Frege plagiarized the Stoics (original) (raw)
Related papers
Frege, Hirzel, and Stoic logic
Frege, Hirzel, and Stoic logic, 2024
This paper is a discussion of Gabriel, Hülser and Schlotter's 2009 article on a possible causal relation between Stoic logic and Frege. It provides detailed argument for why Rudolf Hirzel cannot be taken as the qualified middleman in philosophical discussion with whom Frege learned what he 'borrowed' without acknowledgement from Stoic logic. Additionally, this paper offers some findings about some aspects of Frege's and Hirzel's lives and work habits, which may help us understand a little better Frege's connection to Hirzel and to Stoic logic as well as Frege's failure to acknowledge the Stoics. This paper is a purely historical offshoot of my essay 'Frege plagiarized the Stoics'. Zero direct insights into either Frege's or Stoic philosophy are offered.
Epicharmus and the plagiarism of Plato
Epicharmus and the plagiarism of Plato. In:G. Cornelli; R. McKirahan; C. Macris (Org.). On Pythagoreanism. 1ed. Berlin: DE GRUYTER, 2013, v.1 p.307-322, 2013
The study of Pythagorean philosophy, as well as the study of philosophy of the Pre-Socratics in general, is inseparable from the study of its transmission and reception by subsequent philosophers and other authors. This is due not only to the contingent fact that in most cases only quotations and allusions survive from pre-Platonic philosophy, but also, particularly in the case of the Pythagoreans, to the fact that their very precepts included prescriptions about what can and cannot be said in public, precepts that thus also imply what can or cannot be written. Even when a doctrine of theirs could be written, the way it was written probably varied according to the intended audience, in order to be appropriate to the audience's degree of initiation. However, these limits did not prevent the spread and success of the ideas attributed to Pythagoras, whether these ideas went back to the Master himself, being transmitted from members belonging to the inner circle, or came from other sources that show, nevertheless, some doctrinal resemblance to those teachings. Instead of preventing the spread of these doctrines, it is possible that this emulation even stimulated it, first of all because of the curiosity that situations of secrecy and mystery generally arise in people. Therefore, Pythagoreanism as a historical category was constructed neither from a precise lineage of teaching nor from a well defined doctrinal corpus, but rather it took its form as a fluid, diffuse assemblage of ideas which were themselves equally fluid and diffuse, and which were concerned with matters ranging from dietary rules to moral prescriptions and even political ideology to views about the nature of life, the universe and the fundamental constitution of beings in general. Thus, historical and literary categories such as 'authentic', 'false' or 'spurious' do not make the same sense as when we use them in order to evaluate and interpret the corpora of other schools and of other more well-defined authors.
In the present paper I examine a rhetorical game played by Plutarch, Lucian, and Aelius Aristides. This game entails citations of mutilated verses, verses where the authors have replaced one or more words in the original text, and verses that are included in the writings of these authors, as if they were written in prose by the authors themselves. Decoding these tampered citations was this so-called rhetorical game, while the more complicated the existing alteration in the quoted text, the greater the satisfaction the pepaideumenoi experienced.
The book edited by the two distinguished scholars is the aftermath of the Tenth Symposium Hellenisticum, which was held at the Sapienza University of Rome in July 2004. The volume consists of eight papers, which are preceded by the Introduction written by the editors and completed by the chronological table and indexes (of passages of ancient writers and of ancient and modern names). In the Introduction, the authors explain, among other things, why it was decided to limit the chronological span of the book to the dates stated in the title. The first date is connected with the famous visit of three Greek philosophers in Rome; they represented three most influential Hellenistic philosophical schools, namely the Stoa, the Academy and the Peripatos. Their lectures, delivered to the audience of Roman intellectuals, begin " the great Roman love affair with philosophy ". In 86 BC, the siege of Athens took place and resulted in philosophers' escaping from that city, which irretrievably lost its significance as the leading centre of philosophical studies. J.-L. Ferrary's paper Les philosophes grecs à Rome (155–86 av. J.-C.) refers to the first of the above mentioned historical events. Its importance for the growth of the interest in philosophy among the Romans is richly evidenced in Cicero's writings, such as the Tusculanae disputationes and De oratore. In his paper Critolaus and Late Peripatetic Philosophy, D.E. Hahm discusses one of the envoys chosen by the Athenians to represent their polis in front of the Roman people. This representative of the Peripatetic school was very famous in his time, but we have not very many testimonies concerning his teaching (see F. Wehrli [hrsg.], Die Schule des Aristoteles. Texte und Kommentar, H. 10, Basel–Stuttgart 1959). Hahm analyzes the references in ancient writers to this philosopher and his followers in order to find why his name so easily disappeared from historical records of ancient philosophy. The main cause was that he was mainly concerned with presenting the Peripatetic philosophy to the general public and with supporting it against its rivals during the open philosophical debates. Critolaus did not devote his life to carrying on any research started by his predecessors, Aristotle and Theophrastus, and he probably did not write any treatises either. This 'peculiarity' as far as the way of philosophizing is concerned shows Critolaus as the original and autonomous thinker. This picture of him is confirmed by his two arguments against rhetoric, namely that it is not necessary to be a good and undefeated speaker und that rhetoric is not an art. This makes him much closer to the Platonic than to the Aristotelian position. It is well known that Plato in his Gorgias criticizes rhetoric exactly along these lines. It turns out that also Critolaus was deeply involved in the debate, one of the central questions of that time, about the role and status of rhetoric. In the field of ethics it can be seen, according to Hahm, that there is some convergence between the Stoic and Peripatetic idea of happiness, but this convergence concerns much more the language used than the doctrine itself. (It is worth reminding here that the Stoic terminology, which occurs in the fragments, could be attributed to Critolaus, and this fact was the cause of Wehrli's sceptical attitude to the fragments.) There is no direct evidence how Critolaus argued that his definition of happiness as " that which is jointly completed from all goods, that is, (all) three kinds " (trans. Hahm, p. 65) could be its correct notion (especially crossing swords with the Stoics). However, Hahm proposes to accept the hypothesis based on Cicero's indirect evidence that he could use arguments similar to those of Antiochus and Carneades. The definition as well as the concept of τέλος can again testify to the profound commitment to the ethical debates. Likewise, it has been proved not only by the critical examination made by the Stoics, but also by the polemics which is to be found in the Arius Didymus' Peripatetic ethical doxography (excerpted and preserved in Stobaeus). As far as Cirtolaus' physics is concerned, the same trait is recognized.