Fragmenta

The Fragmenta were compiled and included at the end of the various Issues of Dialectic.

New Series Volume 1, Issue 1, May 2004.

“Send me a pot of cheese, so that I may be able to indulge myself whenever I wish.” – Epicurus, Fragments §39. The Essential Epicurus (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1993), p. 95.


New Series Volume 1, Issue 2, June 2004.

“Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” – Karl Marx, ‘Theses On Feuerbach’ §XI The Portable Karl Marx (New York: Viking Penguin, 1983), p. 155.

“No, he’ll perceive it in itself and by itself, constant and eternal, and he’ll see that every other beautiful object somehow partakes of it, but in such a way that their coming to be and ceasing to be don’t increase or diminish it at all, and it remains entirely unaffected.” – Plato Symposium §211a,b (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 55.

“Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.” – Michel Foucault The Archaeology Of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 19.


New Series Volume 1, Issue 3, July 2004.

“Men being all naturally inclined to sexual intercourse, and the consequence of this being the birth of children, whenever one of those who have been reared does not on growing up show gratitude to those who reared him or defended him, but on the contrary takes to speaking ill of them or ill treating them, it is evident that he will displease and offend those who have been familiar with his parents and have witnessed the care and pains they spent on attending to and feeding their children.” – Polybius The Histories VI.6 (London: William Heinemann, 1954), p. 279.

“When sight is taken away along with association and intercourse, erotic passion ceases.” – Epicurus, Vatican Sayings §18. The Essential Epicurus (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1993), p. 78.

“Sexual intercourse has never conferred a benefit; one should reckon oneself glad if it has not brought any harm.” – Epicurus, Fragments §8. The Essential Epicurus (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1993), p. 89.

“In one of his books of Exhortations, he [Chrysippus] says that sexual intercourse with mothers or daughters or sisters, eating certain food, and proceeding straight from childbed to deathbed to a temple have been discredited without reason. He also says that we should look to the beasts and infer from their behaviour that nothing of this kin is out of place or unnatural.” – Plutarch, On Stoic Self-contradictions 1044F–1045A in A. Long and D. Sedley [Ed.] The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. I 67F (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 430.

“La sexualité, c’est assez monotone!” – Michel Foucault Dits Et Écrits II, 1976 - 1988 (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), p. 1428.


New Series Volume 1, Issue 4, August 2004.

“Only he [the wise man] is free, but the inferior are slaves. For freedom is the power of autonomous action, but slavery is the lack of autonomous action. There is also a different slavery which consists in subordination, and a third consisting in possession as well as subordination; this last is contrasted with despotism, which is also a morally inferior state.” – Diogenes Laertius 7.121-2 in A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley [Ed.] The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. I 67M (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 431, 432.

“Quite a few men have even been awarded cults before now because of the immortality of their children, where as no human child has ever yet earned his father a cult.” – Plato Symposium §209e (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 53.

“For if A and B are friends, then the collaboration of each is for the sake (at least in part) of the other, and there is community between them not only in that there is a common interest in conditions, and common pursuit of the means whereby each will get what he wants for himself, but also in that what A wants for himself he wants (at least in part) under that description ‘that-which-B-wants-for-himself’, and vice versa. Indeed, the good that is common between friends is not simply the good of two successfully achieved coinciding projects or objectives; it is the common good of mutual self-constitution, self-fulfilment, self-realization.” – John Finis, Natural Law And Natural Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 141.


New Series Volume 1, Issue 5, September 2004.

“Pindar turned it into a law of nature – which meant that he ‘justified the use of force extreme’, to quote his actual words.” – Plato Laws §713 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 173.

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” – Albert CamusThe Myth of Sisyphus (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 11.

“killing is an act which of itself does nothing but damage the basic value of life.” – John Finis, Natural Law And Natural Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 119.


New Series Volume 1, Issue 6, October 2004.

“Enlightenment is mankind’s exit from its self-incurred immaturity” – Kant, Immanuel, ‘An Answer To The Question: What Is Enlightenment?’ in James Schmidt [Ed.] What Is Enlightenment? (Berkley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 58.

“Each individual also requires, according to his status and vocation, different theoretical insights and different skills to attain them – a different degree of enlightenment. The enlightenment that is concerned with man as man is universal, without distinction or status; the enlightenment of man as citizen changes according to status and vocation. The destiny of man remains always the measure and goal of these efforts.” – Moses Mendelssohn, ‘On The Question’ in James Schmidt [Ed.] What Is Enlightenment (Berkley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 55.

“Man, it turns out, can lose all so-called Rights of Man without losing his essential quality as man, his human dignity. Only the loss of polity itself expels him from humanity.” - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), p. 297.