Comparison of Translations

Today, a comparison of Rowe's translation with another recent one, that of C.C.W. Taylor in his Clarendon Aristotle volume. I add also the revised Ross translation as a baseline for the comparison.

I'm thinking that tomorrow I'll comment on these sections one-by-one, maybe starting only with the first. For today I add some notes for you to consider, not comprehensive at all, but 'starters' I hope.

[Corrigendum, March1: The discussion has so far been carried out in Diminishing Fleas.]

τὸ δ' ὄνομα τῆς ἀκολασίας καὶ ἐπὶ τὰς παιδικὰς ἁμαρτίας φέρομεν· ἔχουσι γάρ τινα ὁμοιότητα. πότερον δ' ἀπὸ ποτέρου καλεῖται, οὐθὲν πρὸς τὰ νῦν διαφέρει, δῆλον δ' ὅτι τὸ ὕστερον ἀπὸ τοῦ προτέρου.

(Rowe) The term 'indulgence' is one we also apply to the ways children go wrong, for these have a certain resemblance to self-indulgence. Which is called after which makes no difference for present purposes, but clearly the later is called after the earlier.

(Taylor) Now we also apply the term akolasia to the naughtinesses of children, as they have a certain resemblance. It makes no difference for the present purpose which is called after the other, but it is clear that the posterior is called after the prior.

(Ross/Urmson) The name self-indulgence is applied also to childish faults; for they bear a certain resemblance to what we have been considering. Which is called after which, makes no difference to our present purpose; plainly, however, the later is called after the earlier.

1. There's a difficulty in finding a pair of English words which (i) match the opposition between akolasia and kekolosmenos (roughly, ‘undisciplined’ vs. ‘disciplined’); and (ii) which can be applied both to a child and to an adult with a bad trait. (If you pick ‘self-indulgence’ for akolasia, you have to use a different word, ‘indulged’, for the child.)

2. Do you think that Aristotle is making up his mind here about which is called after which? If so, should the translation bring that out?

οὐ κακῶς δ' ἔοικε μετενηνέχθαι· κεκολάσθαι γὰρ δεῖ τὸ τῶν αἰσχρῶν ὀρεγόμενον καὶ πολλὴν αὔξησιν ἔχον, τοιοῦτον δὲ μάλιστα ἡ ἐπιθυμία καὶ ὁ παῖς· κατ' ἐπιθυμίαν γὰρ ζῶσι καὶ τὰ παιδία, καὶ μάλιστα ἐν τούτοις ἡ τοῦ ἡδέος ὄρεξις. εἰ οὖν μὴ ἔσται εὐπειθὲς καὶ ὑπὸ τὸ ἄρχον, ἐπὶ πολὺ ἥξει·

(Rowe) Nor does the transfer of usage seem inappropriate; for least to be indulged is the part of us that not only desires shameful things but can become big, and this characteristic belongs to appetite, and to the child, above all--since children too live according to appetite, and the desire for the pleasant is strongest in them. If, then, whatever desires shameful things is not ready to obey and under the control of the ruling element, it will grow and grow, ...

(Taylor) The transferred application seems not a bad one; for something which has an appetite for shameful things and a capacity for considerable growth requires to be disciplined, and bodily desire on the one hand and children on the other seem particularly to be things of that kind. Children live in accordance with bodily desire, and the appetite for pleasure is particularly strong in them; so if it is not made submissive and subject to some control, it will grow to a large extent.

(Ross/Urmson) The transferrence of the name seems not a bad one; for that which desires what is base and which develops quickly ought to be kept in a chastened condition, and these characteristics belong above all to appetite and to the child, since children in fact live at the beck and call of appetite, and it is in them that the desire for what is pleasant is strongest. If, then, it is not going to be obedient and subject to the ruling principle, it will go to great lengths; ...

1. Note the difficulty in rendering epithumia. ‘Appetite’ is misleading (in English it refers usually to hunger only). ‘Bodily desire’ is strange and, besides, doesn’t match what Aristotle means to be talking about (he had said earlier that the virtue and vice deal with only a subclass of somatikai epithumiai, viz. those involving touch and, indirectly, taste).

ἄπληστος γὰρ ἡ τοῦ ἡδέος ὄρεξις καὶ πανταχόθεν τῷ ἀνοήτῳ, καὶ ἡ τῆς ἐπιθυμίας ἐνέργεια αὔξει τὸ συγγενές, κἂν μεγάλαι καὶ σφοδραὶ ὦσι, καὶ τὸν λογισμὸν ἐκκρούουσιν.

(Rowe) ... for the desire for the pleasant is insatiable and indiscriminate, in a mindless person, and the activity of his appetite augments his congenital tendency; and if his appetites are strong and vigorous, they knock out his capacity for rational calculation as well.

(Taylor) The appetite for pleasure is insatiable and attacks the thoughtless person from all sides, and the actual occurrence of bodily desires increases that aspect of our nature, especially if they are strong and intense, and if they drive out rational thought.

(Ross/Urmson) ... for in an irrational being the desire for pleasure is insatiable and tries every source of gratification, and the exercise of appetite increases its innate force, and if appetites are strong and violent they even expel the power of calculation.

1. It seems that some distinction between epithumia and orexis needs to be preserved in the translation; it's at least a relation as between specific and more general. The alternatives above are: appetite/desire; and bodily desire/appetite. But neither seems satisfactory.

2. What exactly is Aristotle's thought here? Are you happy with these ways of rendering τῷ ἀνοήτῳ?

διὸ δεῖ μετρίας εἶναι αὐτὰς καὶ ὀλίγας, καὶ τῷ λόγῳ μηθὲν ἐναντιοῦσθαι – τὸ δὲ τοιοῦτον εὐπειθὲς λέγομεν καὶ κεκολασμένον – ὥσπερ δὲ τὸν παῖδα δεῖ κατὰ τὸ πρόσταγμα τοῦ παιδαγωγοῦ ζῆν, οὕτω καὶ τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν κατὰ τὸν λόγον.

(Rowe) This is why they should be moderate and few, and offer no opposition to rational prescription (which is the sort of thing we mean by 'ready to obey' and 'not indulged'); for [a note says: 'Reading ὥσπερ γὰρ τὸν παῖδα '] just as a child should conduct himself in accordance with what the slave in charge of him tells him to do, so too the appetitive in us should conduct itself in accordance with what reason prescribes.

(Taylor) So they ought to be moderate and few, and ought not to oppose reason in any way--we call something like that submissive and disciplined. Just as the child ought to live in accordance with the instructions of its tutor, so the desiderative part ought to be in accordance with reason.

(Ross/Urmson) Hence they should be moderate and few, and should in no way oppose reason--and this is what we call an obedient and chastened state--and as the child should live according to the direction of his tutor, so the appetitive element should live according to reason.

1. Now how does Rowe's opting for gar seem? What's the structure of the argument?

2. Tutors don't direct childrens' lives now -- I think 'guardian' is best. But what weight should be given to the thing said by way of direction, and how much to the person giving the direction? Rowe wishes to emphasize the former, Ross the latter.

διὸ δεῖ τοῦ σώφρονος τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν συμφωνεῖν τῷ λόγῳ· σκοπὸς γὰρ ἀμφοῖν τὸ καλόν, καὶ ἐπιθυμεῖ ὁ σώφρων ὧν δεῖ καὶ ὡς δεῖ καὶ ὅτε· οὕτω δὲ τάττει καὶ ὁ λόγος.

(Rowe) Hence in the moderate person the appetitive should be in harmony with reason; for the fine is goal for both, and the moderate person has appetite for the things one should, in the way one should, and when--which is what the rational prescription also lays down. Let this, then, be our account of moderation.

(Taylor) That is why the desiderative part of the temperate person ought to be in agreement with his reason; for the goal of both is the fine, and the temperate person desires the things he should and as he should and when; and that is what reason prescribes for its part.

(Ross/Urmson) Hence the appetitive element in a temperate man should harmonize with reason; for the noble is the mark at which both aim, and the temperate man craves for the things he ought, as he ought, and when he ought; and this is what reason does.

1. By to epithumetikon does Aristotle mean what might be called a faculty? (Strangely, Rowe's phrase, 'the appetite', suggests this even more than Ross' 'appetitive element'.) But the correspondence with epithumia is obscured in Taylor (clearly bodily desiderative part won't do.)
2. Is it that the epithumetikon needs to agree with reason, or does Aristotle implicitly mean a reciprocal relationship, and reason needs to agree with the epithumetikon as well (i.e. they 'are in agreement with each other')?
3. Is there no way of putting to kalon into ordinary and natural English?
4. Why 'craving' now in Ross/Urmson?

Translation Workshop I

I thought I would try today one of the 'features' I had in mind for this blog, viz. a 'translation workshop', which I envision as useful primarily for students.

Some concerns:

1. The choice of a text is largely arbitrary and couldn't possibly be equally useful to all. Therefore, I'll pick something that currently interests me, although in the future, as I said in an earlier post, I'd be happy to entertain suggestions from others. What isn't arbitrary about the text below is that it is related to a text I had earlier considered, the so-called 'definition of virtue' in NE II.6, since when that 'definition' is understood in the subversive manner I suggested earlier, then the text below becomes much more important (I think).
2. Any passage for translation worth its salt could easily lead to a discussion requiring multiple posts to resolve, continuing over weeks. I don't know quite how to handle this, but I imagine that after a handful of posts I'll carry out the discussion simply in the comments area ('Diminishing Fleas'). Thus those who are interested will know where to look, and those who are not will not be troubled.
3. To generate discussion, I'll raise a few questions, but I don't want to impart too much of a slant to the discussion -- I want to hear what you think.

So then, first the text (from Nic. Eth. III.12), with textual issues highlighted; then the sample translation, with some highlighting; then some questions.

(Yes, I know that Nic. Eth. is a sorry hobby-horse of mine, and apologize for that! I can plead only that I am planning soon to trade up to a newer hobby-horse.)

Text:

τὸ δ' ὄνομα τῆς ἀκο-
λασίας καὶ ἐπὶ τὰς παιδικὰς ἁμαρτίας φέρομεν· ἔχουσι
1119b.1
γάρ τινα ὁμοιότητα. πότερον δ' ἀπὸ ποτέρου καλεῖται, οὐθὲν
πρὸς τὰ νῦν διαφέρει, δῆλον δ' ὅτι τὸ ὕστερον ἀπὸ τοῦ προ-
τέρου. οὐ κακῶς δ' ἔοικε μετενηνέχθαι· κεκολάσθαι γὰρ δεῖ
τὸ τῶν αἰσχρῶν ὀρεγόμενον καὶ πολλὴν αὔξησιν ἔχον, τοιοῦ-
1119b.5
τον δὲ μάλιστα ἡ ἐπιθυμία καὶ ὁ παῖς· κατ' ἐπιθυμίαν γὰρ
ζῶσι καὶ τὰ παιδία, καὶ μάλιστα ἐν τούτοις ἡ τοῦ ἡδέος
ὄρεξις. εἰ οὖν μὴ ἔσται εὐπειθὲς καὶ ὑπὸ τὸ ἄρχον, ἐπὶ πολὺ
ἥξει· ἄπληστος γὰρ ἡ τοῦ ἡδέος ὄρεξις καὶ πανταχόθεν τῷ
ἀνοήτῳ, καὶ ἡ τῆς ἐπιθυμίας ἐνέργεια αὔξει τὸ συγγενές,
1119b.10
κἂν μεγάλαι καὶ σφοδραὶ ὦσι, καὶ τὸν λογισμὸν ἐκκρούουσιν.
διὸ δεῖ μετρίας εἶναι αὐτὰς καὶ ὀλίγας, καὶ τῷ λόγῳ μη-
θὲν ἐναντιοῦσθαι – τὸ δὲ τοιοῦτον εὐπειθὲς λέγομεν καὶ κεκο-
λασμένον – ὥσπερ δὲ τὸν παῖδα δεῖ κατὰ τὸ πρόσταγμα
τοῦ παιδαγωγοῦ ζῆν, οὕτω καὶ τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν κατὰ τὸν
1119b.15
λόγον. διὸ δεῖ τοῦ σώφρονος τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν συμφωνεῖν
τῷ λόγῳ· σκοπὸς γὰρ ἀμφοῖν τὸ καλόν, καὶ ἐπιθυμεῖ ὁ
σώφρων ὧν δεῖ καὶ ὡς δεῖ καὶ ὅτε· οὕτω δὲ τάττει καὶ ὁ
λόγος. ταῦτ' οὖν ἡμῖν εἰρήσθω περὶ σωφροσύνης.

Bywater's apparatus:

4. τὸ] τὸν K^b M^b αὔξησιν] ἕξιν αὔξησιν K^b: fort. αὔξην ἔχοντα M^b Γ 6. καὶ ante μάλιστα om. K^b M^b ἡ] γὰρ καὶ ἡ Kb 8. πάντοθεν K^b 12. καὶ om. K^b 13. δὲ] γὰρ Lb M^b Γ

Sample translation (of C. Rowe):

The term 'indulgence' is one we also apply to the ways children go wrong, for these have a certain resemblance to self-indulgence. Which is called after which makes no difference for present purposes, but clearly the later is called after the earlier. Nor does the transfer of usage seem inappropriate; for least to be indulged is the part of us that not only desires shameful things but can become big, and this characteristic belongs to appetite, and to the child, above all--since children too live according to appetite, and the desire for the pleasant is strongest in them. If, then, whatever desires shameful things is not ready to obey and [be] under the control of the ruling element, it will grow and grow, for the desire for the pleasant is insatiable and indiscriminate, in a mindless person, and the activity of his appetite augments his congenital tendency; and if his appetites are strong and vigorous, they knock out his capacity for rational calculation as well. This is why they should be moderate and few, and offer no opposition to rational prescription (which is the sort of thing we mean by 'ready to obey' and 'not indulged'); for [a note says: 'Reading ὥσπερ γὰρ τὸν παῖδα '] just as a child should conduct himself in accordance with what the slave in charge of him tells him to do, so too the appetitive in us should conduct itself in accordance with what reason prescribes. Hence in the moderate person the appetitive should be in harmony with reason; for the fine is goal for both, and the moderate person has appetite for the things one should, in the way one should, and when--which is what the rational prescription also lays down. Let this, then, be our account of moderation.

Some questions:

1. This passage is particularly difficult (I think) among passages in Aristotle in its resisting attempts to render it in ordinary English. For instance, I've highlighted above in orange everything above which, I think, is not natural in English. (It's easy to point these out. The difficulty is: Can you do better?)

2. Where do you think the translation is less accurate than necessary, or unnecessarily misleading? E.g. "the ways children go wrong" suggests Aristotle has in mind different types of going astray (types of bad upbringing), but I don't think such a suggestion is carried by τὰς παιδικὰς ἁμαρτίας. I've noted a few passages like that in bold green. (Again, it's perhaps easy to point these out; difficult to improve upon.)

3. Questions about word choice: one might wonder about 'in a mindless person', 'knocks out' (which is the primary meaning of the word, instead of something like 'evades' or even 'resists'); 'lays down' for τάττει (which seems too weak--isn't Aristotle's image of a commander or leader?).

4. A very small point: presumably 'be' is omitted by an editorial oversight before 'under'? I've added it in brackets.

Four Years Old

Today, Dissoi Blogoi, δ.

Vassar College, 1914 debate team.

Test Your Skill at Physiognomy

The following appealing visage is that of:

(a) Franz Brentano
(b) Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg
(c) Theodor Mommsen
(d) Hermann Bonitz















Answer in the comments.

The Master of Those Who Discover

Something of a pleasant distraction for today: a stamp commemorating the authority of Aristotle, for Columbus.

From the website non-contradiction.com.






Aristotle's Greek is a bit different from the Latin (which is actually a paraphrase quotation of Roger Bacon from his Opus Maius, c. 1268):

Διὸ τοὺς ὑπολαμβάνοντας συνάπτειν τὸν περὶ τὰς Ἡρακλείας στήλας τόπον τῷ περὶ τὴν Ἰνδικήν, καὶτοῦτον τὸν τρόπον εἶναι τὴν θάλατταν μίαν, μὴ λίαν ὑπολαμβάνειν ἄπιστα δοκεῖν (De Caelo, 298a9-12).

And the sentence almost immediately preceding that selection seems not unimportant, the conclusion of a series of arguments for why the earth is spherical:

Ὥστ' οὐ μόνον ἐκ τούτων δῆλον περιφερὲς ὂν τὸ σχῆμα τῆς γῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ σφαίρας οὐ μεγάλης.

WASAP not ASAP

The next presentation in the Washington Area Symposium in Ancient Philosophy has been rescheduled. It was formerly planned for next Friday, Feb. 29th, but note the new date and time:

Richard Bett (Philosophy, Johns Hopkins)
"How Ethical Can an Ancient Sceptic Be?"
Friday, March 28th, 3 pm
Center for Hellenic Studies

Fleas for Excuses

Austin from Austin. By reading on I might have found from Austin himself the answer to my question about diminishing fleas. See this passage from "A Plea for Excuses":

For this problem too the field of Excuses is a fruitful one. Here is a matter both contentious and practically important for everybody, so that ordinary language is on its toes: yet also, on its back it has long had a bigger flea to bite it, in the shape of the Law, and both again have lately attracted the attention of yet another, and at least a healthily growing, flea, in the shape of psychology.

A strange passage, perhaps, because Austin doesn't usually recycle clever images; and "on its toes"/"on its back" is particularly infelicitous. In this case, his words don't do much for me.

Presocratics Commentary in an Introductory Course

I have an idea for two regular features on this blog: (1) a translation quiz or workshop, and (2) a periodic workshop about teaching. The translation quiz might pose a Greek text and sample translation, and then solicit comments for changes or improvements (and, really, anyone might propose these for us, not simply myself). The teaching workshop would raise a question about teaching and solicit views.

For instance, as regards (2), here's a question about teaching the so-called presocratics. Some professors assign only collections which have no commentary (Freeman's Ancilla) or minimal commentary (Barnes' Penguin volume), preferring to give their own. But others like to assign a secondary source which in any case gives an alternative commentary.

I usually count myself in this second camp. Now my question is: Which secondary work offering a commentary, or historical narrative, do you think is best? If only one such commentary were to be required reading in a unit on the presocratics in an introductory course in ancient philosophy, which should that be? (Assume that if the commentary does not itself contain the testimonia and fragments, as e.g. McKirahan does in his Philosophy before Socrates, then these would otherwise be somehow made available to the students.)

In the past I've used McKirahan, Hussey, and Waterfield's congenial The First Philosophers in that role. But recently I've been looking at James Warren, Presocratics: Natural Philosophers before Socrates (U Cal Press, 2007), which I'm now thinking may be the best of the lot. It is brief, accessible, clear, comprehensive in its way, and to my mind shows good judgment.

But what's your view? No need to answer the question in the terms set: thinking outside the box is welcome.

Does Flux Boil Down to Compresence? A Last Word.

Here is my answer to the questions I raised yesterday.

Irwin begins by agreeing (it seems) that, for Plato, Flux implies Compresence (as I have maintained, on the 'simple' interpretation):

These appearances of compresence are the result of motion, change, and mingling, so that everything merely comes to be (hard, soft, light, heavy, and so on) and nothing stably is what we take it to be (Tht. 152d2-e1).

But then he shifts and says that for Plato the implication actually works in the other way, viz. that Compresence implies Flux, because when opposites are compresent in a thing they make it unstable:

In speaking of heavy, light, and so on, Plato clearly refers to the Heracleitean doctrine of the compresence of opposites; he thinks no further explanation is needed to justify him in describing such a doctrine as a doctrine of flux. He therefore assumes that it is appropriate to speak of 'flux', 'change', and 'becoming' in describing the instability that is manifested in the compresence of opposites.

So how is it that Irwin so easily converts "A implies B" into "B implies A"? Does Plato think that Flux implies Compresence (as the text seems to say, and as the 'simple' interpretation asserts) or that Compresence implies Flux (as Irwin construe him as saying)?

The reason for this shift in interpretation, is that Irwin interprets flux, and change, as mere 'succession' in time of properties: for something to be in flux is for it to have (stably and completely) some property F at one time and (stably and completely) the property not-F at some other time. On this view, Flux couldn't possibly imply Compresence, and, if that is how one understood flux or change, the most charitable interpretation one could place on Plato would be to hold that he thinks Compresence suggests or implies Flux, perhaps because Flux in some broad and extended sense includes Compresence. So "A implies B" gets converted to "B implies A" by charity!

That Irwin interprets Flux as the succession of properties over time:

In Plato's report, 'Heracleitus says somewhere that everything passes away and nothing remains, and in likening beings to the flow of a river he says that you could not step into the same river twice' (Cra. 402a8-10). This claim is about the succession of properties in the same subject over time.

(Notice that this interpretation of the 'river fragment' in Plato requires that we think Plato thought nothing of "we step and do not step; we both are and are not", and also that Plato failed to read "Everything passes away and nothing remains" in the subtle way suggested by Catherine Osborne in a comment on this blog.)

That any view about Flux as the succession of properties over time could imply nothing about Compresence:

Plato does not assume that the instability Protagoras attributes to things is simply change over time; he uses terms that are appropriate for change in order to describe the instability involved in the compresence of opposites.

We ought not to assume, then, that when Plato speaks of flux he must have succession in mind; and so we ought not to be surprised when he begins by speaking of compresence and continues by speaking of change. ...

If Aristotle see that this is Plato's conception of flux, he does not mean to say that Plato thinks sensible objects undergo continual change over time, or that change over time is what makes them unsuitable as objects of knowledge. He may simply recognize that, given Plato's broad interpretation of flux, compresence of opposites counts as a kind of flux. We ought not to conclude, then, that Plato's argument from flux in sensibles relies on anything more than the compresence of opposites.

Two points in conclusion:

1. Irwin in effect argues: "For Plato, Flux boils down to Compresence. Thus, everything he wants to say about Flux is captured already in my account of Compresence." But this won't work, because the doctrine of Flux for Plato is a doctrine about the change of sensible particulars. Even Irwin uses this language, e.g. "sensible objects undergo continual change over time" (see immediately above). So if Flux boiled down to Compresence, this would be the simultaneous compresence of opposite properties in sensible objects, not the loose compresence of opposite properties, in Irwin's sense (as explained in earlier posts). Admit that Flux boils down to Compresence, and one is still stuck with two doctrines of Compresence in Plato.

2. Whether Irwin's view of Compresence of Opposites is in the end a philosophically more sophisticated view than what I have called the 'simple' view, depends upon the sophistication of (i) Irwin's compresence of properties; and (ii) the interpretation of change as mere succession of properties over time.

And we may leave it at that.

Socrates Comes to Life

This is going to be either very good or very bad.

The Yale Working Group in Ancient Philosophy is pleased to invite you to

"Socrates on Trial"
A Dramatic Performance of Plato's 'Apology.'"

With Steve Wexler
Professor of Law
University of British Columbia

This Wednesday, February 20th, at 6:30 p.m.
Rm. 317, Linsley Chittenden Hall (63 High Street)

Flux and Compresence

I've been looking at T. Irwin's interpretation of Plato on the Compresence of Opposites. You will recall that this was recommended as a philosophically more sophisticated view than, for instance, the simple and perhaps simplistic idea that Plato believed that all things were infested with contraries because all things were changing.

The simple and simplistic idea is expressed in the following argument:

1. Each thing, in any respect in which it is perceptible, is changing.
2. Anything which changes, in the respect in which it changes, has compresent opposite properties.
3. Thus, each thing, in any respect in which it is perceptible, has compresent opposite properties.

According to this argument, Flux implies Compresence, because change requires that the changing thing somehow partake simultaneously both of the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem of the change. (Note: on this view, change in the true sense is not a mere succession of qualities, e.g. a thing changes if at time T1 it is F and at some later time T2 it is not-F.)

Now here's a curiosity about Irwin's interpretation. As we saw, he re-interprets Compresence in a very broad way, and as being about properties rather than particulars. For Irwin, Compresence becomes, in effect, the view that each property is such that there is at least one other property for which it is not a sufficient condition; i.e. for each property there is at least one other property that fails to be fixed when the former is fixed. Thus on this view circularity has opposites 'present in it', because to say that something is circular is to imply nothing about whether it is (say) green or not-green. So (Irwin would have it), both green and not-green are present in circularity.

Yet, at the same time, Irwin acknowledges that Plato is committed to a Doctrine of Flux. Below I give the relevant passages from Plato's Ethics below (from pages 161-2).

Now, when you read these passages, ask yourself: How can Irwin acknowledge all of these things, and yet still give such a weak reading of Compresence? If Flux implies Compresence of Opposites, in the sense of the simultaneous presence of contrary or contradictory properties in particulars, how can Irwin consistently affirm Flux but deny Compresence in that sense? Or is Irwin committed to two different accounts of Compresence, the sophisticated and the simple?

I'll give you my take on this in a later post.

...Plato himself speaks of change in sensibles and seems to regard this as a reason for denying that they can be objects of knowledge and definition. In the Cratylus he suggests that knowledge requires the existence of unchanging forms as objects of knowledge; even if sensibles are all in flux, forms must be exempt from flux (Cra. 439c6-440d2). In this passage Plato does not actually affirm that sensibles are in flux, but in other dialogues he seems to affirm precisely that; after he has argued that the Forms are different from sensibles, he claims that sensibles undergo constant change, whereas Forms are completely unchanging (Phd. 78c10-e4; R. 495a10-b3, 508d4-9, 518e8-9, 525b5-6, 534a2-3). ...

[Plato] explains who Protagoras' belief in the truth of appearances leads to the doctrine that 'nothing is any one thing itself by itself', because, for instance, you cannot call anything large without its appearing small,or heavy without its appearing light (Tht. 152d2-6). These appearances of compresence are the result of motion, change, and mingling, so that everything merely comes to be (hard, soft, light, heavy, and so on) and nothing stably is what we take it to be (152d2-e1).

The Law of Diminishing Fleas

I suspect Austin used the phrase as being more elegant than "diminishing nits".

It occurs, of course, at the opening of his essay, "Unfair to Facts":

This paper goes back to an old controversy between Strawson and me about truth. Of course comments on comments, criticisms of criticisms, are subject to the law of diminishing fleas, but I think there are here some misconceptions still to be cleared up, some of which seem to be still prevalent in generally sensible quarters.

The phrase has since been picked up and used widely on the internet to refer to comments on comments on comments .... on a blog post. But what did it mean originally?

Some have supposed that Austin was referring to how some microscopic mites live on fleas, and maybe even other microscopic mites live on those mites, etc., "all the way down". The point would be that the importance of comments is miniscule when compared with the original paper commented upon, and thus comments upon comments are proportionately even smaller in importance. An iteration or two of comments and replies, and one's words will have almost no importance at all.

But it's unlikely that this was Austin's image. First of all, fleas don't live on other fleas, even if mites do. Morever, his "Unfair to Facts" was a reply to Strawson's reply to Austin's "Truth", which was itself a reply to something by Strawson. Thus, "Unfair to Facts" would have represented a mite, upon a mite, upon a flea, upon an animal, and Austin couldn't have supposed that that essay was so insignificant. (Look at his words, and you'll see that he doesn't.)

A student in my J. L. Austin graduate seminar last night, himself raised on a farm, proposed a much more satisfactory explanation. He pointed out that fleas are removed in successive 'passes' over an animal, and that each pass yields fewer and fewer fleas. One certainly wants to remove all of them all, so that the animal is clean, but eventually one has to give up as having done well enough-- even though some fleas may remain, and if so they will return eventually in force. (Thus also our 'nit picking', but for lice, not fleas.)

Not only does this image make more sense, it also fits Austin's understanding of philosophy perfectly. For him, philosophy is simply a matter of removing fleas, and it requires the same attention to detail. One is fixed on removing them all--that's the goal of the 'treatment'--but one is likely to fail, and then the infestation, and 'illness', will return in full force.

The one objection to this interpretation, as I see it, is that it does not attribute to Austin any sense of reciprocity in his exchange with Strawson. Strawson has got the fleas, and Austin is removing them. Strawson's own comments don't count as removing anyone's fleas at all, except perhaps in intention only and misguidedly.

And yet I think a careful attention to the tone of Austin's essay confirms that that was how he conceived of the exchange.

More, and Less, on Compresence

Irwin in a sense does deal with the first objection I raised yesterday against his account of Compresence of Opposites, but through what seems to me a kind of unfortunate verbal slide.

The objection was that his construal is too weak and captures too much. Any instance in which one property is indeterminate relative to some other concurrent property would count as "Compresence of Opposites", and that can't be what Plato was driving at (viz. in those passages which make us want to ascribe that sort of doctrine to him).

I gave as examples yesterday a circle which could be green or not, or a green patch which could be circular or not. Yet actually the problem for Irwin's account is worse than that. Because Irwin characterizes "Compresence" in terms of types only, his characterization carries with it no notion that those tokens need even be instantiated in the same subject. Thus, that the core of an apple is white yet its skin can be either red or not red would also count as "Compresence of Opposites".

Admittedly, for someone in debate to point out even that sort of weak "compresence" would suffice to rebut the claim that a thing of the one sort makes it so that the other thing is of that other sort. We could rebut the claim that the white core of the apple made the skin red by pointing out that there are apples with white cores and not-red skin. Or we could rebut the claim that the circularity of a green circle is responsible for the greenness of the circle by pointing out that there are circles that are not green. Which is all to say that we might serviceably take what Irwin calls "Compresence of Opposites" as shorthand for a certain argumentative move one makes, in response to a proposed claim about what sorts of things "make it so that" other things are the way they are. That is, we can take "Compresence of Opposites" to be a fancy way of saying that one should use Moore's Open Question Test to examine a proposed definition. And I suppose in that way we might in some sense "save" this otherwise much too weak characterization of Compresence.

But to understand the doctrine in that way would be, so to speak, to change it from a metaphysical or physical thesis (which it is for Plato) into an elenchic strategy for dealing with claims about what "makes" something to be what it is--claims which will clearly be relative to the interests and theories of those who are proposing the definitions to be tested.

Now if you look carefully at Irwin's exposition in Chapter 10 of Plato's Ethics, you'll see that changing the point of the doctrine is exactly what he does. He accomplishes this by the purely verbal maneuver of restating the doctrine until it takes a form which might pass muster. Here's the relevant paragraph (p. 157):

The discussion of explanation in the Phaedo refers primarily to properties: having a head, being taller by a head, and so on. When he contrasts the 'safe' explanation referring to Forms with the defective explanations he has illustrated, Plato insists that we should say that beautiful things are beautiful because of the Beautiful Itself, not 'by having a bright colour or shape or anything else of that kind' (Phd. 100c9-d2). He seems to mean the same by saying (1) that bright-coloured things, say, are both beautiful and ugly, (2) that bright colour is both beautiful and ugly, or (3) that bright colour makes things beautiful and ugly. The third formula conveys his main point most accurately. [Emphasis mine.]

In one of the next sections of the book Irwin goes on to discuss Plato's commitment to the doctrine of flux. And I almost think that that transition from (1) to (3) was meant to foreshadow it playfully, as an instance.

More (or Moore?) on Compresence of Opposites

A natural view to take about Plato is to say that he holds (in the 'middle' dialogues at least) that anything perceptible is either changing or open to change--it is therefore 'becoming', a condition intermediate between nothingness and being--and that therefore at least in some respects, and perhaps in all, it somehow has opposite properties at the same time--because change is not unnaturally viewed as a thing's simultaneously sharing in the terminus a quo and terminus ad quem of the change. (If the changing thing didn't simultaneously share in these, it would be either one or the other and wouldn't be changing.)

If I had to describe the doctrine of Compresence of Opposites in Plato, that's how I'd describe it initially.

But the version of the doctrine one finds in Irwin is something else entirely, so much so that I'd hesitate to describe is as a doctrine of Compresence of Opposites at all.

Irwin's thought is similar to G.E. Moore's "Open Question Test" in the Principia Ethica. Suppose we define 'beauty' in terms of some shape or color. But it will remain an open question whether something with that shape is beautiful -- in fact we won't find it hard to imagine a case where something with that shape is beautiful, and another case in which something with that shape is ugly. The property of having that shape, then, is compatible with both beauty and ugliness. Thus both opposites, beauty and ugliness, are 'present' in that shape--that is to say, some tokens of that type of shape are beautiful, and some are ugly.

According to Irwin, that's what Compresence of Opposites amounts to for Plato.

Now I won't judge whether this view is philosophically more sophisticated than the simple, or even simplistic, view which I sketched at the beginning of this post.

But I do think it's wrongheaded as an interpretation of Plato for various reasons, of which I'll mention two.

First, the interpretation is 'against the intention of Plato' (as it sometimes used to be said), because the wrong things get included as examples of 'Compresence of Opposites'. For example, on Irwin's interpretation, that a circular shape can be either green or not green, or a green surface either circular or not circular, would illustrate Compresence of Opposites -- but that kind of thing is surely not what Plato meant in the passages that lead us to ascribe such a doctrine to him.

Second, Plato frequently discusses cases in which one and the same thing has opposite appearances at the same time (large and small, equal and unequal, one or indefinite, cp. Rep. 478d2, εἴ τι φανείη οἷον ἅμα ὄν τε καὶ μὴ ὄν), and, far from taking these to be strange cases insofar as they involve relatives (which is what Irwin says to dismiss them), he apparently takes them to stand for what is true but less evidently so of anything perceptible.

To my mind, Irwin's view seems plausible only on the supposition that Plato postulated Forms in order to deal with difficulties of definition--his view seems to be a translation, really, into an ancient context of relatively recent disputes about whether mental and ethical terms can be defined with observables--whereas 'Compresence of Opposites' in Rep. V and especially in the Phaedo is presented more as a way of dealing with phenomena of causation (sc. dependence) and change.

Compresence of Opposites

Here's an interesting passage by a scholar writing on whether Plato accepted some doctrine of the "Compresence of Opposites" in sensible particulars, and, if so, what that doctrine is best taken to mean.

He considers the following version of that doctrine:

For any property F that admits a contrary (con-F), all sensible F things are con-F.

And he argues as follows that Republic book V gives no support for the doctrine so formulated:

[Someone might claim] to find direct evidence for this principle in Republic 5's description of "the many beautiful things," on which the sight-lovers focus their attention, as also appearing ugly (479a-b), [if we take] these many beautiful things to be particular objects. [But to do so would be to fail] to notice ... that when the sight-lovers are introduced as accepting "beautiful things" (kala pragmata) but not beauty itself (476c1-3), these are the "beautiful sounds, colors, shapes, and all the things fashioned from these" the sight-lovers have just been said to enjoy (476b4-6). It is surely no accident that the same properties the Phaedo's Socrates can no longer accept as making things beautiful recur so prominently here.

The author then concludes that the above formulation of Compresence of Opposites should be rejected "in favor of the more philosophically sophisticated interpretation ... developed by Terence Irwin."

Now it would be too easy to deal with this argument by saying that, since it defers to a particular interpretation of the Phaedo, it has no more weight than the "Forms as Properties" interpretation of the relevant passage in the Phaedo -- that is, apparently no weight at all.

One might also point out that, of course, even if the argument were successful, to remove one reason in favor of a certain formulation of Copresence of Opposites would hardly be to remove all reasons (not even all the reasons in the Republic), when the author has said nothing to indicate that all of the evidence can be dealt with in this way. (And we shouldn't expect that it could, because not all the evidence is going to have a verbal resemblance to certain lines in the Phaedo.)

And one might wish to put aside, too, the question of whether the 'argument' is not really an argument but another appeal to authority, as perhaps having too obvious an answer to be interesting.

Rather, I'm concerned with two other matters, which I'll discuss later:

--How sound is this scholar's point about the words of that passage from the Republic? and,

--Exactly what is the alternative version of Compresence of Opposites offered by Irwin: is it more 'philosophically sophisticated', and does it capture better what Plato meant?

Forms as Properties

Here's a passage from a discussion of the theory of Forms. The author is maintaining that, although Plato in earlier parts of the Phaedo seemed to have held that a Form is an individual which is a perfect exemplar of that of which it is the Form, the final argument of that dialogue contains claims which are at odds with such a view:

In the later passage [in the Phaedo], Socrates describes how he can no longer accept, as explanations of what makes things beautiful, references to their having a bright color or a certain shape (100c9-d2), saying that he prefers instead the safe explanation that "if anything else is beautiful besides the beautiful itself (auto to kalon), it is beautiful for no other reason than that it participates (metechei) in that beautiful" (100c4-6; cf. 100d3-e3). The point of rejecting bright color or a certain shape as what makes things beautiful is that, while these properties may well be sufficient to make some things beautiful sometimes, neither is in fact necessary, whereas the form of beauty is supposed to be that property instantiation of which is both a necessary and sufficient condition of a thing's being beautiful. Already in the Phaedo, then, Plato suggests a conception of forms as properties, and of participation as property instantiation, that is much less problematic than the conception of forms as individual and perfect instances of a property that drives some of the Parmenides' criticisms

One might cavil at some of the language: for example, surely the view earlier in the dialogue is that Forms are paradigms rather than perfect instances.

But for me the passage raises questions, which I'll raise also for your consideration and comment:

Do we know what it means to say that a Form is a 'property' or that participation is 'property instantiation'? Is this something evident or straightforward? (If we suppose that these terms are uncontroversial, aren't we settling in advance the 'problem of universals'? And wouldn't one with some justification presume that Plato, at least, was a platonist about such things?)

If we know what this language means, must the cited passage be understood as putting forward that sort of view (or is it naturally or best so understood)? What is the argument in the passage that it should? (To me the phrase 'whereas the form of beauty is supposed to be that property instantiation of which ... ' looks like it is assuming what is meant to be shown.)

That those sentences in the Phaedo are puzzling and difficult to interpret, I freely admit. That they plainly put forward a view at odds with the view that Forms are individual and perfect exemplars, this I don't see (-- yet--maybe you do see).

Multiple Posts

A point of clarification about the posting policy of this blog.

It's a common practice of blogs to post once on a subject and allow discussion to take the form of a thread of comments on that single post.

I've often taken a different approach here. Many times I choose to 'serialize' my comments about something, presenting them over a series of days, in posts which have something of a dramatic or narrative structure. This procedure seems to me often better for examining a philosophical claim or argument.

In my view, a blog post should be (roughly) no larger than what can fit on a screen and be seen in one view. It should present essentially a single thought. If due treatment of something requires more than one thought, it therefore requires more than one post. Several posts on a topic, then, imply nothing about the importance of that topic.

But that I shouldn't take up discussion of anything except matters of importance -- that's another demand, and one that I doubt a blog should even attempt to meet. On the other hand, I think this blog has succeeded better than most at avoiding topics so easy to discuss but that can squander our energies.

First Meeting, Washington Area Symposium in Ancient Philosophy

Professor Athanasios Samaras
George Washington University

The household in Plato's Laws

Friday, February 8, 2008

2 pm
Leahy 100
The Catholic University of America

The Theory of Forms

I want to consider the question of whether we should attribute a theory of Forms to Plato, as this is raised in Palmer's review.

It might be considered a frivolous point, to observe that there are dozens of books, articles, and encyclopedia entries on Plato's theory of Forms, so that, even if Plato did not hold such a theory, or even a theory (at all), still, an argument which supposed that he did would most appropriately be evaluated by the granting, for purposes of argument (indeed), of that premise.

That is, it would have been easy--and I think most responsible--for Palmer to express briefly his own doubts that Plato ever held a theory, then proceed to discuss Rickless' interpretation on the widely-granted premise that he does. Someone unable for the purposes of a review to reason on that premise should probably simply decline to review Rickless' book -- just as, say, someone who thought the phenomenological method had little merit should probably decline to review a book on Scheler or Ingarden.

You might be thinking, "This is too simple. It's not that Palmer denies that there is any theory of Forms in Plato; he rejects Rickless' way of stating it."

Actually, no. Palmer argues that there is no theory of Forms in Plato, and that Rickless' attempt to find or reconstruct a theory leads him inevitably to distort Plato's views. I'll deal with the question of distortion later. Let's look now at Palmer's arguments that there is no theory.

I won't dwell long on the paragraph which begins:

The systematizing impulse driving Rickless's reconstruction of the theory of Forms is reminiscent of that found in Russell Dancy's Plato's Introduction of Forms.

and which concludes:

Out of it came his first publication in ancient philosophy, "How Parmenides saved the theory of forms" (The Philosophical Review 107 [1998], 501-54), which this monograph now supercedes. Rickless perhaps does not altogether appreciate the depth of Dancy's influence on his approach to the problems he tackles here. The very impulse to systematize is an important case in point.

except to say that I personally find it obnoxious that Palmer in effect claims that he understands Rickless' motives and method better than Rickless does. And isn't it human that he misspells a word as he adopts this untenable posture?

Next Palmer says:

Rickless never doubts that the middle-period dialogues contain a fully-developed theory of forms.

This sentence I think suggests dogmatism and inflexibility. Yet in fact, we don't know whether Rickless spent years puzzling over the question of a theory before finally arriving at his view, and whether he did or not is irrelevant. Note also the fudge-term, 'fully developed'. Is it that he reconstructs a theory which is the problem, or a 'fully developed' theory?

It might be useful to define terms. What is a theory after all? A view? The belief that Forms exist together with (as must be the case) some beliefs about what Forms are like? Note that although, clearly, Rickless is fond of formalism (and we can argue about the advantages and disadvantages of formalization and rational reconstruction), the views he attributes to Plato are actually not very complicated. Perhaps in some sense it's puffery to call it a 'theory' even on Rickless' formalization.

But here is Palmer's argument:

In actual fact, however, the existence of certain imperceptible forms in which sensible particulars participate is typically presented as no more than Socrates' favored hypothesis. This status is especially clear in the Phaedo, where it enters the third argument that the philosopher should welcome death as something Socrates and his interlocutors already agree upon (65d4-7), and where it is likewise presumed without further argument in both the recollection and affinity arguments for the soul's immortality. Socrates' recap of the recollection argument marks the existence of forms as an unargued [sic] and as yet unsecured hypothesis (76d7-e7), and he makes it perfectly clear in his subsequent account of his method that the forms' existence has merely the status of a hypothesis (100a3-b9). Rather than a fully developed theory of forms, the Phaedo gives us a theory under construction, and much the same holds true of the Symposium and Republic. A crucial feature of the method of hypothesis as described in the Meno, Phaedo, and Republic is that it eventually becomes necessary to go beyond just considering what accords with one's hypothesis by examining the hypothesis itself, with a view to ultimately grounding it in an unhypothesized first principle. The Parmenides is best understood as conducting the projected examination of Socrates' favored hypothesis.

Since the "theory of forms" is more accurately a hypothesis under development in the Symposium, Phaedo, and Republic, Rickless's attempt to furnish a systematic reconstruction of the "theory" in would-be definitive fashion not only is misplaced but also makes it more difficult than necessary to understand what to make of Parmenides' criticisms.

I'll put aside Palmer's use of the Phaedo, which seem to me faulty. What I wish to emphasize instead is that his argument contains ambiguities and false contrasts. Palmer uses the word 'hypothesis' in two ways: (i) as contrasted with 'conclusion' and meaning a premise, and (ii) as contrasted with 'definitive' and meaning provisional. On neither meaning does something's being an hypothesis exclude its being a theory, since theories may be both posited and provisional (as it seems all scientific theories are). So these paragraphs do nothing to defeat the claim that Plato held a theory. Perhaps Plato never held a theory, but Palmer gives no reason for this claim.

Yet suppose the point of these paragraphs is the notion that Plato's views were always changing throughout the 'middle period' dialogues, so one cannot pin down and state a single theory that covers all of them adequately. Even if that were granted, it's not clear that this would imply problems for the truth of Rickless' interpretation (I don't say how he understands his interpretation; I say its truth), since it seems that it would suffice to say that Rickless' reconstruction captures one position that Plato adopted, or a favored position, or the strongest position, or a representative position -- and that the Parmenides is best viewed as reflections which take that 'snapshot' of a developing theory as their starting point.

Actually, given the odd, logic-chopping character of the Parmenides, who is to say that as advance work for the dialogue, Plato didn't try to throw his thoughts into a more formal cast than he required of himself before? Surely we would be justified in suspecting systematic thought about the Forms in connection with the Parmenides if anywhere.

But as to whether the Parmenides is indeed best viewed in such a way -- to examine that question, we would (surprise, surprise) need to look at the actual interpretation of the dialogue which Rickless gives.

More on a Non-Review

I asked yesterday about the appropriateness of the strategy announced in the following paragraph:

It will not be necessary further to summarize Rickless's understanding of Parmenides' criticisms of Socrates' theory and of the response to them indicated in the dialectical exercise, for he has himself done so at length in his article on the Parmenides for the web-based Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Instead, since how one understands what Plato has to say about forms in previous dialogues will obviously determine to a large degree how one is inclined to respond to Parmenides' criticisms of young Socrates' theory, it will be worth concentrating first on some of the presuppositions that guide Rickless's reconstruction of the "high" and "higher theory of forms" before turning to some of the problems in his account of how the Parmenides indicates this theory needs to be revised.

Note that when Palmer writes, "It will not be necessary ... for ...", he is implicitly admitting that if an adequate summary were not available, then it would be necessary for him to say more -- and that's why the review is, as it were, condemned by the very words of the reviewer.

Note, furthermore, that Palmer did not write--waiving any reference to the SEP article--"It will not be necessary further to summarize Rickless' understanding of Parmenides' criticisms of Socrates's theory and of the response to them, because it's enough to examine the premises on which that interpretation depends". This is what he should have said, if he really did have criticisms of the presuppositions of Rickless' interpretation so thoroughgoing and devastating, that it made further direct examination of Rickless' interpretation unnecessary.

Of course criticisms of that sort are hard to come by (compare as an instance of that sort of thing G.E. Moore's painstaking explanations in "The Refutation of Idealism" of how he aims to remove a principle on which all arguments for idealism seem to depend); and the review does no such thing.

(Nor could it. The dialogues of Plato are separate works, and even if Rickless were markedly wrong about the Phaedo, he could be right about the Parmenides nonetheless; indeed, the inference might even go in the other direction, and the correctness of his interpretation of the Parmenides would, so far, count as evidence in favor of his interpretation of other dialogues.)

But I find that Palmer's review in several places puts something forward and then takes it back.

We saw already that "summarize at length" does not make a great deal of sense.

And then there are:

• "determine to a large degree" (a fudge-- do the presuppositions determine or fail to determine?)
• "the existence of certain imperceptible forms in which sensible particulars participate is typically presented as no more than Socrates' favored hypothesis" -- (if it's only 'typically' so presented, then sometimes it's not so presented )
• and, perhaps most strikingly, in the last paragraph of the review Rickless is criticized for not following Meinwald, and yet the reviewer admits that, for all we know, Meinwald may not be right ("Even if one does not agree with her development of this distinction .... some distinction along the lines..." ).

Let me be perfectly clear that I fault the reviewer far less than the editors of NDPR. They should have sent the review back to Palmer with the instruction, "instead of an essay on your disagreement with Rickless over the middle-period dialogues, please give us a review of the argument of the book", and along the way they might have dealt besides with the review's various misspellings ('supercedes'); solecisms ('unargued hypothesis'); colloquialisms ('In actual fact'); and clichés ('cashes out') .

Reviewing by Proxy

It's difficult to review a book without reviewing it, and yet that is just what Palmer does, and what he admits to doing.

Rickless' book is an interpretation of the Parmenides, and, if you consult its TOC, you'll see that its pages 53 to page 250 (the last page) are dedicated to that task.

This is the bulk of the argument of the book, and whether the book succeeds or not, depends upon whether it succeeds at this task. In fact, since Rickless claims that his interpretation is the first which allows a reader to understand each particular twist and turn of the complex deductions of the dialogue, then presumably that claim at least needs to be considered. (That is, if someone is reviewing this book. If such a task seems unpleasant or too onerous, then one ought to decline to review it.)

Yet if you examine the review, you'll find that the following, extremely superficial sketch, is just about all that Palmer says about this main burden of the book:

Chapter 2 considers how Parmenides' criticisms suggest this theory needs to be modified. Chapter 3 articulates a view of the method Parmenides recommends that enables one to read it "as a direct and rational response to the problems raised in the first part of the dialogue" (95). Chapters 4 through 7 then run through the arguments in Parmenides' demonstration of this method to reveal what Rickless takes to be the Parmenides' fundamental lesson, namely, that certain principles of the high and higher theories of forms are to be abandoned.

Then, strangely, he says the following:

It will not be necessary further to summarize Rickless's understanding of Parmenides' criticisms of Socrates' theory and of the response to them indicated in the dialectical exercise, for he has himself done so at length in his article on the Parmenides for the web-based Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

That is, Palmer declares that he isn't going to explain--or, presumably, examine critically--the main argument of the book he is reviewing.

Now I don't know what it means to summarize something at length. Rickless' SEP entry is 18,000 words long, or about 55 double-spaced pages. Imagine that instead of referring us to the encyclopedia, Palmer at this point in his review had said, "First I'll summarize the argument of the book; then I'll criticize it", and he proceeded to give an 18,000 word summary. How would that have been adequate, as a review? A fortiori.

But then the encyclopedia article does not present itself as a summary of a book, so if a reviewer were to explain the book by the article, he'd need to say how the book differs, and which parts of the article represent the book. And then of course after doing all this, he would need to give a judgment on whether the book or the article is better, and how. (To bring in a separate article actually implies more work for a reviewer, not less.)

There's also a question of whether a reviewer isn't shirking the responsibility of giving his own judgment if he, in effect and in his own mind, allows the author to summarize the book for him.

Palmer's reply might be that in examining only the first chapter of the book (which is what he does), he says enough to undermine the presuppositions of Rickless' interpretation, which therefore makes a consideration of the rest of the book unnecessary. The reference to the SEP article was a mere courtesy.

I'd be more inclined to accept the integrity of such a strategy, if it didn't also turn out that it's much easier to examine chapter 1 than the rest of the book.

But, be that as it may, I'll look at the success of Palmer's approach in another post.

Source Criticism

Did you see the informative doxographygraphy ? (That's not diplography.)

Note that Placita Dogmata has little to do with opera.

Was That a Philosophical Mugging?

In the next few posts, I want to take a look at a review of a recent book by Sam Rickless, Plato's Forms in Transition: A Reading of the Parmenides.

When the review came out last December--by John Palmer in NDPR--I was stuck by what seemed its harsh tone. The fact that several friends immediately wrote to me about it showed that my perception was not unusual. Without question, the review had 'made an impression'.

Yet the question was raised in my mind: Did Rickless write a very poor book, as the reviewer seemed to suggest, or was he treated unfairly? I know Rickless to be a very able philosopher, so my first suspicion was of the latter, and I thought too that, if this were so, then it would interesting to show this on the blog (as belonging to its muckraking function).

Back then, I only had time to glance at the review. So I kept it in the stack at the bottom of my mailbox, to revisit it when I at last had some free time. Today I found that time, studied the review more carefully, and reached a considered judgment. And tomorrow I'll let you know something of the direction of my thought.

Not to leave you only with a teaser, I'll end by copying some lines (emphasis mine) from near the end of the review. (Given that they are at the very end, you may not have even gotten to them.) They're striking because one would never think that they could belong in a harshly negative review of a book:

It is natural to think that the Parmenides satisfies the expectation raised by the youthful Socrates' insistence that it would be truly remarkable if someone were to show that the forms themselves admit in themselves opposite attributes (Prm. 129c1-3) and that they are in themselves capable of combining and separating (129e2-3), so that the forms would be revealed as involved in the same complexities to which Zeno showed sensible particulars to be subject (129e5-130a2). Rickless argues that this expectation is borne out in the dialectical exercise in a manner that demonstrates the need to abandon the axiom of Radical Purity, the theorems of Purity and Uniqueness, and the auxiliary principle of No Causation by Contraries. This is a provocative new view worthy of taking its place alongside other interpretations of the dialogue's overall purpose.