The article reconstructs a late ancient debate concerning a dilemma raised by Aristotle’s De anima: How can an impassive soul account for perceiving qua being affected by perceptual objects? It is argued that Alexander and Themistius developed radically different approaches which can be better understood within a larger context of the dialogue between Aristotelianism and Platonism. The debate is shown to be instructive in underlining difficulties inherent in Aristotle’s account.

This essay pursues the question of vegetal respiration in Presocratics’ doctrines in contrast to Aristotle’s categorical circumscription of this vital process to the blooded animals. It finds that epithelial respiration in DK31 B100 is central to Empedocles’ conception of plants’ breathing, linked to their fructification, deciduousness, and overall life preservation. It also discusses plants’ respiration in relation to their body temperature in Menestor, then, concludes by analyzing Democritus’ psychological doctrine, arguing that the intake of fiery atoms pertained to all living beings, plants included.

In suggesting that its last chapter’s purpose is to provoke the reader to begin reconsidering and thus rereading the book they have just read, this article attempts to negotiate the interpretive quarrel as whether Xenophon’s Cyropaedia deserves a “sunny” reading—in which Cyrus straightforwardly embodies Xenophon’s own political ideals—or a more critical “dark” one, that separates the author from his protagonist. To help us get the most advantage from the paideia his book was intended to provide, Xenophon made a “sunny” first reading plausible, but he also sowed in his text the kind of clues—especially with respect to pleonexia—that would reveal his full intentions only to those who reread his book.

This paper aims to shed light on a difficult passage from Plato’s Alcibiades, in which Socrates presents an analogy between vision and knowledge. It argues that we can make sense of some puzzling Socratic claims if we acknowledge that the analogy points to the Theory of Forms. In urging Alcibiades to come to know himself, then, Socrates is urging him to come to know the Forms.

This paper argues that Plato’s arguments at Cratylus 386e-390d are more robustly analogical than is generally supposed. Accordingly, it first establishes the nature of the main analogues (cutting and burning, boring, and shuttling). It then demonstrates the argument’s underlying structural relation (that, through their destructive or divisive nature, these analogues create), extending it to the target domain (names) and to Socrates’ chosen method for evaluating that domain (i.e., etymologizing).

The contrast between the content of Alcibiades’ speech and the character delivering it is a well-known interpretative difficulty of the last speech of Plato’s Symposium, for Alcibiades reveals important truths about Socrates and his philosophical practice, yet he seems to be the least suited man to do so and praise philosophy. Offering a more positive account of Alcibiades as a character in the Platonic dialogues, I argue that this difficulty can be solved provided one takes into account the political agenda of the Symposium.

I analyse Theaet. 200e-201c. I hold that this passage provides specific insights into: first, the nature of sensible things and events; second, the nature of knowledge. I show that the text should be taken as an analogy, which means that Plato does not consider eye-witnessing to be a case of knowledge. Finally, I consider the relation between the trial analogy and the dialogue as a whole.

I argue that Plato thinks that the soul has location, surface, depth, and extension, and that the Timaeus’ composition of the soul out of eight circles is intended literally. A novel contribution is the development of an account of corporeality that denies the entailment that the soul is corporeal. I conclude by examining Aristotle’s objection to the Timaeus’ psychology and then the intellectual history of this reading of Plato.

Plato and Aristotle both grant and deny the status of techne to farming. How can we resolve this apparent inconsistency? The answer is by construing techne as a folk concept and farming as a marginal member of this category: farming is a techne in the sense of a specialized, rational practice, but it is a non-central case of techne because it is tied to the land and involves work outdoors.

While Aristotle’s explicit focus in Metaphysics Theta 1-5 is dunamis in the sense of the ‘capability’ a thing has to originate change in something else or in itself qua other, practically all translators, when they arrive at chapter four, switch to ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ as translations of dunaton and adunaton. Such a switch is neither defensible nor necessary and the relevance of Theta 4 is understood only without it.

Aristotle does not uniquely specify, much less define, eudaimonia in the EE’s ergon argument (1218b31-1219a39). He concludes simply that eudaimonia belongs to a certain kind. That Aristotle claims to have offered a horos of eudaimonia (1219a39-40) does not show that he has uniquely specified eudaimonia. This interpretation has implications for our understanding of Aristotle’s Eudemian account of eudaimonia; of Eudemian methodology; and of his use of ergon argument more generally.

Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean is often interpreted as a map of how character virtues are constituted. Taken in this way, critics argue that the Doctrine fails to describe accurately the specific virtues analyzed in books 3 to 5 of the Nicomachean Ethics. I argue that Aristotle does not offer the Doctrine as a map, but rather as a legend in terms of which any explication of a character virtue should be given. This interpretation resolves a number of interpretative problems in the Ethics and sheds light on the way the Doctrine does, and does not, guide action.

Aetius 2.24.1 includes a reference to the ‘corona’ apparent during a total solar eclipse, and suggests a theory, also discernible in Plutarch, that it is a case of the optical phenomenon known as a ‘halo.’

According to the Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus, a whole can exist in three ways: before the parts, composed of parts, or in the part. To unify the diverging scholarly interpretations of this idea, this paper re-examines Proclus’ well-known definition of the three wholes in his Elements of Theology, analyses lesser-known arguments from his Platonic Theology, and discusses two examples of Proclus’ theorem from the Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus.