David Sedley
Biographic Data
| ID | 1226232 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Sedley |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Sedley |
| SIGNATURE | SEDLEY D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 98 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 76 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 22 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Legacies of Academic Skepticism
This chapter focuses on the skeptical Academy’s fragmentation during its final decades as a school. A lack of consensus among Carneades’s successors over the true meaning of his legacy brought to the fore a weakly doctrinal interpretation of his methodology, namely as a kind of fallibilism. Importantly, this approach found favor with the Academy’s final head, Philo of Larissa. Although his stance was intended to promote the school’s unity, it ins…
Conceptualising Concepts in Greek Philosophy
Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy: Volume 3
Myles Burnyeat (1939–2019) was a major figure in the study of ancient Greek philosophy during the last decades of the twentieth century and the first of this. After teaching positions in London and Cambridge, where he became Laurence Professor, in 1996 he took up a Senior Research Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, from which he retired in 2006. In 2012 he published two volumes collecting essays dating from before the move to Oxford. Two ne…
Plato on why mathematics is good for the soul
Anyone who has read Plato’s Republic knows it has a lot to say about mathematics. But why? I shall not be satisfied with the answer that the future rulers of the ideal city are to be educated in mathematics, so Plato is bound to give some space to the subject. I want to know why the rulers are to be educated in mathematics. More pointedly, why are they required to study so much mathematics, for so long?
Carneades’ Theological Arguments
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Theophrastus and Epicurean Physics
This chapter aims to show that an Epicurean group of arguments for the world’s impermanence, preserved by Lucretius, is a direct response to a passage of Theophrastus. It discusses some rather more speculative conclusions about the debt of Epicurean physics to Theophrastus. Now the mere correspondence of Lucretius’ argument with the truncated one recorded by Theophrastus does not yet demonstrate that the Epicureans learnt it from Theophrastus. Th…
Lucretius on Imagination and Mental Projection
Lucretius sometimes speaks of the mind ‘projecting’ itself, echoing the Epicurean Greek technical term epibolē. The way in which he and other first-century BCE Epicureans use this concept, however, elevates it beyond anything we can find in Epicurus, and applies it in particular to the kind of superhuman intellectual leap of which the school’s founder was himself considered the master. This has implications for Lucretius’ relation to contemporary…
La Fin de La Princesse de Clèves comme fait divers
Considérée comme un fait divers par extension, La Princesse de Clèves allie fiction et hasard d’une façon novatrice. La fin du roman, curieusement fade et d’une concision extrême, est un effet de cette alliance. La princesse sécurise son repos final en se mettant hors de portée des événements aléatoires qui l’ont tourmentée au cours de l’intrigue. Dès que le hasard ne peut plus l’atteindre, le récit se relâche et raconte immédiatement sa mort en …
The Timaeus as Vehicle for Platonic Doctrine
The Timaeus , I argue, encodes in its cryptic opening lines Plato’s confirmation that the dialogue represents his own views. This corresponds to the fact that a series of metaphysical, psychological, and ethical theses defended by the main speakers of other dialogues are displayed in Timaeus’ speech as components of a global system. Which in turn provides neglected support for the too often dismissed ‘mouthpiece theory’. Although these doctrines …
Stoics and Their Critics on Diachronic Identity
This article is a return to a theme I first tackled in “The Stoic criterion of identity” (1982): the Academics’ ‘Growing Argument’ ( auxanomenos logos ) and the Stoic response to its attack on diachronic identity. This time my aim is to separate out approximately five different stages of the debate between the two schools. This will be done by shifting more of the focus onto developments that seem likely to belong to the late second and/or early …
Becoming Godlike
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Epicurean versus Cyrenaic Happiness
Plato's Symposium: A Critical Guide
Plato's Symposium is an exceptionally multi-layered dialogue. At once a historical document, a philosophical drama that enacts abstract ideas in an often light-hearted way, and a literary masterpiece, it has exerted an influence that goes well beyond the confines of philosophy. The essays in this volume, by leading scholars, offer detailed analyses of all parts of the work, focusing on the central and much-debated theme of erōs or 'human desire' …
An Introduction to Plato's Theory of Forms
This lecture was designed as an introduction to Plato's theory of Forms. Reference is made to key passages of Plato's dialogues, but no guidance on further reading is offered, and numerous controversies about the theory's interpretation are left in the background. An initial sketch of the theory's origins in the inquiries of Plato's teacher Socrates is followed by an explanation of the Forms’ primary characteristic, Plato's metaphysical separatio…
Empedoclean Superorganisms
In Empedocles’ zoogony, an original set of single-specialism organisms – solitary hands, eyes, etc. – combined into complex organisms, of which the fittest survived. A less recognized anticipation of (one strand of) the Darwinian tradition relates to the superorganism theory: what is naturally selected for is not the individual and/or its kin, but, as most manifestly in insect colonies, the cooperative group. Empedocles’ Love likewise works by pr…
Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius
Pyrrhonian skepticism has gradually gained a stellar reputation. Rather than being dismissed as extremist and evidently implausible, as it often was in the past, it is now recognized as a philosophically sophisticated outlook, sympathetic to today's commitment to science as a long-term enterprise. Ancient skepticism is now seen as an important position in the history of philosophy and as addressing core questions in epistemology. It is worthwhile…
Theory and Practice in Aristotle's Natural Science
Aristotle argued that in theory one could acquire knowledge of the natural world. But he did not stop there; he put his theories into practice. This volume of new essays shows how Aristotle's natural science and philosophical theories shed light on one another. The contributors engage with both biological and non-biological scientific works and with a wide variety of theoretical works, including Physics, Generation and Corruption, On the Soul, an…
Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius
Pyrrhonische Skepsis bei Diogenes Laertius.
The Midwife of Platonism: Text and Subtext in Plato’s Theaetetus
1. Opening moves 2. 'Knowledge is perception' 3. Relativism 4. Perception 5. Falsity puzzles 6. Accounts Bibliography Index locorum General index
A Definição De Zenão Da Phantasia Kataleptike
Zenão de Cítio, o fundador do Estoicismo, introduziu como critério de verdade a impressão cognitiva (phantasia kataleptike), definida como "a partir do que é". Esse "a partir" veio a ser interpretado por estoicos posteriores como causal, mas argumenta-se aqui que o próprio Zenão concebeu-o antes em um sentido "representacional
Cicero and theTimaeus
Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy
This is the first exploration of how ideas of politeia (constitution) structure both political and extra-political relations throughout the entirety of Greek and Roman philosophy, ranging from Presocratic to classical, Hellenistic, and Neoplatonic thought. A highly distinguished international team of scholars investigate topics such as the Athenian, Spartan and Platonic visions of politeia, the reshaping of Greek and Latin vocabularies of politic…
The Platonic Art of Philosophy
This is a collection of essays written by leading experts in honour of Christopher Rowe, and inspired by his groundbreaking work in the exegesis of Plato. The authors represent scholarly traditions which are sometimes very different in their approaches and interests, and so rarely brought into dialogue with each other. This volume, by contrast, aims to explore synergies between them. Key topics include: the literary unity of Plato's works; the pr…
Chapter 7 — Philoponus' Conception of Space
Journal Article CHAPTER 7 — PHILOPONUS' CONCEPTION OF SPACE Get access DAVID SEDLEY DAVID SEDLEY Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Volume 56, Issue Supplement_103, February 2013, Pages 181–193, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-5370.2013.tb02542.x Published: 06 February 2014
From the Pre-Socratics to the Hellenistic Age
This handbook explores atheism - understood in the broad sense of 'an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods' - in its historical and contemporary expressions. It probes the varied manifestations and implications of unbelief from an array of disciplinary perspectives and in a range of global contexts
Is Aristotle's teleology anthropocentric
Aristotle holds that nature does nothing pointless that natural processes are structured by the good ends they serve. But there is a strong current tendency to read him, in line with the priorities which govern his zoological works, as refusing to extend the workings of this finality in nature beyond the internal structure and functioning of individual organisms.' Some do continue to attach importance to the occasional remarks in his corpus which…
The Stoic Criterion of Identity
The story starts with a scene from an early Greek comedy. Its author is the Syracusan comic playwright Epicharmus, and it probably dates from the opening decades of the fifth century B.C. The following reconstruction is based on one verbatim quotation of twelve lines, plus two indirect references to it in later authors.' Character A is approached by Character B for payment of his subscription to the running expenses of a forthcoming banquet. Find…
The Hellenistic Philosophers: Volume 2, Greek and Latin Texts with Notes and Bibliography
This comprehensive sourcebook makes available in the original Latin and Greek the principal extant texts required for the study of the Stoic, Epicurean and sceptical schools of philosophy. The material is organised by schools, and within each school topics are treated thematically. The volume presents the same texts (with some additional passages) as are translated in The Hellenistic Philosophers, Volume 1. The authors provide their own critical …
Two Conceptions of Vacuum
Writers on ancient philosophy have always been impressed by the early atomists' conceptual breakthrough in introducing vacuum, or void, as an intelligible notion. But discussion of the concept itself has been rare and, on the whole, disappointing. It is as if the doctrine were so obviously correct and sensible that no one had paused to ask whether it really is quite so straightforward. My contention is that it raises considerable conceptual diffi…
Platonic Causes
This paper examines Plato's ideas on cause-effect relations in the Phaedo. It maintains that he sees causes as things (not events, states of affairs or the like), with any information as to how that thing brings about the effect relegated to a strictly secondary status. This is argued to make good sense, so long as we recognise that aition means the "thing responsible" and exploit legal analogies in order to understand what this amounts to. Furth…
From the Pre-Socratics to the Hellenistic Age
This handbook explores atheism - understood in the broad sense of 'an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods' - in its historical and contemporary expressions. It probes the varied manifestations and implications of unbelief from an array of disciplinary perspectives and in a range of global contexts
The end of the A cademy
Is the Lysis a dialogue of definition
Are these closing words of the Lysis a serious application of the so-called 'Socratic fallacy', that until you can define something you cannot know how to predicate it truly of anything, or anything truly of it (cf. Euthyphro 15d, Meno 71b, Rep. 354b)? Or are they more in the nature of a humorous parting shot, not intended to be squeezed too hard for precise philosophical content? The latter seems to me in principle the preferable answer, on the …
Epicurus and his professional rivals
I. Introduction For a historical appreciation of any system of thought a certain amount of biographical information is needed. Otherwise we may never progress beyond vague speculation about its philosophical ancestry ; for the same doctrine can just as well be fostered by the negative influence of one school of thought as by the positive influence of another. If, on the other hand, we can find out whom its founder know and what he thought of them…
Diodorus Cronus and Hellenistic Philosophy
During the last four decades historians of ancient logic have become increasingly aware of the importance of Diodorus Cronus and his pupil Philo as pioneers of the propositional logic which came to flourish in the Stoa. Their direct influence has so far been recognised in two main areas of Hellenistic controversy – the validity-criteria for conditional propositions, and the definition of the modal terms ‘possible’ and ‘necessary’. But some broade…
The end of the A cademy
Two Conceptions of Vacuum
Writers on ancient philosophy have always been impressed by the early atomists' conceptual breakthrough in introducing vacuum, or void, as an intelligible notion. But discussion of the concept itself has been rare and, on the whole, disappointing. It is as if the doctrine were so obviously correct and sensible that no one had paused to ask whether it really is quite so straightforward. My contention is that it raises considerable conceptual diffi…
The Stoic Criterion of Identity
The story starts with a scene from an early Greek comedy. Its author is the Syracusan comic playwright Epicharmus, and it probably dates from the opening decades of the fifth century B.C. The following reconstruction is based on one verbatim quotation of twelve lines, plus two indirect references to it in later authors.' Character A is approached by Character B for payment of his subscription to the running expenses of a forthcoming banquet. Find…
The Stoics
The Stoic Theory of Universals
The Hellenistic Philosophers: Volume 1, Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary
Volume 1 presents the texts in new translations by the authors, and these are accompanied by a philosophical and historical commentary designed for use by all readers, including those with no background in the classical world. With its glossary and indexes, this volume can stand alone as an independent tool of study.
Colloquium 11: Teleology and Myth in the Phaedo
The power of things' being actually arranged in the way in which it was best for them to be arranged, that power they neither seek out nor credit with any extraordinary strength... For my part, in order to learn the character of this kind of cause, I would be delighted to become anybody's pupil (Plato, Phaedo. 99c). With these words Socrates concludes the first and most celebrated manifesto of teleology. His expressed readiness to become somebody…
Is the Lysis a dialogue of definition
Are these closing words of the Lysis a serious application of the so-called 'Socratic fallacy', that until you can define something you cannot know how to predicate it truly of anything, or anything truly of it (cf. Euthyphro 15d, Meno 71b, Rep. 354b)? Or are they more in the nature of a humorous parting shot, not intended to be squeezed too hard for precise philosophical content? The latter seems to me in principle the preferable answer, on the …
The Hellenistic Philosophers: Volume 2, Greek and Latin Texts with Notes and Bibliography
This comprehensive sourcebook makes available in the original Latin and Greek the principal extant texts required for the study of the Stoic, Epicurean and sceptical schools of philosophy. The material is organised by schools, and within each school topics are treated thematically. The volume presents the same texts (with some additional passages) as are translated in The Hellenistic Philosophers, Volume 1. The authors provide their own critical …
Is Aristotle's teleology anthropocentric
Aristotle holds that nature does nothing pointless that natural processes are structured by the good ends they serve. But there is a strong current tendency to read him, in line with the priorities which govern his zoological works, as refusing to extend the workings of this finality in nature beyond the internal structure and functioning of individual organisms.' Some do continue to attach importance to the occasional remarks in his corpus which…
Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for His Life, Writings, Thought and Influence
As part of Project Theophrastus this volume covers the material related to Theophrastus’ work on logic. As Aristotle’s pupil, he largely followed his master, but made important changes in modal logic, and some of his innovations passed into medieval logic.
Passions & Perceptions: Studies in Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium Hellenisticum
The philosophers of the Hellenistic schools in ancient Greece and Rome (Epicureans, Stoics, Sceptics, Academics, Cyrenaics) made important contributions to the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology. This volume, which contains the proceedings of the Fifth Symposium Hellenisticum, describes and analyses their contributions on issues such as: the nature of perception, imagination and belief; the nature of the passions and their role i…
Three Platonist Interpretations of the Theaetetus
That the Theaetetus is one of the great pioneering texts in the history of epistemology is agreed on all sides. But the solidly doctrinal ways of reading it which were long fashionable have been largely eclipsed, especially in the last thirty years, by philosophically more rewarding approaches which treat it as essentially exploratory and open-ended. Most recently, Myles Burnyeat has presented the Theaetetus in terms of a complex dialectical conf…
Plato’s Auctoritas and the Rebirth of the Commentary Tradition
In striking this note of caution, Simplicius incidentally allows that a Platonist like himself will, of course, treat Plato as completely infallible. This merely makes explicit a notion of philosophical authority that had been commonplace in Greek philosophy at least since the mid—third century BC, and which had much older roots. Since the founder of your school is ex officio above criticism, you must seek a compromise between adjusting your view…
Philosophical Allegiance in the Greco—Roman World
AT the risk of over-generalization, I shall be claiming in this paper that in the Greco-Roman world, especially during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, what gives philosophical movements their cohesion and identity is less a disinterested common quest for the truth than a virtually religious commitment to the authority of a founder figure. More specifically, I shall try to illustrate how this kind of loyalty can look when put into practice, usi…
The Ethics of Brutus and Cassius
Among that select band of philosophers who have managed to change the world, and not just to interpret it, it would be hard to find a pair with a higher public profile than Brutus and Cassius — brothers-in-law, fellow-assassins, and Shakespearian heroes. Yet curiously little is understood of the connection, if any, between the fact that they were philosophers and their joint decision to form the conspiracy against Caesar. It may not even be widel…
Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom
This book is designed to appeal both to those interested in Roman poetry and to specialists in ancient philosophy. In it David Sedley explores Lucretius' complex relationship with Greek culture, in particular with Empedocles, whose poetry was the model for his own, with Epicurus, the source of his philosophical inspiration, and with the Greek language itself. He includes a detailed reconstruction of Epicurus' great treatise On Nature, and seeks t…
Ethics
This fourth Companion to Ancient Thought is devoted to ancient ethics. The chapters range over the ethical theories of all the major philosophers and schools from the earliest times to the work of the Hellenistic philosophers. There is a substantial introduction which considers the question of what is distinctive about ancient ethics, and an extensive bibliography. This collection provides a sophisticated and accessible introduction to the moral …
The Etymologies in Plato's Cratylus
Socrates is asked to arbitrate a dispute about the ‘correctness of names’ between Cratylus and Hermogenes. While Hermogenes regards the assignment of names as merely arbitrary, Cratylus holds that they belong to their nominata either naturally or not at all. He has annoyed Hermogenes by informing him that Hermogenes is not his real name. But he is too laconic to offer any explanation, thus leaving it to Socrates himself to work out the etymologic…
Platonic Causes
This paper examines Plato's ideas on cause-effect relations in the Phaedo. It maintains that he sees causes as things (not events, states of affairs or the like), with any information as to how that thing brings about the effect relegated to a strictly secondary status. This is argued to make good sense, so long as we recognise that aition means the "thing responsible" and exploit legal analogies in order to understand what this amounts to. Furth…
Hellenistic physics and metaphysics
The Stoics are leading champions of the continuum, the Epicureans its leading opponents. Any such division of Hellenistic schools into continuists and discontinuists provides a useful skeleton, but one which needs careful fleshing out.
The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy
A full account of the philosophy of the Greek and Roman worlds from the last days of Aristotle (c.320 BC) until 100 BC. Hellenistic philosophy, for long relatively neglected and unappreciated, has over the last decade been the object of a considerable amount of scholarly attention. Now available in paperback, this 1999 volume is a general reference work which pulls the subject together and presents an overview. The History is organised by subject…
The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy
The Western tradition of philosophy began in Greece with a cluster of thinkers often called the Presocratics, whose influence has been incalculable. They include the early Ionian cosmologists, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, the Eleatics (Parmenides, Melissus, and Zeno), Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the atomists and the sophists. All these thinkers are discussed in this 1999 volume both as individuals and collectively in chapters on rational theology, epistem…
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