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The Development, Logic, and Legacy of Reflexive Concepts in Greek Philosophy
- Journal of the History of Ideas
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 74, Number 4, October 2013
- pp. 507-529
- 10.1353/jhi.2013.0037
- Article
- Additional Information
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Reflexive concepts and philosophy have a history of intimacy. From the beginning, philosophy's discourse incorporates reflexive ideas and makes these essential building-blocks in its project to think the real. I argue that concepts such as the self-moving and self-gathering soul in cosmology and anthropology, the thing-in-itself in ontology, and self-care in ethics become primordial reflexive operations which ground and animate their respective realms, and form an ecology of reflexive ideas. I provide an account of the underlying reasons for the development of these reflexive concepts, while at the same time sketching their reception and legacy in the tradition.