Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 683 the corpus. The Rhet0r/c's late entry into the field of ancient philosophy also seems to dictate a large ratio of exposition to analysis in many of these essays, and a greater attention to the methodological than to the more substantive parts of the text. Another consequence is that these essays are valuable when they use the Rhetoric to illuminate problems in the rest of the corpus, but only occasionally is light reflected in the other direction--from other, more familiar, works of Aristotle onto this traditionally neglected text. EUGENE GARVER Saint John's University .Jacques Brunschwig. Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xiii + 277. Cloth, $69.95. Jacques Brunschwig is one of the most important historians of philosophy working today, with his greatest contribution being to the understanding of the period represented by this volume, from Epicurus to Sextus Empiricus. It is ironic that his work is not better known in the English-speaking world, as he has long been the French scholar most open to the style of thinking characteristic of the English-speaking philosophical world. The appearance of this exemplary volume will make his work accessible to a wider audience. Professor Brunschwig and Cambridge University Press are to be congratulated for producing a well-chosen selection of essays, skillfully translated by Janet Lloyd and beautifully presented. There are twelve essays ranging in date from 1977 to 1992. Ten have been previously published and are essentially unrevised. Two appeared in volumes where even devotees of Hellenistic philosophy would have difficulty finding them. There is, then, considerable value in this collection, even for specialists. This is by no means a complete collection of Brunschwig's publications on the three major topics covered here (Epicureanism, Stoicism, Pyrrhonism), yet the volume has a unity beyond that conferred by its themes. Each of these essays is a valuable illustration of Brunschwig's method; even readers without a special interest in the period can benefit from the example of a master at work. Two papers on Epicureanism open the volume: "Epicurus' Argument on the Immutability of the All" examines a short argument from the Letter to Herodotus (section 39), with a sensitivity not just to the text of Epicurus and to its intellectual background, but to the history of scholarly engagement with the problem. His analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of earlier scholarship reinforces the plausibility of Brunschwig 's own proposal; but more importantly, it illustrates his intellectual generosity and candor. Not one to dismiss another scholar's theory hastily, even when it is obviously wrong, he refuses to let go of a problem until he has understood the motivations behind other views. The second Epicurean paper, "Epicurus and the Problem of Private Language," shows another side of Brunschwig's mind, his penchant for pursuing issues of interest to contemporary analytic philosophy without yielding to the temptation to assimilate ancient to modern theories. 684 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER 1995 "Private I.anguage" and the pivotal paper in the Stoic section, "The Conjunctive Model," bring out a third feature of Brunschwig's method. Many of his essays take their start from a small text or a relatively local problem, one which does not primafacie bear significantly on large philosophical issues. Yet in a rigorously conceived philosophical system, the whole is often reflected in the details; where possible Brunschwig elicits the larger significance. He shows how Epicurean physics provides a normative model for Epicurean psychology without falling into the reductionist error; the Epicurean does extrapolate from physical theory to human experience, but in so doing he does not forget that human beings are not just atomic; they are atomic compounds. Reductionism does not follow from materialism, for Epicurus or for us. Similarly in "The Conjunctive Model" Brunschwig connects, in a manner which is speculative but nevertheless compelling, a important Stoic thesis in logic (that a conjunction is false if even one of its conjuncts is false) with a comprehensive understanding of Stoic ethics and physics, thereby giving definite content to the Stoic claims about the coherence of their system. The other Stoic papers focus on ontology and...