Este artigo se ocupa em averiguar os termos com os quais Cícero, Lucrécio e Diógenes Laércio buscaram tornar compreensível a prólêpsis de Epicuro. Cícero forneceu os termos antecipatio, praenotio e informationem; Lucrécio, notitia, exemplare et vestigia, a fim de dar voz e expor entre os latinos a doutrina do epicurismo. Diógenes Laércio indicou os termos katalêpsis, dóxa, énnoia, hypólêpsin, com os quais, segundo ele, os próprios epicuristas tentaram explicitar a prólêpsis de Epicuro. Por fim, o artigo expõe a opinião (...) de alguns comentadores contemporâneos. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the equivalent of Epicurus’ πρόληψις, the second criterion of the Epicurean Canonic (DL X 31 = fr. 35 Usener), in Lucretius’ De rerum natura (DRN). Taking stock of the several occurrences of the Latin terms notitia and notities in the six books of the poem, I show that Lucretius’ view about preconception remains faithful to Epicurus’ πρόληψις, and that the poet does not endorse a less empiricist position than his Master because of some influence of (...) the Stoic ἔννοια. To this end, I will also briefly address an important case in which πρόληψις, albeit not clearly mentioned, plays an essential role, namely the prolepsis of the deity (DRN V 1169–1182). Finally, I explain how Lucretius can be of some help in grasping the controversial relationship between the criterion of πρόληψις and that of ἐπιβολὴ τῆς διανοίας (animi inectus/iactus), showing in which way the poet seems to consider the latter as a criterion of truth in its own right. (shrink)

This book offers a reconstruction of the early Stoic doctrine of prolepsis, revealing it to be much closer to Platonic recollection in certain respects than ...

This paper is an extended prolepsis in favor of epistemic situationism, the thesis that epistemic virtues are not sufficiently widely distributed for a virtue-theoretic constraint on knowledge to apply without leading to skepticism. It deals with four objections to epistemic situation: 1) that virtuous dispositions are not required for knowledge, 2) that the Big Five or Big Six personality model proves that intellectual virtues are a reasonable ideal, 3) that the cognitive-affective personality system framework proves that intellectual virtues are a (...) reasonable ideal, and 4) that weakening the reliability requirement through epistemic dependence or abilism means that common inferential strategies really are virtues. The paper concludes with reflections on the replication crisis in psychological science. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 31 This paper analyzes the theories of three representatives of Second Scholasticism, namely Francisco Suárez, SJ, John Poinsot, OP, and Francisco de Oviedo, SJ, on the issue of the intuitive and abstractive cognition of the external senses. Based on a comparison of their theories, linked to the historical starting point of the debate in the first decades of the fourteenth century, the paper argues that the doctrinal and argumentative matrix of these authors’ texts is significantly ‘present’ (...) in the Second Scholastics as well. 1) As far as naturally produced sensation is concerned, all these authors, including Poinsot, follow the Scotistic justification of the natural infallibility of the external senses; 2) regarding the possibility of supernaturally caused objectless perception, Poinsot’s position can be labelled, surprisingly, Scotistic; 3) Suárez’s theory, although partly similar to the doctrine of the late Ockham, is an idiosyncratic stance; 4) Oviedo’s conception, even more distant from that of Ockham, can be characterized as ‘Auriolian’ and ‘Chattonian’. (shrink)

Case, agreement, and A-movement dependencies across finite clause boundaries, such as Hyperraising or Long-Distance Case or Agreement [LDA], are available in many typologically diverse languages. The research on such dependencies typically distinguishes between cross-linguistically restricted true A-dependencies across finite clauses, and generally available binding-like A′-dependencies as found in Prolepsis. In this paper, we investigate both types of configurations in parallel and refer to this as the A-domain. Since the diagnostics to distinguish A-configurations vary across languages and often cannot be compared (...) directly, we define four characteristic properties: whether the construction is restricted by matrix predicate selection, whether movement in the embedded clause is involved, whether the dependency shows locality restrictions, and whether there are semantic restrictions on the relevant DP. By combining different values of the characteristic properties, we show, differently from previous approaches, that the A-domain does not simply consist of two types of configurations, but that the empirical landscape represents a continuum of five A-constructions. We suggest a theoretical implementation of our empirical findings, which is built on a predicational relator phrase above the embedded CP and propose that, in some of the constructions, these two projections fuse into one. We employ a minimalist probing approach which relies on differences in the base-generated position of the relevant DP, differences in the feature composition of the embedded C, a composite probe hierarchy yielding three types of feature-dependencies of composite probes, and, resulting from that, different probing mechanisms. Lastly, this paper also contributes methodological tools for disentangling constructions of the A-domain. (shrink)

A teoria do conhecimento desenvolvida por Guilherme de Ockham no século XIV traz uma importante distinção entre dois níveis de cognição: conhecimento intuitivo e conhecimento abstrativo. O conhecimento intuitivo ou notitia intuitiva tem uma relação de causalidade com os objetos do mundo extramental: os objetos são a causa do conhecimento intuitivo. Este conhecimento é aquele pelo qual pode-se afirmar que algo existe ou não existe; ele desempenha um papel central na epistemologia ockhamiana porque é destacado como a base de todo (...) o conhecimento. O conhecimento abstrativo ou notitia abstrativa, por sua vez, diz respeito ao conhecimento inteligível dos objetos sensíveis que prescinde da existência ou não-existência do objeto. Apesar de todo o conhecimento derivar do conhecimento intuitivo, o conhecimento abstrativo não é imediatamente formado a partir da notitia intuitiva. Nesse sentido, nosso objetivo nessa comunicação é mostrar como se dá a passagem do conhecimento intuitivo para o conhecimento abstrativo através da teoria do habitus desenvolvida por Ockham. O pano de fundo dessa discussão é a noção essencial de que as etapas envolvidas no processo cognitivo do Venerabilis Inceptor, isto é, tanto o conhecimento intuitivo quanto o conhecimento abstrativo são atos mentais, de modo que o ato mental neste modelo é não somente o ponto de partida das operações intelectuais como também o produto final: o conceito. Assim, apresentaremos como as noções supracitadas se articulam na teoria cognitiva ockhamista. (shrink)

This paper examines the argumentation strategy prolepsis: anticipating and subsequently responding to an argument before it has been made. Although prolepsis is common to a variety of arguments, it seems insufficiently studied or understood—or, worse, misunderstood as simply a “feint.” Drawing on scholarship in rhetorical theory and cognitive and social psychology, I offer a new understanding of prolepsis, recognizing the technique’s potential in argumentative discourse—especially in the search for “common ground.”.

Prolepsis is a rhetorical device in which an expected future event is presented as though it was already an accomplished fact. In the speed and instantaneity of current experience, our time is structured like a prolepsis. Through an analysis of the proleptic structure of some contemporary practices, I raise questions concerning the political nature of time's interval. In the proleptic organization of time, the interval between present and future is devalued as an obstacle to an anticipated event. However, with the (...) help of Kant and Heidegger, I argue that time's interval consists of an act of temporalization which at once dissolves what has already presented itself and generates an absolutely new and singular event of time and being. The interval is an event in the process of being accomplished, and it is this properly political dimension of experience that is foreclosed in our contemporary organization of time. (shrink)

The Roman Stoics hold that all humans possess the seeds of virtue and wisdom and innately develop certain natural concepts alternately called ' prolepseis,' 'koinai ennoiai,' or 'phusikai ennoiai.' This dissertation addresses the relation between these doctrines, concept-formation, and intellectualist psychology in the Early Stoa. The prevailing view is that the 'empiricism' of the Early Stoa precludes interpreting prolepsis and koine ennoia as tacitly functioning innate ideas; rather, the Roman Stoics are influenced by Platonic recollection. I argue to the contrary (...) that this interpretation is well grounded in the extant fragments from Chrysippus. ;Chapter One examines the evidence for regarding 'prolepsis,' 'koine ennoia,' and ' phusike ennoia' as technical terms designating a single Chrysippean doctrine. Chapter Two shows that the Stoic theory of concept-formation poses serious difficulties concerning the criterial function and scope of prolepsis and koine ennoia. These problems are addressed in Chapters Three and Four respectively. I conclude that they can be resolved by interpreting prolepsis and ennoia as successive stages in the development of reason. Specifically, I argue that prolepsis is a form of tacit knowledge that is providentially guaranteed to be true whereas koinai ennoiai are the articulations of prolepseis that serve as criteria for evaluating other beliefs. Since prolepseis and koinai ennoiai have identical propositional content, the Stoics tend to use the terms interchangeably, leading to confusions in both ancient sources and recent scholarship. ;Chapters Five and Six examine the historical and philosophical context of Stoic prolepsis. I suggest that the doctrine is appropriated from Epicurus in two stages. Academic criticism of the first stage has led to the 'empiricist' reading of Stoic epistemology. However, in response to this criticism Chrysippus develops the dispositional innatism that is preserved in the Roman Stoics' metaphor of seeds of virtue and wisdom. Plato's dialogues are influential throughout the formation of this theory. The Stoics regard their intellectualist psychology and science of dialectic as the true Socratic philosophy and offer prolepsis as an alternative to Platonic recollection. I conclude by suggesting that in the Roman period Stoic prolepsis is used to reformulate Platonic recollection as a theory of dispositional innatism. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Millennium Jahrgang: 10 Heft: 1 Seiten: 435-462.

According to the Stoics, the psychology of adult human beings is unified in a striking sense: each of the soul's perceptive, discursive, and motivational functions belongs to the single faculty of reason. Reason, in turn, is constituted by a set of conceptions (ennoiai) and preconceptions (prolêpseis) acquired on the basis of experience. The few secure sources that bear on this theory in the early Stoa suggest that certain of these empirically acquired conceptions function, somehow, as a criterion of truth in (...) human perception and rational cognition generally. The conceptions associated with this cognitive role are sometimes said to be shared or common (koinai).These tenuous but intriguing claims are the focus of .. (shrink)

To the historian concerned with the long development of Western political thinking, the medieval phase has frequently proved to be difficult to access and the significance of its various aspects or components hard to assess. One way around that difficulty is to sharpen the focus by adopting a world-historical perspective and by taking as one's criterion of significance the degree to which the components of the medieval legacy helped shape the unquestionable singularity of Western political thought. Take that tack, however, (...) and one is likely to fall victim to charges of having succumbed to some sort of 'mythology of prolepsis'. That being so, it is long since time to respond, as here, with a word or two 'in praise of prolepsis'. (shrink)

In a recent article, C. H. Kahn addresses an ‘old scholarly myth’, namely the idea that Book I of the Republic began life as an earlier, independent dialogue and was subsequently adapted to serve as a prelude to the much longer work that we know. The case for this hypothesis rests both on stylometric considerations and on the many ‘Socratic’ features that Book I, unlike the rest of the Republic, shares with Plato's earlier works. Having disposed of the positive arguments (...) in favour of the ‘myth’, Kahn turns to the contrary—and in his view overwhelming—evidence that Book I was composed from the start as an integral part of the longer Republic. He catalogues 12 passages in Book I, accounting for roughly half its length, whose full significance will, he argues, only emerge if they are seen as instances of prolepsis, deliberate anticipations of what is to come in later books. (shrink)

Osservazioni sulle fonti luterane della controversia De notitia Dei naturali insita in infantibusStarting from a passage of Adam Steuart’s refutation of Descartes’ Notae in programma quoddam, this essay reconstructs the debate on the innate idea of God in infants that took place in Lutheran-oriented philosophy and theology between the end of the 16th and the middle of the 18th century. It is shown that one of the most common questions in modern philosophy is closely connected with theological thinking - in (...) this case Lutheran - from the formulation of the dogmatic systems up until their criticism by the Enlightenment. Also explained is the way in which the reception of Cartesianism was singularly influenced by the various backgrounds and the different and continuously changing polemical goals that inspired each author. In fact, Descartes was even accused of being a Lutheran. (shrink)

Retomando alguns dos principais estudos sobre o conhecimento intuitivo do não existente em Guilherme de Ockham, pretendemos mostrar tanto alguns equívocos do que ficou estabelecido como a atual interpretação do problema, como também oferecer uma nova análise que enfatiza os vínculos entre os conceitos de evidência e de causalidade na argumentação ockhamiana. Fundamentando nossa exposição, estará a análise de pequenos trechos dos textos de alguns dos principais debatedores e intérpretes medievais do texto ockhamiano quanto a esse tema, como Walter Chatton, (...) Adão de Wodeham e Gabriel Biel, os quais nos pareceram essenciais para uma boa compreensão da própria posição ockhamiana. (shrink)

The theory of notitiae naturales or κοιναὶ ἔννοιαι was part of the ancient Stoic epistemology. It served as precondition of any knowledge. Within the framework of the humanist rediscovery of ancient sources this theory became an important aspect of Philipp Melanchthon’s theological anthropology. This paper examines the polyvalent perspectives of the theory of notitiae naturales in Melanchthon’s philosophy and the role it played among Lutheran and Calvinist scholars, particularly regarding Rom 1: 19, where Paul stated some kind of a natural (...) knowledge of God. The idea of notitiae communes or “common notions” as an a priori precondition of knowledge was widely spread both on the continent and in England in early modernity. It came to an end by John Locke’s critique in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. (shrink)

ExcerptExcept one hopes for what is beyond hope, he will not find it, for it will remain impossible to examine and to understand. HeraclitusIf it is the case, which we would like to prove in this essay, that hope itself is the sacred element that lies at the heart of philosophy, sine qua non, then the question of the relation between theology and philosophy can be posed in this way: What does philosophy have to do with hope? Kant asked: “For (...) what may I hope?” Perhaps it is the case that the questions of knowledge…. (shrink)

The largely unstudied insigne of the proconsul Africae, governor of the late Roman province Africa, is preserved in the primary copies of Notitia Dignitatum from around 400 ce and known from copies of the lost Codex Spirensis. This article, based on a combination of legal and art historical methods, seeks to determine the meaning of the insignia’s symbolic representations, especially its references to maritime shipping. Details in the insignia, including the colors used in it, can be considered a visual statement (...) of the proconsul Africae’s scope of competence and intended to amplify the association in the Notitia Dignitatum. The reader in antiquity of the Notitia Dignitatum possibly saw the Africa proconsularis emblem as illustrating that official’s crucial role in producing supplies for Rome and delivering them by maritime freight. It is of note that no other insignia in the Notitia Dignitatum have maritime symbols or other details relating to seafaring. The depictions’ high degree of technical detail attests to the reliability of the insignia to the Notitia Dignitatum in studies concerned with Late Antiquity. (shrink)

The two triads mens, notitia, amor (trin. 9) and memoria, intellegentia, voluntas (trin. 10) are crucial for understanding Augustine’s Trinitarian triads in De Trinitate. However, Augustine’s intention in proceeding from mens, notitia, amor to memoria, intellegentia, voluntas remains unclear. There is a common tendency to regard the latter triad as superior to the former one because the latter one is an inward progression to the mind in analogizing the Trinity. This perspective of inward progression, however, cannot give a full account (...) of the complicated relationship between these two triads. This article calls attention to Augustine’s use of knowledge and love in these two triads. The analysis of the pattern of knowledge and love reveals that Augustine understands knowledge and love in a different way in these two triads. In mens, notitia, amor, Augustine personalizes knowledge and love and regards them as analogous to the Son and the Holy Spirit. In memoria, intellegentia, voluntas, however, Augustine interprets knowledge and love as actions and portrays the mind’s self-knowing and self-loving as components of human spirituality. The different patterns of knowledge and love show that the second triad is not intended to be superior to the first. Rather two triads should be understood as complementary. Moreover, the turning from mens, notitia, amor to memoria, intellegentia, voluntas also shows that Augustine intends to include a spiritual dimension into his Trinitarian theology. This means that one should expect that Augustine’s Trinitarian theology has connections to his soteriology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Concordance to Descartes’ “Meditationes de Prima Philosophia.” by Katsuzo Murakami, Meguru Sasaki, Tetsuichi NishimuraTuomo Aho and Mikko YrjönsuuriKatsuzo Murakami, Meguru Sasaki, and Tetsuichi Nishimura. Concordance to Descartes’ “Meditationes de Prima Philosophia.” Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 1995. Pp. v + 355. Cloth, DM 198.00.This is a product from the Descartes database of Tokyo University scholars. It gives an account of the occurrences and contexts of words in the Meditationes (the main (...) text only), aiming at a complete survey of vocabulary. The work keeps strictly to the form of a lexical concordance; in addition to the word lists, there is only a brief instruction. (A bibliographical note about editions might be useful.) Technical realization is excellent. But concordances like this are big and expensive books; could they possibly be published more easily in electronic format?Most words of Descartes’s text are included in the main concordance. There they are listed following the alphabetic order of standard dictionaries, and in each entry the total amount of occurrences of the word is announced. Then every occurrence is quoted in its context (one line = approximately two in the Adam-Tannery standard edition). Quotes within each entry are arranged and their places identified by digits showing the page and line in AT edition.Some function words and most indeclinables are placed in an index which gives only the numbers and locations of their occurrences. In most cases this is certainly reasonable, but some choices are problematic. For example, why have the 638 + 36 occurrences of qui in its two senses (‘who’, ‘what’; ‘how’, ‘whereby’) been printed with full contexts, while the philosophically interesting adverb plane (‘plainly’, 55 times) is to be found merely in the index?Concordances are uncommon for modern philosophy, but they are familiar and valuable tools in work with ancient texts. Obviously they function in linguistic research, and even the present Descartes book has largely the same goal: to serve the study of neo-Latin language. Undoubtedly, a rigorous case study like this is important for such [End Page 135] investigations. (There remains, however, a difficulty, as the editors point out, because the AT text differs from original editions, mainly in matters of orthography and punctuation.) But also a completely nonlinguistic philosopher can benefit from this material. It is useful to see all occurrences of a word together and at once; many careless generalizations could be avoided by checking from a concordance.One can make amusing observations at random. Thus some terms have remarkably low frequencies (notitia, qualitas occur 4 times; materia 3 times; absolutus, principium 2 times; abstractus, definire, dispositio, species 1 time; intentio, possibile not at all). On the other hand, there is an overwhelming concentration on the semantic family round cogitare, cognoscere, comprehendere, concipere, percipere. Descartes has some idiosyncratic favorites, like advertere/animadvertere. One also notices his strong liking for words of seeing and light (15 arguments from lumen naturale!). It hardly is a surprise that his most cherished favorite is ego (492 times).Tuomo Aho and Mikko Yrjönsuuri University of HelsinkiCopyright © 1998 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc... (shrink)

Table of Contents -/- Introduction: Epistemic Situationism by Abrol Fairweather -/- 1. Is Every Epistemology A Virtue Epistemology? by Lauren Olin -/- 2. Epistemic Situationism: An extended prolepsis by Mark Alfano -/- 3. Virtue Epistemology in the Zombie Apocalypse: Hungry Judges, Heavy Clipboards and Grou Polarization by Berit Brogaard -/- 4. Situationism and Responsibilist Virtue Epistemology by James Montmarquet -/- 5. Virtue Theory Against Situationism by Ernest Sosa -/- 6. Intellectual Virtue Now and Again by Chris Lepock -/- 7.Responsibilism Out (...) of Character by Kurt Sylvan -/- 8. Epistemic Situationism and Cognitive Ability by John Turri -/- 9. Epistemic Situationism, Epistemic Dependence and the Epistemology of Education by J. Adam Carter and Duncan Pritchard -/- 10. The Situationist Challenge to Educating For Intellectual Virtues by Jason Baehr -/- 11. Feminist Responsibilism, Situationism and the Complexities of the Virtue ofTrustworthiness by Heidi Grasswick -/- 12. Moods and Their Unexpected Virtues by Nicole Smith . (shrink)

Sub hoc titulo, sed lingua polona, publicata est in ephemeride "Archiwum Historii Filozofii i Myśli Społecznej" 40 paginarum dissertatio de uno e bene meritis in philosophico campo Societatis Iesu auctoribus saeculi XVII Cuius brevis latina synthesis pro „Fori Philosophici" lectoribus hic proponitur. Auctor enim ille breves solum hucusque obtinebat notitias, ast ipsius Philosophia Aristotelis explicata [...], anno 1678 publici iuris facta, accuratiorem visa est mereri ac postulari considerationem. Aperte dictum est ita in quadam ex eius recensionibus. En ratio praesentis articuli (...) de vita textuque publicato ab Adamo Quirine Krasnodębski. (shrink)

Sub hoc titulo, sed lingua polona, publicata est in ephemeride "Archiwum Historii Filozofii i Myśli Społecznej" 40 paginarum dissertatio de uno e bene meritis in philosophico campo Societatis Iesu auctoribus saeculi XVII Cuius brevis latina synthesis pro „Fori Philosophici" lectoribus hic proponitur. Auctor enim ille breves solum hucusque obtinebat notitias, ast ipsius Philosophia Aristotelis explicata [...], anno 1678 publici iuris facta, accuratiorem visa est mereri ac postulari considerationem. Aperte dictum est ita in quadam ex eius recensionibus. En ratio praesentis articuli (...) de vita textuque publicato ab Adamo Quirine Krasnodębski. (shrink)

The neurosciences seem to thrive on the constantly postponed promise to herald a definitive understanding of the human mind. What are the dynamics of this promise and its postponement? The long and fascinating history of the neurosciences offers ample material for looking into the articulation of neuroscientific research and contemporary culture. New tools and research methods, often announced as breakthroughs, brought along new representations of brain activity. In addition, they shaped the way of conceptualizing the brain’s mode of operation even (...) where they failed to meet the high expectations initially kindled. Rather than arriving at a definitive and final understanding of human nature by solving the riddle of the human brain, the neurosciences appear to operate as active interfaces mobilizing human societies to ever new research endeavors. (shrink)

Hanc quoque ‘iucunditatem’, si vis, transfer in animum , rnodo intellegas inter ilium qui dicat Tanta laetitia auctus sum ut nihil constet et eum qui Nunc demum mihi animus ardet, quorum alter laetitia gestiat, alter dolore crucietur, esse ilium medium [Quamquam haec inter nos nuper notitia admodum est] qui nee laetetur nee angatur, itemque inter eum qui potiatur corporis expetitis voluptatibus et eum qui crucietur summis doloribus esse eum qui utroque careat.

Ockham distingue entre la ¿notitia intuitiva¿ y la ¿notitia abstractiva¿. Este es el punbto de arranque de la filosofía moderna posterior. Pocos estudios se han dedicado a relacionar y confrontar ambas nociones. Tal es el objetio del presente artículo.

En un trabajo nuestro anterior, después de haber procurado una exposición crítica de la doctrina ocamista del conocimiento desde el punto de vista de su contraposición entre ¿notitia intuitiva/notitia abstractiva¿, dejábamos pendientes dos aspectos de la máxima importancia e interés: Uno, referente a las fuentes conceptuales o presupuestos doctrinales de la doctrina ocamista al respecto; otro, respecto de las consecuencias implícitas en dicha doctrina. Lo primero, nos servirá para valorar adecuadamente esta doctrina explícita y ver sus fundamentos. Lo segundo, para (...) medir su importancia histórica y comprender sus resultados y su influencia en posiciones sistemáticas posteriores a Ockham, pero precontenidas ya de alguna manera en su horizonte conceptual. Lo primero, corresponde a lo que pudiéramos denominar ¿pre-textos¿ o presupuestos implícitos; lo segundo, podría denominarse como ¿pos-textos¿ o consecuencias doctrinales, igualmente implícitas. De acuerdo con la idea de que todo el que escribe o habla, dice no sólo lo que explícitamente expresa, sino también lo que presupone y lo que implica en sus asertos como consecuencias. De todo esto queremos ocuparnos a continuación. Y ello, con las limitaciones de espacio que este tipo de publicaciones lleva consigo; sin contar con las deficiencias que se deban cargar en nuestras personales limitaciones, como autor. (shrink)

How did John’s Gospel draw and compel Augustine before and during the composition of Confessiones? Analyzing references to John in Augustine’s works from his embrace of Nicene Christianity to the writing of Confessiones, this paper finds a growing (and Johannine-based) emphasis on the importance of Christ’s humanity. Augustine strategically invokes two texts in Confessiones’ crucial seventh book: John 1:14, “the Word was made flesh,” and John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” This paper considers three features: (...) First, how the rhetorical device of anticipation (prolepsis) allows Augustine simultaneously to unify his developing Christological perspective and to build drama into his conversion narrative. Second, how the structure of Confessiones, which first works to understand divine transcendence and then seeks to relate that divine transcendence back to time, emphasizes the central role played by the Gospel of John in advancing Augustine’s conversion story. Third and finally, how invocations of John’s Gospel typify the way that, for the Augustine of Confessiones, reading scripture had become the means of achieving new spiritual self-comprehension. Texts from John were not mere receptors or reflectors of spiritual forces that moved Augustine toward conversion, but, rather, powerful agents of conversion in their own right. (shrink)

The prolepsis in Denis Villeneuve's Arrival emphasises the cyclical nature of the film's narrative and anchors human reproduction as a central theme. Pregnancy, the pregnant body, and the physical, experiential nature of birth, commonly heavily gendered in film, are misleading focal points in the narrative. The presence of the unborn as a subtext in the film problematises Iris Marion Young's notion of pregnant embodiment as a subjective lived-body experience. The viewer is encouraged to empathise with the complexity of birth, life, (...) and death as part of Louise's lived-body experience, but is finally confronted with the uncertainty of maternity, pregnancy and the unborn. When Barbara Duden calls the unborn foetus a “not-yet”, she describes the process by which the foetus achieves a legal status, and the precarious nature of ascribing life or personhood. The prolepsis, which punctuates the main narrative, emphasises the reversibility and irreversibility of life that does “not-yet” exist. Import... (shrink)

The article calls in question the widely held opinion that Epicurus developed his concept of prolepsis as an empirical “alternative response” to the Platonic Forms. One tries to show that in fact the prolepsis and the Form produce two different types of knowledge and that their difference goes beyond the fact that the former is empirical while the latter is not: the prolepsis is based on recognition and strives to ascertain the identity of the perceived things, while the Form is (...) based on recollection and seeks to know what their essence or nature is. Recognition and recollection are phenomenologically quite different. However, it is still possible that the Epicurean prolepsis was indebted to Plato, but it was the Plato of the Theaetetus and Philebus rather than that of the Meno and Phaedo. So one holds that Epicurus developed a somehow marginal Platonic epistemology to which he assigned a central and basic role in his own epistemology (the Canon). (shrink)

Images are usually understood as something perceived: as something presented to us and different from us. But since Antiquity the concept has also been given a different meaning: it has been used to describe our own being, and indeed so much so that it also stands for our essential nature: we are ourselves an image (we are ourselves but an image); and being an image (being but an image) is what is what really defines us. The experience of being oneself (...) an image (as opposed to just perceiving something else as an image) – or, as one might also say, this basic understanding of oneself as being just an image – plays an important role inter alia in Pre-Platonic thought, in the corpus platonicum, in the Christian idea of the imago Dei (of the notitia Dei as capacitas Dei) and, not least, in Fichte’s late philosophy.This paper focuses on two ancient Greek forerunners of some aspects of Fichte’s understanding of image, namely pre-platonic and platonic views on our own being-just-an-image. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thucydides: Narrative and ExplanationCarolyn DewaldTim Rood. Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. xi + 339 pp. Cloth, £47.Any text has dislocations in its narrative surface. Since the time of Schwartz and Schadewaldt (1929), the text of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War has been scrutinized for its omissions, ellipses, and apparent contradictions. Scholars have thought that these would contain important clues regarding aspects [End Page 138] (...) of the war not emphasized explicitly by Thucydides in his narrative and that in addition they would help solve historiographical questions about Thucydides as an author: the nature and quality of the sources he had available to him, for instance, or, even more important, the evolution of his own understanding, over the long years in which he was observing and writing up the war. Thucydides himself provides grounds for such scholarly expectations by emphasizing that he had begun his project right at the war's beginning (1.1); he tells us in the second preface (5.26) that he was exiled after his command in the Thraceward region, and that thereafter he had a much better chance to talk to combatants on all sides. Clear stylistic differences distinguish different parts of the History; most strikingly, it breaks off mid-sentence in the narrative of the summer of 411. One can certainly see why, with this author in particular, attentive readers are tempted to take an analytical approach.Tim Rood, however, utterly rejects this temptation. Instead, he uses the tools of contemporary narratology to explore the text of Thucydides, just as it is, as the end product of authorial interpretation. He argues that Thucydides' narrative is not only written accurately to recount what happened but is also, in the most minute variations of its narrative details, an analysis of why and how the war happened as it did. Rood looks carefully at changes of perception (who "focalizes" the narrative at any given point), narrative disjunctions of time (analepsis, prolepsis, and variations in pacing), and Thucydides' handling of speech, thought, and the description of character. According to Rood, these are important clues that Thucydides provides to show us how the anticipations and perceptions of its various participants crucially shaped the Peloponnesian War.This is a careful, subtle book, and a very important one for historians as well as literary students of Thucydides. Rood is a student of S. Hornblower and C. Pelling, and in this revision of his Oxford thesis he cites the enormous secondary literature, both historical and historiographical, to excellent effect, usually in the context of precise observations about the import of individual passages. This is the first major study seriously to take into account Hornblower's Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 and 1996), and the result shows on almost every page. Even in the stretches where the minute attention to details of Thucydides' language make Rood's narrative itself read more like a commentary than an essay, the textual observations are aimed at a larger and more interesting interpretive point. In the thoughtfulness and integration of its readings of individual passages into a larger overall argument, it resembles Connor's Thucydides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), but where Connor uses a reader-response approach, arguing that Thucydides moves the reader in effect through the sequential experience of the war as it unfolds, Rood has Thucydides constructing his narrative to unpack for us as readers how the war's participants saw and thought about things and reacted to one another and how this in turn influenced how things unfolded.The book has twelve chapters, divided among five parts. The first part generally discusses temporal and focalizing strategies, concentrating on the Pylos story and the role speeches play in the narrative; the second emphasizes how [End Page 139] perception and gaps of knowledge between readers and characters as well as temporal displacement contribute to Thucydides' analysis of Peloponnesian and Athenian strengths and weaknesses in books 4 and 5. The third part explores how Athenian political life in general and the character of Nicias in particular become crucial in books 6 and 7 and shape the way the Sicilian Expedition unfolds, setting the stage for the grim years after... (shrink)