I argue that musical education in Plato’sRepublicis not aimed at developing a moral discriminatory faculty in the spirited part, but rather that its benefits are predominantly intellectual, and become fully apparent only at the philosophical stage of the guardians’ education. In order to prove this point, I discuss the intellectual state which the guardians’ philosophical education is meant to bring about, and then show why it is dependent on the earlier cognitive effects of musical education. Ultimately, I show that musical (...) education allows guardians to provide a unified analysis of both culture and nature. (shrink)

Ennead VI.7, the thirty-eighth treatise in order of composition, opens with a sustained attack on the idea that the form and function of various animal organs are the result of divine forethought and deliberation. In the first three chapters of the treatise, Plotinus argues that no formulation of the notion of deliberation can be made consistent with the facts about the nature of the intelligible2 and its priority over the physical world. As has been noted in the past,3 Plotinus's arguments (...) against the Platonic idea that teleological thinking is a genuine cause in the sphere of biology can also be taken, from the standpoint of his own philosophical principles, to be effective against an Aristotelian .. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

In this paper, I examine several key issues relating to the definition of knowledge as perception in the first part of Plato's Theaetetus. I begin by explaining the workings of the ‘secret doctrine’ of perception, which is introduced in order to support the idea that perception is incorrigible, and then turn to examine the two refutations of the definition of knowledge as perception which appear at the end of the first part of the Theaetetus. I shall present and explain distinct (...) lines of interpretation pertaining to these passages and explore the consequences they attempt to draw regarding Plato's views on the perceptual world, the nature of perception and how these bear on his conception of knowledge. (shrink)

In this second installment on the Theaetetus, I discuss Theaetetus' second and third definitions of knowledge, namely, ‘true judgment’ and then ‘true judgment with the addition of an account’. I offer a brief description of Socrates' intricate examination of these suggestions, concentrating especially on the discussion of false judgment and that of the so-called ‘Dream Theory’. I then proceed to map different lines of interpretation for these passages that have been offered by scholars writing in the last 40 years.

This volume brings together eleven papers written by specialists of ancient philosophy, focusing on philosophical polemics from the Classical to the Roman period, by way of Hellenistic philosophy.