scholarly journals Hippias’s “Collection” — a handbook for a man of wisdom

Hypothekai ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 100-112
Author(s):  
Roman Svetlov ◽  

Despite the obvious revival of interest in the First Sophistry in recent decades, Hippias of Elis is poorly considered in the con-text of the history of ancient education. Evidences about his phil-osophical views are not investigated as something significant in the development of ancient philosophy. Usually Hippias is inter-preted as a representative of the nascent genre of doxography. Meanwhile, there is an opportunity to consider evidence of his work, teaching, genre of his texts as an element of the history of the “higher” levels of ancient education, intended for successful and self-sufficient members of ancient society. This social type was formed precisely in the era of the First Sophistry. The cen-tral subject of this paper is the «Collection» of Hippias. Despite the minimum of information about this text available to a mod-ern scholar, there is a steady tendency to associate a number of evidences about the work of Hippias with this text. I will try to show that the hypothetical content of the “Collection” is in good agreement with the available information about the wisdom of Hippias. First of all, it corresponds to his belief in the diversity and plurality of being. This is the origin of the sophist's multi-scholarship — the multiplicity of being (the bodies of beings) forces us to develop a variety of knowledge concerning the most diverse aspects of life, its various manifestations. The methodol-ogy of his work was connected with this: Hippias singled out the most important and “homogeneous”. It allowed him to classify the material in full accordance with the tasks facing him. As a re-sult, firstly, this text was an attempt to systematize human knowledge about existence in its most important sections (the beginning of everything, the gods, history, the experience of re-markable people). Secondly, it was a teaching guide that allowed not only to learn various facts, but also helped to formulate judgments about the past so that it became a source of experience for the present. And thirdly, it was an auxiliary mnemonic tool, important for the process of writing speeches or rhetorical im-provisation.

Think ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (60) ◽  
pp. 5-20
Author(s):  
Anna Marmodoro

The debate over whether and how philosophers of today may usefully engage with philosophers of the past is nearly as old as the history of philosophy itself. Does the study of the history of philosophy train or corrupt the budding philosopher's mind? Why study the history of philosophy? And, how to study the history of philosophy? I discuss some mainstream approaches to the study of the history of philosophy (with special focus on ancient philosophy), before explicating the one I adopt and commend.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Stanisława Bartosiewicz

The reflections included in this paper show the imperfections of human knowledge when it comes to predicting the socio-economic situation of a modern democratic state, and their consequences resulting in that those who develop the forecast have to direct their attention to the following issues in their exploration:a)       list of important features characterizing well-being of the state and its citizens’ condition;b)      credibility of the information on the value of the selected characteristics (data);c)      adequate methods outlining the history of how those characteristics were shaped in the past (trends);d)     methods of shaping causal relationships between these characteristics;effective methods of forecasting socio-economic situation in future.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
André Koscianski

Abstract. Cities concentrate most of the world’s population and are the stage of difficult problems around logistics, economy, or quality of life, to enumerate just a few. As an object of research on itself, a urban agglomeration is difficult to characterize; it is both an ensemble of various disconnected heterogeneous elements, and the product of numerous actions and effects between those elements. Studies of the structure and the functioning of cities date back to one century ago, with an increased interest in the last decades on the phenomenon of expansion and all of its impacts. Models of city growth face the complex nature of this system and are approximative. Different representations seek to balance characteristics as data availability, level of detail of internal processes, or precision. The uflow model approaches the problem with the metaphor of an abstract field, which evolves over time and signals the conversion from empty to urban cells. The procedure for calibration adjusts parameters according to the history of the region under study, and is able to capture local conditions. The implementation takes advantage of parallel hardware, and the simulation can be performed in reverse mode, a feature that can be useful to verify the adaptation of the tool to a given scenario, or to compute approximations of the past state of a region. Tests confirmed the expected behaviour of the algorithms, and good agreement with actual data. The flexibility of the concept of intensity of urbanization is open to the integration of different data sources into the model, and the possibility of simulating their evolution over time.


Author(s):  
Catherine Zuckert

The “Straussian” approach to the history of political philosophy is articulated primarily in the writings of Leo Strauss. Strauss wrote extremely careful, detailed studies of canonical philosophical works along with essays explaining his approach. The most controversial claim Strauss made was that philosophers in the past did not always present their thoughts openly and explicitly. They used an “art of writing” to entice potential philosophers to begin a life of inquiry by following the hints the authors gave about their true thoughts and questions. The overriding purpose of Strauss's own studies was to prove that philosophy in its original Socratic form is still possible by showing the persistence of certain fundamental problems throughout the history of philosophy. The most pertinent of those problems, not merely to political philosophy but to human life as a whole, was the problem of justice. Strauss also insisted that “historicism” is based on a philosophical account of the character and limitations of human knowledge and that it can be refuted, therefore, only on the basis of a philosophical argument.


2019 ◽  
Vol 88 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-149
Author(s):  
James C. Ungureanu

Historians of science and religion usually trace the origins of the “conflict thesis,” the notion that science and religion have been in perennial “conflict” or “warfare,” to the historical narratives of John William Draper (1811–1882) and Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918). While Draper and White have been designated cofounders of the conflict thesis, there has been little research on how contemporaries responded to their narratives. This paper examines the early reception of these narratives by considering the extensive commentary they received in British and American periodicals from 1856 to 1900. Sampling a selection of this material suggests that while many rejected Draper and White's interpretation of the past, many others agreed with them in affirming that theological dogmatism came into conflict with the advance of human knowledge. This essay also suggests that Draper and White may have had a more nuanced position about the history of science and religion than has been contended by modern scholars. Whatever their intentions, however, their historical narratives had the unintended consequence of creating in the minds of their contemporaries and later generations the belief that science and religion have been and are at war.


Author(s):  
Alexander Sanzhenakov

The article is devoted to the consideration of the possibility of applying the methodological principles of scientific realism in the history of ancient philosophy. The author shows that in its strong version, scientific realism is not an appropriate basis for historical research, since it involves minimizing the number of interpretations of philosophical material of the past. Another serious drawback of applying strong versions of scientific realism in the history of philosophy is their focus on the correspondent theory of truth. This theory does not fit the historian of philosophy, since she aims not only at creating a realistic picture of the past, but also at incorporating the philosophical ideas of the past into the modern context, therefore a coherent theory of truth is more likely to meet her objectives. After a brief review of the weak versions of realism (H. Putnam’s “internal realism”, S. Blackburn’s “quasi-realism” and “sensibility theory”), the author concludes that these kinds of realism are more suitable for the history of philosophy in general and for the history of ancient philosophy in particular. As a result, the author concludes that the historian of philosophy must take into account the objectivity and independence of the philosophical ideas of the past, and inevitably be guided by his own conceptual and terminological facilities in order to incorporate the ideas of the past into the modern philosophical context.


1961 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. W. Small

It is generally accepted that history is an element of culture and the historian a member of society, thus, in Croce's aphorism, that the only true history is contemporary history. It follows from this that when there occur great changes in the contemporary scene, there must also be great changes in historiography, that the vision not merely of the present but also of the past must change.


1962 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
pp. 137-143
Author(s):  
M. Schwarzschild

It is perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the past decade in astronomy that the evolution of some major classes of astronomical objects has become accessible to detailed research. The theory of the evolution of individual stars has developed into a substantial body of quantitative investigations. The evolution of galaxies, particularly of our own, has clearly become a subject for serious research. Even the history of the solar system, this close-by intriguing puzzle, may soon make the transition from being a subject of speculation to being a subject of detailed study in view of the fast flow of new data obtained with new techniques, including space-craft.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard

Purpose The current “specific language impairment” and “developmental language disorder” discussion might lead to important changes in how we refer to children with language disorders of unknown origin. The field has seen other changes in terminology. This article reviews many of these changes. Method A literature review of previous clinical labels was conducted, and possible reasons for the changes in labels were identified. Results References to children with significant yet unexplained deficits in language ability have been part of the scientific literature since, at least, the early 1800s. Terms have changed from those with a neurological emphasis to those that do not imply a cause for the language disorder. Diagnostic criteria have become more explicit but have become, at certain points, too narrow to represent the wider range of children with language disorders of unknown origin. Conclusions The field was not well served by the many changes in terminology that have transpired in the past. A new label at this point must be accompanied by strong efforts to recruit its adoption by clinical speech-language pathologists and the general public.


Crisis ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Mohammed Madadin ◽  
Ritesh G. Menezes ◽  
Maha A. Alassaf ◽  
Abdulaziz M. Almulhim ◽  
Mahdi S. Abumadini ◽  
...  

Abstract. Background: Medical students are at high risk of suicidal ideation. Aim: We aimed to obtain information on suicidal ideation among medical students in Dammam located in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted at the College of Medicine affiliated with Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Suicidal ideation in the past 12 months was assessed based on responses to four questions in the depression subscale of the General Health Questionnaire 28 (GHQ-28). In addition, data were collected to examine the association of suicidal ideation with various factors. Results: We found that 1 in 3 medical students in the study had suicidal ideation in the past 12 months, while around 40% had lifetime suicidal ideation. Suicidal ideation was associated with feelings of parental neglect, history of physical abuse, and dissatisfaction with academic performance. Limitations: The cross-sectional nature of this study limits its ability to determine causality regarding suicidal ideation. Conclusion: These rates are considerably high when compared with rates from studies in other countries around the world. This study provides a reference in the field of suicidology for this region of Saudi Arabia.


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