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Antisthenes and Ortega analyzed the relationship between language, reality and truth. Our aim here is first to prove certain provocative ideas of Antisthenes, if we fit them onto the ontological plane, find their correlate in Ortega's thought, and second to show that there is a partial match between the antisthenic thesis that it is impossible to define things and the Ortegian affirmation that the man has no nature. In the third place, to point out the amazing resemblance between the antisthenic conception of the "proper name" of things and the "authentic names" that Ortega postulates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why, when Plato wants to justify his definition of the sophist as an "image maker"(Sophist, 236c), he quotes two authentic verses of Parmenides (fr. 7.1-2) that undoubtedly allude to the path taken by the "mortals who know nothing" (fr. 6.4)? Does he want to suggest that these "mortals", who are actually "opinions (doxaí) makers" are ancestors of the sophists, who are "image makers"? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Socratic Memorabilia (1759) reconstruct the figure of Socrates with great interest for a historiography inaugurated by Plato and encouraged by Xenophon. The problematic nature of a life without written work and the philosophical instrumentalization of his exemplary death are exploited by Hamann to appropriate the Socratic êthos (cultivated from the daímon rather than from the logos), which allows defining an aesthetic Socrates who articulates his vital attitude under two premises. On the one hand, beliefs and other material concretions take part in the epistemological understanding of the world and, on the other, it is through radical and critical skepticism towards institutions that it is best to find in Socrates the protoenlightened one that the most orthodox Enlightenment seeks. If Hamann's Socrates is aesthetic, it is because of his understanding of the aesthetic as a human perceptual structure, prior to the constitution of subjectivity that would dominate senses and passions, according to traditional Aesthetics. Given that the aesthetic dimension appears as the gift of God that brings together the divine and the human in the sentient body, Hamann thus approaches a Christian Socrates, but also a 'teacher of existence' like the character left by Antisthenes and who must complement the Platonic one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the studies on the Socratic philosophies have enabled a return to the analysis of intertextual passages within the platonic corpus. This work explores the dream passage in Theaetetus, 201c ff. and its links with Antisthenic philosophy. Firstly, it analyses its features in the context of the Socratic dialogue. Then, it presents some key points on the dream passage, and finaly, it sets out an interpretation of the Antisthenic philosophy that reveals relevant contacts with the Platonic approach. In this vein, we offer an hypothesis about the general sense of the dialogue and its way of comprehend the phenomenon of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía is the property of Centro de Investigaciones Filosoficas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Considering the importance of cunning in the characterization of σοφός in the Ancient Greek tradition, from the literature of the archaic period to the Socratic circle, it is striking that in Plato there is no such thing as a cunning σοφός. Apart from the Lesser Hippias, which offers an ambiguous assessment of Odysseus πολυτροπία, the σοφός is almost never defined by its intelligence --this is not a distinctive feature of the σοφός or φιλόσοφος-- but rather by the knowledge of certain things. The lack of treatment has led to most interpreters to neglect the subject. In order to remedy this situation, in this article I offer an interpretation that diagnoses the absence of an attribute such as cunning in the conceptualization of σοφός in Plato, but not as the result of simple condemnation or censorship as argued, for example, by Detienne and Vernant 1978 and suggested by Montiglio 2011. In this paper I propose that Plato would manifest a lack of interest regarding these attributes. From the analysis of the Platonic corpus I seek to demonstrate that, although attributes of intelligence are considered advantageous and desirable qualities, they have only instrumental value with respect to the attainment of truth and good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several scholars have suggested that Isocrates' speeches Against the Sophists and Encomium of Helen attack some of Socrates' followers, mainly Plato, Antisthenes and Euclid. Nonetheless, most of these authors do not see the overall nature of Isocrates' criticism of the Socratics, which not only includes the figures mentioned above, but it is aimed at the group as a whole. This article seeks to defend that hypothesis. In order to do so, I will reconstruct, firstly, Isocrates' attack on the first group criticized in Against the Sophists and on the intellectuals from the prologue of Encomium of Helen. I will defend that both groups must be identified and that Isocrates attributes a set of shared doctrines and practices to all of them, among which he highlights an eristic methodology of argumentation and an intellectualist ethical position. Secondly, I will argue that these elements were practiced and defended by many of first-generation Socratics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we intend to analyze the ontology of different Socratic lines of thought, through an approach of Zones of dialogic tension. Antisthenes and the megarics Euclid and Stilpo develop ontologically negative conceptions that reject the affirmation of ontological principles capable of sustaining reality and its linguistic expression. This theoretical stance not only offers an alternative to the platonicaristotelic approach towards ontology, but affects, by means of interaction and reciprocal influence, the constitution of those affirmative variants in classical Greek thought. Thereby, the inclusion of Socratic lines of thought allows us to question the heideggerian diagnosis of ancient Greek philosophy, inscribed solely in the paradigm of "metaphysics of presence". The recovery of the Socratic philosophers, usually obscured by the figures of Plato and Xenophon, offers an opportunity to redimension the period of classical antiquity through the study of its diverse ontological conceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The speeches by Ajax and Odysseus, whose authorship is ascribed to the Socratic philosopher Antisthenes, give us the chance to trace some possible connections between philosophy, sophistic and poetry. In the bases of these connections we can find an important element present in Antisthenes’ conception of language: the notion of χρῆσις τῶν ὀνομάτων (use of names). We are going to examine how some scenes from the epic tradition, together with some rhetorical strategies, are seen through a conception of language in which the meaning of a word depends on the social and historical conditions in which that term is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A. BRANCACCI (1990) has interpreted and rebuilt the philosophy of Antisthenes semantically, denying antisthenic nominalism and pointing out the binding status of the antisthenic method of philosophical research, which links rhetorical skill and moral knowledge. BRANCACCI'S interpretation has become canonical, but the antisthenic passages, which refer to the analysis of names, seem more an example of nominalist philosophy (according to the meaning that 'nominalism' acquired in the twelfth century disputes about status of universals) rather than an exclusively pattern for the semantic analysis of concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antisthenes, one of the so many listeners of Socrates, was a direct witness of the philosophical activity of Plato, that was about twenty-five years younger than he. Since each reality is, for Antisthenes, an entity already qualified, to which it denominates Τὸ Ποιόν ("the qualified one"), with particular properties, individualized by a name, it does not agree with Plato in the necessity to postulate supreme kinds (γένη, ∈ἰ̑δη). These, for Antisthenes, are only naked fictions, qualities in herself. If the ontological status of Forms is left of side (nonexistent realities, for Antisthenes; supreme realities, for Plato), the interpretation of Antisthenes agrees with the examples presented by Plato in its dialogues: the Equality, the Greatness, the Parity, the Whiteness, etc. But in the case of substantial realities (like the man, the mud, the bed, the fire), the Plato of the dialogues does not have a clear and precise answer. Antisthenes seems to reproach to him that, so that its theory has universal value, it would be necessary to postulate the Equinity as Form of the horse, or the Humanity as Form of the man. And Plato seems to have accepted the challenge because in anecdotes related by Diogenes Laertius it would have spoken of the Cup-ness or the Spunness. Nothing of that is found in the dialogues, but perhaps the challenge of Antisthenes moved Plato to modify in the Sophist the ontological status of Forms and to consider them like givers communicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]