classics digests, reflections and reviews
Greco-Roman and Eastern Classics: Mythology, Philosophy, Literature.
In Book 34, Livy recounts a debate in the Roman senate concerning the Oppian Law, which forbids ‘female extravagance’. It presents a microcosm of ancient Rome. All the issues being raised here, such as moral virtues and vices, human rights, the relations between the sexes and between the social classes, the desires of the people vs. the sanctity of the laws, are universal, and highly relevant today, though the particulars […]
Read moreBeing, Thought and God Thought thinks on itself because it shares the nature of the object of thought; for it becomes an object of thought in coming into contact with and thinking its objects, so that thought and object of thought are the same. For that which is capable of receiving the object of thought, i.e. the essence, is thought. But it is active when it possesses this object. Therefore […]
Read moreUnity and Measure To be one means ‘to be whole and indivisible’, being essentially one means a “this” and capable of being isolated in time, place, form or thought; but it means especially ‘to be the first measure of a kind’, and most strictly of quantity; for it is from this that it has been extended to the other categories. For measure is that by which quantity is known; and […]
Read morePotentiality and Contraries There is difficulty in the question how the matter of each thing is related to its contrary states. It is the matter of one in virtue of its positive state and its form, and of the other in virtue of the privation of its positive state and the corruption of it contrary to its nature. The corpse comes from the animal, and vinegar from wine, as night […]
Read moreForm, not Genus, is Principle If the universals are always more of the nature of principles, evidently the uppermost of the genera are the principles; for these are predicated of all things. Both being and unity will be principles and substances. But it is not possible that either unity or being should be a single genus of things; for the differentiae of any genus must each of them both have […]
Read moreArtists can Teach We view them as being wiser not in virtue of being able to act, but of having the theory for themselves and knowing the causes. And in general it is a sign of the man who knows and of the man who does not know, that the former can teach, and therefore we think art more truly knowledge than experience is. Having abstract knowledge of the cause […]
Read moreClarity of Definition First of all see whether he has used any attribute that belongs universally. For the genus ought to divide the object from things in general, and the differentia from any of the things contained in the same genus. Now any term that belongs to everything separates off the given object from absolutely nothing, while any that belongs to all the things that fall under the same genus […]
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