30 October 2007

Question for the Day

Here's a question about translation and meaning. Consider the following passage in bold from NE III.9 (I supply some context):

1117b.10
1117b.15
εἶναι, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἧττον μὲν ἀνδρείους, ἄλλο δ' ἀγαθὸν μη
δὲν ἔχοντας· ἕτοιμοι γὰρ οὗτοι πρὸς τοὺς κινδύνους, καὶ τὸν
1117b.20
βίον πρὸς μικρὰ κέρδη καταλλάττονται.

Rowe renders:
But presumably it is perfectly possible that the most effective soldiers will not be people of this sort, but rather the sort who while being less courageous possess nothing else of value.
C.C.W. Taylor has:
Perhaps there is nothing to prevent the best soldiers being not people like that, but those who are less courageous, but have not other good in their lives.
What think thee of this? Do you find these renderings satisfactory? Also, as regards the meaning: what do you suppose is meant by ἄλλο δ' ἀγαθὸν μηδὲν ἔχοντας?

For handy comparison, here's Ross with the context:
And so, if the case of courage is similar, death and wounds will be painful to the brave man and against his will, but he will face them because it is noble to do so or because it is base not to do so. And the more he is possessed of virtue in its entirety and the happier he is, the more he will be pained at the thought of death; for life is best worth living for such a man, and he is knowingly losing the greatest goods, and this is painful. But he is none the less brave, and perhaps all the more so, because he chooses noble deeds of war at that cost. It is not the case, then, with all the virtues that the exercise of them is pleasant, except in so far as it reaches its end. But it is quite possible that the best soldiers may be not men of this sort but those who are less brave but have no other good; for these are ready to face danger, and they sell their life for trifling gains.
(Yes, I know I need to say something about De Int!)

25 October 2007

Can Anything Good Come Out of New Haven?

Yes, perhaps a renaissance in music, led by Jay Greenberg (a.k.a. "Blue Jay"), the prodigy whose violin concerto will be debuted by Joshua Bell this Sunday in Carnegie Hall.

If you want to hear something truly amazing, listen to Greenberg's 9/11 Overture, written five years ago, when the composer was 11 years old.

24 October 2007

"falsity and truth have to do with combination and separation"

For those who want to continue thinking with me about this, here's a passage from earlier in De Int which looks to be relevant for understanding the passage quoted below:

ἔστι δέ, ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ
[16a.10]οὔτε ἀληθές πω. σημεῖον δ' ἐστὶ τοῦδε· καὶ γὰρ τραγέλα-
εἶναι μὴ εἶναι προστεθῇ ἁπλῶς κατὰ χρόνον.
And Ackrill's translation:
Just as some thoughts in the soul are neither true nor false while some are necessarily one or the other, so also with spoken sounds. For falsity and truth have to do with combination and separation. Thus names and verbs by themselves--for instance 'man' or 'white' when nothing further is added--are like the thoughts that are without combination and separation; for so far they are neither true nor false. A sign of this is that even 'goat-stag' signifies something but not, as yet, anything true or false--unless 'is' or 'is not' is added (either simply or with reference to time).
A quibble: I might have put "while some necessarily are one or the other", to avoid the (slight) suggestion that Aristotle has in mind modal truth, rather than bivalence.

That passage seems relevant because:
(i) it shows how Aristotle uses τὸ εἶναι μὴ εἶναι as a stand-in to signify the occurrence of "is" or "is not" in an assertion;
(ii) it suggests that εἰ ἔστιν μή οὔπω σημαίνει (infra) is likely to mean "does not yet signify whether it is or is not truth"; and
(iii) it indicates that by προσσημαίνει δὲ σύνθεσίν τινα (infra) Aristotle likely means precisely that sort of combination that results in an assertion with a truth-value.
(Curiously, in a blog infra is supra!)

22 October 2007

Εφυγε ένας φίλος

August 11, 2007. For those who missed them, memorial notices may be found here, here, and here; and see posts in the Leiter Report.

19 October 2007

Parmenides: The Morning Star is the Evening Star

Today at 2 pm in Aquinas Hall, CUA:

Alexander P.D. Mourelatos
University of Texas at Austin
"Parmenides, Astronomy, and Scientific Realism"

Parmenides of Elea (early 5th century BC) composed a poem in two parts, "Truth," and Doxa, "Opinion." "Truth" offers an a priori deduction of the defining criteria of "what-is" or "the real," including such counter-intuitive criteria as "indivisible, unitary" and "immobile"—criteria no observable entity could possibly meet. Doxa is explicitly branded by Parmenides as a scheme that is "off-track," "deceptive," and "lacking genuine credence." Even though Doxa is considerably more fragmentary in our sources than "Truth," it is clear that Doxa comprised a full-fledged cosmology. Most surprisingly for a doctrine disparaged by its own author, it propounded breakthrough astronomical discoveries—notably, that the Morning Star and the Evening Star are the same celestial object, and that the moon gets its light from the sun; perhaps also that the cosmos and the earth are spherical.

Are there appropriate analogues in modern philosophy for this paradoxical juxtaposition of "Truth" with "deceptive Opinion"? Kant's doctrine of a duality of "things-in-themselves"(or "noumena") and "appearances" (or "phenomena") has been cited in this connection. A better model is found in a twentieth-century doctrine of scientific realism, which holds that ultimate reality is disclosed through the theoretical and postulational schemes progressively worked out by modern science. In accordance with this model, our familiar and empirically-grounded image of the world, conceptually sophisticated and scientific though it is (as was Parmenides' Doxa), is in principle replaceable by, or eliminable in favor of, postulational schemes which (like Parmenides' "Truth") defy familiar and ordinary intuitions.

"It does not yet signify whether it is or not"

Ethics gets a lot of attention on the pages of this blog. But here's a passage from De Int (16b19-25) that might be worth considering:

συγκειμένων οὐκ ἔστι νοῆσαι.
For now, John Ackrill's translation:
When uttered just by itself a verb is a name and signifies something--the speaker arrests his thought and the hearer pauses--but it does not yet signify whether it is or not. For not even [a note says: "Read οὐδὲ γὰρ"] 'to be' or 'not to be' is a sign of the actual thing (nor if you say simply 'that which is'); for by itself it is nothing, but it additionally signifies some combination, which cannot be thought of without the components.
I'll post some questions later. But let this sit and stew.

18 October 2007

David Charles, BACAP lecture, October 25

I was very pleased to have helped arrange this opening lecture for BACAP 2007-8:

David Charles

Oriel College, Oxford

Aristotle’s Psychological Theory

(Commentator: Victor Caston, University of Michigan)

Thursday, October 25, 2007
7:30pm
Rockefeller 2
Dartmouth College

Seminar Topic: “Aristotle on Desire and Action” (12 pm, Thornton 103)

For additional information, please contact Margaret Graver (Margaret.R.Graver@dartmouth.edu) or Christine Thomas (Christine.J.Thomas@dartmouth.edu)

17 October 2007

Wrapping Oneself in Glory

There are just five sentences in the passage I raised for consideration.

(1) τέλος δὲ πάσης ἐνεργείας ἐστὶ τὸ κατὰ τὴν ἕξιν.
A goal of each actualization of a state, is that which is in accordance with that state.

(2) καὶ τῷ ἀνδρείῳ δὲ ἀνδρεία καλόν.
But courage is something honorable (kalon) for a brave person as well.

Thus: a courageous man stands firm, and does those actions that are in accordance with courage, for the sake of the honor of it.
I agree with Rowe/Broadie, and commentators on this blog, that the passage explains why the definition of courage must mention the motive of the agent, and, specifically, that he aims to act so as to do something honorable (kalon). But why does Aristotle feel compelled to give such an explanation?

To simplify:
(5) merely states in greater detail that qualification which Aristotle had already included in his definition-- we may dismiss it then.
(4) is merely a reminder, aimed to justify the inclusion of this qualification.
(3) is meant to follow from (1) and (2).

So the real work of the passage is done by (1) and (2). But what are these comments directed at? I propose that they are aimed to correct for what Aristotle has already said.

Consider: He has so far explained courage as concerned in the first instance with military actions, but every time previously that he has mentioned military action in the Ethics, his view has been that its goal is victory. (Victory in fact is a star example of a goal in I.1.) Then, earlier in III.7, when discussing courageous action in particular, all that he says is that a courageous person stands firm given a reasonable assessment of and reaction to dangers: he fears those things that he should; to the degree that he should; when he should; and as reason indicates.

It would be understandable if someone concluded from all this that courage were simply reasonable behavior, and the modulation of the emotions, in the pursuit of military victory -- and that it had no role to play (for instance) when there was no hope of victory. In particular, from what Aristotle had said earlier, there would be no reason to think that a willingness to prefer death over retreat could ever be an expression of courage!

And yet preferring to die in some circumstances becomes for him an index of courage (see 1116b20, καὶ θάνατος τῆς τοιαύτης σωτηρίας αἱρετώτερος, 22, τὸν θάνατον μᾶλλον τοῦ αἰσχροῦ φοβούμενοι, and the suggestion at 1116a12-3, τὸ δ' ἀποθνήσκειν φεύγοντα πενίαν ἔρωτα τι λυπηρὸν οὐκ ἀνδρείου).

I suggest: the way Aristotle wishes to handle this is to build the intention, or willingness, to give up one's life (on behalf of one's friends and fatherland) into the description of what it is to be courageous. This is what talk of the kalon imports.

Thus:
τέλος δὲ πάσης ἐνεργείας ἐστὶ τὸ κατὰ τὴν ἕξιν.
This is directed at the misunderstanding that the goal of a courageous action, when it is effective and victorious, is no more than the victory: Aristotle is insisting, rather, that the particular action needs to be interpreted in relation to the state; and (we are meant to think) in other circumstances someone with that state avoids acting shamefully and keeps to actions which are admirable--that is how the state governs the actions of (τὸ κατὰ τὴν ἕξιν) someone who has that state (cp. 1117b1, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ δόξειεν ἂν εἶναι τὸ κατὰ τὴν ἀνδρείαν τέλος ἡδύ); thus the criterion there exhibited is also a goal of a courageous action that happens to be victorious.

καὶ τῷ ἀνδρείῳ δὲ ἀνδρεία καλόν.
This is directed at the misunderstanding that it's enough for a courageous agent to act reasonably as regards fearful objects and in his feelings of fear and boldness. We don't in fact praise and admire courageous actions simply (or even mainly) for their reasonability--though they must be like that. And those other grounds are available to the courageous agent as much as to us.

16 October 2007

Nobel Laureates in Philosophy

Occasionally the topic turns up among philosophers, especially at this time of year: Suppose there were a Nobel Prize in philosophy, who then might receive it?

And then in hushed tones someone might suggest Kripke, or perhaps Habermas, or just maybe Putnam.

What such a discussion fails to appreciate, is that now it is almost commonplace for two or three laureates to be selected in a field each year. Assume the horizon within which a philosopher might be living and therefore eligible is 40 years. That means there could be as many as 120 living "philosophy" laureates at any one time. Thus there would be no question at all that Kripke, Habermas, and Putnam would have received a prize. But prizes would surely be awarded, too, for a Gettier problem, the Chinese room, Mary's qualia, and speculations about the interior lives of flying rodents.

Which leads me at least to ask a question involving a comparison: Do the discoveries in economics (say) which garner the prize appear to have an equivalent 'weight' (or, more precisely, lack of weight) to experts in that field, as those contributions that would have won a prize in philosophy do to us (or to me, at least), and, if not, should they? (As in: "Mechanism theory has been very indirectly applied to match medical students to residencies. Wow! Amazing!") Or are those discoveries indeed weighty, and the absence of anything of comparable weight in philosophy is further proof that to model the philosophical 'vocation' (as one might call it) on the particular sciences is a mistake?

A Mighty, Twelve Inch Dinosaur?

I couldn't figure out why they had given a newly discovered dinosaur in the titanosaurian class the name, Fut-a-long-kosaurus, until I realized that I had mistakenly switched two letters, and that its name was actually:

Futalognkosaurus

I puzzled only briefly over possible Greek roots before I read on and discovered that the name is derived not from Greek but from Mapudungu, a dialect of the Patagonia region of Argentina.

And yet it turns out that the name in that dialect, despite the spelling. is indeed pronounced Foot-a-long-o-saurus!

15 October 2007

My Complaint, Sharpened

Here's a way to sharpen my complaint with how this passage from NE III.7 typically gets handled. Rowe/Broadie say:

"The aim of this passage is clear, although the detail is obscure. ... Aristotle is emphasizing that an action is correctly said to be done from courage only if it is, and is done as, an instance of the fine, rather than, say, because it is useful, or because one will be punished otherwise. This will be the main criterion that distinguishes actions of real courage from ones belonging to the five false types (see below). In four of these the fine is absent, and in one (the first) it is present imperfectly."
All that this commentary says (in three different ways), is that Aristotle wishes to include some reference to the kalon in his definition of courage.

But:

He had already done so! -- Yes, look again at 1115b11-13, a few lines earlier:
φοβήσεται μὲν οὖν καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα, ὡς δεῖ δὲ καὶ ὡς λόγος ὑπομενεῖ τοῦ καλοῦ ἕνεκα· τοῦτο γὰρ τέλος τῆς ἀρετῆς.

"So he will be afraid of those things too, but he will withstand them in the way one should, and following the correct prescription, for the sake of achieving what is fine; for this is what excellence aims at." (Rowe/Broadie).
Thus the point has already been made, and--one would think--sufficiently emphasized. So, then, what is this later passage meant to do? Why does Aristotle revisit the point? Presumably he is now giving an argument for including the kalon in the definition of courage (recall its conclusion: καλοῦ δὴ ἕνεκα ἀνδρεῖος ὑπομένει καὶ πράττει τὰ κατὰ τὴν ἀνδρείαν). The interpreter's task, I should think, is to explain why Aristotle thought he needed to argue for this, and what that argument is -- which the Rowe/Broadie commentary, for all its ample merits and astuteness elsewhere, does not provide.

12 October 2007

But Also This

As regards the problematic sentence, καὶ τῷ ἀνδρείῳ δὲ ἀνδρεία καλόν, compare:

1102a17
καὶ τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν δὲ ψυχῆς ἐνέργειαν λέγομεν.

1161a16-17
καὶ τοῖς προγόνοις δὲ ταῦτα προσνέμεται

1161b16
καὶ συγγενικὴ δὲ φαίνεται πολυειδὴς εἶναι

1161b24
καὶ τῷ πλήθει δὲ τοῦ χρόνου

1176a5
καὶ ἐφ' ἑκάστῳ δὲ θεωροῦντι τοῦτ' ἂν φανείη·
In each of these, καί is adverbial, not conjunctive. Thus understand καὶ τῷ ἀνδρείῳ δὲ ἀνδρεία καλόν as "But for a courageous person, too, courage is something admirable (kalon)."

So where's the difficulty? If I'm missing something, let me know.

Is 'Spark' a Technical Term?

I couldn't believe I was reading a paragraph in a sober journal (NDPR) written by an accomplished philosopher, rather than a "Dear Abby" column:

There's an important truth here. But it is only a half-truth: for while we must undoubtedly take responsibility for choices that smoothed the path to erotic love, we can't set out on that path at will. We can decide not to go to dinner, not to kiss goodnight, not to go out alone together rather than with friends, and so forth -- and so be responsible for falling in love when we shouldn't. But in the absence of a spark that is beyond the power of choice to summon, making all the opposite decisions won't manufacture erotic love. Without that crucial spark, one might doubtless embark on a successful marriage, but not aspire to erotic passion.
Someone might be tempted to counter: "If I went out to dinner (and had a couple of martinis too), kissed goodnight, and then went into the room together alone, I can assure you that there would be no need for any additional spark!" --But let's talk about that somewhere else, as well as about the other silly paragraphs in this review.

A Riddle within an Enigma

A strange sentence in a strange comment just published in BMCR:

Without appreciating the methodological questions raised in this recent scholarship,
Singpurwalla brings arguments against Weiss that cannot be sustained.
'Scholarship' means either the scholarly attainment of an individual, or a grant for study, but not scholarly literature or scholarly opinion. This solecism is unfortunately not uncommon.

Also, "Without appreciating" would naturally mean, "If she fails to appreciate", in which case the second clause should be "Singpurwalla cannot bring arguments against Weiss that can be sustained"--yet then one might wonder why her not appreciating something should have a bearing on whether her own arguments can be sustained.

Of course, what the editors wish to run is their business. But I personally fail to see how third-party replies to reviews, unless they are straightforward corrections, have a place in a journal such as BMCR. Leave that sort of thing to blogs (I say)!

11 October 2007

Recitations of Immortality

I'm still puzzling over that passage from yesterday: I see for instance that Grant, in his annotated text of the Ethics, gives the same reading as the OCT; he doesn't obelize any line, or the passage; and he renders b21 as "Now to the brave man courage is something morally beautiful." Apparently Grant wouldn't agree with Taylor that b21 is ungrammatical. But to be continued ...

Today my thoughts are turning momentarily to immortality, as I am teaching the Phaedo in an introductory class.

While unpacking books, I came across William Ernest Hocking's 1957, The Meaning of Immortality in Human Experience. You may know that Hocking's earlier, The Meaning of God in Human Experience, was something of a philosophical blockbuster when it appeared in 1912. The much later immortality book was a repackaging of Hocking's earlier, Thoughts on Life and Death (1937), perhaps with the idea that, if the title were similar, this book too would prove to be a bestseller.

Hocking in his time was a high-profile professor at Harvard, whose lectures on immortality were originally given at:

Harvard, the Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality, 1936
Chicago, the Hiram W. Thomas Lecture, 1936
Berkeley, the Foerster Lecture on Immortality, 1942
The lecture series at Harvard was instituted by President Eliot and still persists in the Divinity School. The Berkeley series, I gather, also continues, although in both cases, I believe, the connection with philosophical discussions of immortality is slight. For instance, a recent Foerster lecture (2004) is described on the Berkeley website:
This year’s Foerster Lecturer, Carlo Ginzburg, is professor of Italian Renaissance studies at UCLA. His interests range from cultural and intellectual history to art history and methodology, though his special expertise is in the Inquisition. Ginzburg “is not only one of the world’s leading social historians,” says Foerster Lecture Committee Chair Anthony Long, professor of classics, but “a riveting author and lecturer, with a special gift for reminding us how much we have still to learn about the peculiarities of our species.” Ginzburg’s lecture is entitled “The Soul of Brutes: A 16th Century Debate.”
I wonder, especially given the mention of Anthony Long's presence on the committee, whether ancient philosophers discussing Platonic or Aristotelian arguments ever hold the Foerster lectureship? (I haven't a clue -- never heard of the lecture series before I encountered it in Hocking.)

10 October 2007

Ungrammatical and incoherent?

Since there are no breaking events today in the world of ancient philosophy, here's a passage that has puzzled me, from Aristotle, EN III.7, 111b20-24. Note the obelized line:

τέλος δὲ πάσης ἐνεργείας
τὴν ἀνδρείαν.
C.C. W. Taylor in his recent Clarendon Aristotle volume renders:
The goal of every activity is what is in accordance with the state; and to the courageous person courage is something fine. So that is the nature of the goal; for each thing is determined by its goal. So it is for the sake of the fine that the courageous person endures and does courageous actions.
I'm quite confident that 'in accordance with the state' hardly has the meaning that Taylor wishes it to have!

But questions:
1. What's the argument here?
2. How to deal with that problematic line?
Taylor as regards 2. writes (as you might have guessed):
I follow Gauthier/Jolif and others in reading kai tōi andreiōi dē instead of OCT's ungrammatical kai tōi andreiōi de (dē is an emphatic particle, de the connective 'and', which merely duplicates kai.)

09 October 2007

A Reason to Switch, Ipso Facto

A friend writes:

"You might consider going back to a Mac. Diogenes now includes LSJ and Lewis Short, and the former is linked to the TLG. No need for Perseus."
Yes, it's true: with the free search program available from Diogenes, those long waits for Perseus pages to load are now a thing of the past. One need only click on a word from searched text, and instantaneously the LSJ entry will show up in a split window.

Not that this alone could justify, for me, switching now to a Mac. However, if this Dell laptop . . . were to fall . . . accidentally . . . from my desk >>>
\\
>>>>
\\
* ($@*$)***)#$*$*&&!!!!

Asking the Right Question

They say that to make a discovery one needs to be able to pose the right question, and this, surely, is an example (from the Yale Working Group in Ancient Philosophy):


"Why Isn't Continence Enough for Practical Wisdom?"

Ursula Coope (Corpus Christi College, Oxford)

Tuesday, October 9, 5.45 pm
Connecticut Hall, Rm 104
Yale University

05 October 2007

On " 'Pre-Socratics' "

I've sometimes put the term 'pre-Socratics' in scare quotes when using it (thus: "'pre-Socratics'", for you use-mention fans). Kurt Pritzl in his first lecture of the 'pre-Socratics' lecture series speculated that Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, was responsible for the term's influence and was perhaps even (derivatively in English) its origin. Someone else in a discussion on James Warren's Kenodoxia (here and here) has pointed to Grote's usage.

According to the OED, the provenance of the term is indeed German, but its first occurrence in English is from 1838, and Burnet was already using the term with scare quotes!

You may see for yourself what is apparently the first usage, in Morrison's translation of Ritter, here (courtesy, Google books).

A. adj. Of, relating to, or dating from the period before Socrates, spec. the sixth and early fifth centuries B.C.

1838 A. J. W. MORRISON tr. A. H. Ritter Hist. Anc. Philos. I. 179 (heading) History of the Pre-Socratic philosophy. 1856 J. H. SEELYE tr. A. Schwegler Hist. Philos. in Epitome III. i. 17 The universal tendency of the pre-Socratic philosophy is to find some principle for the explanation of nature. 1892 J. BURNET Early Greek Philos. 2 The common practice of treating this younger contemporary of Sokrates [sc. Demokritos] along with the ‘pre-Socratic philosophers’ has obscured the true course of historical development. 1957 G. S. KIRK & J. E. RAVEN Presocratic Philosophers p. vii, We have limited our scope to the chief Presocratic ‘physicists’ and their forerunners, whose main preoccupation was with the nature (physis) and coherence of things as a whole. 1974 Nature 8 Nov. 130/2 In the treatment of Greek science emphasis is laid upon the importance of the presocratic belief that causal relationships existed between natural phenomena. 2001 Brit. Jrnl. Hist. Sci. 34 380, An awareness of what might be called ontological objectivity..was implicit in the speculations and enquiries of some of the pre-Socratic thinkers, Plato and Aristotle.

B. n. Any of the Greek philosophers of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. who preceded Socrates.

1876 S. F. ALLEYNE et al. tr. E. Zeller Plato & Older Acad. p. viii, Character in relation to Socrates..To the pre-Socratics. 1889 Mind 14 603 It was transformed into a monism like that of the pre-Socratics. 1945 B. RUSSELL Hist. Western Philos. (1946) I. xiii. 126 ‘The Good’ dominated his [sc. Plato's] thought more than that of the pre-Socratics. 1972 E. HUSSEY Presocratics i. 1 What gives the group of Presocratics such unity as it possesses is..that all these men were involved in the movement of thought which led to the separation of science and philosophy from one another and from other ways of thinking. 1994 H. BLOOM Western Canon III. x. 261 While the pre-Socratics and Freud agree that there are no accidents, Austen thinks differently.

03 October 2007

This Theory, That Belongs to Me, Goes As Follows

"You may well ask, 'What is it, that it is, this theory of mine on Anaximander?' My theory, that belongs to me, is as follows. This is how it goes. This theory goes as follows, and begins now."

(Here's the link, if you haven't seen that hilarious Monty Python skit, of Anne Elk's theory of the brontosaurus, 3 min 36 sec.)

Actually, I don't have much of a theory, or much that I'd wish to stake anything on, but more like a hunch. This hunch, which is mine, is as follows...

What is meant to have prominence, I think, in the highlighted sentence below, is the notion of destruction or perishing. The sentence, in the context, introduces that notion for the first time in the passage, after, so far, only talk of origins and coming to be:

Of those who say that it is one, moving, and infinite, Anaximander, son of Praxiades, a Milesian, the successor and pupil of Thales, said that the principle and element of existing things was infinite, being the first to introduce this name to the material principle. He says that it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but some other infinite nature, from which come into being all the heavens and the worlds in them. And the source of coming-to-be for existing things is that into which destruction, too, happens by necessity. (ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι.) For they pay penalty and compensation to each other for injustice according to the order of time. It is clear that he, seeing the changing of the elements into each other, thought it right to make none of these the substratum, but something else beside these. And he produces coming-to-be not through the alteration of the element, but by the separation off of the opposites through the eternal motion.
Exactly what thought about perishing the sentence is meant to convey, is difficult to say. At least: whatever comes to be also perishes. From this Anaximander might have reasoned, intuitively:
  1. Coming-to-be and perishing are corresponding processes.
  2. Thus, end points of perishings and starting points of comings-to-be have the same status.
  3. Thus, end points of perishings are as likely candidates for the most basic principle (archē) and element (stoicheon), as are starting points of comings-to-be.
  4. But everything (or: every putative element) may be seen either among starting points or among end points. (Indeed, since the seas are drying up, dryness is an end point, as much as wateriness is a starting point.)
  5. Thus, there is no reason to pick any one thing rather than another to be the most basic principle and element.
  6. Thus, the most basic principle and element is something different and apeiron.
This gives an argument for why the archē and stoicheon is something apeiron (which is what was needed at that point in the passage from Simplicius); it does so by drawing out implications from the fact and necessity of perishing (which is what is stressed in the relevant sentence); and it is at bottom an indifference argument (step 5), a type of argument which we have reason to think Anaximander favored.

Furthermore, a line of thought such as this would have been a natural development from the position of Thales, because, whatever we think of Aristotle's reconstruction of Thales' reasons for positing water as the archē, it seems likely that Thales looked simply to the origins of things to justify his view -- and then Anaximander would be offering a significant correction in insisting that the end points of processes of perishing (especially the drying up of the earth) have parity.

Moreover, the view leads naturally to Heraclitus, because it is a short step from holding that coming-to-be and perishing are corresponding processes, to holding that, in fact, anything that counts as the one is, at the same time, an instance of the other -- which perplexes Plato in the Phaedo ("When a pair is separated, is that the phthora of the pair or the genesis of each individual?"), and Aristotle in de Gen et Corr.

As for the famous 'fragment'-- "they pay penalty and compensation to each other for injustice"--its function, on this interpretation, would be to give a reason, figuratively, for why everything that comes to be also perishes. Since its language is figurative, we should not, I think, place much weight on on the fragment; and, indeed, the subject matter is inherently difficult. (Exactly why, indeed, must everything that comes to be also perish?)

The intuition of Plato on this point was that a 'becoming' was between being and nothingness and therefore was inherently unstable. Other philosophers have held that anything that comes to be must be composite, and every composite is potentially divided, but any real potential must become realized in an indefinite length of time.

Anaximander's intuition, judging from the fragment, is that whatever comes to be is, to that extent, somehow 'in debt'--perhaps because the 'cost' of its existing is that something else that it excludes cannot exist--and that this debt must eventually be 'repaid', which is its perishing.

I am inclined to explain the 'debt' owed by any generated thing through an indifference argument: that something of one sort exist, rather than something of some other sort that it excludes, is, so far, irrational given the fact of an initial or background apeiron element--this irrationality becoming corrected through the perishing. (Note that such a debt might still be spoken of as a debt of one thing to something else, rather than to the apeiron, because the 'debt' is created by one thing's excluding something else.)

"And that is my theory. It is mine."

02 October 2007

Gods, Rights, and Values

More on Anaximander later. But for today, I wished to notice Catherine Osborne's book, Dumb Beasts and Dead Philosophers, through drawing attention to this paragraph from a recent review:

In Chapter Seven ('On the Notion of Natural Rights: Defending the
Voiceless and Oppressed in the Tragedies of Sophocles') O. addresses
the connected questions of the appropriateness of speaking of rights in
general, and of using this language in speaking about animals. Through
a reading of Sophocles O. develops the argument that where in our own
time we tend to employ rights language to express moral outrage, other
forms of language were employed for the same purpose in antiquity, in
particular that of religion (182). Following this analysis, O. gives a
'Possible Historical Sketch' of how the vocabulary of rights developed.
O. concludes that what has occurred is the replacement of 'one set of
imaginary entities, the gods, with another set of imaginary entities,
rights', neither of which makes clear 'the real source of the
constraint . . . absolute moral value' (193). On this replacement of
imaginary entities, O. is very convincing, but the invocation of
'absolute moral value' here and elsewhere in the book is more
problematic. The existence of an absolute standard is asserted on
several occasions, but not really argued, raising the objection that
replacing both the gods and rights with absolute moral values appears
to be simply the introduction of a third imaginary entity or group of
entities to replace the previous two. The questions of the sense in
which these absolute values can be said to exist, how we can know about
them and how we can be sure that we perceive them and are not
perceiving something which is merely culturally constructed are also
not directly addressed.
Now suppose that by 'absolute moral value' Osborne means something like 'starting point' (or 'first principle of practical reason'). It seems right to say that the appeal to gods, and the appeal to rights, both play the role of a starting point or first principle in practical thought. It also seems right to say that roughly the same sort of starting point might be affirmed, either in the language of gods or in the language of rights.

If we grant this, then does Osborne really need to tell us 'how absolute values can be said to exist' and 'how we can know them' and 'how we can be sure we perceive them'?

One wonders: Can't those questions ever be put aside? Must they always be answered first? Is it inevitably a deficiency when they are not?

Or: Shouldn't the reviewer, then, first explain, before he raises his criticism, why he ultimately thinks that Osborne must do this, and how he can know that she must, and how he can be certain that he isn't simply going along with constructed cultural norms in insisting that she should?

01 October 2007

The State of the Question, For Me

Some rules of thumb for the interpretation of a 'pre-Socratic' philosopher:

1. The interpretation of a fragment or attributed view should be the most economical interpretation of that fragment or attribution which is consistent with the following:
2. The philosophical view (taken to be) expressed should be such as earlier views might naturally have led to it directly (that is, the view might serve as a development, correction, application to a new domain, generalization, etc., of an earlier view).
3. The philosophical view (taken to be) expressed should be such as it might naturally have led directly to a later view (by way of development, correction, application to a new domain, generalization, etc.).
4. The philosophical view (taken to be) expressed is inherently interesting, clever, or profound.
I don't claim that this list is complete, but it is a good start.

Note that 2. and 3. serve to place a philosopher in a sequence of thought.

I state these rules of thumb because they capture what I think is wrong with the usual interpretation of the Anaximander 'fragment' -- which, it seems to me, offends against all four.

The usual interpretation goes much beyond what the fragment says (contrary to 1.); it does so with reference to a general view about cyclical change in nature which any philosopher at any time in the 6th-4th centuries BC might have thought (contrary to 2. and 3.); and, when given precise content in relation to the actual words of the fragment, the view is hardly coherent and seems actually to contain a contradiction (contrary to 4.).

This by way of summary.

But it's easy to be critical. Someone might challenge me to come up with something better, and I'll try to do that tomorrow or the next day.

No Pun Intended

Well, I suppose it all depends on what one means by "whet". According to some dictionaries, it means "to make more acute":

Any reader who shares this curiosity and turns to the opening "problem"
of Book 1 will encounter the following question: "Why are testicles of
cockerels fed on milk large and easy to digest?" It would be a mistake
simply to raise an eyebrow and not read on, however, as there is
interesting material in what follows. For in answering this question,
the author refers to "the testicles of both females and males" (pp. 91
& 93). But female "testicles" (i.e., ovaries) were unknown to
Aristotle, as their discovery was (as we are told in a note) "one of
the achievements of Hellenistic anatomy" (93 n. 162). So in the very
first "problem" we learn something about the relationship of this (part
of the) work to the thought of Aristotle.

To whet the readers' appetite, and to illustrate further that not
everything in this work is orthodox Aristotelianism, what follows is a
sample of "problems" that I found particularly interesting. ...
Still, I'm guessing that for Robert Mayhew, from whose review of Kapetanaki and Sharples' edition of Supplementa Problematorum the above was taken, no pun was intended.