Raphael Woolf

This book revisits, and sheds fresh light on, some key texts and debates in ancient philosophy. Its twin targets are 'Old Chestnuts' – well-known passages in the works of ancient philosophers about which one might have thought everything there is to say has already been said – and 'Sacred Cows' – views about what ancient philosophers thought, on issues of philosophical importance, that have attained the status of near-unquestioned orthodoxy. Thirteen leading scholars respond to these challenges by offering new perspectives on familiar material and challenging some prevailing orthodoxies. On authors ranging from the Presocratics to Plotinus, the book represents a snapshot of contemporary scholarship in ancient philosophy, and a vigorous and illuminating affirmation of its continuing interest and power. The volume is dedicated to Professor M. M. McCabe, an inspiring scholar and teacher, colleague and friend to both the editors and the contributors.

This 2001 translation makes one of the most important texts in ancient philosophy available to modern readers. Cicero is increasingly being appreciated as an intelligent and well-educated amateur philosopher, and in this work he presents the major ethical theories of his time in a way designed to get the reader philosophically engaged in the important debates. Raphael Woolf's translation does justice to Cicero's argumentative vigour as well as to the philosophical ideas involved, while Julia Annas's introduction and notes provide a clear and accessible explanation of the philosophical context of the work. This edition will appeal to all readers interested in this central text in ancient philosophy and the history of ethics.

Cicero's philosophical works introduced Latin audiences to the ideas of the Stoics, Epicureans and other schools and figures of the post-Aristotelian period, thus influencing the transmission of those ideas through later history. While Cicero's value as documentary evidence for the Hellenistic schools is unquestioned, Cicero: The Philosophy of a Roman Sceptic explores his writings as works of philosophy that do more than simply synthesize the thought of others, but instead offer a unique viewpoint of their own. In this volume Raphael Woolf describes and evaluates Cicero's philosophical achievements, paying particular attention to his relation to those philosophers he draws upon in his works, his Romanizing of Greek philosophy, and his own sceptical and dialectical outlook. The volume aims, using the best tools of philosophical, philological and historical analysis, to do Cicero justice as a distinctive philosophical voice. Situating Cicero's work in its historical and political context, this volume provides a detailed analysis of the thought of one of the finest orators and writers of the Roman period. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Cicero: The Philosophy of a Roman Sceptic is a key resource for those interested in Cicero's role in shaping Classical philosophy.

Relatively little attention has been paid to Socrates' argument against akrasia in Plato's "Protagoras" as an example of Socratic method. Yet seen from this perspective the argument has some rather unusual features: in particular, the presence of an impersonal interlocutor ("the many") and the absence of the crisp and explicit argumentation that is typical of Socratic elenchus. I want to suggest that these features are problematic, considerably more so than has sometimes been supposed, and to offer a reading of the argument that accounts for them. My reading revolves around the connections between Socratic method, consistency and akrasia. I argue that Socrates' discussion of akrasia aims at exposing the interlocutor's inconsistency, and to this extent is typical of Socratic inquiry; but it is also untypical, insofar as Socrates' chief concern here is with the inconsistency between an interlocutor's statements and his actions (what I call "word-deed inconsistency") rather than, as more usually, inconsistency among an interlocutor's various statements ("word-word inconsistency"). I use this reading to show how the akrasia argument, despite its untypical features, is not just a variant, but in an important way a paradigm, of Socratic method

This paper addresses the question of whether or not Epicurus was a psychological hedonist. Did he, that is, hold that all human action, as a matter of fact, has pleasure as its goal? Or was he just an ethical hedonist, asserting merely that pleasure ought to be the goal of human action? I discuss a recent forceful attempt by John Cooper to answer the latter question in the affirmative, and argue that he fails to make his case. There is considerable evidence in favour of a psychological reading of Epicurean hedonism, evidence that includes some of the very texts that Cooper cites in support of the ethical reading

To what extent is possession of truth considered a good thing in the Republic? Certain passages of the dialogue appear to regard truth as a universal good, but others are more circumspect about its value, recommending that truth be withheld on occasion and falsehood disseminated. I seek to resolve this tension by distinguishing two kinds of truths, which I label 'philosophical' and 'non-philosophical'. Philosophical truths, I argue, are considered unqualifiedly good to possess, whereas non-philosophical truths are regarded as worth possessing only to the extent that possession conduces to good behaviour in those who possess them. In the non-philosophical arena it is an open question, to be determined on a case-by-case basis, whether falsehood is more efficacious in furthering this practical aim than truth

The main title of this work is a little misleading. Hobbs does not begin to consider in any detail Plato’s relation to traditional Greek models of the hero until chapter 6, nearly two-thirds of the way through the book. In fact, Hobbs’s treatment of Plato’s re-working of the hero-figure is embedded in a nexus of themes revolving round the Greek virtue of andreia and its psychological basis in that part of the soul that Plato in the Republic calls the thumos. Commonly translated ‘spirit’, the term is notoriously hard to render by a single English equivalent. Plato’s conception of this human drive can be captured, according to Hobbs’s succinct phrase, as “the need to believe that one counts for something”.

The tale of Gyges' ring narrated by Cicero at De officiis 3.38 is of course originally found, and acknowledged as such by Cicero, in Plato. I would like in this paper to address two questions about Cicero's handling of the tale – one historical, one philosophical. The purpose of the historical question is to evaluate, with respect to the Gyges narration, Cicero's quality as a reader of Plato. How well does Cicero understand the role of the story in its original Platonic context? The motivation for the question is that, at first blush, Cicero seems to have badly misunderstood it. I shall argue that the appearance is illusory, and that Cicero understands the tale's Platonic provenance perfectly well. Now it should be noted that the question of Cicero's grasp of the tale's purpose in Plato is distinct from the question whether Cicero himself puts the story to the same or a different use than Plato did. I shall suggest that while there are striking points of contact between the two treatments, on one crucial feature – namely the tale's ostentatiously far-fetched nature – Cicero is instructively more explicit than Plato.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Coloration of Aristotelian Eye-Jelly: A Note on On Dreams 459b–460aRaphael WoolfThe purpose of this paper is to make a small contribution to a recent lively debate concerning Aristotle’s philosophy of mind. This debate has centered on a paper published by Myles Burnyeat,1 which argued that Aristotle’s philosophy of mind, being hopelessly anachronistic, could not serve as the prototype of any contemporary theory: in particular, it could not be seen as proto-functionalist, as Nussbaum and Putnam had proposed.2 The grounds given by Burnyeat for the anachronism of Aristotle’s philosophy of mind focus mainly on Aristotle’s notion of perceptual awareness. According to Burnyeat, perceptual awareness is for Aristotle a primitives3 and essential4 property of the relevant organ of perception. In Burnyeat’s view, Aristotle’s theory denies that there is any further level of analysis that can be undertaken. When an eye comes to perceive an object, the potentiality of the eye for seeing is actualized, but there is nothing further to be said. In particular, there is no physiological change taking place in the eye, in which the psychological change is realized. Thus, when Aristotle says in the De Anima that the eye becomes “in a way coloured”5 when it sees a coloured object, for Burnyeat this means no more [End Page 385] than that it registers awareness of colour,6 not that it becomes literally coloured itself.On this last point, Burnyeat takes issue with the view of Richard Sorabji,7 who maintains that for Aristotle the eye does undergo physiological change when it does some seeing: in particular, if it sees, for example, a red object, then the jelly inside the eye literally becomes coloured red. On this view, Aristotle does indeed have a theory, congenial enough to modern perspectives, whereby each psychological change is realized physiologically.8There are several large questions which my paper does not attempt to address. Firstly, it offers no view on what implications Burnyeat’s position would have, if correct, for the interpretation of Aristotle as a proto-functionalist. Secondly, it does not offer a view on how necessary the correctness of an interpretation such as Sorabji’s is to the case made by the advocates of Aristotle as a proto-functionalist.9 Thirdly, it makes no adjudication between any of the competing parties’ interpretations of Aristotle’s De Anima, his main work on psychology and the chief textual battleground in the debate I have been outlining.This paper’s aim is a much more modest one. It is to draw attention to a short passage in Aristotle’s work On Dreams, which in my view incontrovertibly suggests that Aristotle did believe that the eye becomes literally coloured during perception of a coloured object. I shall therefore be presenting one piece of evidence in favour of Sorabji’s view; but I shall not be arguing that Sorabji’s view is conclusively the right one (which would require consideration of all the relevant evidence), nor drawing any conclusions about the implications of this evidence for interpretations of Aristotle’s philosophy of mind. It is, however, [End Page 386] reasonable to suggest that if Sorabji’s view is right then Burnyeat’s view is in severe difficulties, since its main underpinning—the claim that psychological change has no physiological counterpart in Aristotle’s theory—will have been removed. The evidence I have to present, then, is, albeit indirectly, support for the view that Aristotle’s philosophy of mind is not hopelessly anachronistic, at least in the way that Burnyeat claims.Here is the evidence from On Dreams (459b23–460a26):That the sense-organs rapidly perceive even slight differences is shown by what happens with mirrors. Indeed, anyone who would give his attention to it might look into that subject too and explore the problem. At the same time, it is clear from this case that, just as the organ of sight is affected by, so too it acts upon, its object. For in extremely clean mirrors, when women look into them during their menstrual period, the mirror surface takes on a sort of blood-red cloud. In fact, if the...