Dissertations in Progress

Work in Progress133 Theses and dissertations in progress at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Submitted by Francis M. Dunn. 1.Robert Ultimo. "The pursuit of learning in Seneca's Epistulae Morales." M.A. Thesis. 2.Dougal Blyth. "Cosmology and teleology in Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda." PhD. Dissertation. Recently completed and current dissertations in progress at Stanford University, Stanford, California. Submitted by Susan M. Treggiari. 1 . Christopher A. Faraone. "Talismans, voodoo dolls and other apotropaic images in ancient Greek myth and ritual." Director: John J. Winkler. PhX). received June 1988. 2.Honora H. Chapman. "Josephus, Greek Culture and Roman Politics." Director: Sabine MacCormack. 3.Cynthia Damon. "Vetus atque antiquus quaestus: the Art of the Parasite in Ancient Rome." Director: Edward Courtney. 4.Patricia Gibson. "A Study of the Attic Heracles." Director: Michael Jameson. 5.Karen Sara Myers. "Narrative framework in Ovid's Metamorphoses: Studies in Ovid's use of the internal narrator." Director: Edward Courtney 6.James Boykin Rives. "Religion and Society in the Territory of Roman Carthage, from Augustus to Diocletian." Directors: Susan M. Treggiari and Simon Price. 7 . Anna Livia Plurabelle Thorpe. "Prometheus Revised: Socratic Forethought in the Protagoras." Directors: Dorothea Frede and Bruce Rosenstock. Dissertations in progress at the University of California-Irvine, Irvine, California. Submitted by D. F. Sutton. 1 . Robert Dean Luginbill. "National Character and National Leadership in Thucydides." 134Syllecta Classica 1 (1989) Recently completed and current dissertations in progress at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Submitted by G. A. Sheets. 1 . Daniel M. Hooley. "Parata Verba Invenit: An Essay on Aspects of Allusion amd Imitation in Persius." Director: R. P. Sonkowsky. Completed in 19871988 . 2.Susan K. Light. "Greek Sympotic Poetry and the Origins of Play Imagery." Director: R. P. Sonkowsky. Completed in 1987-1988. 3.Duane R. Smith. "The Programmatic Convention of Roman Satire." Director: G.A.Sheets. Completed in 1987-1988. 4.Shirley J. Stewart. 'Time and Perception in Aeschylus' O/roteia." Director: R. P. Sonkowsky. Completed in 1987-1988. 5 . Thomas H. Cook. "Roman Imperial Legislation and the Donatist Movement in North Africa from Constantine to the Muslim Conquest." Director: P. Sellew. 6.Donald C. Haggis. "The Kavousi-Thripti Survey: A Reconstruction of an Ancient Landscape." Director: W.D.E. Coulson. 7.Hugh Parker. "Greek and Roman Myth in Ovid's Fasti." Directors: N. Krevans and O. Nicholson. Work in Progress135 Abstract COSMOLOGY AND UNIVERSAL TELEOLOGY IN ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS XII Dougal Blyth (Diss. Northwestern University, 1989) Historically Metaphysics XII has been recognized at many times and places as among the very greatest metaphysical achievements in all philosophy. Although Aristotle's world view is undeniably defunct today, his philosophy is not. Ancient physics ultimately foundered in the attempt to explain motion; and yet the difficulties Aristotle faced in this regard reveal that he was grappling with issues which modern sciences have had to ignore in order to achieve their enormous apparent instrumental success. The failure of all contemporary attempts in the philosophy of science to justify a realist interpretation of modem scientific theory, and its postulated nonobservable entities, betokens a crisis in our conception of explanation. We do not have an adequate account of what kinds of explanations are ultimately necessary to satisfy us, because we are no longer capable of the comprehensive political and ethical theory of man which was the project of Greek Philosophy; and our modem failure in this regard is the result of our historically deliberate decision in the modem age not even to attempt the kind of explanation of the world which could begin to make sense of man's place in it, and hence of our nature and real needs. Thus our commitment to the distinction between facts and values, modem hasty dismissals of the notion of essence, and the epistemological residue of the representational account of cognition, have left us in a double bind which undermines any rational account of contemporary science or political justification for its support. Because we fail to understand our own cognitive nature, we cannot say what kind of explanations would satisfy us, while, accordingly, our modem attempted explanations of the natural world cannot satisfy our need to know ourselves. In fact Aristotle in Met. XII offers us, by means of...