• What did the early Greek philosophers think about animals and their lives? How did they view plants? And, ultimately, what type of relationship did they envisage between all sorts of living beings? On these topics there is evidence of a prolonged investigation by several Presocratics. However, scholarship has paid little attention to these issues and to the surprisingly "modern" development they received in Presocratics' doctrines. This book fills this lacuna through a detailed (and largely unpr…Read more
  •  175
    Socrates' "Flight into the Logoi": a non-standard interpretation of the founding document of Plato's dialectic
    In MOUZALA, MELINA G. (ed.) (2023) ANCIENT GREEK DIALECTIC AND ITS RECEPTION. BERLIN AND BOSTON: DE GRUYTER 2023, De Gruyter. 2023.
    The paper proposes (1.) a non-standard interpretation of the proverbial expression “deuteros plous” by giving a fresh look to Phaedo, 99c9-d1. Then (2.) it proceeds to the philosophical problem raised in this passage according to this interpretation, that is, the problem of the “hypothesis” or the “unproved principle”. It indicates finally (3.) the kernel of truth contained in the standard Interpretation and it concludes with some remarks on the “weakness of the logoi”.
  •  6
    This is a revised short overview of Plato’s “greatest thing to be learned” or the “greatest lesson” (megiston mathêma) – the Idea of the Good.
  •  5
    La seconda polis: Introduzione alle Leggi di Platone by Bruno Centrone
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 61 (2): 325-326. 2023.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:La seconda polis: Introduzione alle Leggi di Platone by Bruno CentroneRafael FerberBruno Centrone. La seconda polis: Introduzione alle Leggi di Platone. Rome: Carocci Editore, 2021. Pp. 348. Paperback, €32.30.After the death of some of the great Italian scholars who devoted a considerable part of their lifetimes to the study of Socrates and Plato, including Gabriele Giannantoni (1932–98), Margherita Isnardi Parente (1928–…Read more
  •  133
    Goodness (the good, the Agathon)
    In The Bloomsbury Handbook of Plato, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 248-251. 2023.
    This is a revised short overview of Plato’s “greatest thing to be learned” or the “greatest lesson” (megiston mathêma) – the Idea of the Good.
  •  110
    Donald R. Morrison (Hg.), The Cambridge Companion to Socrates
    with Matthias Vonarburg
    Philosophisches Jahrbuch 120 (1): 211-213. 2013.
    Book review of: Donald R. Morrison (Hg.), The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010
  •  207
    Platon: Meisterdenker der Antike by Thomas Alexander Szlezák
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 60 (4): 687-688. 2022.
    Since 1976, when Thomas A. Szlezák held his inaugural lecture as a private lecturer at the University of Zurich entitled "The Dialogue Form and Esotericism: On the Interpretation of the Platonic Dialogue the Phaedrus", the now-emeritus professor at Tübingen has advocated a particular interpretation of the Platonic dialogues and especially of the Phaedrus: namely, that what is referred to in the latter dialogue—without further explanation—as "more valuable" than what is set down in writing corres…Read more
  •  9
    A Numbers-Based Approach to a Free Particle’s Proper Spacetime
    Foundations of Physics 51 (5): 1-21. 2021.
    This paper contains a proposal for a free, nonzero-rest-mass particle’s proper spacetime, determined exclusively by the particle’s rest mass \ and numbers. The approach defines proper time as de Broglie time, which is isomorphic to a sequence of natural numbers \ that count de Broglie time units \\). The approach is based on defining the spatial coordinate as proper following the constructive definition of positive and negative integers as all possible differences of ordered pairs of natural num…Read more
  •  407
    This book provides an introduction to six key concepts within philosophy: philosophy itself, language, knowledge, truth, being and the good. At the same time, it aims to initiate its readers into the processes of philosophical thinking. The book is addressed to students and lay persons, but also contains new ideas for specialists. It is written in a clear, accessible and engaging style. The German version appeared in eight editions and the second revised and updated English editon has the potent…Read more
  •  177
    This review tries to show that even if Plato ties the soul in the later dialogues more to the body, he still adheres in the Timaeus to the separation of the soul from the body as far as it is possible for humans, and in the Laws to the soul as a separated entity whose union with the body is in no way better than separation.
  •  783
    Second sailing towards immortality and God
    Mnemosyne 74 (3): 371-400. 2021.
    This paper deals with the deuteros plous, literally ‘the second voyage’, proverbially ‘the next best way’, discussed in Plato’s Phaedo, the key passage being Phd. 99e4-100a3. I argue that (a) the ‘flight into the logoi’ can have two different interpretations, a standard one and a non-standard one. The issue is whether at 99e-100a Socrates means that both the student of erga and the student of logoi consider images (‘the standard interpretation’), or the student of logoi does not consider images …Read more
  •  241
    Platonische Aufsätze
    De Gruyter. 2020.
    The volume contains a selection of essays on Plato from his Socratic beginnings to his aftermath in the works of Donald Davidson and Hans Georg Gadamer. Particular attention is paid to the Idea of the Good and the question of its transcendence and immanence.
  •  12
    Platonische Aufsätze
    De Gruyter. 2020.
    The volume contains a selection of essays on Plato from his Socratic beginnings to his aftermath in the works of Donald Davidson and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Particular attention is paid to the Idea of the Good and the question of its transcendence and immanence.
  •  921
    The paper gives (I) a short introduction to Aristotle’s theory of the soul in distinction to Plato’s and tries again (II) to answer the question of whether the individual or the general active mind of human beings is immortal by interpreting “When separated (χωρισθεìς)” (de An. III, 5, 430a22) as the decisive argument for the latter view. This strategy of limiting the question has the advantage of avoiding the probably undecidable question of whether this active νοῦς is human or divine. The pape…Read more
  •  5573
    Is the Idea of the Good Beyond Being? Plato's "epekeina tês ousias" Revisited
    In Debra Nails, Harold Tarrant, Mika Kajava & Eero Salmenkivi (eds.), SECOND SAILING: Alternative Perspectives on Plato, Wellprint Oy. pp. 197-203. 2015.
    The article tries to prove that the famous formula "epekeina tês ousias" has to be understood in the sense of being beyond being and not only in the sense of being beyond essence. We make hereby three points: first, since pure textual exegesis of 509b8–10 seems to lead to endless controversy, a formal proof for the metaontological interpretation could be helpful to settle the issue; we try to give such a proof. Second, we offer a corollary of the formal proof, showing that not only self-predicat…Read more
  •  318
    The article treats again the question of whether «the Idea of the Good is a Reality in the Universe, or beyond it. Is it immanent or transcendent ?» (Rufus Jones, 1863 1948). Plato scholars such as Matthias Baltes (1940 2003) and Luc Brisson have defended the thesis that Plato’s Idea of the Good is, on the one hand, beyond being (epekeina tês ousias) in dignity and power, but on the other, is nevertheless not transcendent over being. The article delivers first (I.) the most important arguments f…Read more
  •  811
    The paper deals with the "deuteros plous", literally ‘the second voyage’, proverbially ‘the next best way’, discussed in Plato’s "Phaedo", the key passage being Phd. 99e4–100a3. The second voyage refers to what Plato’s Socrates calls his “flight into the logoi”. Elaborating on the subject, the author first (I) provides a non-standard interpretation of the passage in question, and then (II) outlines the philosophical problem that it seems to imply, and, finally, (III) tries to apply this philosop…Read more
  •  640
    The article again treats the question of whether ≪the Idea of the Good is a Reality in the Universe, or beyond it. Is it immanent or transcendent?≫. Plato scholars such as Matthias Baltes and Luc Brisson have defended the thesis that Plato’s Idea of the Good is, on the one hand, beyond being in dignity and power, but, on the other, is nevertheless not transcendent over being. The article delivers first the most important arguments for the thesis of Baltes and Brisson. Then, it gives two countera…Read more
  • International Plato Studies
    Academia Verlag. 2016.
  •  342
    Der Grundgedanke des Tractatus als Metamorphose des obersten Grundsatzes der Kritik der reinen Vernunft
    Société Française de Philosophie, Bulletin 75 (4): 460. 1984.
    The paper puts forward that the basic principle of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (4.0312) transforms “the supreme principle of all synthetic judgments a priori” in Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” (A158/B197) from a level of reason to the level of language. Both philosophers, Kant and Wittgenstein, put forward a transcendental principle and both hold a formal identity true, Kant an identity between the form of experience and the form of the object of experience, Wittgenstein an identity between the f…Read more
  • . 2013.
  •  228
    Das normative "ist" und das konstatiere "soll"
    Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 74 185-192. 1988.
    Despite the fact that Aristotle and Frege/Russell differ in how to understand the ambiguity in the meaning of the word "is", their theories share a common feature: "is" does not have a normative meaning, but a constative meaning. This paper, however, shows (1) that there is a normative meaning of "is" (and correspondingly a constative meaning of the word "ought") and (2) that the ambiguity of "is" is itself ambiguous. Furthermore, the paper proposes (3) a performative criterion for making a dist…Read more
  •  368
    Abstract: It deals with the question of what a moral judgment is. On the one hand, a satisfactory theory of moral judgments must take into account the descriptive character of moral judgments and the realistic language of morals. On the other hand, it must also meet the non-descriptive character of moral judgments that consists in the recommending or condemning element and in the fact that normative statements are derived from moral judgments. However, cognitivism and emotivism or “normativism” …Read more
  •  359
    It deals with the question of what a moral judgment is. On the one hand, a satisfactory theory of moral judgments must take into account the descriptive character of moral judgments and the realistic language of morals. On the other hand, it must also meet the non-descriptive character of moral judgments that consists in the recommending or condemning element and in the fact that normative statements are derived from moral judgments. However, cognitivism and emotivism or “normativism” are contra…Read more
  •  1211
    Goodness (The Good, Agathon)
    In Debra Nails and Harold Tarrant Associate Editors: Francisco Gonzalez Gerald A. Press (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Plato, Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 177-179. 2012.
    This is a short overview of Plato’s “greatest thing to be learned” or the “greatest lesson” (megiston mathêma) – the Idea of the Good.