Ancient Self-Refutation

Luca Castagnoli is Lecturer in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Durham. He is the author of several articles on a variety of themes in ancient philosophy.

• Introduction; Part I. Truth, Falsehood and Self-Refutation: 1. Preliminaries; 2. A modern approach: Mackie on the absolute self-refutation of 'nothing is true'; 3. Setting the ancient stage: Dissoi Logoi 4.6; 4. Self-refutation and dialectic: Plato; 5. Speaking to Antiphasis: Aristotle; 6. Introducing peritroph: Sextus Empiricus; 7. Augustine's turn; 8. Interim conclusions; Part II. Pragmatic, Ad Hominem and Operational Self-Refutation: 9. Epicurus against the determinist: blame and reversal; 10. Anti-sceptical dilemmas: pragmatic or ad hominem self-refutations?; 11. Must we philosophise? Aristotle's protreptic argument; 12. Augustine's 'Si fallor, sum': how to prove one's existence by Consequentia Mirabilis; 13. A step back: operational self-refutations in Plato; Part III. Scepticism and Self-Refutation: 14. Self-bracketing Pyrrhonism: Sextus Empiricus; 15. Scepticism and self-refutation: looking backwards; Conclusion.

'In this thoroughly stimulating and in every way impressive book, Castagnoli offers a comprehensive examination and analysis of a large number and variety of self-refutation arguments in ancient philosophy … C.'s command of such exceedingly wide and complex material is nothing short of masterful, as is his acutely rigorous, sharply focussed and immensely detailed use of tools - philological, historical, logical - for the handling of it.' Vasilis Politis, Classical Review