Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter - Volume 9, Issue 1, 2004

What made Socrates so special that he became the object of mockery, slander and hate? The answer in the Apology is expressed in the formula of the ‘Socratic pragma’. Plato claims that Socrates’ philosophical enterprise was a reaction to the Delphic oracle according to which no living Greek was wiser than Socrates. But does this really explain what it pretends to explain? The paper argues that this explanation tells us more about Plato’s philosophical approach than about this alleged turning point in Socrates’ life. Our understanding of Socrates’ philosophical development should be based on other Platonic dialogues and the Old Comedy as well, for they inform us about the historical shift of philosophical interest from questions of physics to questions of ethics and political anthropology.

The article analyses the relation between logos and myth in Plato’s philosophy using the Phaidros as a representative example; this includes the investigation of the function of the myth in this dialogue. The palinode proves to be the central unifying element of the Phaidros, and thus the dialogue s core. The second speech of Socrates mediates between the different parts of the Phaidros, its themes, motives and thoughts: for example love, rhetoric, dialectic, forms, different kinds of knowledge and speech or of souls and gods. These entities are connected in the myth with the aim of mutual elucidation. While the myth is to be seen on a metaphorical level, the logos has to reflect the relation of the myth’s themes in a rational and discursive manner. Thus, the myth gives the dialogue its epistemological purpose.

This essay is on the concept of friendship in Aristotle, which plays a key role in his practical philosophy: as a nucleus of human relationships which is the basis not only of politics but of all forms of community, and as that rare element in Aristotelian thought which, at least in part, interrupts the principle of government generally characterizing his system. The author’s argument takes three steps. Beginning with the distinction of individual and collective practice he tries to define the concept of friendship in its tension between the basically different conditions of self-reference and reciprocity (1 and 2). On the basis of this structure, the two communities of oike and polis are reconstructed and a new evaluation of their relationship is attempted. Furthermore, the essay suggests an interpretation of the anthropological dictum: “Man is by nature a political being”, which can integrate both forms of living (3). Above all, it is pointed out that it was Aristotle who introduced and developed the relationship of ego and alter ego as the nucleus of friendship in practical philosophy. This way he definitely anticipated modern social philosophy with its principal category of intersubjectivity. However, he became entangled in a profound and by no means accidental ambivalence which can be clearly explained (4).

This paper argues that Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae presents theoretical metaphysical speculation as having a direct bearing on the life of the metaphysician. Boethius accomplishes this through his depiction of Lady Philosophy’s ‘therapy’ wherein complex metaphysical arguments are utilized to pull Boethius out of his depression, returning him to what she calls his true self. I begin the paper by contextualizing this discussion in terms of the debate as to whether or not the ‘philosophic life’ of pagan antiquity is present in medieval thought. I then turn to a discussion of the therapeutic metaphysical arguments of Lady Philosophy and their effects on Boethius’ mental and emotional state. I conclude the essay by listing some questions raised and directions for further study.

William of Champeaux (1170-1121) is best known as Peter Abelard’s teacher and the proponent of realism of universals. In recent years, many works on the linguistic liberal arts – grammar, dialectic and rhetoric – have been attributed to him. However, at least in the case of the dialectical commentaries, these attributions have been hastily made and are probably incorrect. The commentaries themselves, correctly situated in the time and place when Abelard and William worked at Notre Dame, nonetheless deserve close attention. The commentaries on Aristotle’s De interpretatione are examined here: in them we find a new theory of signification which developed as a critical response to William of Champeaux’s view of the vox significativa, as well as an important clue to the origins of the doctrine of the proprietates terminorum.

In spite of the fact that Henry of Gent (†1293) had a major and lasting influence on the developments at the University of Paris after the condemnation of the errores philosophorum in 1277, the Gandavistae – pupils of Henry of Gent – are hardly known by their proper names in the history of philosophy. As a member of the theological and philosophical faculty, Henry broke with the predominant Averroistic approach to Aristotle’s conception of science and concentrated, instead, on the Aristotelian tradition. He defended a revised version of the Aristotelian doctrine of the categories along the lines of the pseudo-Boethian Liber de sex principiis and ascribed fundamental eminence to relatio, a category which was considered ontologically “debilissimus” among the Aristotelians. John de Polliaco († p. 1321) was a pupil of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Gent and Godfrey of Fontaines during the seventies of the 13th century. In his Quodlibet I, q. 7, dating from 1307, he gave a controversial account of the notion of relation that was favoured by Henry’s adherents: “Does the relation, expressed as a (modal) respect, differ from the respects (respectus) expressed by the six principles?” In this discussion he attacks the intentional and modal interpretation given by the Gandavistae and calls them non-reales. Is this accusation already an indication of the rise of 14th century nominalism?