Sarah Broadie writes on ‘The Knowledge Unacknowledged in the Theaetetus’ for Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy.Footnote ¹ Her paper makes two main claims: first, that Plato in the Theaetetus rejects the ‘additive’ picture for knowledge, namely, that knowledge is true judgement with something else (e.g. an account); and second, that in the Theaetetus true judgement relies on prior knowledge, especially if that knowledge is arrived at methodically. Thus, true judgement is not necessary for knowledge and sometimes knowledge is necessary for true judgement. Broadie's argument, roughly, is that, in the Theaetetus, true judgement is already a high-level epistemic achievement. She has a number of pieces of evidence for this. The first is Theaetetus 189e4–190a6, where Socrates stresses that a judgement is an assertion that results from a soul having a silent, internal debate. Broadie infers from this that a judgement involves reasons even if those reasons are not good reasons; judgement, for Plato, is more than a mere doxastic attitude (95–6). This already looks unfriendly to the additive picture. Once I have a judgement I have reasons, and when I have a true judgement, I have good reasons. If I have good reasons then what I have is reliable and secure. So, what more could I add to upgrade this cognitive achievement to make it knowledge? Broadie goes on to explore the alternative to the additive picture given in the Sophist and the Statesman. There it turns out that there may be topics that simply cannot be captured by the additive picture: cases where there must be knowledge of an object in the absence of true judgements about that object. This is Broadie's knowledge unacknowledged.

The Sophist provides examples. As Broadie points out, like the Theaetetus, the Sophist adopts the model of judgement as a silent assertion. If that is right, there may be cases where we need some account of a thing before we can have true judgements of that thing: cases where that thing simply does not feature in our ‘conceptual vocabulary’ (108). The way to get things in our conceptual vocabulary suggested by the Sophist is to locate them in a taxonomy. In general, there is no pre-theoretic grasp of objects. So, to have even true judgements of those objects, some methodical, theoretical understanding of them is needed. In these cases, of course, knowledge of an object will be necessary for judgement about it and, a fortiori, true judgement about it.

From the opposite end of scholarship on ancient philosophy comes Diotima at the Barricades. French Feminists Read Plato by Paul Allen Miller.Footnote ² This book takes on the neglected subject of the reception of Plato in the work of twentieth-century French feminists, primarily Kristeva, Irigaray, and Kofman, with contextualizing discussions of Beauvoir, Cixous, Duras Lacan, and Foucault. The substance of Miller's book revolves around three Platonic discussions: the Republic’s Cave image, the Timaeus’ chora, and eros in the Symposium. In each case, Millar offers his reading of the ancient text, followed by a discussion of how the French thinkers in question received that text in their own work. It thus represents a triple contribution: to our understanding of Plato, to our understanding of French feminism, and to our understanding of classical reception.

More focused on the ancient, rather than modern, reception of classical philosophy, Myrto Hatzimichali offers a paper entitled ‘The Texts of Plato and Aristotle in the First Century bce: Andronicus’ Canon’.Footnote ³ The dialectical meat of her paper replies to Barnes's claim that Andronicus’ work on the Aristotelian corpus was not ‘epoch making’. Hatzimichali wants to say that what would be ‘epoch-making’ work in the first century bce is rather less than Barnes and other scholars have assumed. You might think that an epoch-making contribution would be a ‘new edition’ of Aristotle's works: discovering new texts; gathering together texts to produce a canon; comparing those texts to produce a critical edition; looking at an existing set of texts and putting them in order; repairing errors or omissions in a text; and/or transmitting the result. But this, Hatzimichali argues, would be anachronistic: that is to think of ancient textual work along the lines of modern textual criticism. This would be to judge Andronicus by the standards of Bekker. Given how books circulated at this time, an epoch-making editor might do something as simple as writing a guidebook that bibliophiles could use to look at their own collection of Aristotle's texts: ‘by referring to the incipit and stichometric information provided by Andronicus, users of this work could identify the relevant texts in their own copies, put them in the right order and weed out any spurious material’ (98). Hatzimichali argues that Andronicus did, in fact, produce such a guide, and therefore can claim to have made an epoch. His arrangement made a ‘lasting impact and defined the way we still read Aristotle’ (101).

Although other ancient philosophical schools had female members, our evidence shows that Pythagoreanism had by far the most. Sarah Pomery's Pythagorean Women is a social and intellectual history of those women.Footnote ⁴ Pomery divides these women into two groups: the first are those associated with Pythagoras himself, by various sources, including Potphyry's Life of Pythagoras. Such women include Timycha, Philtys, Occelo, Eccelo, Cheilonis, Cratesicleia, and, most famously, Theano, whom Pomery takes – somewhat controversially – to be the wife of Pythagoras. The second group include the Neopythagorean women, mainly writers of prose texts and letters in the Hellenistic period. Pomery's book itself comprises seven chapters: the first two offer a fascinating social history of the early group; the third, the history of the Neopythagorean group; the fourth, fifth, and sixth add the intellectual history, with translations of, and commentaries upon, the prose texts of the Neopythagorean group. Vicki Lynn Harper contributes Chapter 7, which outlines the philosophy of some women in the Neopythagorean group. The book has deep contemporary relevance: at a time when philosophy is, or ought to be, trying to reconstitute its culture so as to be less hostile to women philosophers, this book proves that, even in the ancient world, a warmer climate was possible.

The ancient world's most famous female philosopher receives a dedicated treatment. Hypatia. The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher by Edward Watts, is a study of the life, times, and death of the Neoplatonist philosopher and mathematician.Footnote ⁵ The biography attempts to recover something of the life that Hypatia lived through contextual information and historical detail. Watts's extensive knowledge of late antique history, and fifth-century Alexandria in particular, allows him to conjure a picture of an exceptional life in this late antique context. The book begins with a chapter on Alexandria, its early history as a foundation by Alexander the Great, and the historical origins of the extraordinary diversity – ethnic, political, religious, economic, and especially intellectual – that the city exhibited by Hypatia's time, as well as discussing the Roman elite class into which Hypatia was born.

Chapter 2 focuses on Hypatia's own childhood and education, beginning with her birth around 355 ce. After contextualizing information about the sort of education that Greek-speaking Roman elites could expect, Watts discusses Hypatia's own education, especially the philosophical and mathematical work she completed during her transition from pupil to teacher at her father's school of mathematics and her ultimate independence as a thinker. Chapter 3 focuses on the development that the school underwent during Hypatia's headship, roughly, moving towards Plotinian and Porphyrian Neoplatonism, away from the purely mathematical interests of her father. Chapter 4 sets out the intellectual and political challenges that Hypatia faced in the 390s, in terms both of Neoplatonism taking a new, baroque direction from Iamblicus and of increasing tensions within Alexandria between Christians and pagans. This sets the scene for Hypatia's transition from brilliant scholar to political intellectual, discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, and her central role in establishing a new Alexandrian settlement after the destruction of the Serapeum, partly through her practice of teaching pagan and Christian students together.

Chapter 7 compares Hypatia's career and life with four of her female contemporaries. First is the Pandrosion, whose mathematical career as a teacher seems to reflect Hypatia's closely. Second, the teaching of the philosopher Sosipatra contrasts with Hypatia's: the former taught in her home, a semi-private space, while the latter taught in public. Asclepigenia, Proclus’ teacher of theurgy, again provides a contrast, apparently teaching select pupils the highest mysteries of philosophy, but, unlike Hypatia, not giving public instruction. Finally, like Hypatia, the anonymous wife of Maximus conducted business through receiving clients and exercising her political influence.

Chapter 8 outlines the multi-directional tensions that spilled over into the Lent riot of 415 that resulted in Hypatia's murder, as well as the political and intellectual repercussions of that murder for Alexandria. Chapters 9 and 10 and the conclusion consider the ancient and modern historiography of Hypatia. She or her death have been variously used as a symbol for: the decline in the pagan philosophical tradition; an attack by institutional Christianity on Greek rationalism; the beginning of Christian persecutions of intellectuals; a critique of Christian factionalism; male intellectualized sexism; the sexualization of female intellectuals; orientalist racism; and even a well-known journal of feminist philosophy. Watts ends with a call to remember Hypatia's monumental achievements in life, rather than her death or the symbol she became.

Sarah Wear's Plotinus on Beauty and Reality is a text of, and commentary on, Enneads 1.6 and 5.1, intended for students of Ancient Greek.Footnote ⁶ It seems to be a one-off, but resembles the Cambridge Green and Yellow and the Bristol Classical Press Orange readers. But for Plotinus. Plotinus. Let that sink in. This text introduces Ancient Greek to students through Plotinus. That seems to be an idea more wild than anything to be found in Neoplatonism. But for some audiences, this book makes sense. Many students of Christian theology will be introduced to Greek, maybe specifically biblical Greek, and want to read Plotinus. And having a primer on Plotinus’ Greek will help any scholar of Greek philosophy more used to reading Plato or Aristotle. So I can see two markets for this text: students of theology who want to read Plotinus early on in their linguistic career, and advanced students of Greek philosophy interested in working on Plotinus. Given that there is a budding interest in Plotinus among broadly analytically orientated ancient philosophers, this may be no bad thing. Furthermore, given that Wear includes Enneads 1.6, a nice reading course could comprise Plato's Symposium and Wear's text.

Wear's book itself begins with a brief introduction to Plotinus’ metaphysics, particularly how it relates to the material that will be covered in his discussion of beauty. Wear carefully describes the ontological hierarchy of The One, the intellect, the soul, and matter, offering good contextualizing notes. The substance of the book is the text and linguistic commentary on Enneads 1.6 (on beauty) and 5.1 (on the three hypostases). Wear uses the OCT text for Plotinus’ Greek. The commentary proceeds slowly, taking around ten lines of Greek in a double-page spread, with comments taking up at least one and a half of those pages. Each line of Greek has several comments, usually to explain the grammar or vocabulary and, more rarely, the philosophy. As you'd expect, this is slow going, and even with Wear's helpful comments, Plotinus’ meaning is often mysterious: he knits sentences so loose and anaphoric that his text always seems about to unravel. Wear follows the same pattern for Ennead 5.1, where Plotinus is primarily concerned with showing the relation of the individual soul to soul, intellect, and The One. If anything this section is more baffling than Ennead 1.6, because it involves Plotinus in a complex, multi-faceted discussion of not only Plato and Platonism but also Pythagoreanism and Presocratic thought, especially Parmenides, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles, as well as fending off Aristotle. Wear rounds out the book with appended texts: one that influenced Plotinus’ discussion of beauty and one that he influenced: Diotima's speech from Plato's Symposium and Augustine's vision at Ostia (Confessions 9.10) respectively. Further appendixes give an English transition of part of Porphyry's Life of Plotinus and glossaries of Plotinus’ technical terminology.

Fay Edwards writes on ‘The Purpose of Porphyry's Rational Animals’ for Aristotle Re-interpreted.Footnote ⁷ In his On Abstinence, Porphyry argues that philosophers should not eat animals. Book 3 offers one of his central arguments, namely, that animals are rational and so it would be unjust to kill and eat them. Although most scholars hold that this argument reflects Porphyry's own view, Edwards argues that Porphyry presents the argument dialectically against the Stoics: given Stoic views of rationality and justice, animals are rational and it is unjust to eat them. Moreover, according to Edwards, Porphyry himself believes that it is unjust to eat animals, despite the fact that they are not rational.

Porpyhry's argument seems to involve two premises: (1) all animals are rational and (2) it is unjust for any rational being to kill another rational being for food. Edwards’ argument begins with the simple observation that Porphry's argument is given in direct response to a certain Stoic argument that animals are excluded from moral consideration – they are not oikeios to humans (267). The Stoic argument is a reductio. If animals were oikeios to humans, then humans would have to not harm them. But human life as such depends on harming animals in various ways. So either human life as such is impossible or it is necessarily unjust. But human life is not necessarily unjust (because all is for the best!). So animals are not oikeios to humans. This argument shows that only those creatures oikeios to us are objects of moral concern. But, Edwards points out, for the Stoics all and only rational beings are objects of moral concern. Thus, for them, if a being is rational, then it is an object of moral concern and so it would be unjust to kill and eat it for food. This makes the Stoics are committed to (2). Edwards then takes the time to crisply argue that Porphyry is not committed to this theory of justice and so the argument must be a dialectical one against the Stoics (269–73).

If Porphyry can show that the Stoics are also committed to (1) then he has shown, in spite of their official commitments, that killing animals for food is unjust. He goes to some length to persuade us that animals have certain cognitive capacities – perception, memory, passion, meaningful utterance – identical to the capacities of humans. He gives both a priori arguments – from the concepts of perception – and a posteriori arguments – from the similarity of human and animal physiology. Porphyry presents the Stoic view of rationality briefly, but it is clear that these soul capacities are rational capacities, basically because all parts of the soul, according to the Stoic view, are rational, because rationality is acquired by the soul through sense-impressions. Having the capacity for perception, memory, passion, and meaningful utterance is sufficient for rationality, in the Stoic view. Now, as it happens, the Stoics deny that animal perception, memory, and so on are rational capacities; rather, animals have quasi-perceptions and quasi-memories. In the context, this move looks ad hoc. Furthermore, Edwards argues, Porphyry's own theory of rationality is completely different from the Stoic one. Porphyry takes a standard (Neo-)Platonist line that rationality is innate, because of the soul's connection with the Forms, and that the soul has both rational and non-rational parts.

Edwards then points out that, given Porphyry's theory of rationality, animals are not rational. From the Platonist viewpoint, the capacities of perception, memory, and so on belong to the non-rational part of the soul. So Porphyry should not be understood as endorsing the view that animals are rational. Rather, his point is that the Stoics end up committed to the view that animals are rational precisely because they are endowed with the same cognitive capacities as humans, and the Stoics hold that these capacities come about rationally. Hence, according to Porphyry, the Stoics end up committed to animal rationality, while Porphyry himself is not so committed. Thus Porphyry's argument is best understood as making the point that, despite their official position, the Stoics are committed both to the rationality of animals and that rational beings are worthy of moral consideration. If this is right, the traditional interpretation of On Abstinence Book 3 is wrong, and Edwards is right that Porphyry's argument for vegetarianism is a dialectical one aimed at the Stoics.

Finally, Ariel Helfer's Socrates and Alcibiades. Plato's Drama of Political Ambition and Philosophy studies the conversations of Socrates with an incorrigible, mercurial, ambitious, and unpredictable demagogue.Footnote ⁸ The book is nothing if not timely. Helfer reads the main texts where Plato, or at least a Platonic author, presents the interpersonal relationship of Socrates with Alcibiades, namely the First Alcibiades I, the Alcibiades II, and Symposium 211–22. Helfer makes a number of remarkable claims about these texts. Although most scholars think that these presentations of Socrates and Alcibiades are, at best, loosely related, he argues that they constitute a single, decades-long narrative. Second, he claims that these passages present inchoate something that most scholars don't think exists: a Socratic political philosophy.

Helfer sidesteps the questions of the authenticity of two-thirds of these sources with the following move: any attempt to determine whether the two Alcibiades dialogues are authentically Platonic will depend on an interpretation of how those dialogues relate to other parts of the Platonic corpus. This book attempts such an interpretation. So, if you are worried about authenticity, you will feel better if you think of this book as a part of an investigation into authenticity. The problem with Helfer's methodological argument is this. Helfer wants us to accept the following: if the interpretations in my book are sound, then Alcibiades I and II are authentic; the interpretations are sound, so the Alcibiades I and II are authentic. But what if you have independent reasons to think that the Alcibiades I and II are not authentic? You will still accept thatm if Helfer's interpretations are sound, Alcibiades I and II are authentic, but you will just end up denying that Helfer's interpretations are sound.

Shelving this questions of authenticity, we can follow Helfer's discussion. Chapter 1 presents a reading of Alcibiades 103–16. This chapter brings to the fore the main theme of the book, namely, whether Alcibiades, and hence the ambitious politician, would consider it choice-worthy to become honoured at the expense of the polity which he ostensibly serves. Helfer argues that, despite some suggestive arguments, Socrates has not even managed to make Alcibiades see that there could be a tension between the good of the ambitious politician and that of the polity. Chapter 2 discusses Alcibiades 116–35. Helfer reads the second part of the dialogue as really responding to this tension by asking about corruption, especially corruption of ambition. Socrates tries to stamp out the budding anti-demos character of Alcibiades’ ambition, while keeping enough anti-demos ambition to pursue Socratic education, especially when it comes to conventional ethical norms and piety. Piety is again the theme of Chapter 3, in which Helfer discusses the Second Alcibiades: Socrates’ warning to the ambitious young man that he had better acquire a proper knowledge of the good and the bad before simply mouthing traditional pieties. Chapter 4 discusses Alcibiades’ intervention in Plato's Symposium, where Helfer argues that Alcibiades has learned some of the lessons that Socrates had earlier tried to teach him, particularly about the importance of rhetoric. Of course, Socrates rejects Alcibiades erotic advances, just as the Athenians will reject Alcibiades’ attempts at seduction. The books ends by piecing together an account of ambition that can be recovered from Platonic portraits of Alcibiades, namely desire for renown, love of power, love of honour, the desire to be a benefactor, and desire for the greatest goods.