Midwest Annual Workshop in Ancient Philosophy (MAWAP)

The Midwest Annual Workshop on Ancient Philosophy (MAWAP) aims to foster the ancient philosophy community in the Midwest and to provide early-career scholars with a platform where to share their current research.

Schedule

Friday

10:30 am - Welcome

11:00 am - "Aristotle's Trilemma Against Plato's Forms" (Gonzalo Gamarra Jordán)

12:30 pm - Lunch

2:30 pm - "The Less Accurate Arguments in the On Ideas" (Katy Meadows)

4:00 pm - Break

4:30 pm - Keynote: "Idealism and Greek Philosophy: Aristotle and Alexander on Appearance and Reality" (Victor Caston)

6:30 pm - Dinner

Saturday

9:00 am - "Models in Plato’s Republic" (Claudia Yau)

10:30 am - Break

11:00 am - "Memory and the two-level account of perceptual experience in Plato’s Theaetetus" (Lea Schroeder)

12:30 am - Lunch

2:30 pm - "Aristotle's Argument for Essentialism" (Gabriel Shapiro)

4:00 pm - Break

4:30 pm - "The unity of Aristotle's account of epistēmē" (Joshua Mendelsohn)

6:30 pm - Goodbye

Keynote Abstract

Myles Burnyeat famously claimed that idealism is “one of the very few major philosophical positions which did not receive its first formulation in antiquity” and Bishop Berkeley was wrong to find his own views in Plato and Aristotle. But Aristotle attacks precisely this sort of idealism in Metaphysics Gamma 6: those who take every appearance to be true make all things relative, because anything that appears appears to a subject. But his arguments do not just presuppose the Measure Doctrine – that anything that appears to someone is – but its converse as well, that anything that is appears to someone. Protagoras’ homomensura is often taken to consist in both doctrines. But the Converse Measure Doctrine is even more radical than the claim that all appearances are true, for it implies that nothing can exist apart from being apprehended by some mind. Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary is explicit on the point and repeatedly states that on such a view what it is to be is to be perceived, just like Berkeley’s esse est percipi, or, as Alexander once puts it, the being of beings consists in appearing. There is, then, a very clear formulation of idealism in antiquity. Aristotle and Alexander both argue against it: if some things are not essentially relative, then such idealism must be rejected.