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Article

Academy  

D. Sedley

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
06 July 2015
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Academy, public *gymnasium at Athens, sacred to the hero Academus, north-west of the Dipylon gate. It gave its name to the school founded there by *Plato (1) in the early 4th cent. and maintained by an unbroken line of successors until the 1st cent. bce. The school's private property was never there, but, at least during the 4th cent., at Plato's nearby house.The Early Academy is the phase of doctrinal Platonism under Plato himself (d. 347) and his successors *Speusippus, *Xenocrates (1), *Polemon (2), and Crates.The ‘New Academy’ is the phase, from c.269 to the early or mid-1st cent. bce (its further subdivision, Sext. Emp. Pyr. 1. 220, is a later imposition), in which the school, initially under *Arcesilaus (1), interpreted true Platonism as scepticism. Dialectical criticism of doctrines, usually Stoic, was orchestrated to demonstrate akatalēpsia, the impossibility of knowledge, resulting in epochē, suspension of judgement.

Article

Aenesidemus, of Cnossus, Sceptic philosopher  

Gisela Striker

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy

Aenesidemus of Cnossus, sceptical philosopher, revived Pyrrhonism (see pyrrhon) in the 1st cent. bce, probably as a reaction to the decline of scepticism in the Academy under *Philon (3) of Larissa. He taught at some point in *Alexandria (1). His works are lost, but versions of his ‘Modes of Inducing Suspension of Judgement’ (Τρόποιτῆςἐποχῆς) are preserved by Philon (4) Judaeus, Diogenes Laertius, and Sextus Empiricus. Photius (Bibl. cod. 212) has a summary of his Πυρρώνειοιλόγοι (‘Pyrrhonian Arguments’) in eight books, dedicated to L. *Aelius Tubero, an Academic and friend of Cicero. Sextus also ascribes to Aenesidemus a set of modes of argument against causal explanation.

Article

Aeschines (2) Socraticus  

Michael Gagarin

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek History and Historiography
  2. Greek Literature
  3. Philosophy

(4th cent. bce), of the *deme of Sphettus in Attica, a devoted follower of *Socrates, was present at his trial and death. He wrote speeches for the lawcourts and taught oratory, but fell into poverty and took refuge at the court in *Syracuse, returning to Athens after the expulsion of *Dionysius (2) II in 356. Best known as the author of Socratic dialogues which resemble *Xenophon (1)'s more than *Plato (1)'s, Aeschines was apparently not an original thinker, and his Socrates expounds common ethical views. Although only fragments survive today, seven dialogues were considered genuine in antiquity: Alcibiades, Axiochus, Aspasia, Callias, Miltiades, Rhinon, Telauges. The first of these was partly intended to defend Socrates against charges of corrupting the young *Alcibiades. The dialogues of Aeschines were highly esteemed for their style and their faithfulness to Socrates' character and conversational manner.

Article

aesthetics  

Stephen Halliwell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
The nature and scope of aesthetics have been a subject of debate ever since the 18th-century coinage of the term. The application of aesthetics as a theoretical or experiential category to the study of earlier periods therefore needs to be dialectical and pluralistic. But the contribution made by Greco-Roman antiquity to the evolution of ideas such as beauty, creative inspiration, and sublimity is indisputable. It reaches back to issues and values already salient in the pre-philosophical culture of archaic Greece, many of them associated with the uniquely Greek symbolism of the Muses. The early Greek association between song, music, and dance was consolidated and expanded, first by intermedial comparisons and subsequently by the concept of mimesis, into a standard grouping of the “mimetic arts,” which bracketed musico-poetic forms together with visual forms of artistic representation and expression. It was this cluster of activities that provided a frame of reference for philosophical theorizing. In Plato, representational and figurative art forms are seen as carrying great cultural and psychological power, but consequently as in need of educational and political control in an ideal society. Aristotle moves nearer to a recognition of a qualified degree of aesthetic autonomy, while stressing the cognitive and emotional aspects of responses to mimetic art. In Hellenistic philosophy, Stoicism regarded the whole cosmos as imbued with divinely sustained and quasi-moral beauty, while Epicureanism’s simplified standards of pleasure narrowed the valuation of mimetic art. [Longinus], On the Sublime is a prime instance of the way that new thinking could emerge from modifications of older ideas; its own model of creativity entails rivalrous emulation between present and past writers.

Article

Aëtius (1)  

Malcolm Schofield

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Aëtius (1), probably late 1st cent. ce, author of a comprehensive survey of the contrasting views of Greek philosophers on questions in natural philosophy. Hermann Diels convincingly argued that this lost work (the Placita) was reproduced in the ps.-Plutarchean Epitome and in *Stobaeus' Eclogae; and that it in turn derived indirectly, augmented e.g. with Stoic and Epicurean material, from *Theophrastus' Physical Tenets: hence its value as a source especially for Presocratic philosophy.

Article

Agatharchides, of Cnidus, Greek historian, geographer, and Peripatetic philosopher, c. 215–after 145 BCE  

Kenneth S. Sacks

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek History and Historiography
  3. Philosophy

Who lived most of his adult life in *Alexandria (1), eventually leaving, perhaps in flight to Athens after 145. He was not, as previously believed, regent to *Ptolemy (1) IX but was in the service of *Heraclides (3) Lembus. His major works, for which there are fragmentary remains, include: Asian Affairs (Τὰ κατὰ τὴν Ἀσίαν), probably a universal history that extended to the *Diadochi; European Affairs (Τὰ κατὰ τὴν Εὐρώπην), perhaps to his own time; and On the Red Sea (Περὶ τῆς Ἐρυθρᾶς θαλάσσης) in five books (some preserved by Diodorus, bk. 3, and Photius). These large-scale histories, interlaced with *anthropology and *geography, provided a model for *Posidonius (2). He attacked the Asianic prose style, and *Photius calls him a worthy disciple of *Thucydides (2) in expression. He may have voiced hostility toward the Ptolemies, from whom he may have fled.

Article

Agrippa, Pyrrhonist Sceptic philosopher  

Gisela Striker

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy

Dates unknown, but later than *Aenesidemus. Diogenes Laertius (9. 88) ascribes to him a set of five modes (τρόποι) of argument introduced to supplement or replace the older Modes of Aenesidemus, and frequently used by *Sextus Empiricus.

Article

Albinus (1), Platonist philosopher  

John Dillon

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Albinus (1) Platonist philosopher, pupil of *Gaius (2). Taught at Smyrna, where Galen heard him lecture in ce 151–2. The only extant writing which is certainly his is a brief preface to Plato's dialogues (Prologos or Eisagōgē), concerned with their classification and the order in which they should be studied. He also published a collection of the lectures of his master Gaius, which has been lost. The attribution to him by J. Freudenthal in 1879 of the Didaskalikos, or ‘Handbook of Platonism’ of Alcinous has recently been convincingly impugned.

Article

Alcinous (2)  

John Dillon

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
  2. Philosophy
Alcinous (2), accredited in the MSS as author of the Didaskalikos, or ‘Handbook of Platonism’, a summary of *Plato (1)'s doctrines designed as a handbook for the general public. He was long identified with the 2nd-cent. ce Platonist *Albinus (1); but this identification has recently been impugned on palaeographical grounds, and it seems better to preserve the original name, admitting ignorance of the author's identity or dating (though a 2nd-cent. date still seems reasonable). Long since rejected as an accurate account of Plato's own views, by reason of its incorporation of many Aristotelian and even Stoic doctrines and terminology (see aristotle; stoicism), the work has now come to be valued for what it is, a summary of the doctrine of at least one school of the Platonism of the period. Alcinous attributes Aristotle's categories and syllogistic to Plato; he equates Plato's Demiurge with Aristotle's Unmoved Mover; he interprets Plato's transcendent Forms as thoughts of God. However, despite an interesting distinction between a primal god and a world-mind, Alcinous has no doctrine of a supra-intellectual One, such as is characteristic of *Neoplatonism.

Article

Alcmaeon (2), of Croton, Greek philosopher, 5th cent. BCE  

Gwilym Ellis Lane Owen and Malcolm Schofield

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy

Wrote a philosophical book dedicated to a group of Pythagoreans (see pythagoras (1)), and known to *Aristotle and *Theophrastus. It mostly concerned the nature of man. Alcmaeon explained the human condition by the interplay of opposites, e.g. health as ‘equal rights’ of hot and cold, wet and dry, etc. , disease as ‘monarchy’ of one of them. He held that ‘passages’ linked the sense-organs to the brain, which, followed by *Plato (1), he took to be the seat of understanding (but Calcidius' statement that Alcmaeon discovered this by dissection merits scepticism). And he compared the immortality of the soul to the endless circling of the heavenly bodies.

Article

Alexander (14), of Aphrodisias, commentator on Aristotle  

Robert Sharples

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Appointed public teacher of Aristotelian philosophy, probably though not certainly in Athens, at some time between 198 and 209 ce (his treatise On Fate being dedicated then to *Septimius Severus and *Caracalla); referred to by later writers as ‘the commentator’ on Aristotle. Commentaries on MetaphysicsΑ–Δ, Prior Analytics 1, Topics, Meteorologica, and De sensu survive; others are extensively quoted by later writers. The commentaries on Metaph.Ε–Ν and on Sophistical Refutations are, in their present form, spurious. In a number of short treatises (On the Soul, On Fate, On Mixture surviving in Greek; On Providence in Arabic translation) Alexander presents as Aristotelian his own developments of Aristotelian material. There are also numerous short discussions, some preserved in Greek (Quaestiones, Ethical Problems) and others only in Arabic, which seem linked with his teaching activity but whose authenticity is debatable. The Medical Puzzles and Physical Problems (ed.

Article

Amafinius, Gaius  

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy

Amafinius, Gaius, older contemporary of Cicero, popularized the philosophy of *Epicurus in Latin. Cicero refers to him disparagingly (Fam. 15. 19. 2; Acad. Post. 1. 5. Cf. Tusc. 1. 6, 2. 7, 6, 7).

Article

Amelius  

D. O'Meara

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy

Amelius (or Amerius) Gentilianus (3rd cent. ce), from Etruria, was *Plotinus̕ pupil 246–69. He wrote extensively, mainly presenting and defending Plotinus' philosophy, which he did not always understand and with which he sometimes differed.

Article

Ammonius (2) Saccas  

Erik Robertson Dodds and John Dillon

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Ammonius (2) Saccas, of *Alexandria (1), Platonist philosopher, active in first half of 3rd cent. ce, famous as the teacher of *Plotinus, who studied under him 232–42, as well as of *Origen (1) the Christian, *Origen (2) the pagan, *‘Longinus’, and others. According to Porphyry (in Eus. Hist. Eccl. 6. 19) he was brought up as a Christian but reverted to paganism as soon as he began to think for himself. The epithet θεοδίδακτος (‘taught of God’) and the nickname Saccas (sack-carrier? wearer of sackcloth?) would seem to imply a humble origin, though other interpretations have been proposed. He wrote nothing, and no distinctive features of his teaching can be inferred with any certainty from the few references to it in Nemesius, Nat. hom. 2 and 3, and Hierocles in Photius, cod. 251. Even the story of the vow of secrecy which his pupils, like those of Pythagoras, took and subsequently broke (Porph.

Article

Anaxagoras, c. 500–428 BCE  

Malcolm Schofield

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Anaxagoras (probably 500–428 BCE), son of Hegesibulus, and a native of *Clazomenae; the first philosopher known to have settled in Athens. The evidence for his biography, although relatively plentiful, is confused and confusing. The best critical study (by Mansfeld) has him arrive in Athens in 456/5 in the archonship of Callias and philosophize there for 20 years or so, until his prosecution and trial on a charge of impiety (dated by Mansfeld to 437/6). He resettled in *Lampsacus, probably with the aid of his patron *Pericles (1). There he died and was buried with high honours. His name was associated with the fall of a large meteorite at Aegospotami in *Thrace (c.467); his explanations of other physical phenomena are already reflected in Aeschylus' Supplices (c.463) and Eumenides (458).*Simplicius preserves extensive fragments of Anaxagoras' one book, which famously began with the words: ‘All things were together’ (fr. 1 DK). The longest and most eloquent surviving passage explains how our differentiated kosmos was created from the original mélange by the action of mind, an entirely discrete principle, unmixed with any other substances but capable of ordering and controlling them (fr.

Article

Anaxarchus  

D. Sedley

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Anaxarchus, of *Abdera, a Democritean philosopher (see democritus) and teacher of *Pyrrhon (the putative founder of Scepticism). He accompanied *Alexander (3) the Great on his Asian campaigns—a relationship which generated numerous anecdotes. He wrote a treatise on *kingship—an early representative of what became a major Hellenistic genre. His familiar title, ‘Anaxarchus of the happiness school (ὁ εὐδαιμονικός)’ evidently encapsulated an ethical stance.

Article

Anaximander, of Miletus, d. c. 547 BCE  

Charles H. Kahn

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy

Anaximander of *Miletu (died soon after 547 BCE), said to be an associate or disciple of *Thales, was the first Greek to write a prose treatise ‘On the Nature of Things’ (Peri physeōs). He thus initiated the tradition of Greek natural philosophy by elaborating a system of the heavens, including an account of the origins of human life, and by leaving his speculation behind in written form. He was the first to make a *map of the inhabited world; some sources also credit him with a sphairos or plan of the heavens.

Anaximander's view of the cosmos is remarkable for its speculative imagination and for its systematic appeal to rational principles and natural processes as a basis for explanation. The origin of things is the apeiron, the limitless or infinite, which apparently surrounds the generated world and ‘steers’ or governs the world process. Symmetry probably dictates that the world-order will perish into the source from which it has arisen, as symmetry is explicitly said to explain why the earth is stable in the centre of things, equally balanced in every direction. The world process begins when the opposites are ‘separated out’ to generate the hot and the cold, the dry and the wet. By a process that is both biological and mechanical, earth, sea, and sky take shape and huge wheels of enclosed fire are formed to produce the phenomena of sun, moon, and stars. The size of the wheels was specified, corresponding perhaps to the arithmetical series 9, 18, 27. The earth is a flat disc, three times as broad as it is deep. Mechanical explanations in terms of the opposites are offered for meteorological phenomena (wind, rain, lightning, and thunder) and for the origin of animal life. The first human beings were generated from a sort of embryo floating in the sea.

Article

Anaximenes (1)  

Charles H. Kahn

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy

Anaximenes (1), of *Miletus (traditional floruit 546–525 bce) followed in the footsteps of *Anaximander in composing a treatise in Ionian prose in which he developed a world system on the basis of an infinite or unlimited principle, which he identified as aēr. His system differed from that of his predecessor in several respects. Instead of suspending the earth in the centre of the universe by cosmic symmetry, he supported it from below by cosmic air. And instead of leaving the infinite starting-point for world formation indeterminate in nature, he specified it as elemental air, which he probably conceived as a kind of vital world-breath that dominates the world order as our own breath-soul rules over us. Anaximenes also offered a mechanistic explanation for world formation and change in terms of the condensation and rarefaction of the air. Air becomes fire by rarefaction; by motion it becomes wind; by condensation it becomes water and, by more condensation, earth and stones.

Article

Andronicus  

Robert Sharples

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Andronicus of Rhodes, Peripatetic philosopher, who recalled the attention of the school to the works of *Aristotle and *Theophrastus (see peripatetic school). With the assistance of the grammarian *Tyrannio (1) he arranged the works of both in an order whose influence can still be seen in modern editions. He wrote a treatise in at least five books on the order of Aristotle's works with discussion of their contents and authenticity, an account of his life, and a transcript of his will. The exact date of Andronicus' editorial work (between 70 and 20 bce) is debated, as is whether he became formal head of a Peripatetic school at Athens. He defined the soul as a power resulting from the mixture of the bodily elements, and located emotion in an irrational part of the soul. The work On the Emotions (ed. A. Glibert-Thirry (Gk. and Lat.), Corpus Latinum Commentariorum in Aristotelem Graecorum 7 vols.

Article

animals, attitudes to  

Richard Sorabji

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
This was the subject of a huge debate among the philosophers. Already in the 6th and 5th cents. bce*Pythagoras (1) and *Empedocles had attacked the killing or maltreatment of animals, partly on the grounds that *transmigration made us literally akin to them. But vegetarianism was made difficult by the mutual interconnections between religious sacrifice and meat-eating. Justice was treated as a gift of God to benefit humans, not animals, both by *Hesiod and in the myth ascribed to *Protagoras in *Plato (1)'s Protagoras. Little was conceded by *Democritus' extending considerations of criminal justice to dangerous animals.The decisive step, however, was taken not by the Presocratics, but by *Aristotle, who denied reason and belief to animals. Compensatingly, he allowed them a rich perceptual life, which he carefully disentangled from reliance on reason or belief. In ethics, he surprisingly combined the view that animals can be praised and blamed for their voluntary acts with the view that we owe them no justice, because we have nothing in common, and can conduct a just war against them. Aristotle's successor *Theophrastus, disagreed.