Dorothea Frede

Body and soul in ancient philosophy

The problem of body and soul has a long history that can be traced back to the beginnings of Greek culture. The existential question of what happened to the soul at the moment of death, whether and in what form there is life after death, and of the exact relationship between body and soul was answered in different ways in Greek philosophy, from the early days to Late Antiquity. The contributions in this volume not only do justice to the breadth of the topic, they also cover the entire period from the Pre-Socratics to Late Antiquity. Particular attention is paid to Plato, Aristotle and Hellenistic philosophers, that is the Stoics and the Epicureans.

Traditions of Theology

This collection of articles presents the views of the different philosophical schools of the Hellenistic area on various theological topics such as on the existence of the gods, their nature, and their concern for humankind. It also mirrors the changes of perspective that took place over the many centuries in this area, thus presenting the Hellenistic contribution within the larger framework of Greek philosophical theology.

Disintegration and restoration

Each of us will be trying to prove some condition or state of the soul to be the one that can render life happy for all human beings. - You that it is pleasure, we that it is knowledge. ( Phil , 11d) Although the main topic of the Philebus, the rivalry between pleasure and knowledge as candidates for the dignity of the highest good in human life, is a familiar one from the early Socratic dialogues on, for the wider congregation of Platos admirers the Philebus to this very day remains largely terra incognita. It is regarded as one of the late and difficult dialogues, an area for the specialist who has mastered the intricacies of the late Platonic doctrine that we find more alluded to than explained in the Parmenides, the Theaetetus, and the Sophist. What frightens the student of Platos ethics off the territory is most of all the long “dialectico-metaphysical preface” of the Philebus (14c-31b). For the first quarter of the dialogue is filled with a rather complex discussion of dialectical procedure, dealing with “the one and many,” and with a new kind of ontological classification that is, at least at first sight, more bewildering than enlightening and may exhaust the readers patience before he has even penetrated to the lengthy discussion of different sorts of pleasures that starts at 31b and fills most of the rest of the dialogue.

How Sceptical were the Academic Sceptics

Arcesilaus said that there is nothing that can be known, not even that residuum of knowledge that Socrates had left himself — the truth of this very dictum: so hidden in obscurity did he believe that everything lies.... His practice was consistent with this theory — he led most of his hearers to accept it by arguing against the opinions of all men, so that when equally weighty reasons were found on opposite sides on the same subject, it was easier to withhold assent from either side. They call this school the New Academy...(Cicero, Academica I.45)

PHILOSOPHIA ANTIQUA: A SERIES OF STUDIES ON ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

This collection of articles presents the views of the different philosophical schools of the Hellenistic area on various theological topics such as on the existence of the gods, their nature, and their concern for humankind. It also mirrors the changes of perspective that took place over the many centuries in this area, thus presenting the Hellenistic contribution within the larger framework of Greek philosophical theology.

Heidegger and the Scandal of Philosophy

The topic of this paper is a criticism ventured by Heidegger against Kant’s attempt to prove the objective reality of the objects of experience. This proof is given by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason as a refutation of psychological idealism.1 It has been further elucidated by Kant in the preface to the second edition, where he calls it “a scandal of philosophy and of human reason in general that the existence of things outside us must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubt by any satisfactory proof.”2 And Kant expresses the hope to have made up for this scandal by a strict proof.3