GRICE'S QUIZ

 

QUIZ

Ancient Rome had her Pliny the Elder and her Pliny the Younger; Italy had her Ermolao Barbaro the Elder and her Ermolao Barbaro the Younger. Supply three corresponding parallelisms for England’s J. S. Mill and his father.

Provide a short narrative of the history of Italian and English mediaeval philosophy under the counterfactual assumption that philosophers had been denied the possibility of commenting on Aristotle.

Assess, by means of two contrasting judgments, how one canonical Italian and one canonical English philosopher of the Middle Ages would have fared had the educational order run from quadrivium to trivium rather than the reverse.

Reconstruct the history of Italian and English philosophy on the assumption that the Grand Tour itinerary had run not Como–Firenze–Roma–Napoli, but Como–Paris–London–the Hebrides.

Reconstruct twentieth-century Italian philosophy on the hypothesis that Italy had installed the Oxford tutorial system, whereby the philosophy student remained for five years under a single tutor before earning a first degree.

Assess three distinct ways in which Aquinas’s philosophy was reinterpreted once he had been made a saint.

Assess three distinct ways in which Bonaventure’s philosophy was reinterpreted once he had been made a saint.

Assess (A) whether Kierkegaard, rather than a more traditional Italian or English philosopher, would require prior mastery of the seven liberal arts before one might be granted a meeting with the grand dame, Philosophia, and (B) what he would require in their stead.

Boethius: “Hircocervus enim compositum est significans hircum et cervum; sed nisi ei aut esse aut non esse addatur, nullus inde veri falsive intellectus poterit provenire.” State whether “Hircocervus non est” thereby acquires truth-value, or merely the appearance of it, with reference to Strawson’s Introduction to Logical Theory and the criticisms that followed.

Boethius writes: “Vox vero significativa est, ut ‘homo’; non significativa vero, ut ‘blityri’.” Reverse the distinction for an anti‑Boethian, and illustrate it, as Frege requires in Der Gedanke, by means of one complete utterance for each resulting species of voice.

Explain why Italy, though already in possession of Bologna before there was any Ox to bridge, failed to produce an “Oxbridge” of her own.

Casanova made it to England in 1763–64. Explain why London did not improve his reputation for prudence.

What, in Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, counts as the wake-up call?

Derek Jarman famously made a film about Wittgenstein. Using three sections of the screenplay as your model, reconstruct one he might have written for (A) an Italian philosopher and (B) an English philosopher, and compare their critical fates.

Compare Bologna and Oxford vis-à-vis the fact that the former ceased to belong to the Papal States in 1859–61, while the latter remained under the control of the Defender of the Faith.

Using criteria other than mere chronology, rank (A) Hegel and (B) Cicero in respect of their claim to be post-Socratic philosophers.

Assess the claim that Austin’s ordinary-language philosophy arose in reaction either to (A) Ceretti’s Pasaelogices Specimen itself, or to (B) its translation into Italian by P. D’Ercole.

Justify the failure of “Saturday mornings,” à la Austin, to establish themselves at Bologna, with particular reference to prejudice against the sabato inglese.

Explain why Cicero’s numerous dialogues proved a systematic flop when staged both in Rome and in London.

Jean‑Paul Sartre spent his summer holidays at Naples in the 1930s before returning to Paris and engaging in existentialist philosophy. Reconstruct the corresponding history of philosophy had he chosen the moors of Yorkshire instead.

Descartes stayed in Italy from late March to early May 1625. Include that premiss in the refutation of sum ⊨ cogito.

Vincenzo Cuoco wrote “Platone in Italia.” Explain why Gilbert Ryle did not write “Plato in England,” and justify whether he should have.

In the mediaeval trivium, once popular in both Italy and England, rank the three disciplines in increasing order of triviality. Justify.

Reconstruct Burali‑Forti’s likely assessment of Russell’s appropriation of his hyphenated surname for a paradox (1903, après 1897), later enlisted — with Whitehead’s complicitation in Principia Mathematica (1913) — to justify the macabre Theory of Types.

Collingwood translated De Ruggiero’s Storia del liberalismo europeo (1925) into English for the Clarendon. Assess whether that was too great a liberty.

Given that the third Earl of Shaftesbury sojourned at Naples in 1711–1713, philosophising with Vico and Doria while seeking relief for his own lungs, reconstruct the reverse scenario in which Vico and Doria undertake the same at St Giles House, Wimborne St Giles, Dorset.

Given that Bentham rendered Beccaria’s “la massima felicità divisa nel maggior numero” as “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”, assess the consequences for English utilitarianism had he (A) thought fit to translate the divisa, and (B) preferred the Latinate “felicity” to his vernacular “happiness”.

Q. Assuming the standard rule of thumb for ancient sea-routes — approx. 4 knots, or 500 stades in 12 hours and 1000 stades in 24 hours under favourable conditions — and granting that this would have brought Pythagoras from Samos to Croton in three weeks, calculate the corresponding duration required for him to reach Dover in England: (A) by sea, (B) by land, (C) by air.

A. (A) 32 weeks; (B) 145 weeks, assuming the requisite submarine land-bridges from Samos to the mainland and from Calais to Dover; (C) 2 hours, without stopovers.

For most of the twentieth century Oxford maintained a Sub-Faculty of Philosophy. Provide three reasons why Bologna would have regarded that as a form of sub-letting.

The Accademia dei Lincei sustain an annual, very prestigious, Classe di Scienze filosofiche in Rome. Expose three reasons — philosophical, urban, and zoological — why no such collectivity of animals has so far ever done so in London.

Rome had her Civil War — and her Cato. Apply §2.5.6 of Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta to: England had her Civil War — and her Sidney.

Q Walter Pater, an English philosopher, wrote “Marius the Epicurean” on ancient Italic (Roman) philosophy. Provide the strict equivalent of an Italian philosopher writing on ancient Anglo-Saxon philosophy, compleat with the perfectly analogical title.

A: Hereward il Fuorilegge [by Gualterio Padre].

Re ‘liceo’ and ‘lyceum’, provide one specific case pro, and one specific case contra: the claim that, in Italy — unlike England — the ordinary high-schooler is etymologically peripatetic.

Re Bonaiuti’s trial, set out the premiss for his stubborn “si muove”, against (A) the received “non si muove”, and (B) the obvious complication he blatantly leaves aside, that, if motion is frame-relative, “si muove” may require a qualified re-statement.

Assess Numa’s Pythagoreanism as first-rate by ranking the following sources: (A) direct acquaintance and indoctrination still fresh in his mind when he assumed the throne at the age of 185; (B) some other source of acquaintance (rumour, etc.); (C) time travel.

Assess Eco’s plain object-language “Il nome della rosa” against the superior Austinian variant, “Il nome di ‘la rosa’”, with particular reference to the difference between a nomen substantivum and a definite description. Use Austin, “The Meaning of a Word” (Philosophical Papers, 3rd ed., esp. pp. 65–66), and Whitehead and Russell, Principia Mathematica, *14, for ι.

Assess Virgil’s construction of Aeneas as a Stoic hero vis-à-vis §4.5 of Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, with special reference to fatum and the she-wolf.

Using A(a,b) for a amat b and I for intended reflection, construct a meta-scenario involving Ovid himself in “Ars amatoria”, such that the addressee recognises not merely A(a,b), but Ovid’s staging of A(a,b) for recognition.

Nietzsche’s sojourn in the west-coast Italian village of Sorrento gave rise to “Menschliches, Allzumenschliches.” Reconstruct his philosophical output had his travel destination been the east-coast English village of Whitby.

Test the validity of the main claim of “Il principe” by providing a natural-deduction sequence. (Use ‘m’, ‘f’, ‘v’, and ‘g’ respectively for ‘mezzo’, ‘fine’, ‘volere’, and ‘giustifica’, treating ‘giustifica’ as an iterated ‘volere’).

Re Ficino’s “Accademia Platonica”, weigh the obvious horns: (A) that “platonica” is a necessary marker of revived allegiance; (B) that it is a later historiographical over-description imposed upon an originally informal circle.

Re Horace’s “Epistula ad Pisones”, examine and conclude by weighing the obvious horns: (A) that Horace is economising on parchment; (B) that he takes collective uptake by the Pisones to be even conceivable.

Test Aosta’s definitional claim, using second-order predicate calculus with identity, by describing a possible world in which the upper limit of what may be cogitated changes between Aosta as monk of Bec and Aosta as archbishop of Canterbury. (Use ‘C, ‘M,’ ‘b, and ‘c,’ respectively for: ‘cogitari,’ ‘maius,’ ‘monk of Bec’ and ‘archbishop of Canterbury.’ .

Expand, in second-order predicate calculus with identity, how Pomponazzi’s “De immortalitate animae” remains, in a characteristically Padovian way, commitment-free (use the primitive symbols ‘d’, ‘i’, and ‘a’ for ‘de’, ‘immortalitate’, and ‘animae’, together with the standard symbolism of such a calculus, including variables, quantifiers, and relational expressions of whatever adicity may prove necessary; no element is to be rendered into your vernacular).

In the comparative terms of the history of philosophy in both England and Italy, (A) which is your least favourite: the English, or the Italian translation of “Kritik der reinen Vernunft”? (B) Provide one passage from each to counter-balance your judgement. (C) Consolidate your opinion that: Either: “Gott ist allmächtig; das ist ein notwendiges Urteil. Die Allmacht kann nicht aufgehoben werden, wenn ihr eine Gottheit, d. i. ein unendliches Wesen, setzt, mit dessen Begriff jener identisch ist.” is best left untranslated — Or: That neither an English nor an Italian philosopher is properly so called unless he can read Kant in his vernacular — Kant’s, not the English or the Italian philosopher’s.

Given that, when Bologna was founded in 1088, Italy was a mere geographical expression — unification not occurring until 1861 — (A) refute the claim that Bologna is Italy’s oldest university, let alone Europe’s; (B) defend the claim that Oxford was the oldest university of a country that was not a mere geographical expression — and, therefore, of the whole world.

Philosophy was introduced at Rome by an Athenian embassy on a clear day of February in DXCIX ad urbem conditam. Supply, finding the apt historical equivalents, the exact parallel for Londinium, in terms of: (A) Carneades’s speech on the Monday pro δίκη — of Rome’s over-taxation of Athens; (B) Carneades’s speech on the Tuesday contra δίκη; and (C) the reaction of Cato the Censor to the proceedings.”

Provide the natural-deduction derivation by which, in §§ 8.5–7 of the “Oratio de hominis dignitate,” Pico della Mirandola concludes per reductio ad absurdum contra “re-nascentia.”

Is Quattromani the name of ONE philosopher? (A) If ‘Yes’: justify your answer in terms of his known oeuvre; (B) If ‘No’: supply the other Quattromani [(C) Would that not make him Ottomani? Counter‑justify.] (D) State a corollary that would follow from your declining to give a yes‑or‑no answer to the original question.

What work by Telesio did Bacon not read to justify his characterisation of the former as “prius modernorum”?

 

Distinguish between (A1) Civitas solis, (A2) Civitas Solis, (B1) La città del sole, (B2) La città del Sole, (B3) La Città del sole, and (B4) La Città del Sole. What was lost in translation?

Q: (A) Provide the three scope variants for Bruno’s Dell’infinito, universo, e mondi; (B) indicate which one led to the Santo Ufficio resolution; (C) counter-justify.

Q: Give three philosophical arguments why Oxford may be an older university than Bologna.

Explain why Aquinas’s Summa Theologica can or cannot still be taught at Oxford by a former seminarian like Kenny.

Explain how Cicero’s philosophical advice in “The Republic” applies, in English history, to any period other than Cromwell’s Commonwealth.

Q: Explain the differences between the philosophical doctrines of both Rensi and Renzi in terms of how their surnames would be mispronounced outside Italy.

Q. Compare William of Ockham and Gregorio da Rimini in terms of: (a) percentuals of the first names William and Gregorio in their respective villages; (b) other.

Q: “Is soul-survival of the nous qua noumenon pantheistically flawed?” From Marcus Aurelius, Ad se ipsum, § 5.4.

A: His question; his answer!

Q: What is the meaning of “of” in Boethius’s “Consolation of Philosophy”?

A: “Off,” surely?

Q: Would Lucretius be able to read a modern Italian rendition of his De rerum natura?

A: Provided the hexametres are kept.

Q: If your name were Cicero, would you legally change it?

A: I did — but my wife remains Missus Cicero.

Q: Is Vico’s Scienza nuova still new?

A: Even before he wrote it.

Q: Name three philosophers within the S before Sabbadini who wrote on Cicero.

A: Sabba, Sabbada, and Sabbadin — if you heard of them.

Q: Why is Croce’s Breviario di estetica anything but?

A: Because “Breviario” alone would not do.

Q: Is it Salutati’s custom to salute more than once?

A: Not necessarily at once.

Q: Is Sancasciani doubly invoked?

A: Indeed. And worth the double reward.

Q. Expose in your own terms what Gricean maxim Sanseverino but not Severino flout.

A. I do not expose on principle.

Q: If Sarpi’s surname is supposed to derive from sarpa, a fish, why is it not Sarpe?

A: Why not?

Q: If s- at the beginning of a word is the negative prefix, what would Scaramelli not mean?

A: Not not little candies.

Q: Why are there two Scevolas, and why should Grice care?

A: Because “Scevola” in these notes names two different Quintus Mucius Scaevolas, each exemplary in a different register of reasoned public life. One is the pontifex and jurist, associated with the systematic ordering of civil law, dialectical division, and the idea that jurisprudence is a branch of political philosophy grounded in public reasons. The other is the augur and civic speaker, remembered above all for his refusal, under threat, to call Marius an enemy, thereby showing that force cannot cancel the authority of judgment. Grice should care because both figures anticipate, in different ways, his own central thought: that meaning, judgment, and public reason depend not on coercion, costume, or institutional fiat alone, but on recognisable standards of rational accountability. One Scevola shows reason as juridical articulation; the other shows reason as moral steadfastness in speech.