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Displaying: 1-20 of 42 documents


1. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
David Sider

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2. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Nathan Nicol

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3. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Darren Gardner

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4. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Jean-Philippe Ranger

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5. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Enrico Piergiacomi

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Democritus, the Epicureans, and Seneca were deeply interested in the topic of the fear of death. They believed that this passion is generated by many wrong beliefs about its harmfulness that must be removed in order to help individuals lead a blissful mortal life. But all three also affirmed that, in some extreme cases, the fear of dying leads humans to paradoxically search for the very death they are trying to flee. Indeed, they argued that the fear of death sometimes results in self-destruction or suicide, and sometimes in a bad and unhappy form of life that is a state close to death, a condition comparable to «a long time in dying» (Democritus), of the sleepwalker (the Epicureans), or of a “half-life” (Seneca). In this paper, I try, on the one hand, to explain what this movement of the “escape-chase” of death is, and on the other, to recognize both the similarities and the differences between the three moralists.

6. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Jon Miller

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Stoic scholarship over the past several decades has identified the centrality of phantasiai or impressions for their accounts of action, determinism, and overall moral theory.ii While not disputing the importance of impressions, I do think that there are important unresolved issues surrounding their interpretation. In this paper, I shall identify two of those problems. Though I shall hint at a possible solution to one of the problems, my goal is not to placate but to agitate, for (as I argue in my conclusion) these problems ought to be disquieting to those interested in understanding Stoicism.

7. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Joseph G. DeFilippo

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8. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Paul A. Vander Waerdt

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9. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Brad Inwood

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10. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
David Robertson

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11. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Michael Erler

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12. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Alain Gigandet

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13. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Paul Schollmeier

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14. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Franco Manni

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From the ideas of Aristotle, De Saussure and Wittgenstein, philosopher Herbert McCabe elaborated an original anthropology. 'Meaning' means: the role played by a part towards the whole. Senses are bodily organs and sensations allow an animal to get fragments of the external world which become 'meaningful' for the behaviour of the whole animal Besides sensations, humans are ‘linguistic animals’ because through words they are able to 'communicate', that is, to share a peculiar kind of meanings: concepts. Whereas, sense-images are stored physically in our brain and cannot be shared, even though we can relate to sense-images by words (speech coincides with thought). However, concepts do not belong to the individual human being qua individual, but to an interpersonal entity: the language system. Therefore, on the one hand, to store images is a sense-power and an operation of the brain, whereas the brain (quite paradoxically!) is not in itself the organ of thought. On the other hand, concepts do not exist on their own.

book reviews

15. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Odysseus Makridis

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16. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Sarah Ruth Jansen

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17. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Yi Wu

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Contrary to its self-proclamation, philosophy started not with wonder, but with time thrown out of joint. It started when the past has become a problem. Such was the historical situation facing Athens when Plato composed his Socratic dialogues. For the philosopher of fifth century BCE, both the immediate past and the past as the Homeric tradition handed down to the citizens had been turned into problematicity itself. In this essay, I will examine the use of philosophy as memory theatre in Plato's Republic. I shall do so by interpreting Book X of the Republic as Plato's “odyssey” and suggest that such Platonic odyssey amounts to an attempt to re-inherit the collapsed spatial and temporal order of the fallen Athenian maritime empire. In my reading, the Odysseus in the Myth of Er comes forth for Plato as the exemplary Soldier-Citizen-Philosopher who must steer between the Scylla of ossified political principles and the whirling nihilism of devalued historical values, personified by Charybdis. I shall further suggest that Plato’s memory theatre also constitutes a device of amnesia and forgetting. The post-Iliadic Odysseus must drink of forgetfulness from the river Lethe, so that the revenant soldier, Er, and those who inherited the broken historical present during and after the Peloponnesian War, would be enabled to remember in a particular way. Such remembrance, I shall conclude, may be what Plato means by philosophy, a memory theatre of psychic regulation and moral economy that sets itself decidedly apart from earlier tragic and comic catharsis.

18. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Helen Tsalla

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Constitutions differ in kind, according to Aristotle (Politics, III), and the perverted ones are posterior to the nondeviant ones. This paper interprets Aristotle’s treatment of monarchy in light of his distinction in Posterior Analytics (I) between the order of being (constitutional types) and the order of experience (existing constitutions). The paper moves from an analysis of political definitions (Politics, III) and their psychological implications to Aristotle’s analysis of kingship as a species of constitutional correctness. It becomes apparent that, when discussing the relation between a political community and the rule befitting it, Aristotle is consistently using cognates of potency (dunamis) whereby a form already present in a thing becomes the principle of formal actualization of another. Such a mutual relation between rulers and ruled and between their psychological powers sheds light on Aristotle’s inclusion of kingship among proper constitutions, even in the absence of shared governance, and to his willingness to suggest policies that preserve even tyrannies.

19. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Ioannis Alysandratos, Dimitra Balla, Despina Konstantinidi, Panagiotis Thanassas

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Wonder is undoubtedly a term that floats around in today’s academic discussion both on ancient philosophy and on philosophy of education. Back in the 4th century B.C., Aristotle underlined the fact that philosophy begins in wonder (θαυμάζειν), without being very specific about the conditions and the effects of its emergence. He focused a great deal on children’s education, emphasizing its fundamental role in human beings’ moral fulfillment, though he never provided a systematic account of children’s moral status. The aim of this paper is to examine, on the one hand, if, to what extent, and under what conditions, Aristotle allows for philosophical wonder to emerge in children’s souls, and, on the other hand, how his approach to education may shed light to the link between wonder and the ultimate moral end, i.e. human flourishing. We will, thus, 1) try to offer a unified outlook of the philosopher’s views on children’s special cognitive and moral state, and 2) illustrate how wonder contributes in overcoming their imperfect state of being.

20. Politeia: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Yuanyuan Liu

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Creativity is a developing topic in philosophy in recent years, and it raises a series of challenging questions both in theory and practice for us. In this paper, I will explore creativity with the lateral thinking techniques which aim to solve problems in a creative and lateral way. I will examine the meaning of lateral thinking and its three kinds, the conceptual lateral thinking, the emotive lateral thinking, and the diagrammatic lateral thinking, trying to find out how the space of possible solutions is affected by lateral thinking, which separates the creative from the problem-solver.