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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT / ŹRÓDŁO PRZEKŁADUJanus, C. (Ed.). (1895). Euclidis sectio canonis (pp. 113–166). In: C. Janus (Ed.). Musici scrip-tores graeci. Lipsiae: B.G. Teubner.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT / ŹRÓDŁO PRZEKŁADUJanus, C. (Ed.). (1895). Euclidis sectio canonis (pp. 113–166). In: C. Janus (Ed.). Musici scrip-tores graeci. Lipsiae: B.G. Teubner.
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The incomplete commentary on Aristotle’s De sensu et sensato found in Prague, Metropolitan Chapter, Ms. M. 80, ff. 131vb–132vb was composed around 1250 in Oxford. Its author, whose identity is yet to be discovered, drew heavily on the so-called Oxford Gloss and Robert Grosseteste. It must have been originally designed for teaching purposes, presumably at the Faculty of Arts. Its peculiar form — dubitationes — indicate a divergence from literal explanations of source texts, leading to a more independent formulation of research problems. For this reason, it emerges as an intermediary form between expositions and question-commentaries. These dubitationes are divided into two thematically distinct blocks beginning with short lemmas. First seven of them deal with the relationship between an organism viewed as a psychophysical unity and its various operations, such as sensations and emotions. The other block contains five short dubitationes on animal senses and a longer one on whether celestial bodies have colour. This neat composition is, however, interrupted by an independent note regarding the order of the powers of the soul following the first dubitatio in the second block.
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Paul of Worczyn (1380–1430) was a mediaeval scholar, master at the Faculty of Liberal Arts of the University of Krakow in the years 1416–1430. He was the first Polish commentator on the Parva naturalia collection. This paper is an introduction to the edition of his commentary on De respiratione et inspiratione — one of the treatises from Parva naturalia.
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The philosophical discourses of violence developed in the 20th century can be grasped in two fundamental paradigms: the paradigm of force (Simone Weil) and the paradigm of domination (Horkheimer and Adorno). This article aims at situating René Girard’s theory of the culture within the paradigm of violence as an immediate force, stemming from Simone Weil’s phenomenological description of force in The Iliad. Simone Weil can be read as a model for modern reflection on violence in different ways. One of them can be identifying her interpretation of The Iliad as a starting point for the critique or even unmasking of blind reifying violence through the philosophy of culture: an example of this kind of translation can be found in Girard and his analyses of the figure of the scapegoat and rituals of violence, (sanctioned within myth), transferring violence into a sacral sphere. The pivotal point of the comparison is the concept of kydos, “the triumphant fascination of superior violence,” developed by Girard in Violence and the Sacred. The Greek term, which connects violence, understood in the mode of immediate force, with the magical and sacral dimension, serves as a key concept for comparison of the two thinkers’ conceptualizations of force. It allows interpretation of the conceptual tenets of Girardian theory, such as unanimity, symmetry, mimesis, and myth in the light of the key concepts of Weil, such as reification, symmetry, unawareness, and the blind mechanism of force. It also allows us to point out the discrepancies between the two conceptualizations (above all, the tensions between the rationality and irrationality of violence) and to grasp Girard’s theory as a philosophical commentary on Weil’s insights. This is going to fill a space on the map of modern discourses of violence.
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The Neoplatonic philosophers developed a complicated and quite ingenious concept of the grades of virtue, starting with such common human virtues, as the natural, ethical and political, and finishing which those attainable only by the real seekers of the highest truth, such as the purificatory, contemplative, paradigmatic, and hieratic. In the paper I trace the evolution of the Neoplatonic grades of virtue by means of the select passages from Damascius’ “Philosophical History,” which deal specifically with the character of Damascius’ revered teacher. The life of Isidore is presented by his student as an ascent along the path of Neoplatonic perfection, moreover, by chance or not, but in the surviving fragments of this work, which tells about many remarkable philosophers and theurgists, it is Isidore who ultimately attains the last seventh degree of virtue. Possessing outstanding personal qualities and even the gift of the seer, he was a teacher of the Socratic type, most eager to help students achieve the purificatory virtues that alone determine the further path of philosophical perfection. The position of Damascius and his attitude to the philosophical way of life is further illustrated by a series of lively portraits of Athenian and Alexandrian philosophers of his time.
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The aim of the article is to recall Homer’s similes (Π 384–393), in which the poet says that people ἐκ δὲ δίκην ἐλάσωσι, in other words, “drove away justice” (“When guilty mortals break the eternal laws, | Or judges bribed betray the righteous cause” – trans. by Alexander Pope). The author compares the Homeric simile with the situation outlined by Hesiod (Op. 248–251), who describes therein (and in other verses) the lack of the rule of law and its socio–political consequences. The article ends with a reminder of Aratus’ myth of Dike (96–136).
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The article presents a new proposal to supplement v. 12 of the anonymous hexametric piece containing, most likely, the lament of Ariadne abandoned by Theseus on Naxos. The suggestion offered here (οὐκ or, better, οὐδ’ αἰδ]ὼς ἐν ὀνείρωι instead of δήλ]ωσεν ὀνείρωι or ὡς ἐν ὀνείρωι developed by other scholars) allows us to guess that the piece may have expressed Ariadne’s contradictory feelings and her moral dilemma.
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The paper focuses on longer poems by the court poet Claudian that depict a State ruined by evil forces or the state of harmony. This poet from late Antiquity uses a vocabulary related to death and destruction. Evil, above all barbarians and political opponents, is also presented appropriately by the poet. Their characters function in the poems as disaster, ruin and ignominy. To depict these evil forces, their repeatability and how they are overcome on different levels, the poet uses the motive of the upward and downward movement, describing a dead character‘s way up to heaven and down to the underworld. Destruction rises from this movement of evil to the upper world, while the movement down to the underworld carries liberation and peace. Nevertheless, the poet implies, that the state of harmony is never definitive. Destruction and ruin repeat and recur in different forms in the poems, from the mythological past up to the present. In this sense, the characters in these poems function within a time loop and the story world presents the poet’s view on history and how it works on the divine and human level.
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Maksymos z Tyru, wędrowny grecki retor żył w II wieku i był przedstawicielem Drugiej Sofistyki. Występował z deklamacjami popisowymi (konferencjami) w Atenach oraz za czasów cezara Kommodusa (180–192) w Rzymie. Zachowało się po nim ich czterdzieści i jedna na różne tematy. Jednym z nich jest miłość, której poświęcił aż cztery wystąpienia. Nie są one głębokie. Retor wynagradza to słuchaczom popisem krasomówczym, sięgając popisowo po wiele aluzji literackich i cytatów poetyckich głównie z Homera i Platona. W prezentowanej tu porównuje jej przedstawienie przez Sokratesa z obrazem miłości u Safony. Przekładu tej dialeksy dokonałem na podstawie wydania: Maximus Tyrius: Dissertationes, ed. M.B. Trapp, Stutgardiae et Lipsiae 1994.
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This paper makes four arguments to challenge attributing to Plato a theory of Forms. I begin by closely studying Aristotle’s critique of the Forms to show that Aristotle was more focused on the epistemological implications of the Forms as opposed to their existence. Additionally, it remains unclear as to whether Aristotle was targeting Plato or the Platonists in his critiques. I then turn to the inconsistencies inherent in Plato’s discussion of the Forms. Essentially, this is incumbent upon Plato’s commitment to the belief that writing and language fail to capture the Forms holistically. As such, Plato’s variegated discussions of the Forms in the dialogues reflect his commitment to the mutability of the world concurrently with language. This carries over to the reception of Plato and Aristotle in Antiquity and beyond. I show that starting from Antiochus of Ascalon onwards, Plato and Aristotle were accepted to be representatives of a consistent philosophy. This historical ‘harmonization’ of Plato and Aristotle shows that opposition between both thinkers concerning the Forms was not a commonly held view. I then turn to Plotinus who syncretised Plato’s Forms with Aristotelian Intellect which was appropriated by al-Fārābī who rejected the idea that there had been any distinction in the first place. Al-Fārābī composed a treatise on the harmony of Plato and Aristotle, whereas Plotinus based his entire philosophical enterprise on the synthesis of Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy that proved historically influential. The resulting thesis of this paper is that any close historical study of Aristotle’s interpretation of Plato’s Forms would show that one cannot attribute to Plato a theory of Forms without facing serious contradictions.
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This article examines W. Jaeger’s work The theology of the early Greek philosophers: The Gifford Lectures, 1936. We believe that in addition to an extensive introductory article by V. V. Prokopenko, several points should be clarified. The first point is to reveal the ideological context within which this work was created and which it belonged to. The second point is to understand how W. Jaeger views the early Greek philosophers and what picture of early ancient intellectualism he paints. The disclosure of these two moments in unity lets us both to take a fresh look at the early ancient tradition of philosophizing and, to some extent, extrapolate this view by shifting the emphasis from the myth and logos plane to the area where mythopoetics (mythical theology) turns into theopoetics (philosophical theology).
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The article attempts to identify the characteristics of classical antiquity representation in The Library for Reading journal in the 1830s, when it was the most popular Russian periodical, with its editor Josef Senkovsky being one of the famous writers and eminent scholars. The study draws on 8 literary publications and 24 research papers related to Greco-Roman antiquity. The analysis of literary works accepted for publication by Senkovsky shows that they were to lead the reader to reflect on three subjects: the features of intellectual pastime in classical antiquity and modernity; the transient nature of power of both an ambitious individual and the great empire; and the similarities, differences, and accomplishments of antiquity and modern times. The works of belles-lettres reflected the ambiguous perception of classical antiquity in the 1830s: on the one hand, viewing its heritage as a “golden standard”, and on the other – picturing it as a bygone and distant epoch through the motifs of catastrophe and decrepitude. The analyzed research publications on antiquity are distinguished by a striking variety of topics and the editor’ desire to make the papers clear and fascinating for readers by presenting classical antiquity not as a boring collection of dead forms, but as full of life and struggle. Moreover, the research articles shaped the image of the classical studies as a dynamic and developing scholarly discipline filled with discoveries, acute disputes, and unsolved riddles. All scholarly publications on Greco-Roman antiquity wrapped thoughtful and profound reflections targeting the highly educated reading elite in a popular narrative addressed to the general audience. The key questions they raised were the significance of classical texts as reliable sources for studying ancient history and understanding ancient Greek and Roman worldviews, as well as the relationships between antiquity and the Ancient East or antiquity and modernity.
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Review of: Miroshnichenko, E.I. (2021) Synesius of Cyrene: Personality and Etiquette in Late Antique Epistolography. St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoria. 311 p
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The publication presents a commented Russian translation of chapters 120 and 127-136 from Calcidius’ Commentarius on Plato’s Timaeus dealing with demonology, a most important part of philosophical knowledge in the eyes of Neoplatonic thinkers. We know virtually nothing about Calcidius, neither the dates of his lifespan, nor the place where he lived and worked. Even his name has become debatable recently: Chalcidius or Calcidius. Meanwhile, his principal (and only) work, a Latin translation of Plato’s Timaeus accompanied by a detailed commentary, has become the most important link in the transmission of Plato’s legacy from Antiquity to the medieval Latin West. Up to the twelfth-century turning point and the rise of the School of Chartres, the reception of Plato in the West was channeled almost exclusively through Calcidius’s work. His translation of the Timaeus, which occupies pages 17a-92c in the Corpus Platonicum, carries on only up to page 57c; another translation of the Timaeus, which has been accessible in the Latin West, belonged to Cicero, and was even more abridged (pages 27d-47b with omissions); nevertheless, it was Cicero’s translation that St. Augustine (354-430) used, unaware, it would seem, of Calcidius’ work. The most probable dating of our author seems to be the 4th – the beginning of the 5th century AD. Calcidius reveals himself as an author in his own right, who had not only accomplished the serious job of translating philosophical terminology from Greek into Latin, but also contributed to the development of the genre of commentary, and so deserves to be studied not only as a transmitter of knowledge from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. The Russian translation is based on the standard Jan Hendrik Waszink’s edition (1975), taking into account more recent editions by C. Moreschini (2003), B. Bakhouche (2011), and J. Magee (2016), which are accompanied by translations into modern European languages; the chronological density of these publications testifies to the undoubtable surge of interest in Calcidius’ work in the last few decades.
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The purpose of this short note is to show by concrete examples how in some Russian (among others) translations of Plato’s Theaetetus the meaning changes to its exact opposite, which, of course, not only significantly complicates the understanding of the text for the reader inexperienced in ancient Greek, but sometimes brings him to an unsolvable logical impasse. The article analyzes two examples from T.V. Vasilyeva’s translation in comparison with some other translations and focusing on the corresponding contexts of the dialogue: Th. 160e7-8 and 164c7-d2. It is important that these are not some run-of-the-mill passages, but the key points for Plato to build the logic of Sophists: in the first case, he shows the necessary absence of the subject of sensation in the concept of universal movement; in the second, the role of the “agreement on words” in the eristic strategy of Sophists. In both cases, Vasilyeva’s translation, unfortunately, can only confuse the reader and make him doubt the logic and coherence of the Platonic text. From the point of view of the history of Plato’s translations, it would be interesting to consider possible sources of error in the first example (Th. 160e7-8) from multilingual translators of different epochs. From the practical point of view, the analysis of Vasilyeva’s translation of the Theaetetus, included in the “canonical” Russian-language edition of Plato, shows one thing: a new translation of the Theaetetus into Russian is earnestly needed.
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It is quite fair to consider Empedocles as one of the first naturalists. Many of his fragments describe the parts of animals, their composition, functions and origin. Nature as a whole appears to us as a well-oiled mechanism in which different forces operate. As an illustration of this thought, the article considers the fragment B 84 DK. In it Empedocles, according to Aristotle, describes vision. In his characteristic style Empedocles does so by means of metaphor. In the first part of the fragment, he talks about the need to carry a lamp if one is travelling in the dark. But the lamp also needs to be protected from the wind, for which purpose some kind of lantern is attached to it, which prevents the wind from blowing. What this device is remains a mystery. Based on philological analysis, the article tries to imagine how this device might have looked like. The second part of the fragment is a mirror image of the first, it echoes it, but in different words. Here the metaphors of primordial fire, round-eyed Kora, and miraculous funnels attract special attention. Analysis of the fragment shows that the rich religious life of the time could have had a great influence on the formation of these metaphors. The fragment is given in Marwan Rashed's reconstruction.
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The article presents a new original view on the circumstances and features of the origin of euhemerism in all its genre diversity - from mythographic utopias, chorographies and mirabilia to pseudoperiples and paradoxography. An in-depth analysis of the sources that have come down to us gives grounds to assume with a fairly high degree of probability early Ptolemaic Alexandria as its main launch pad and epicenter and to link it with the activities of Demetrius Phalereus, the founder of the famous in antiquity Mouseion and the Library.
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In his work De Insomniis, Aristotle pointed out that after observing motion, objects at rest appeared to move. In modern literature, this effect, called the "waterfall illusion" or "the motion aftereffect", is widely researched and explained both scientifically and philosophically. Most researchers consider in the first place why this happens and what it means. This allows us to put forward new hypotheses and argue in favor of existing theories, in particular, thanks to the waterfall illusion, a hypothesis about multi-threaded data processing by neurons was proposed and some features of the work of adaptive perception mechanisms were demonstrated. At the same time, the implicit and unreasoned choice of a specific method of explanation to assert the advantages of a certain model while neglecting other empirical experience may be a methodological error, which can be seen in the example of S. Prosser's concept of dynamic frames.
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The article discusses the philosophical implications of the Greek myth of Eos and Tithonus. In relation to different versions of this myth, the opinions of various authors regarding the problem of finding and maintaining individual identity in the conditions of bodily metamorphoses, as well as the problems of aging (gradual loss of the body and memory) are considered. The question is raised about the body of the mythological hero and the means of transmitting the fabula, whether it is transmission in the oral tradition through speech-logos or transmission through the text fixed on a material carrier (which can be lost, corrupted, restored ). The question of the interrelation of the myth of Eos and Tithonus with the details of the biography of the authors who refer to it is being studied. In this respect, the following are studied: the Homeric hymn to Aphrodite, Sappho’s “Tithonus poem” (including the history of its finding and reconstruction), as well as the poem “Tithonus the Cicada” by Alexei Parshchikov, which puts the ancient story into the modern context of reasoning about the “digital body”, transhumanism and cloning.
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The article deals with Aristotle's doctrine of syllogism as an elementary form of proof. According to Aristotle, of all fourteen valid syllogism forms, the first form of the first figure is best suited for this task, since its conclusion is "general and affirmative." But Aristotle also considers a special case of this syllogism form, when both terms of the first premise are equal, and its converse goes without restriction. Aristotle shows that in this case, on purely logical grounds, it is impossible to distinguish middle term from major, since they are interchangeable. Therefore, such syllogisms turn out to be ambiguous and do not prove anything. What is to be done? Aristotle turns to epistemological grounds to make the definition converse impossible and thus to get the ability to state it as the major syllogism premise. He claims that knowledge of the formal cause of a thing leads to the knowledge of a thing itself, but not vice versa. A determinable requires clarification with the help of the determinant, and not on the contrary. Therefore, the formal cause of a thing by Aristotle is always the cause, and not the thing itself, or the action. Therefore, if the definition serves as a major premise of the syllogism, then the formal cause of a thing always turns out to be a middle term, while for the major premise stands the thing itself. Thus, the interchangeability of terms is disestablished, since, as Aristotle says, the cause has the first place in comparison with its effect. As a result, a syllogism becomes complete, unambiguous, and quite “usable”.
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