Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy - Volume LIII

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Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy - Volume LIII

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OXFORD STUDIE S IN A NC IE N T P H I L O S O P H Y

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OX FO R D S T U D I E S IN A N C IE N T PHIL OS O P H Y EDITO R: VI CT O R CA S T O N

VO LUM E LIII     

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford,  , United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Except where otherwise stated, Oxford University Press,  The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in  Impression:  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press  Madison Avenue, New York, NY , United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Oxford studies in ancient philosophy.— Vol. liii ().—Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, – v.;  cm. Annual. . Philosophy, Ancient—Periodicals. B.O .′—dc. – AACR  MARC-S ISBN –––– (hbk.) ISBN –––– (pbk.) Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon,   Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work

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A D VI SORY B OARD Professor Julia Annas, University of Arizona Professor Rachel Barney, University of Toronto Professor Susanne Bobzien, All Souls College, Oxford Professor Riccardo Chiaradonna, Università degli Studi Roma Tre Professor Alan Code, Stanford University Professor Dorothea Frede, Universität Hamburg Professor Brad Inwood, Yale University Professor A. A. Long, University of California, Berkeley Professor Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago Professor David Sedley, University of Cambridge Professor Richard Sorabji, King’s College, University of London, and Wolfson College, Oxford Professor Gisela Striker, Harvard University Professor Christopher Taylor, Corpus Christi College, Oxford Contributions and books for review should be sent to the Editor, Professor Victor Caston, Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan,  South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI -, USA (e-mail [email protected]). Contributors are asked to observe the ‘Notes for Contributors to Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy’, printed at the end of this volume. Up-to-date contact details, the latest version of Notes for Contributors, and publication schedules can be checked on the Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy website: www.oup.co.uk/philosophy/series/osap

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CONTE NTS Zenonian Strategies



DA VID SEDLEY

The Coherence of Thrasymachus

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RA LPH W EDGWOOD

Plato on the Grades of Perception: Theaetetus – and the Phaedo

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GA IL FINE

Shame and Virtue in Aristotle

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CH RISTOPHER C. RAYMO ND

Aristotle on Principles as Elements



MARK O MALINK

Plato Systematized: Doing Philosophy in the Imperial Schools. A Discussion of Justin A. Stover (ed.), A New Work by Apuleius

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MAUR O BONAZZI

Index Locorum

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ZENONIAN STRATEGIES DAVID SEDLEY

H far did presuppositions about Zeno of Elea’s overall philosophical position shape the ways in which his individual paradoxes were understood in antiquity? I shall address this question by focusing in particular on one deviant interpreter, Aristotle’s pupil Eudemus, and on the two specific paradoxes to whose interpretation he can be shown to have contributed. These are the small/large paradox, and the less well-known place paradox. Eudemus, it will emerge, sought to impose a consistently nihilist interpretation on the paradoxes. In all probability he was historically mistaken to attempt this. Nevertheless, a careful reconstruction of the methods by which he extracted the nihilist reading from Zeno’s text can help us towards rediscovering details of that text. This in turn, as I shall argue in my final two sections, enables us to appreciate the place paradox as an excellent specimen of Zeno’s dialectical method.

. Zeno’s philosophical purpose In a celebrated encounter that takes place near the beginning of Plato’s Parmenides, dramatically dated to / , Zeno of Elea is found in conversation with a very young Socrates. Zeno, said to be aged around  at the time, tells Socrates how in his own © David Sedley  For very helpful criticisms, queries, and suggestions, my warm thanks to Marko Malink and John Palmer; to audiences at the B Club, Cambridge, February , at Royal Holloway University of London, February , at Washington University in St Louis, March , at the University of Notre Dame, March , and at New York University, April ; and to two anonymous referees. Finally, as both editor and scholar Victor Caston has been unfailingly helpful and generous with his advice. Needless to say, none of the above should be assumed to agree with everything said in the paper.  For the date see J. Mansfeld, ‘Aristotle, Plato and the Preplatonic Doxography and Chronography’, in G. Cambiano (ed.), Storiografia e dossografia nella filosofia antica (Turin, ), –; repr. in Mansfeld, Studies in the Historiography of Greek Philosophy (Assen and Maastricht, ), –.

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David Sedley

youth—presumably around  —he wrote a book of antinomies. Someone, he goes on, in defiance of Zeno’s own intentions, purloined the manuscript and published a pirate edition. The book contained a series of arguments, each with the form ‘If there are many things, they are both F and un-F ’, where ‘F ’ and ‘un-F ’ represent some pair of opposites. In some cases these appear to be polar contraries, in others simple contradictories, and sometimes it is hard to tell. According to Zeno’s book the uncontroversialsounding belief that there is a plurality of things leads over and over again to self-contradiction—whether in the semi-formal sense that pluralism inevitably entails pairs of propositions each of which entails the contradictory of the other, or in the historically perhaps more apposite sense that the multitude of things assumed by pluralists would, whether collectively or individually, have to bear pairs of predicates which are in direct conflict with each other. For example, we learn that the book’s opening antinomy purported to show that if there are many things they are both alike and unalike. To judge from a report in Proclus, the gist of this argument was first to show that the many things, as a disunited plurality, must be entirely unalike, and then to point out that they must on the contrary be alike in at least one respect, namely in being unalike. Two other antinomies which we know to have been present in the book, and which have survived more or less verbatim, concluded that if there are many things they are both finitely many and infinitely many (Zeno B  DK = D  LM), and at the extremes of both smallness and largeness (B – DK