Tradition
Greek & Roman
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Diogenes and the naked Jain monk are not doing the same thing
When I read about Diogenes, people kept saying he was like our Digambara monks: no possessions, no shame about the body, indifferent to comfort. There's even a historical thread: a writer called Onesicritus, said to have been a pupil of Diogenes, went…
Started by Hetal Shah4 replies -
How does rasa theory compare with Aristotle’s catharsis?
I studied rasa theory in my literature classes and Aristotle's Poetics in a single comparative class. My professor said they're answering the same question: why do we enjoy art that shows painful emotions? But I'm not sure. Can someone explain what rasa…
Started by Kavya Menon4 replies -
Night shifts and Epictetus: the dichotomy of control in a care home
The Enchiridion opens by dividing things into those up to us (our judgments, impulses, desires and aversions) and those not up to us (our bodies, property, reputation, office). Epictetus says that suffering comes from treating the second kind as though it were…
Started by Elin Hedqvist4 replies -
The Nyaya five-membered syllogism versus Aristotle’s three
I've recently started comparing two traditions of logic. The Nyāya inference for others (parārthānumāna) has five members: Thesis (pratijñā): the hill has fire. Reason (hetu): because it has smoke. Example (udāharaṇa): wherever there is smoke, there is fire, as in a kitchen.…
Started by Vikram Sethi4 replies -
Rasa and catharsis: is tasting an emotion the same as purging it?
I grew up with rasa theory the way some people grow up with grammar. Recently I read Aristotle's Poetics for a class and was told that catharsis is "the Greek version of rasa". I don't think it is, and I want to…
Started by Kavya Menon4 replies -
Why does ‘the shape caused the door’ sound so wrong if Aristotle meant it?
When I was an apprentice my father explained Aristotle's four causes to me with a door: the cedar is what it is made of, the design is its form, I am the one who makes it, and it exists to be a…
Started by Hicham Ouazzani4 replies -
Is the ban on riba about bad outcomes, or about the form a transaction may take?
Many of my clients in Surrey are Muslim. Several of them won't take a conventional loan. One explained that it's not because the interest rate is too high; it's that a guaranteed return on money lent is wrong in itself, whatever the…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal4 replies -
How did Cynicism turn into Stoicism? What did Zeno keep from Crates, and what did he drop?
I'm a startup founder in Mumbai, recently burnt out, and reading my way back via the Stoics. Everywhere I read that Stoicism "grew out of" Cynicism, and that Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, studied with the Cynic Crates. But the two seem…
Started by Rohan Desai4 replies -
Natural, necessary and empty desires: running a small winery by Epicurus’s sorting
I make small-batch wine in the Adelaide Hills. The irony of an Epicurean in the wine trade isn't lost on me, but I've found his sorting of desires the most useful bit of ancient philosophy I've ever read. In the Letter to…
Started by Bec Doyle4 replies -
Why does asking “how do you know?” three times end every argument in our house?
My younger one is seven and has discovered the most powerful question in the world. I say the shop closes at nine. "How do you know?" Because it says so on the door. "How do you know the door is right?" Because…
Started by Thamarai Raman4 replies -
Is Aristotle’s “final cause” an explanation, or just a story about purpose?
When I first read Aristotle's four causes I recognised my trade immediately. The material cause of a door is the cedar. The formal cause is the pattern, the geometry my father taught me. The efficient cause is my hands and my tools.…
Started by Hicham Ouazzani4 replies -
My daughter asked why Plato wanted to ban stories. What exactly did he ban?
I read to my children every night, a mix of the Panchatantra, Tamil folk tales and whatever they bring home from the library. My eight-year-old saw a book on my shelf and asked what it was about. I said, a little carelessly,…
Started by Thamarai Raman4 replies -
How much of just war theory is really in Augustine?
Every introduction I read says that Augustine founded the Christian theory of just war. So I went looking for the treatise. I have read a fair amount of The City of God for other reasons and could not find one. What I…
Started by Siobhán Keane4 replies -
Epicureans and Cārvākas: two ancient materialisms, two ideas of pleasure?
I have spent years arguing that the Cārvāka or Lokāyata materialists deserved a fairer hearing than their opponents gave them. Reading Epicurus, I keep seeing the comparison, and I want to test it. Both schools hold that there is no soul that…
Started by Arvind Poojary4 replies -
How can I tell an argument is valid when I don’t know what its words mean?
Forgive me if this is basic; I'm very new to formal philosophy. I met this pair of arguments in a logic primer: All whales are mammals. All mammals are warm-blooded. So all whales are warm-blooded. All zorps are blickets. All blickets are…
Started by Kavya Menon4 replies -
Preferred indifferents: a real distinction, or having your health and despising it too?
I volunteer on a palliative-care unit and my own sympathies are Epicurean, so I come to this a little sceptical. The Stoics say virtue is the only good. Health, wealth, reputation, even life itself, are "indifferent": neither good nor bad. But then,…
Started by Nadia Haddad4 replies -
Who was Hunayn ibn Ishaq, and what was new about the way he translated?
Visitors to my shop often ask me about the "House of Wisdom" and the translators of the Abbasid age, and I realise I repeat the same few sentences I learned at school. The name I hear most is Hunayn ibn Ishaq. I…
Started by Zainab Kadhim4 replies -
Reading group: Aristotle’s Poetics as a craft manual, with the Nāṭyaśāstra beside it
I've always read the Poetics as "Aristotle's theory of art". Recently I came across the argument that this is a mistranslation of the whole enterprise: the Greek technē covered medicine, carpentry, navigation and poetry alike, and the Poetics is less aesthetics than…
Started by Kavya Menon4 replies -
Al-Fārābī’s virtuous city and Plato’s philosopher-king: the same answer for different reasons?
Baghdad is the city where al-Fārābī did much of his work a thousand years ago, and on bad days I find it hopeful that someone here once believed a city could be organised around wisdom. Al-Fārābī's Principles of the Opinions of the…
Started by Zainab Kadhim4 replies -
Why the translators skipped Greek tragedy, and what Ibn Rushd made of Aristotle’s Poetics
At the statue of Ibn Rushd near Córdoba's old walls I often tell visitors about Borges's story "Averroes' Search". Borges imagines the great commentator puzzling over two words in Aristotle's Poetics, "tragedy" and "comedy", for which his world has no examples, while…
Started by Rafael Lucena Prieto4 replies -
Why a sad film consoles where good advice doesn’t
At work, after a night when we lose someone we were close to, some of us have a ritual. We go to someone's flat, open a bottle of something, and watch a particular old film that makes everyone cry. I have done…
Started by Elin Hedqvist4 replies -
What did Xenophanes actually say about horses, oxen and the gods, and what was he arguing for?
My students love to quote "if horses could draw, they would draw gods like horses" as a knock-down argument against religion. As a theology teacher I find that interesting, because the man who said it was not an atheist, as far as…
Started by Nikos Theodoridis4 replies -
Hui Shi’s Ten Theses: paradoxes for their own sake, or a theory of space?
I spend most of my reading time on the Later Mohist canons, and I keep being drawn sideways to Hui Shi, Zhuangzi's friend and sparring partner. Almost nothing of his own survives. What we have is a list of ten theses preserved…
Started by Chen Yuting4 replies -
Mulla Sadra’s substantial motion: what if things change in their very substance?
I am an architect in Shiraz, and Mulla Sadra, who was born here, keeps pulling me back to questions about being. This one has been on my mind since I started reading about persistence. In Aristotle's framework, which Ibn Sina refined, a…
Started by Reza Tehrani4 replies -
The Abhidharma was the most thorough reductionism ever attempted. Was it right?
I taught chemistry for years, and when I first studied the Abhidhamma I recognised something familiar: a periodic table of experience. The Abhidharma traditions analyse everything a person is into ultimate constituents, dhammas: momentary events of consciousness, mental factors, material qualities. In…
Started by Nirmala Jayasekara4 replies -
Who was al-Ruhawi, and what does his Adab al-Tabib actually say about the physician?
At a hospital conference in Cairo, a speaker mentioned al-Ruhawi's Adab al-Tabib as one of the earliest systematic works on medical ethics, written in the ninth century, and then moved straight on to modern guidelines. I've been unable to find much more…
Started by Omar Ragab4 replies -
The sea battle argument is a scope mistake, and Aristotle half saw it
Chapter 9 of De Interpretatione makes a fatalist of somebody in my class every year. So here is the case I make to them, and I would like it attacked by people who know more logic than my students. The argument: if…
Started by Giulia Ferrante4 replies -
Natural law is a form of ethical naturalism, and it needs no ontological naturalism
I keep meeting a confusion, in students and in some books: that "naturalism" is one view, and that a Catholic, by definition, can't be a naturalist. My thesis: natural law theory is a form of ethical naturalism, because it holds that moral…
Started by Ikechukwu Anyanwu4 replies -
Does the dialetheist really believe contradictions, or has she changed the meaning of ‘not’?
A question I keep returning to. Quine, in Philosophy of Logic (1970), has a famous argument against "deviant" logicians. Suppose someone claims to accept a sentence of the form "P and not-P". Quine says: then whatever they mean by "not", it isn't…
Started by Tomasz Szewczak4 replies -
Did Epicurus actually make the argument from evil that carries his name?
In my theology seminar the lecturer put up the famous dilemma, "Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Able but not willing? Then he is malevolent...", with "Epicurus" printed under it. A friend in classics…
Started by Aoife Kilbride4 replies