Sense-Perception, Reasoning and Forms in Plotinus

This paper discusses the role of innate concepts derived from Intellect in Plotinus’ account of cognition of the sensible realm. Several passages have been claimed as evidence for such innateness, but an analysis of them shows that they do not support this claim. It is tentatively suggested that, nevertheless, some very general concepts such as difference, sameness and being are integral to the faculty of sense and play a crucial role in concept formation. It is further argued that reasoning about the sensible realm takes place to a large extent without the involvement of the higher realms of Plotinus’ hierarchy of being. Clearly, however, for value concepts such as those of goodness, justice and beauty human beings are dependent upon an illumination from Intellect.

Aristotle’s Uses of ἕνεκα

I argue that Aristotle’s arguments in passages regarding chance in the Physics and in passages about ignorance in action in the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics presuppose two different uses of ‘for the sake (ἕνεκα) of something’, which are able to explain respectively the wish or thought of agents and the type or nature of what they actually do. In my view, however, this does not commit Aristotle, in the ‘ignorance’ passages from the two Ethics, to holding that the type or nature of what the agents actually do is for the sake of killing or wounding.

The Starting-Points for Knowledge

This paper examines some neglected Chrysippean fragments on insecure apprehension (κατάληψις). First, I present Chrysippus’ account of how non-Sages can begin to fortify their insecure apprehension and upgrade it into knowledge (ἐπιστήμη). Next, I reconstruct Chrysippus’ explanation of how sophisms and counter-arguments lead one to abandon one’s insecure apprehension. One such counter-argument originates in the sceptical Academy and targets the Stoic claim that insecure apprehension can be acquired on the basis of custom (συνήθεια). I show how Chrysippus could defend the possibility of custom-based apprehension, while also denying that there is custom-based knowledge.

A Method of Resolutions: Rereading NE 7.1, 1145b2–7

This article is about the methodological remarks in Nicomachean Ethics 7.1, 1145b2–7, and the way they are carried out in the following chapters. I argue that the procedure therein described does not aim to establish consistency among a subset of endoxa, but to test and refine—by considering and resolving objections against them—endoxa that could enter into a nominal definition of continence and incontinence. The dialectical lineage of this discussion, if there is one, is to be found in the use of the critical procedure of resolution that can be traced back to Topics and Sophistical Refutations.

The Doing of Justice and the Priority of Acting from Virtue

Aristotle famously distinguishes between merely doing a virtuous action and acting in the way in which a virtuous person would. Against an interpretation prominent in recent scholarship, I argue that ‘acting virtuously,’ in the sense of exercising a virtue actually possessed, is prior to ‘virtuous action,’ understood generically. I propose that the latter notion is best understood as a derivative abstraction from the former, building upon a reading of a neglected distinction between per se and coincidentally just action in Nicomachean Ethics 5, and thus shed light on the meaning and philosophical significance of the priority of acting from virtue.

The Three Choruses of Plato’s Laws and their Function in the Dialogue

This article questions a longtime credo concerning Plato’s Laws, namely that the three choruses introduced in Book 2 are institutions of the dialogue’s political project. A detailed analysis of relevant passages shows that the evidence is insufficent. Rather, it is argued, this part of Book 2 is essentially plurivalent: on three separate semantic layers, the choruses illustrate political, moral-psychological and key educational issues of the Laws. Apart from explaining the disappearance of the choruses after Book 2, the proposed reading aims to bring to light an impressively artful philosophical and literary strategy of Plato’s.

Disturbance in the Outlines of Sextus Empiricus

Sextus seems to offer inconsistent accounts of the sceptics’ achievement of tranquillity, apparently saying both that the sceptics’ tranquillity is achieved by suspending judgement on all issues and that it is achieved by suspending judgement only on the issue of there being objective goods and evils. It is argued that Sextus does not make the latter claim. The reason for the sceptics’ achievement of tranquillity is to be found in the original perplexity that instigated scepticism and left them immune to the value beliefs that disturb everyone else. After discussing this perplexity that gave rise to scepticism, the paper focuses on Sextus’ explanation of sceptical tranquillity and dogmatic disturbance.

Everything in Nature is in Intellect: Forms and Natural Teleology in Ennead 6.2.21 (and elsewhere)

According to a straightforward reading of Enn. 6.2.21, all principles (logoi) in nature have their origin in corresponding features of a divine Intellect. But interpreters have often advocated more restricted readings of Intellect’s contents. These restricted readings are based in part on other textual evidence, and in part on the concern that a more expansive reading would require Intellect to think objects that are of trivial value (‘the value problem’) or whose purposes depend upon facts about sensible reality to which it has no access (‘the teleology problem’). I argue that restricted readings are not well supported, and that Plotinus is committed to his more expansive conception of Intellect’s contents by his understanding of Plato’s paradeigmatism.