result of an act of socially embedded interpersonal communication, a willing acceptance of guidance offered in respect to action. Even when pistis seems to have an exclusively epistemological sense, this focal meaning of pistis is implicit; to have pistis in a proposition is to willingly acce…Read more
  •  221
    What lies behind Aristotle’s declarations that an attribute or feature that is demonstrated to belong to a scientific subject is proper to that subject? The answer is found in APo. 2.8-10, if we understand these chapters as bearing not only on Aristotle theory of definition but also as clarifying the logical structure of demonstration in general. If we identify the basic subjects with what has no different cause, and demonstrable attributes with what do have ‘a different cause’, the definitions …Read more