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3 results

The Hedonism of Eudoxus of Cnidus

The Hedonism of Eudoxus of Cnidus
  • Richard Davies
  • Published online:
    27 November 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023
  • Mathematician and astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus was a younger contemporary of Plato and an older contemporary of Aristotle, on both of whom he exerted some influence during his stays in Athens. This is perhaps most apparent with regard to his ethical doctrine that identifies the good as pleasure (hedonism). While Plato seems rather unsure how seriously to take this proposal, Aristotle provides the materials for reconstructing the battery of ingenious arguments that Eudoxus brought forward in its defence. Taken together in this Element, these arguments foreshadow almost everything that has been said in the Western tradition in favour of the positive value of pleasure, and, if taken aright, point in the direction of a hedonism that sets store by the cultivation of activities akin to those for which Eudoxus has been most renowned: mathematics and astronomy.

  • 6 - Anachronism in the Renaissance historiography of mathematics

  • Edited by Niccolò Guicciardini, Università degli Studi di Milano
  • Book:
    Anachronisms in the History of Mathematics
    Published online:
    19 July 2021
    Print publication:
    22 July 2021, pp 167-195

  • Summary

    The historiography of mathematics in the Renaissance involves two kinds of anachronism. First, the tendency to anachronism in the authors themselves, whose understanding of broad historical structures and of the development of mathematics may be colored by concerns of their own time. And second, our anachronism in reading these histories of mathematics as if they were attempting precisely the same thing as modern historians of mathematics. This article focuses on the author of the first modern work dedicated to the history of mathematics, Petrus Ramus (1515–1572), singling out three occasions in which his historical account seems to diverge widely from that of modern historians, and examining them in the light of both types of anachronism. First, in his account of the development of mathematics in the early Platonic Academy; second, his assessment of Eudoxus of Cnidus; and finally in his dating of the Neoplatonic philosopher and commentator on Euclid, Proclus.

  • The Measure of Pleasure: A Note on the Protagoras

  • RICHARD DAVIES
  • Journal:
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association / Volume 3 / Issue 3 / Fall 2017
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    08 February 2018, pp. 301-315

  • To explain the presence of the doctrine of hedonism in Plato's Protagoras (351b–8a), the hypothesis is advanced that the author may have been responding to a suggestion made by Eudoxus of Cnidus that pleasures can be measured in terms of size, number, and intensity. The peculiar ways that Socrates represents these dimensions may indicate that Plato did not fully grasp Eudoxus's suggestion or, conversely, that he saw at once that it was a dead end.