Alex Long

Plato and the Stoics

Introduction A. G. Long 1. Cardinal virtues: a contested Socratic inheritance Malcolm Schofield 2. The Academy, the Stoics, and Cicero on Platos Timaeus G. Reydams-Schils 3. Chrysippus and Plato on the fragility of the head Jenny Bryan 4. Plato and the Stoics on limits, parts and wholes Paul Scade 5. Subtexts, connections and open opposition A. G. Long 6. Seneca against Plato: Letters 58 and 65 George Boys-Stones 7. Theoria and schole in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius: Platonic, Stoic or Socratic? Thomas Benatouil.

Immortality in Empedocles

Abstract The paper examines Empedocles’ attributions of immortality. I argue that Empedocles does not withhold immortality from the gods but rather has an unorthodox conception of what immortality is. Immortality does not mean, or imply, endless duration. A god’s immortality is its continuity, as one and the same organism, over a long but finite period. This conception of divine immortality then influences Empedocles’ other attributions of immortality, each of which marks a contrast with discontinuity, real or apparent. The nature of this contrast varies from context to context, and there is considerable heterogeneity in the list of immortal items. On the other hand, the attribution of immortality never implies that the item is completely changeless.

Socrates and Plato

The Pseudo-Platonic Seventh Letter announces one part of its conclusion in the title: the Seventh Letter is not genuine.1 Some will find the other part more unsettling: the Letter is not even a reliable guide to Plato’s life and philosophy. If so, we cannot dodge the question of authenticity by saying that the Letter was written, if not by Plato himself, then at least by someone who knew about his life and understood his thought. The authors, Myles Burnyeat and the late Michael Frede, explicitly target this ‘evasive manoeuvre’, as Frede calls it. On the contrary, they argue, the Letter is incompatible with Platonic theology and the political theory of the Laws. Frede’s notes have been edited by Dominic Scott, with the assistance of Carol Atack and several scholars present at the Oxford seminars of 2001 where Frede and Burnyeat first presented their arguments. The part of the volume based on Frede’s notes is, at times, difficult reading. Some of the editorial endnotes provide not merely references but an essential explanation of Frede’s meaning or argument. Frede provides a survey of epistolary writing in order to show how surprising it would be for this letter to be genuine; as Scott points out in his introduction, this does not prove inauthenticity, but it succeeds in shifting the burden of proof to defenders of authenticity. Frede then argues that the Letter’s insistence on the need for