The Commentary as Polemical Tool : The Anonymous Commentator on the Theaetetus against the Stoics

Contrairement à ce qui est pris d’ordinaire pour acquis, le Commentateur Anonyme du Théétète est philosophiquement stimulant, comme le démontre la confrontation avec le Stoïcisme. Le Commentateur Anonyme déploie une stratégie subtile, ne visant pas tant à rejeter des doctrines nettement stoïciennes qu’à les incorporer dans son propre système platonicien, en présupposant que seul ce dernier peut assurer des fondements adéquats aux doctrines. Le Commentateur Anonyme peut de la sorte s’approprier le Stoïcisme et régler de manière définitive l’ancienne querelle entre Stoïcisme et Platonisme. Qui plus est, le Stoïcisme n’est pas une question séparée, mais il fait partie d’une question plus large. Car la comparaison avec le Stoïcisme aide aussi le Commentateur Anonyme à défendre son interprétation unitaire de la tradition académique platonicienne. Commenter un texte n’est pas une pratique neutre, mais bien plutôt un des aspects les plus importants de la philosophie post-hellénistique.Contrary to what is usually assumed, the Anonymous Commentator on the Theaetetus is philosophically stimulating, as the confrontation with Stoicism shows. The Anonymous Commentator displays a subtle strategy, aiming not so much to reject distinctively Stoic doctrines as to incorporate them into his own Platonist system, on the assumption that only the latter can secure adequate foundations to the doctrines. The Anonymous Commentator can thus appropriate Stoicism and definitely settle the ancient quarrel between Stoicism and Platonism. Besides, Stoicism is not a separate issue, but is part of a wider issue. For the comparison with Stoicism also helps the Anonymous Commentator to defend his unitary interpretation of the Platonic-Academic tradition. Commenting a text is not a neutral practice but one of the most important aspects of post-Hellenistic philosophy

The End of the Academy

What happened to the Platonic Academy in late Hellenistic and Early Imperial Age is a controversial point. For a long period it has been a widely held view that the Academy continued to operate until the Emperor Justinian closed it in the 529 A.D. But in opposition to this view some challenging studies argued that it rather ended its activity around 86 b.C., during and in consequence of the Mithridatic War, when the garden of the Academy was destroyed by Sulla's troops. Needless to say, neither this new (and more solid) reconstruction solved all the ambiguities, and more recently some doubts have been raised against it. By reconsidering the available evidence, aim of the paper is a reapprisal of this vetus quaestio. In fact, the problems are two: the problem of the end of the Academy as a working institution is not the same as its end in the sense of its destruction. The two points not necessarily imply each other. And even though one may cast doubts that the Academy was physically destroyed, the surviving testimonies appear to show that there was not anymore Academic teaching in Athens. Even more fatal than Sulla's troops, were the internal struggles. But not everything went lost, for the term 'Academic' continued to be used in the following centuries, confirming the importance of the tradition stemming from Plato: for at stake in the use and appropriation of the term was not so much the membership to the institution as Plato's heritage – an everlasting problem.(Mauro Bonazi, University of Milan

The Turn to Language

This chapter discusses the importance of rhetoric to the rise of the Sophists and the way that an attention to language as such conduces to a novel and controversial understanding of reality. Language, for the Sophists, is more than a medium for conveying meaning; it is itself creative of meaning, making the education that they offer uniquely powerful. This is the fuller sense of their professing to make their students “clever at speaking” (deinos legein). The chapter traces three specific areas on which the Sophists brought to bear their interest in logos: grammar and the issue of the correct names; the criticism of and engagement with poetry; and rhetoric and the effectiveness of argumentative techniques. We see that these explorations cannot be said to aim at a systematic theory. But they helped to inaugurate the study of language for its own sake, a topic that would play an important role in the philosophical debates of the following centuries

Political all too Political. Again on Protagoras' myth in Its Intellectual Context

The paper argues for an analytic interpretation of Protagoras’ myth in Plato’s dialogue by showing that its goal is not so much to reconstruct the origins of civilization as to identify some essential features of humankind. Against the widespread opinion that human progress depends on the development of technai, Protagoras claims that political art is the most important one, insofar as it is the condition for the existence of society. More concretely, the emphasis on the political art also serves to bring light to what is distinctive of Protagoras as opposed to the other sophists and poets. As clearly shown in the dialogue, Protagoras can thus present himself as the only teacher who is capable of imparting the teachings suited to the needs of the new world of the polis

Antígona contra o sofista

The aim of this paper is to show that a correct interpretation of Sophocles' Antigona has to take into account also its polemical targets. More precisely, a * Professor de História da * Filosofia Antiga, do Departamento de Filosofia da UniversitaÌ degli Studi di Milano. E-mail: [email protected] . Com um célebre ataque, escrito muitas décadas distante do grande V século, Platão conseguiu captar o significado e a importância do teatro para Atenas: mais do que uma democracia, Atenas é uma "teatrocracia"1 . Atenas é uma teatrocracia porque o teatro é o espelho da cidade, no qual a cidade "se apresenta na frente de si mesma, compartilhando seus conhecimentos, suas exigências morais, suas crises e suas contradições2 . Em geral, o impacto social e político coletivo da tragédia e comédia no século V é um fato muito conhecido para que se deva gastar mais palavras aqui3 . O que eu me proponho a fazer é concentrar-me em uma única tragédia, a Antígona, de Sófocles, para verificar concretamente como foi sua participação nos debates da época e qual foi sua contribuição. 1. A Antígona foi encenada no ano 442, uma data que talvez não seja sem importância, como observarei mais adiante. Sobre essa obra, como acontece com as obras-primas, se tudo foi dito e foram e propostas as interpretativas das mais disparatadas. Mas, a despeito do número infinito de divergências conflitantes, há um ponto sobre o qual se pode concordar: um erro que deve ser evitado quando se lê esta tragédia é pensar que ela se concentra unicamente sobre o 1. Cf. PLATÃO, Leis III 701a. 2. Cf. VEGETTI, 1989, p. 49. 3. Para uma discussão aprofundada veja-se o exemplo de MEIER, 2000. BONAZZI, M. (2011). "Antígona contra o sofista". Archai n. 7, jul-dez 2011, pp. 75-85. 76 comparison with Protagoras may prove useful. Indeed, the main reason of disagreement between Antigona and Creon does not regard so much the opposition between the family and the state as two different accounts of reality and of human being. Antigona, on one hand, advocates for a world ruled by divine laws, whose meaning can escape human understanding, but which men must nevertheless respect. Creon, on the other hand, emphasizes the political capacity that enables human beings to create a human world in which to live. This view clearly reminds Protagoras' humanism and relativism, a philosophy well known in V century b.C. Athens. But the problem for Sophocles is that a world in which man is the only measure risks to become a world without measure, or, even worse, a world with strength as the only measure, as the example of Creon will show in the second part of the tragedy

The Unexpected Downside of Paying or Sending Messages to People to Make Them Walk : Comparing Tangible Rewards and Motivational Messages to Improve Physical Activity

People do not exercise as much and as regularly as they should. To support users in adopting healthy exercise routines, app designers integrate persuasive techniques in their apps. In this study, we focus on two of these techniques, i.e., offering tangible rewards and sending motivational messages to users. Past research has demonstrated the effects of these techniques in nudging recipients to increase their physical activity levels. However, the effect of these interventions on the intrinsic motivation of the participants has not yet been studied. We conducted a 10-month study involving 208 participants; this research consisted of a 3-month baseline (pre-phase), a 4-month experiment and a 3-month follow-up (post-phase). The participants were randomly assigned to one of the following three interventions: either they receive money ((i.) through a fixed incentive or (ii.) a lottery), or (iii.) informative messages. Their daily goal was to walk 10K steps. Through their smart phones, we recorded how many steps they walked every day. These interventions had no effect on the main outcome variable (i.e., the number of steps). However, the manipulations produced a detrimental effect on the intrinsic motivation of the participants, measured through a standardized questionnaire. This negative effect extended into the follow-up period. Our study reveals that tangible rewards and motivational messages decrease the intrinsic motivation of the participants, hence their connected physical activity. In our findings, we highlight the importance of intrinsic motivation in setting up healthy exercise routines that will be carried on autonomously by the participants after the period of the intervention. Finally, we present implications for the design of persuasive apps

Effects of quarantine on Physical Activity prevalence in Italian Adults: a pilot study

Background: COVID-19 is a respiratory disease that caused a global pandemic status in March 2020. Due to its fast diffusion, many governments adopted forced solutions including social restrictions, which could negatively affect citizens’ habits as physical activity. Our study aimed to investigate how and why the physical activity prevalence varied from the period before the quarantine up to the period after it, and understand what citizens thought of physical inactivity COVID-19 related to and whether they were satisfied with physical activity promotion during the lockdown. Methods: A new questionnaire was created and administered online. A sample of 749 interviews (female = 552 (73.7%), male = 197 (26.3%)) was collected and analysed. Results: The prevalence of people who were older than 50 years reduced both during and after the lockdown (P < 0.05) and the most common reason for which they have quitted physical activity practice was related to psychological problems (lockdown = 64.57%; post-lockdown = 62.17%). In addition, youngers seemed to be more sensitive than elders to unhealthy consequences generated by forced isolation (P < 0.05), and they believed that children/adolescents and older adults practised an insufficient amount of physical activity and/or sport, which could negatively impact public health. Conclusions: Although many strategies were implemented during the lockdown to promote regular physical activity practice, several results suggested that quarantine negatively affected citizens’ habits. The future government should focus on adequate measures to improve health behaviours

The Sophists

Un'analisi dei sofist