Ricerc@Sapienza

In reconstructing the conceptual universe of Jonas’ philosophy a privileged place can, or indeed must, be reserved for his relationship with the classical heritage. More specifically, a crucial role is played by Plato, especially because, as Jonas strongly underlines, “with Plato [...] you have to go back a much greater distance to make him applicable to the present. But of course Plato is the greater one, the one we have to study again and again from scratch, the one we must discover [...]. With Plato, you’re never finished, that’s the great foundation for all of Western philosophy”.

This article examines the problem of the status of the different degrees of being that Plato, in the Timaeus, seems to attribute to the different kinds of reality that he distinguishes. In what sense and under what conditions is it possible to state that the intelligible forms, the sensible things and the spatial and material substratum of the chora “are” and “exist” ?

In this article, I try to propose some reflections about the nature and status of the intelligible
in the Timaeus, particularly with respect to its features of a properly being and
above all vital reality. The attribution of “life” and “vitality” to the intelligible certainly
has an analogical character, that is, it depends on the consideration of the sensible:
since the cosmos is a sensible living being and is a copy of an intelligible model, then
the intelligible model must be configured as an intelligible living being. Now, to be

This paper aims at collecting and presenting relevant evidence about Hans Jonas’s interpretation of the Socratic philosophy. Against the background of a strong appreciation of Socrates’s research method – a positive evaluation widespread in many passages of works published by Jonas during his life as well as in some unpublished texts (but now available in the new Kritische Gesamtausgabe or published autonomously by other scholars after his death) – more specific attention will be devoted to a short, but highly significant paper: Socratic Virtue and Wisdom.

Il testo intende riflettere sul valore che il mondo greco classico ha attribuito all’arte poetica e alla bellezza: valore educativo, o per meglio dire “paideutico”, molto diverso da quello che la modernità ha conferito alle “belle arti”. Nozione, quest’ultima, che costituisce uno degli effetti storici più diretti della crisi che la concezione greca dell’arte poetica attraversò già nel mondo ellenistico-romano e poi a causa delle profonde trasformazioni impresse dalla cultura paleocristiana all’idea greca del bello.

In this note I discuss Pierre-Marie Morel’s article L’argomento della ‘venerabilità dell’essere’ e la sua fortuna published in this same volume (see pp. 11-26) on Soph. 248e-249a, trying to develop his interpretation of this passage and the conception of being it implies. I also examine Morel’s reconstruction of some steps of the exegetical history and reception of this passage in the history of Ancient Platonism, with reference to Aristotle and Plotinus.

In this paper I examine Plato’s conception of the relation between soul and body in the Timaeus.

In this paper I propose a reconstruction of the onto-cosmological perspective of
Plato’s Timaeus and suggest an interpretation of it in the light of some contemporary
approaches to ontology and logic, i.e. “ontological sequentialism” and “fuzzy logic”,
attempting to use the categories and language of present-day ontology and logic to examine
from a different point of view some aspects of the Timaeus onto-cosmology and
of its logical scaffolding.

In Plato’s Parmenides (135c8-d5), Parmenides suggests Socrates to practice a dialectical exercise before the search for truth: this exercise consists in verifying the logical consistence of the consequences of a certain hypothesis and of its reversal, as regards the object of the hypothesis and its opposite. In a very short passage (137b1-4)), Parmenides states that his analysis will be dedicated to the one itself and that it will start from his philosophical thesis. But what’s the object of Pamenides’ hypothesis?

In this article I examine Plato’s conception of λόγος, as a significant sequence (συνέχεια) of ὄνομα
and ῥῆμα, with a detailed commentary of Sophist 261d-262e. I particularly discuss the following
points: 1. Why the linguistic terms, in the case of a sequence of nouns or of a sequence of verbs,
do not indicate any action or any absence of action (οὐδεμίαν ... πρᾶξιν οὐδ᾽  πραξίαν), any
reality that is or any reality that is not (οὐδὲ οὐσίαν ὅντος οὐδὲ μὴ ὄντος, 262c2-4) ? 2. What is