Philosophy

I begin with two books about the cosmos. The first one is Olaf Almqvist's Chaos, Cosmos and Creation in Early Greek Theogonies. ¹ This monograph skilfully combines approaches from classical studies, anthropology, and philosophy to offer an in-depth analysis of three competing cosmologies: Hesiod's Theogony, the Orphic theogony, and the creation myth in Plato's Protagoras. It also explores the repercussions of these tensions on ritual life. The book introduces it all through a lucid and enjoyable analysis of the opening lines of Pindar's Nemean Six, which the author sees as stressing the ontological tensions present in early Greek creation myths and blurring the lines between myth and philosophy.

The book's general approach follows two key starting points. First, and following recent work on early Greek philosophy, Almqvist challenges narratives that see a transition from myth to philosophy. He argues that ‘the Presocratics were less concerned with abandoning mythic frameworks than the creation of a new mythology – the creation of new understandings about what gods and humans are’ (11). Instead, Almqvist argues that we should understand the transition as a contrast between competing ontological assumptions in creation stories. Second, and to better outline his case for the latter idea, Almqvist adapts Philippe Descola's theoretical framework in Beyond Nature and Culture to describe the ontological tensions in his case studies. Although carefully adapted, somehow qualified, and acknowledging its limitations, I could not shake off the feeling that Descola's framework is dualist (156, n. 46), ‘rigid and even reductionist’ (15). Most of my reservations with this book derive from its overreliance on Descola's work. Although Almqvist is aware of the objections and limitations of Descola's work, he could have engaged more fully with its critics. To be fair, his adaptations of the framework are for the better, and the use of Descola's work does not take away the merit of Almqvist's analysis of Hesiod, Orphic theogony, and Plato's creation myth in Protagoras. Moreover, I found most chapters’ theses bold and well-argued.

The first two chapters discuss Hesiod's Theogony. Chapter 1 argues that disorder is at the heart of Hesiod's cosmology. In this interpretation, Zeus imposes order externally and contains chaos by relocating his enemies and making the gods swear an oath on the river Styx, but he never eliminates the potential threat of rebellion and disobedience. In Chapter 2, Almqvist argues that there was no Golden Age in Hesiod's Theogony. The claim is an overstatement, and he qualifies it by saying that humans sat alongside Kronos and, in some respects, lived better lives. Still, the cosmos was far from a paradise, and the gory details that Hesiod chose to include paint an odd Eden (69). I was disappointed not to see a fuller discussion of and comparison with Plato's Statesman myth, and instead just the claim that the dialogue describes a ‘utopic existence’ (48) when Plato's characters are not so quick in their assessment (see 272b1–d4). Despite this, I enjoyed the chapter's analysis of shared meals with the gods.

Almqvist dedicates Chapters 3 and 4 to the Orphic theogony. Chapter 3 tackles the Derveni theogony. Choosing this text for a broad comparative study is not without risks. Competing interpretations, the fragmented state of the text, and its challenging contents could prove too difficult to accommodate in a short chapter, but, aware of the limitations of space, the chapter offers a well-argued reconstruction. The central thesis is that ‘Orpheus rewrote Hesiod's Theogony in pantheistic terms where the many-named gods are really refractions of a single deity and divinely ordered cosmos’ (96). In Chapter 4, Almqvist discusses the section of the Orphic theogony not preserved in the Derveni papyrus. Orphic traditions reported elsewhere continue with the birth of Persephone and Dionysius, placing particular importance on the myth of Dionysius as the successor of Zeus and his sacrifice by the Titans that later gave rise to humanity (99), but Almqvist notes that, in these myths, the emphasis is on humanity's divine origin and its connection to the divine in a pantheistic cosmos. This picture strongly contrasts with the ontological distance between gods and humans in Hesiod's theogony.

Almqvist discusses his third case study, the myth in Plato's Protagoras, in a chapter oddly labelled as the book's conclusion. Although the chapter fulfils its general purpose, he expresses too much confidence in considering that the creation myth in Protagoras is genuinely Protagorean and not mostly Platonic. But the chapter does not analyse the myth line by line; instead, it takes it as a springboard to discuss the tension between physis and nomos in the Greek world and how that contrasts with the ontological assumptions in the other two cases. All in all, this book has much to be learnt and valued, and everyone interested in early Greek cosmogony and its relation to ritual life should consider adding it to their reading lists. Finally, it is worth noting that the appendix includes the preserved fragments from the Derveni Theology as reconstructed by G. Betegh's 2004 The Derveni Papyrus,² accompanied by a modified translation.

The second book about the cosmos is Philip Sidney Horky's paperback edition of Cosmos in the Ancient World.³ The volume comprises a brief historical note on Kosmos, an introduction by the editor, thirteen chapters (two by the editor), and an afterword by Victoria Wohl. The contributors list features renowned scholars from universities in Europe and the US, including Malcolm Schofield, Luc Brisson, Pauliina Remes, George Boys-Stones, and Arnaud Macé. The volume is the result of research seminars in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University from 2012 to 2013 and a conference held in September 2013. The book centres on the ancient Greek term kosmos, organized in four groups: the notions of kosmos and its relation to cosmology (Chapters 1–4); kosmos and the individual (Chapters 5–7); kosmos and society (Chapters 8–11); and kosmos and ‘what lies beyond’ (Chapters 12–13) (11). Especially useful chapters include Horky's ‘When Did Kosmos Become the Kosmos?’, which traces the use of kosmos as ‘world-order’ back to Empedocles, Schofield's chapter on Atomist cosmology titled ‘Diakosmêsis’, and Pauliina Remes’ ‘Relating to the World, Encountering the Other: Plotinus on Cosmic and Human Action’. Although other scholars reviewed this book in 2019 and most things that needed to be said have been said, I did not want to miss the opportunity to praise this collection of essays, which appears now at a much more affordable price. My only complaint is that when I first saw this title, I assumed it would have at least a few chapters exclusively dedicated to cosmogony and order in Plato's Timaeus and early Stoic views about the cosmos. I was disappointed to be proven wrong, although the excellent quality of the essays included more than made up for it.

If an intriguing and puzzling title is a good title for a book, Thinking of Death in Plato's Euthydemus. A Close Reading and New Translation by Gwenda-lin Grewal is precisely that.⁴ My expectations were only heightened by reading Oxford University Press's social media accounts referring to it as an ‘Acclaimed book’. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. It allowed me to revisit a beloved dialogue and learn many new things about its background and careful composition while simultaneously challenging many of my views about the text and how to approach Plato's dialogues more generally. The book's aim is twofold: to offer a new translation of the Euthydemus that can shed light on how Plato uses Greek grammar and linguistic nuance and to argue that the Euthydemus is ‘closer to the death of Socrates and the fate of philosophy than has been previously thought’ (xii). On these aims, the book is successful, if not to the extent intended by Grewal. The book has an introduction and twelve chapters, followed by the translation, bibliography, and indexes. Here I will only make some general comments and one recommendation for potential readers. I start with the latter.

I suggest reading the translation first, even before the introduction. I would go as far as to say that it was an editorial mistake to place the translation at the end. That is because Grewal's introduction and commentary presuppose that you have the entire contents of the dialogue fresh in your mind and that you have recently studied the text in detail, paying particular attention to the use of the dual, the plural, the multiple puns and word plays in the Greek. Grewal's translation captures some of these details, and she indicates the rest in useful notes to the text.

This book offers a wealth of background information to read the Euthydemus, suggestive comparisons to the Greek literary tradition and beyond, striking cross-references to other dialogues, and fruitful discussions of the possible implications and significance of often neglected details and allusions in the text. It is worth noting, however, that Grewal's hermeneutical methods belong to or are heavily influenced by the Straussian tradition. In fact, I am afraid some analytic readers might find her commentary vague, speculative, and under-argued. For example, her insistence on reading the dialogue as if it were set in Hades – which is central to her interpretation – hangs on meagre textual evidence, despite Grewal's insistence that the parallels are ‘hard to ignore’ (16).

Another new commentary of a Platonic dialogue is Voula Tsouna's Plato's Charmides. An Interpretative Commentary.⁵ This is a beautifully structured book with an excellent introduction and twelve chapters dedicated to well-defined sections of the dialogue. A translation is included as the appendix to the chapters. Tsouna subdivides each chapter into multiple subsections, but they are not included in the table of contents, which makes for an exasperating experience when navigating the book. Nevertheless, Tsouna skilfully presents an analysis and interpretation of the philosophical arguments, the interesting historical subtext, and how that interacts with Plato's ambiguous characterization of Critias, Charmides, and Socrates. The lengthy introduction (56 pages) offers an accessible initiation not only to the dialogue but also to the characters in it, the rival lines of interpretations, the philosophical arguments, and intertextuality with other dialogues. The following ten chapters accompany the text and offer a detailed analysis of its arguments, while the last chapter serves as a general conclusion.

There is much to praise in Tsouna's commentary, from its remarkable clarity even in the most complex passages and her open-ended approach to the text to her willingness to engage with the abundant secondary literature fruitfully and charitably. Her interpretation emphasizes the coherence and unity of the dialogue, the remarkable differences between Socrates’ and Critias’ conception of self-knowledge, and the unique contributions of the dialogue to Platonic philosophy. Of particular interest are Tsouna's analysis of Critias’ definition of sophrosyne, and her reconstruction of two arguments: the Argument from Relatives (167c–169c2), discussed in Chapter 10, and the Argument from Benefit (169c3–175a8), discussed in Chapter 11.

Plato's Parmenides, edited by Luc Brisson, Arnaud Macé, and Oliver Renaut,⁶ assembles fifty-three essays from the Twelfth Symposium Plantonicum, held in Paris in 2019 and organized by the International Plato Society. This outstanding multilingual volume offers a variety of methodological approaches and interpretations to the reading of the Parmenides. It stands as the benchmark for what a truly international research endeavour should look like. Although most contributions are in English (28 essays), it also contains chapters in French, Italian, German, and Spanish. The book begins with a brief introduction that connects contemporary scholarship with the Platonic tradition in antiquity and an explanation of the structure of the volume. The editors divided the contributions into six groups. The first and shortest is dedicated to the proem of the dialogue. The second collects discussions related to the context and the dialogue's interaction with Plato's predecessors, not only Parmenides but also Zeno, Melissus, Anaxagoras, and Gorgias. The third section collects essays on dialogue, dialectics, and exercises, whereas section four is dedicated to the discussion of forms, with most of the contributions focusing on the ‘greatest difficulty’ (133a–135b). Section five tackles the hypothesis and deductions of the second half of the dialogue. The book closes with a section on the reception of the dialogue. Each chapter is accompanied by a useful abstract in two languages. The volume offers a healthy mix of established names and rising stars and will be an essential reference to anyone working on the Parmenides.

In Greek Dialogue in Antiquity, Katarzyna Jażdżewska challenges the traditional narrative of a decline and displacement of dialogue in post-Platonic antiquity followed by a revival of the genre in the imperial period.⁷ Instead, Jażdżewska argues that there was no decline but continuity and creative interaction with other genres like the anecdote, biography, and epistle. The book sets out to expand our understanding of dialogue (Chapter 1), reassess fragments of papyri (Chapter 2), and examine the philosophical traditions in the Academy, Aristotle and his followers, the minor Socratics, and the Hellenistic philosophers (Chapters 3–6).

In Chapter 1, Jażdżewska shows that, to be a helpful category, we need to conceive dialogue as a flexible and fluid notion and that we can find different types of dialogue inside other genres. Dialogue, then, never ‘fell out of fashion’. On the contrary, it got framed and mixed with other prose genres. Although it is difficult to disagree with this, one might object that it misses the book's advertised target. The claim of a decline of the dialogue form practised by Plato and the Socratics is not a claim about the absence of dialogues or the influence of the dialogue form in other genres; instead, it is about the decline of the dialogue form and conversation as the most prevalent aspect of a text.

To her credit, Jażdżewska notes that the traditional narrative relies on an argument from silence (the lack of evidence from the period) and the legacy of an outdated assumption (that the Hellenistic period was a regression) – and she is right in putting this model under question – but, as she acknowledges, for her alternative narrative to stick, she needs as much evidence as she can gather. Chapter 2 attempts to do just that. Jażdżewska presents an excellent compilation of fragments of papyri with dialogue. Despite the difficulties in dealing with papyri, Jażdżewska offers a suggestive variety of little-known philosophical, literary, historical, and dialogized anecdotes. This chapter makes an excellent source collection, but beware that the analysis of the texts is restricted to advance the book's aim.

In Chapter 3, Jażdżewska discusses the meagre evidence we have from the post-Platonic Academy. There, she makes a more modest claim than at the beginning: ‘while the dialogue certainly lost the preeminence it enjoyed in Plato's corpus, there are no reasons to believe it was abandoned’ (90). On this period, she acknowledges that it is ‘extremely difficult, if not outright impossible, to draw general conclusions on the use of the dialogue or any other format by Plato's successors’ (92). However, she makes an extraordinary effort with the available evidence regarding Heraclides of Pontus, Speusippus, Eudoxos of Cnidos, Xenocrates, Crantor, and the members of the New Academy to show that they composed dialogues and experimented with non-Socratic formats.

Chapter 4 briefly discusses a selection of Platonic Dubia and the Appendix Platonica (spuria) and points out some useful common features in an otherwise heterodox list of texts. These works are, of course, her best evidence, even if their authorship and date are difficult to establish. Chapters 5 and 6, like Chapter 2 with the Academy, offer brief discussions of the available evidence for Aristotle and the Peripatetics, on the one hand, and the Hellenistic schools, on the other. All the research and discussions of the sources are excellent, even if I remain unpersuaded of the strongest version of the book's thesis. After all, the dialogue could have declined while simultaneously surviving and developing in exciting ways.

Cambridge has also published two other excellent edited volumes. One is Galen's Epistemology. Experience, Reason, and Method in Ancient Medicine, edited by R. J. Hankinson and Matyáš Havrda.⁸ Except for Chapter 1, the chapters were presented, and benefitted from discussion, at two meetings organized by the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Science in 2017 and 2018. With a brief but useful introduction, the volume gathers eleven lengthy chapters that explore Galen's contribution to epistemology and its legacy in the Islamic world. There is a particular interest in exploring the interconnection between experience and reason in scientific discovery and how exactly each contributes to discovery. Some of the highlights in this volume include Jonathan Barnes’ chapter ‘‘Do I Wake or Sleep?’ Galen, Scepticism, and Dreams’, focusing on a passage on Galen's Commentary on Hippocrates’ Regimen in Acute Diseases (HVA), Inna Kupreeva's ‘Galen's Empiricist Background: A Study of the Argument in On Medical Experience’, P. N. Singer's ‘The Relationship between Perceptual Experience and Logos: Galen's Clinical Perspective’, and Katerina Ierodiakonou's ‘On Sense-Perception: Galen in Dialogue with Plato and the Stoics’.

The second collection of articles is Epicurus in Rome. Philosophical Perspectives in the Ciceronian Age, edited by Sergio Yona and Gregson Davis.⁹ The volume offers an introduction by Yona and ten chapters by an international team of classicists based in the US and Europe. The editors divide the book into two parts of five chapters each: ‘Epicurus and Roman Identities’ and ‘Epicurus and Lucretian Postures’. Although I did not find these labels initially illuminating, the book examines the tension between Epicureanism's appeal in Roman society and its purported incompatibility with mainstream Roman values and political culture. In this way, the first part focuses on whether someone could be both an Epicurean and a Roman (the answer is yes, unless you believe Cicero). The second part is about different aspects of Lucretian Epicureanism, but the collection also considers works by Caesar, Atticus, and Catullus, focusing on the Roman Republic's final days.

The first two chapters help us situate Cicero's invaluable but biased presentation of Epicureanism. Gerbert Roskam's Chapter 1 reminds us not to uncritically accept Cicero's image of what counts as ‘typically Roman’, which might help us, in turn, better understand Epicureanism's success in Roman culture. In Chapter 2, Daniel P. Hanchey argues that Cicero uses Epicureanism as a target ‘because they represent anti-republican ideology (the celebration of self-interest) and methodology (the quantification and measuring of all things, often by utilitarian criteria)’ (54), but it is also clear that Cicero is targeting them for a reason. The following three chapters (3–5) examine the relationship and proximity that Cicero's friend Atticus, Julius Caesar, and the poet Catullus had with Epicureanism. In Chapter 3, Nathan Gilbert carefully navigates Cicero's letters and dialogues to argue that Atticus was most likely both a serious Epicurean and a prominent Roman in the full sense of the word. Katharina Volk's Chapter 4 re-examines whether Caesar could have been some type of Epicurean, as some scholars have suggested, but after a balanced analysis of the evidence, her answer is no. However, she advances a more nuanced claim: ‘Caesar held certain ideas about life and death that were informed by Epicurean doctrine: Being knowledgeable about Epicureanism, he apparently adopted and adapted some teachings for his own life without taking onboard others, let alone declaring allegiance to the school as a whole’ (86). Monica R. Gale asks the same question about Catullus, and her answer is also negative, although the nature of the evidence is even more problematic than in previous cases.

The book's second part serves to counterbalance the picture by focusing on how Lucretius saw Roman Epicureanism from within. Despite the editor's explanations in the introduction, I felt the chapters had less cohesion between them than the previous half. At the same time, it was in this part of the book that we get a more substantive discussion of Roman Epicureanism and its philosophical arguments. From that point of view, the highlights on this half are the brief but lucid Chapter 6, where Elizabeth Amis analyses Nature's ultimatum in Book 3 of On the Nature of Things, and Chapter 10 ‘Lucretius on the Size of the Sun’ by T. H. Gellar-Goad, which discusses Epicurus’ take on the subject in Letter to Pythocles (Diog. Laert. 10.91), and Lucretius’ expansion of the doctrine in Book 5 of On the Nature of Things.

I want to finish this review by mentioning the publication of a highly anticipated book: the fourth and final volume of Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, which compiles eleven papers by Myles Burnyeat (1939–2019).¹⁰ This book collects eleven essays previously published between 2001 to 2017 and carefully prepared by Carol Attack, Malcolm Schofield, and David Sedley. The edition references the original pagination and includes remarkable pieces on Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics and epistemology and Aristotle's philosophical psychology. The essays are divided into two parts: one labelled Ontology and Epistemology and the other Physics and Optics. Some of these essays have been highly influential and are essential reading for those working on the topics they address. For example, in Chapter 1 we read ‘Apology 30b2–4: Socrates, money, and the grammar of γίγνεσθαι’, accompanied by ‘On the source of Burnet's construal of Apology 30b2–4: a correction’, and as Chapter 8 we get ‘ΕΙΚΩΣ ΜΥΘΟΣ’, which was until now difficult to find in some libraries. The relevance of Chapter 5, ‘De Anima II.5’, is finely described in the introduction (1):

In 1992 Myles Burnyeat published an essay he entitled ‘Is an Aristotelian philosophy of mind still credible?’, labelling it ‘A draft’. As he stated, he did so ‘with reluctance’. He had intended it as a working paper only, ‘to provoke discussion’. It had provoked not just discussion and as much interest as anything he ever wrote, but attempted refutations in print. Hence his own reluctant eventual decision for publication. Many have regretted that in Volumes I and II of Explorations he included neither this nor a closely connected article, published in its final English version in 1995 as ‘How much happens when Aristotle sees red and hears middle C? Remarks on De Anima 2, 7–8’. But as Burnyeat had intended, he continued to work on refining and developing his interpretation of Aristotle's theory of perception, and the main result was the major extended essay of 2002 on De Anima II.5, reprinted here in Part I as Chapter 5.

Other remarkable essays include Chapter 2 ‘Plato on How Not to Speak of What is Not: Euthydemus 283a–288a’, and ‘Kinēsis vs. energeia: a Much-Read Passage in (but not of) Aristotle's Metaphysics’, which appears here as Chapter 4. Everyone involved in preparing and publishing this volume has done a huge service to scholars of classics and philosophy.