•  10
    Colloquium 4 Commentary on Shiffman
    Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 36 (1): 123-128. 2021.
    This paper raises three questions about Shiffman’s thesis that Plutarch is offering a distinctive “hermeneutical philosophy” that verifies the truth of central Platonic doctrines.
  •  456
    This article expands our knowledge of the historical-philosophical process by which the dominant metaphysical account of the Christian God became ascendant. It demonstrates that Marius Victorinus proposed a peculiar model of ‘consubstantiality’ that utilised a notion of ‘existence’ indebted to the Aristotelian concept of ‘prime matter’. Victorinus employed this to argue that God is a unity composed of Father and Son. The article critically evaluates this model. It then argues that Augustine noti…Read more
  •  203
    Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4 (review)
    International Journal of the Classical Tradition 11 468-470. 2005.
  •  533
    Love, Will, and the Intellectual Ascents
    In Tarmo Toom (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine's “Confessions”, Cambridge University Press. pp. 154-174. 2020.
    Augustine’s accounts of his so-called mystical experiences in conf. 7.10.16, 17.23, and 9.10.24 are puzzling. The primary problem is that, although in all three accounts he claims to have seen “that which is,” we have no satisfactory account of what “that which is” is supposed to be. I shall be arguing that, contrary to a common interpretation, Augustine’s intellectual “seeing” of “being” in Books 7 and 9 was not a vision of the Christian God as a whole, nor of one of the divine persons, each of…Read more
  •  394
    Early Christian Ethics
    In Sacha Golob & Jens Timmermann (eds.), The Cambridge History of Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 112-124. 2017.
    G.E.M. Anscombe famously claimed that ‘the Hebrew-Christian ethic’ differs from consequentialist theories in its ability to ground the claim that killing the innocent is intrinsically wrong. According to Anscombe, this is owing to its legal character, rooted in the divine decrees of the Torah. Divine decrees confer a particular moral sense of ‘ought’ by which this and other act-types can be ‘wrong’ regardless of their consequences, she maintained. There is, of course, a potentially devastating …Read more
  •  19
    Augustine and Wittgenstein ed. by John Doody, Alexander E. Eodice, and Kim Paffenroth
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 58 (1): 186-187. 2020.
    Forty years ago in this journal, Herbert Spiegelberg examined Wittgenstein's direct references to Augustine in the works that were available to the public at that time. Although there are many allusions to Augustine in the portions of the Nachlass to which Spiegelberg did not have access, Wittgenstein read only the Confessions and his interest lay in a small set of topics for which certain sentences from Augustine served him as repeated proof texts. Given these facts and given how fundamentally …Read more
  •  9
    Commentary on Nawar
    Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 32 (1): 160-165. 2017.
    I offer an interpretation of the Stoic “peculiar qualification” which provides for the identity of individuals over time and the distinguishability of discrete individuals. This interpretation is similar to but not the same as one of the strands in Lewis’s interpretation as presented by Nawar. I suggest that the “peculiar qualification”—what makes the individual be the individual—is the particular ἕξις or φύσις or ψυχή that is in an individual. That is, the peculiar quality is not the kind of πν…Read more
  •  318
    Seneca: The Life of a Stoic, Routledge, 2003 (review)
    Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2003 (6.22). 2003.
  •  42
    Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonean Scepticism (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 43 (3): 391-392. 2003.
  •  3121
    Seneca asserts in Letter 121 that we mature by exercising self-care as we pass through successive psychosomatic “constitutions.” These are babyhood (infantia), childhood (pueritia), adolescence (adulescentia), and young adulthood (iuventus). The self-care described by Seneca is 'self-affiliation' (oikeiōsis, conciliatio) the linchpin of the Stoic ethical system, which defines living well as living in harmony with nature, posits that altruism develops from self-interest, and allows that pleasure…Read more
  •  104
    Argues that Descartes mistook the sense of 'motion' intended by Aristotle in the latter's definition of life as the capacity for self-motion. Descartes' arguments against Aristotelian soul-as-life-principle consequently commit the 'straw man' fallacy.
  •  56
    The Meaning of Voluntas in Augustine
    Augustinian Studies 37 (2): 171-189. 2006.
  •  569
    "Augustine and the Philosophers"
    In Mark Vessey (ed.), A Companion to Augustine, Wiley. pp. 175-187. 2012.
    Augustine on select metaphysical topics: hylomorphism vs. dualism, theories of God, angels.
  • On the Trinity: Books 8-15 (review)
    The Medieval Review 10. 2003.
  •  95
    Augustine and the Cognitive Cause of Stoic Preliminary Passions ( Propatheiai )
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 41 (4): 433-448. 2003.
    Augustine made a significant contribution to the history of philosophical accounts of affectivity which scholars have not yet noticed. He resolved a problem with the Stoic theory as it was known to him: the question of the cognitive cause of "preliminary passions" ( propatheiai ), reflex-like affective reactions which must be immediately controlled if a morally bad emotion is to be avoided. He identified this cognitive cause as momentary doubt, as I demonstrate by citing passages from sermons sp…Read more
  •  510
    "The Psychology of Compassion: A Reading of City of God 9.5"
    In James Wetzel (ed.), Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press. pp. 130-148. 2012.
    Writing to the young emperor Nero, Seneca elaborates a sophisticated distinction between compassion and mercy for use in forensic contexts, agreeing with earlier Stoics that compassion is a vice, but adding that there is a virtue called mercy or 'clemency.' This Stoic repudiation of compassion has won the attention of Nussbaum, who argues that it was motivated by a respect for persons as dignified agents, and was of a piece with the Stoics' cosmopolitanism. This chapter engages Nussbaum's presen…Read more
  •  33
    This book argues that Augustine assimilated the Stoic theory of perception and mental language (lekta/dicibilia), and that this epistemology underlies his accounts of motivation, affectivity, therapy for the passions, and moral progress. Byers elucidates seminal passages which have long puzzled commentators, such as Confessions 8, City of God 9 and 14, Replies to Simplicianus 1, and obscure sections of the later ‘anti-Pelagian’ works. Tracking the Stoic terminology, Byers analyzes Augustine’s e…Read more