"Ugo Zilioli has put together an inspiring, dialogical collection of papers, which explore routes traced by the evidence for the other (let's stop saying 'minor') Socratics and their heirs through many of the blank spaces left on our historical map between Plato and the Hellenistic age. At the same time as advancing our understanding of Classical metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, the papers grapple with important questions about how we do ancient philosophy, and bring much needed critical light to categories, such as that of 'school' itself, which shapes our thinking", George Boys-Stones

Cet article s'attache à comprendre si les cyrénaïques étaient sus-ceptibles d'être attaqués moyennant l'objection d'inactivité et, si oui, comment ils auraient pu essayer d'y répondre et quel type de vision morale ils auraient pu essayer de défendre. En traitant de ces questions, j'évaluerai la légitimité de l'interprétation du scepticisme cyrénaïque offerte par Jules Vuillemin. Je confirmerai ainsi la plausibilité de son interprétation et développerai en même temps l'exploration de la nature et de la portée de la philosophie cyrénaïque. Abstract: The paper aims to first understand whether the Cyrenaics were actually susceptible to the charge of apraxia; secondly, if they were, to see how they might have responded to this and what sort of ethical outlook they might have tried to defend. In dealing with these issues, I will inevitably assess the legitimacy of Vuillemin's interpretation of Cyrenaic scepticism. In so doing, I shall confirm the scholarly plausibility of his interpretation while, at the same time, providing material for further exploration of the full nature and scope of Cyrenaic philosophy.

This collection features the revised versions of the papers presented at <Socratica III – a conference on Socrates, the Socratics, and the ancient Socratic literature> (Trento). The volume approaches the Socratic question from a viewpoint that departs radically from mainstream lines of interpretation, focussing on the theoretical issues that these thinkers were able to develop in the fierce struggle among themselves. The papers dwell on the dynamic context in which these issues were posed, discussed, and eventually fixed in dogmatic theories within the philosophical and non-philosophical Greek literature of the V and IV centuries B.C. Following topics are examined: 1. the ‘intellectual movement’ around Socrates; 2. the literary context in which the texts of the Socratics are framed; 3. major topics discussed within this movement, their development within and outside the Socratic circle, and their reception in Late Antiquity; 4. the state of the art of the ‘Socratic question’. I contributed two papers. They are available separately in thiis website. More in <www.socratica.eu>

This is a general history of ancient and medieval philosophy as it has been studied in Durham from the 7th century CE (the Venerable Bede) until the present day. As it is a living document, corrections and additions are most welcome (please email me phillip.horky@durham.ac.uk).

Special attention in this Newsletter for Nicomachus. Conferences, New books, Book reviews, Book chapters, Journal articles, Internet, and Academia.

This paper provides an overview of the literature on Socrates and the first-generation Socratics that appeared from 2010 up to the Socratica III conference (in 2012). In these years, scholarly activities on Socrates have constantly increased, leading to variegated and dynamic scholarship. Approaches, methodologies, sometimes even the topics are new and original, thus enriching and refreshing a whole field of studies. The paper deals with the scholarship on the literary context of the logoi sokratikoi, the figure of Socrates in Aristophanes and Old Comedy, Antisthenes, Xenophon, and of course Plato.

This collection offers the revised versions of the papers presented at ‚Socratica III – a conference on Socrates, the Socratics, and the ancient Socratic literature‘ (Trento, Italy, 2012). The volume approaches the Socratic question from a viewpoint that radically departs from mainstream lines of interpretation. It focuses on the issues the Socratics were able to develop in the fierce struggle among themselves, i. e. on the dynamic context in which these issues were posed, discussed, and eventually fixed in dogmatic theories within the philosophical and non-philosophical Greek literature of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. The following topics are examined: 1. the ‘intellectual movement’ around Socrates; 2. the literary context in which the texts of the Socratics are framed; 3. major topics discussed within this movement, their development within and outside the Socratic circle, and their reception in Late Antiquity; 4. the state of the art of the ‘Socratic question.’

ABSTRACT In Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes, Timothy Raylor, points to anomalies in what has become the received wisdom about Thomas Hobbes’s understanding of the relation between philosophy and rhetoric. Quentin Skinner, whose Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (1996) is canonical, in From Humanism to Hobbes (2018, 1–2), restates his basic assumption, that ‘by “humanism” and “the humanities”, I am simply referring to a specific academic curriculum widely followed in the grammar schools and universities of early modern England’. Raylor asserts, ‘Hobbes’s understanding of rhetoric [w]as, from the first, Aristotelian rather than Ciceronian’. But for Raylor to secure his case we need to know more about the distribution of knowledge in early modern England, which could not simply be read off from the heavily Ciceronian educational curriculum. Raylor does not discuss the English scientific MS culture of the seventeenth century, the late medieval Arabic into Latin translation movement to which it is indebted, or its impact on the circles to which Hobbes belonged, his mathematics or optics, or the atomism of the Cavendish and Mersenne circles. This essay is designed to make up some of this deficit.