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Stoic eros
Get PDFThe Stoics distinguish two forms of eros. In vicious agents eros is indeed a passion and thus born out of a defective rational judgment about what is needed for happiness. But there is also a positive form of erotic love, practiced by the Sage on the basis of knowledge, which aims to reproduce his virtuous condition in others. In this Element, the author shows how the Stoics' wider theoretical commitments in ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, and psychology support their duplex account of eros. They also consider the influence of Plato's Symposium on the Stoic account, arguing for hitherto unrecognized links with Socratic moral psychology. The Element concludes with an assessment of how the Stoic erotic ideal fares in relation to our intuitions about the non-egoistic and particularized nature of love
Free to love?: Unearthing Plato’s conception of free will in relation to love: Unearthing Plato’s conception of free will in relation to love
Get PDFThis thesis will attempt to explore the relationship between free will and erōs [έρως] within a Platonic context. Love has conventionally been characterized as something that happens to you, like an affliction of sorts, rather than as something that one rationally chooses to pursue or subject themselves to. I think the phrase ‘falling in love’ captures it to some degree: when we fall, it is an involuntary action, it can be scary, fast and somewhat exhilarating. One may ask: could I really have prevented the fall if I were more careful, more attentive to my surroundings, and sheltered myself from whatever unexpected thing prompted the fall? In other words: are we free to love, or as it were, not to love? This line of thought brings to the surface a question concerning the underlying relationship between love and reason, and further, makes one question the nature of the relation that love has to freedom qua being related to reason. By surveying the theory of the tripartite soul as offered in the Republic and overlapping this account with Gary Watson’s account of free will as presented in his seminal paper ‘Free Agency’, I will endeavour to make use of Watson’s view as a kind of rational reconstruction of a Platonic understanding of free will on the basis of tripartition and the supremacy of the rational part [λογιστικόν] of the soul [ψυχή] which results in self-mastery or self-rule. After providing an overview of the nature of love as presented in the Phaedrus during the Palinode (243e-257b), I will analyze whether there is any room for freedom as understood in the way of Platonic self-mastery. Does erōs fundamentally undermine a kind of Platonic freedom of the will? Delving into this inquiry of Platonic psychology in relation to free will allows for the unearthing of the interesting implication that erōs is actually an activity of reason and not a threat to it
Future Tuesday Indifference and Hedonic Value: The First-Order Roots of a Meta-Ethical Debate
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Seneca on Moral Improvement through Dialectical Study: A Chrysippean Reading of _Letter_ 87
Get PDFDoes Seneca entirely reject the utility of dialectical study for moral improvement? No, I argue here. Focusing on Letter 87, I propose that Seneca raises and disarms objections to formal Stoic arguments in order to help moral progressors avoid backsliding and advance towards ethical knowledge. I trace this method back to Chrysippus and show that reading Letter 87 in this Chrysippean framework yields a satisfying explanation of its otherwise puzzling features
Psychological disease and action-guiding impressions in early Stoicism
Get PDFThe early Stoics diagnose vicious agents with various psychological diseases, e.g. love of money and love of wine. Such diseases are characterized as false evaluative opinions that lead the agent to form emotional impulses for certain objects, e.g. money and wine. Scholars have therefore analyzed psychological diseases simply as dispositions for assent. This interpretation is incomplete, I argue, and should be augmented with the claim that psychological disease also affects what kind of action-guiding impressions are created prior to giving assent. This proposal respects the Stoic insistence that impression-formation, no less than assent, is an activity of reason. In so far as the wine-lover’s reason is corrupted in a different way from the money-lover’s, the two vicious agents will form different action-guiding impressions when faced with similar stimuli. Here I juxtapose the Stoic account of expertise, according to which experts form more precise action-guiding impressions compared to the amateur, in virtue of possessing a system of grasps (katalēpseis). So expertise enhances, whereas psychological disease degrades, the representational fidelity of the impressions that prefigure action. With these commitments, the Stoics can be seen to offer a nuanced and principled theory of cognitive penetration and to anticipate some recent proposals in epistemology and cognitive science
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Seneca on moral improvement through dialectical study: a Chrysippean reading of Letter 87
Get PDFDoes Seneca entirely reject the utility of dialectical study for moral improvement? No, I argue here. Focusing on Letter 87, I propose that Seneca raises and disarms objections to formal Stoic arguments in order to help moral progressors avoid backsliding and advance towards ethical knowledge. I trace this method back to Chrysippus and show that reading Letter 87 in this Chrysippean framework yields a satisfying explanation of its otherwise puzzling features
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