Peripatetics

Peter Adamson offers an accessible, humorous tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed. He introduces us to Cynics and Skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics, emperors and slaves, and traces the development of early Christian philosophy and of ancient science. A major theme of the book is in fact the competition between pagan and Christian philosophy in this period, and the Jewish tradition appears in the shape of Philo (...) of Alexandria. Ancient science is also considered, with chapters on ancient medicine and the interaction between philosophy and astronomy. Considerable attention is paid also to the wider historical context, for instance by looking at the ascetic movement in Christianity and how it drew on ideas from Hellenic philosophy. From the counter-cultural witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic to the subtle skepticism of Sextus Empiricus, from the irreverent atheism of the Epicureans to the ambitious metaphysical speculation of Neoplatonism, from the ethical teachings of Marcus Aurelius to the political philosophy of Augustine, the book gathers together all aspects of later ancient thought in an accessible and entertaining way. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the contrast between the ontologies of the subject, such as the Aristotelian one, with the ontologies of the process, such as that of Quine. It attempts to justify the Aristotelian approach paying special attention to Quine's criticism.

The aim of this paper is to show the difference between Aristotle's conception of friendship and the Christian charity. While the pagan charity only search for happiness in this life, the Christian charity moreover point out the eternal destiny in all the men and magnify the friendship in this life.

A literatura crítica sobre Aristóteles ainda discute se a forma é universal ou individual. A doutrina do livro Lambda da Metafísica afirma que as causas dos indivíduos são individuais, mas é no De generatione animalium que essa doutrina é justificada: o sêmen paterno transmite ao mênstruo uma série de movimentos que determinam a alma do feto e o seu desenvolvimento corporal. Portanto, o pai é causa motora do filho e produz sua alma, que pode ser individual.

Há passagens do Corpus aristotelicum em que álogon da alma humana, sede também das paixões, apresenta-se oposto a um certo tipo de lógos chamado logistikón. A polaridade álogon-logistiké, ou alogon-logismos, pertence ao pensameno anterior a Aristóteles, que o faz seu e o reformula. Uma acepção dessa polaridade antes de Aristóteles pertence às matemáticas pré-eudoxianas, que tentam dominar o alógico por meio de certo tipo de cálculo proporcional centrado no “algoritmo euclidiano”. Na Ét. Nic. VI e quanto ao “cálculo prático” do (...) sábio, sente-se o eco dessa concepção.In the Corpus aristotelicum there are passages in which the part of the human soul called alogon, which is also the seat of the passions, is presented as opposite to a kind of lógos called logistikón. This polarity of álogon-logistiké, or alogon-logismos, predates Aristotle, who took it over for his own needs. One sense of this polarity prior to Aristotle comes from pre-Eudoxian mathematics,which attempts to understand the alogon as a kind of proportional calculationcentered on the “Euclidian algorithm”. Echoes of such a conception can be found in the Nicomachean Ethics, in the “practical calculation” of the wise man. (shrink)