SMS · Scepticism, metaphysics and sciences""

Scepticism, metaphysics and sciences

The project 'Scepticism, metaphysics and sciences' has been devoted to the connections between Scepticism and metaphysics at the beginning of the Common Era. The project has been implemented by Dr. Lorenzo Corti by means of a systematic analysis of the pertinent texts. The results have been presented and discussed in seminars held at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris as well as at international conferences in Oxford, Venice, Leuven, Liege, Geneva, and Paris. Dr. Corti's inquiry onto the dialectic between scepticism and dogmatism concerning the principles of sciences has resulted in two articles: 'Scepticism and Hypothetical Method', published in A. Longo and D. Del Forno (eds.), Argument from Hypothesis in Ancient Philosophy, Naples, Bibliopolis, pp. 281-301; and 'Hidden Causes', forthcoming in C. Natali and C. Viano (ed.), Le debat sur les causes a l'age hellenistique et imperial, Peeters, Leuven. The first piece analyses the sceptic attack on the reasonableness of posing the axioms of sciences as witnessed in Sextus' account of the hypothetical mode, and some dogmatic replies provided by Galen and Hume. It further inquiries onto the consequences of the sceptic's attack on axioms on his own 'Platonic hypothesizing'- the heuristic act of supposing something to be true (without accepting it to be such) in the course of an inquiry. The second article analyses the question of the perceivability of the causal links as triggered by the sceptic attack on causality and debated by the ancient medical theorists. After an analysis of the ancient debate, the article argues for an affirmative answer to the question at stake inspired by such contemporary thinkers as Ducasse and Anscombe. Dr. Corti's inquiry onto the connections between Scepticism and metaphysics has further resulted in the preparation of a new English introduction, translation and commentary of Sextus' treatise Against the Arithmeticians, enriched by emendations to the Greek text. The volume includes both a detailed philosophical analysis of Sextus' arguments against the ancient arithmetical art and an historical account of his Academic and Neo-Pythagorean background. The manuscript proposal for this book has been judged by Brill's editorial board to be suitable for publication in the series 'Philosophia Antiqua'. The complete manuscript is scheduled to be sent to Brill for peer review within the end of 2013 and published in 2014. This volume is greatly expected. For the standard edition of the treatise Against the Arithmeticians, provided by J. Mau, is not always satisfactory; and although some modern translations are available, no reader can hope to improve his understanding of this difficult text by means of a commentary, since there isn’t any. A further outcome of this inquiry is the article 'Sextus, the Dyad and the Phaedo', forthcoming in S. Delcominette and M.-A. Gavray (eds.), Ancient Readings of Plato's Phaedo, Leiden, Brill. This piece is devoted to to Sextus' use of some puzzles raised in the Phaedo against a dogmatic notion of the number two. As expected, to engage with scholars highly skilled in philology such as Prof. Marwan Rashed has greatly improved Dr. Corti's philological approach to ancient texts. Prof. Rashed and Dr. Corti's detailed analysis of the Sextan works has persuaded both of them of the inadequacy of the standard edition of Sextus' opus. As a consequence, the project of a new edition of Sextus has been conceived. The project has received the acceptance in principle by Prof. Jacques Jouanna, director of the Collection des Universites de France Greek series at the Editions Les Belles Lettres. It should be emphasised that since Sextus is both our main source for Greek scepticism and also a source of major importance for the Greek dogmatic philosophies he attacks, the project of a new edition of his work is of capital importance for the history of ancient philosophy.

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