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284 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:2 APRIL t99o acceptance or rejection depends on how they view the inconsistencies in Plato's views on women. Among those in the first camp are "informed" defenders such as Martha Lee Osborne, Christine B. Allen, and the classicist Dorothea Wender. Also in the first camp, but "misinformed," argues Bluestone, are Joseph Ghougassian, Mary Cohart, and Elizabeth G. Davis. Among the second camp, those who reject Plato as a feminist, there are also the informed (e.g., Julia Annas) and the misinformed (e.g., Elizabeth Janeway). Bluestone is very careful to spell out the arguments of and her oppositions to both the informed and the misinformed commentators. Bluestone also pays special attention to the views of Susan Moiler Okin and Jane Roland Martin, and to critiquing those who find Plato an enemy because he values "masculine" reason over "feminine" ways of being. Included here are Jean Elshtain and Carol Gilligan. Once again, Bluestone is thorough and fair in presenting their arguments, and very careful with her objections to them. Bluestone believes that the major contemporary issues of sex equality are all broached in Book 5 of Plato's Republic, and even that the order in which they are raised is to the point. Thus she is able to accomplish several things at once: to discuss these issues, to analyze and critique historical and contemporary scholarship on Plato's views of sex equality, and, in the final portion of the book, to discuss and critique (as a kind of update on Book 5) contemporary (generally sociobiological) accounts of the alleged "natural" differences between the sexes, and their implications (or failure to have implications) for desirable human characteristics ant] roles. I think the idea for such a book was terrific, and that the result is grand. The only negative comment I can make is that the title of the book is pretty boring, especially since the contents are decidedly not so. SARA SHUTE Marietta College Richard Sorabji, editor. Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987. Pp. ix + 253. $42.50. No full-scale treatment of Philoponus yet exists, and it would probably be premature to try to produce one. In the meantime this book will serve as an introduction, for it covers a rather wider area of his thought than the title suggests. It contains twelve articles with a variety of purposes and levels, from a reprint of the editor's inaugural lecture on "Infinity and the Creation" to a close examination, by L. Judson, of the arguments Philoponus used to try to establish that the world was created but is permanent, and an excellent discussion by D. Sedley of Philoponus's attempts to replace the Aristotelian concept of space with one that identifies space and void. It includes also a summary of the Corollaria (excursuses) on Space and Void by D. J. Furley which, useful though it is pending the author's projected full translation, is an interim working document. In the preface the editor writes that "Philoponus' chief claim to fame is his massive attack on the Aristotelian science of his day.., and the provision of alternative theories which helped to fuel the Renaissance break away from Aristotle," an appropriate BOOK REVIEWS 285 claim given the intention of the book that one might, however, dispute on the basis of its contents. Thus C. Schmitt, whose untimely death while the manuscript was in press was a serious loss to the study of the Fortleben of late Greek philosophy, shows that Philoponus's influence on early Renaissance thought was very limited and did not have a major impact on philosophy and science till the mid-sixteenth century; while treatments of Philoponus's impetus theory by M. Wolff and (in its Arabic manifestations) F. Zimmermann show that Philoponus was, as one might expect, building on earlier work even when he appears at first sight to have been most original. The collection opens with a survey by the editor which sets Philoponus in his philosophical and religious background and oudines some of his contributions to science : it is a theme of this chapter that Philoponus's philosophical thought was pervasively...

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