I just received some feedback on a paper in which I present some results of the character project I have been working on in the past few months, and one of the worries expressed by the reader was that my account seemed too extreme in its bottom-up, materialistic account of… Read more
One of the most exciting points for classicists who have got some knowledge about Eastern matters consists in inquiring where so many similarities between Greece and Mesopotamia, Iran or India come from. Thereabout three hypotheses basically seem to be considered: 1) a direct influence; 2) a shared inheritance (especially for… Read more
In an earlier post, I suggested that the Glaucon's initial inquiry into the nature of justice in Plato's Republic II is chiefly a response to sophistic arguments involving the relationship of "law" to "justice". This is significant for our own investigation... Read more
Instead of giving you yet another report about my ongoing project on the physiology of character in Aristotle this week, I would like to make use of this opportunity to announce two upcoming workshops in ancient philosophy that I have been (co-)organizing. Both events involve mostly junior scholars and promise… Read more
In his History of Animals, Aristotle makes the following comment (HA VII 6, 585b28-586a4): “And from deformed [parents] deformed [offspring] comes to be, just as lame come to be from lame and blind from blind, and in general they resemble often the features that are against nature, and have inborn… Read more
