The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy held its main annual meeting at Fordham University, in New York city, over the weekend October 16-18. Some 200 people were in attendance.
On the program were two papers from the UWO department:
Kris Biniek, "Unity and Partition in Plato's Souls", and
John Thorp, "Aristotle on Natural Law".
Kris's paper argues that, despite first appearances to the contrary, the tripartite model of the soul that Plato presents in Republic IV and in the Timaeus is not at odds with the tripartite model presented in the Phaedo. The apparent discrepancy arises from the different argumentative motivations in the different dialogues; the theories, however, are ultimately compatible.
John's paper argues that Aristotle has been wrongly pegged as a founder or early proponent of the Natural Law school of ethics. Illuminating a very crabbed and difficult text of the Nicomachean Ethics by reference to a text in the Magna Moralia, he argues that Aristotle's real position is that we can, and sometimes should, alter and improve our "moral hard-wiring".
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