Removing the Inserenda

The article claims that the prologue of Plato's Theaetetus rejects a certain form of presentation because this had been used in an earlier version of the work. Details of the phrases rejected show that he cannot have had the Republic in mind when rejecting such presentatio

A História da Alimentação: balizas historiográficas

Os M. pretenderam traçar um quadro da História da Alimentação, não como um novo ramo epistemológico da disciplina, mas como um campo em desenvolvimento de práticas e atividades especializadas, incluindo pesquisa, formação, publicações, associações, encontros acadêmicos, etc. Um breve relato das condições em que tal campo se assentou faz-se preceder de um panorama dos estudos de alimentação e temas correia tos, em geral, segundo cinco abardagens Ia biológica, a econômica, a social, a cultural e a filosófica!, assim como da identificação das contribuições mais relevantes da Antropologia, Arqueologia, Sociologia e Geografia. A fim de comentar a multiforme e volumosa bibliografia histórica, foi ela organizada segundo critérios morfológicos. A seguir, alguns tópicos importantes mereceram tratamento à parte: a fome, o alimento e o domínio religioso, as descobertas européias e a difusão mundial de alimentos, gosto e gastronomia. O artigo se encerra com um rápido balanço crítico da historiografia brasileira sobre o tema

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From Polemo and Crates to Arcesilaus:revolution or natural transition?

First I argue that Arcesilaus was a natural choice as scholarch. If Crates had intended to groom Socratides for this role, he had too short a time. However, Arcesilaus was already one of four principal Academics when Crantor was alive, in some sense inheriting the role of Crantor (perhaps ‘possessor of the books'); The scholarchs themselves engaged less with Platonic literature than expected. Arcesilaus as scholarch did not directly promote Platonic doctrine or writings, but that was not the scholarch's role. Second I want to argue that the Academy of Polemon was already Socratic in two respects, in concentrating upon ethics and in adopting some kind of ideal of Socratic love. I think it is clear that the Alcibiades I, assuming it was not a product of Polemon's (and Crantor's) Academy, was at least an important influence at that time. (Harold Tarrant, University of Newcastle, Australia

The object of Alcibiades' love

Plato is a notoriously slippery author, but I do not blame his own obscurity for making him particularly elusive on the subject of aesthetics. Rather, there is something tricky and almost incoherent in the Greek approach to value. A great range of things was deemed to have aesthetic value, usually defying our ability to find any coherent linking threat. There were certain types of things that time and again are numbered among kala, among fine or beautiful things. Among them are attractive animate and inanimate bodies, objects well adapted to their roles, personal character and qualities of character, laws and customs, and knowledge. Much has to do with whatever it is that has the potential to inspire us, and whatever it may be that has the potential to lead us to those sources of inspiration

Atlantis: myths, ancient and modern

In this paper I show that the story of Atlantis, first sketched in Plato's Timaeus and Critias, has been artificially shrouded in mystery since antiquity. While it has been thought from Proclus to the close of the twentieth century that Plato's immediate followers were divided on the issue of whether the story was meant to be historically true, this results from a simple misunderstanding of what historia had meant when the early Academic Crantor was first being cited as an exponent of a literal rather than an allegorical interpretation. The term was then applied to straightforward stories that were told as if they were true. Iamblichus argued for a deeper meaning that did not exclude the truth, and Proclus' belief in an inspired Plato leads him to assume that a Platonic historia must be true. Hence he misreads Crantor as having been committed to historical truth and opposes him to allegorical interpreters. Scholars have continued to see Crantor as a proponent of the historical Atlantis without adequate examination of the evidence, an indication of our own need to preserve the tantalizing uncertainties of such powerful stories