How the Stoics solve Plato's greatest difficulty : causality and responsibility in Plato and the Stoics
This thesis offers a reconstruction and analysis of a debate about responsibility, and causation initiated by Plato, and continued by the Stoics. The pivotal moment of the discussion is a problem I call âthe greatest difficulty,â found in Platoâs Parmenides. The debate, however, involves a complex network of arguments including subordinated or parallel discussions about ontology, method, ethics, and epistemology. Instead of isolating the main topic, I highlight the structure of the debate, and the interconnection between its parts, to show the complexity and sophistication of the argumentation in both Plato and the Stoics, and the depth of the Stoicsâ engagement with Platoâs works. The motivation for doing this is to better understand many of the otherwise unexplained and odd starting points of the early Stoic philosophy. But since this requires a reconstruction of the dialectical background the Stoic texts assume, this means that the bulk of the thesis is devoted to discussing Plato. The hope is that by showing the structure of the debate in Platoâs dialogues, the connections in the Stoic fragments will show with more clarity. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first two are dedicated
Vazquez Hernandez, Sergio Daniel
How the Stoics solve Plato's greatest difficulty : causality and responsibility in Plato and the Stoics. This thesis offers a reconstruction and analysis of a debate about responsibility, and causation initiated by Plato, and continued by the Stoics. The pivotal moment of the discussion is a problem I call âthe greatest difficulty,â found in Platoâs Parmenides. The debate, however, involves a complex network of arguments including subordinated or parallel discussions about ontology, method, ethics, and epistemology. Instead of isolating the main topic, I highlight the structure of the debate, and the interconnection between its parts, to show the complexity and sophistication of the argumentation in both Plato and the Stoics, and the depth of the Stoicsâ engagement with Platoâs works. The motivation for doing this is to better understand many of the otherwise unexplained and odd starting points of the early Stoic philosophy. But since this requires a reconstruction of the dialectical background the Stoic texts assume, this means that the bulk of the thesis is devoted to discussing Plato. The hope is that by showing the structure of the debate in Platoâs dialogues, the connections in the Stoic fragments will show with more clarity. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first two are dedicated
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