Wonder, Time, and Idealization -On the Greek Beginning of Philosophy (original) (raw)

Reflections on the Philosophy of the Greek Classical School of Thought

2004

This paper provides an analysis of the philosophy which the Greek Classical School comprising of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle propounded. The aim of the analysis is to ascertain the nature and effect of the contribution made by these three 'philosophic fathers' to the development of jurisprudential thought.

The two-sphere structure of Greek thought [2013

We hope that you remember the two great events that we cited earlier, namely, the revolution in physics, the science of nature, in the early last century, and its anticipation at the hands of a physicist, who migrated to anthropology from his background in physics, mathematics and philosophy and geography, I mean, Boas. Later on another former natural scientist, with the same background in physics mathematics and philosophy, I mean Malinowski, migrated to anthropology and both became the joint author of a new concept of observation which is now commonly known as the participant observation. However, no sooner had Boas found, as we will see later, that materialist weltanschauung that might have been right for physics but was no more adequate in the study of human relations, and that the separation of subject and object was an a priori speculation which had no human experience behind it, the physics in revolution associated with the relativity and quantum theories discovered that such duality or absolute discontinuity between the two spheres of reality which the human subject and nature represented did not exist even in man's relations with nature.

Greek Philosophy in the Twenty-first Century

This article addresses contemporary efforts to understand how the earliest practitioners of philosophy conceived of the philosophic life. It argues that, for Plato, the concept of bios was a central, animating, and structuring object of philosophic inquiry. Concentration on the imagery Plato employed to draw bios into the purview of philosophic contemplation and choice points to interpretative avenues that further the aim of treating the dialogues as complex, integrated wholes, and offers a new approach to the question of the status of image-making in them. The article concludes with thoughts on how an exploration of bios might extend beyond Plato to Aristotle, via an examination of his treatment of the range of human and animal bioi, suggesting that such an examination clarifies the relationship between his analysis of the polis-dwelling animal and his broader investigation of living beings as such.

Discovering φύσις. Reductive Materialism, the Emergence of Reflexivity, and the First Secular Theories of Everything

Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy in Honor of Professor Anthony Preus (ed. David Spitzer), 2023

This paper is the penultimate version of my contribution to Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy in Honor of Professor Anthony Preus (ed. David Spitzer), London: Routledge, 2023, 18-36. I argue that “natural teleology” as Nagel understands it has a historical precedent in what is called the discovery or invention of nature or physis which is at the foundation of early Greek philosophy and science. It then led some thinkers to affirm reductive materialism, which in turn generated a reaction in the form of theism as a philosophical position, a theism grounded in arguments for the existence of God/gods. The aim of this paper is to introduce philosophers and scientists to the different parties in the original dispute and to their terms of reference. I also discuss in context the emergence of a new form of thinking, if not a new kind of Homo sapiens: the advent of Homo philosophicus, and the self-conscious reflexivity this being presupposes, and without which Greek philosophy and science may not have seen the light of day.