Nature = The Non-Supernatural

An astute review in BMCR of Gerard Naddaf, The Greek Concept of Nature (see it here) contains , however, the following curious passage, noteworthy relative to some previous discussions on this blog:

GN's survey of these different pre-Socratic thinkers is undertaken in part to illustrate several general theses. First, GN believes that Anaximander's i(stori/a peri\ fu/sewj initiates a tradition of inquiry which is, on the one hand, a continuation of mythopoetic authors, in that pre-Socratic accounts of nature include a three part schema discernible in works like Hesiod's Theogony, namely a cosmogony (or account of the origins of the universe), an anthropogony (an account of the origins of humanity), and a politogony (an account of the origins of society); but on the other hand, pre-Socratic accounts of nature depart from such mythopoetic accounts in that they locate such explanations within human time and make use of naturalistic causal explanations, whereas earlier accounts had located their explanations in illo tempore and made use of supernatural elements as causes.

Okay, so what was distinctive about presocratic accounts of nature, in contrast with mythopoeic accounts, was that they involved naturalistic explanations, and didn't appeal to anything non- or super-natural. That helps.

Sages, Sophists, and Philosophers

My thanks are due to a friend and reader of Dissoi Blogoi, who just wrote to draw my attention to what I agree is an excellent essay by Andrea Nightingale, "Sages, Sophists, and Philosophers: Greek Wisdom Literature" (in Oliver Taplin, ed. Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A New Perspective, OUP, 2000).

Nightingale argues that the presocratics are best understood as 'sages' who competed with one another, as well as with Homer and Hesiod, to be accounted 'wise men'. Their writings are records of 'performances' by which these thinkers, in a time before university degrees and other credentials, hoped to "put themselves on the map as intellectual authorities or 'masters of truth'."

Nightingale's remarks nicely complement my post, 'The Analysis of Presocratic Thought', and subsequent readers' comments:

In fact, scholars often ascribe to the early Ionian thinkers the heroic feat of liberating philosophic discourse from the shadowy realms of 'mythos' (since their 'naturalistic' accounts of the cosmos rejected the poetic accounts that attributed causality to the weddings and wars of the gods). But the many scholarly attempts to trace the movement from poetry to philosophy--'from mythos to logos'--have foundered on the problem of defining the intrinsic qualities of 'myth' and of 'rational argumentation', and of identifying texts that are either purely mythic or purely analytic. Since the Greek poets were quite capable of constructing arguments, and the 'philosophers' were unable to avoid metaphor and myth, it is difficult to draw a clear distinction between mythos and logos. To be sure, we see in the Ionians a new way of thinking about the world; but we cannot say that their accounts are devoid of any mythical notions. What we can say is that these thinkers adopted a critical attitude towards received wisdom and were prized for their original speculations.

Nightingale additionally makes the extremely valuable point that the thinkers who are attacked by presocratics are presumably, therefore, up to the same thing; in their attacks, then, the presocratics reveal their understanding of themselves:

It is worth noting that Xenophanes attacks Homer explicitly, and Herakleitos inveighs not only against the poets Homer, Hesiod, and Archilochos, but also against Hekataios (a proto-historian ...), Xenophanes, and Pythagoras. Such attacks remind us that these thinkers conceived of themselves as rivalling 'wise men' in general rather than the specialized group of intellectuals who were later called philosophers. The fact that Herakleitos' opponents include poets and prose writers, as well as a religious/political guru such as Pythagoras, gives us a good idea of the breadth of 'wisdom' that he himself recognized as authoritative.

The View from Nowhere?

I think Thomas Nagel is correct when he claims in "Subjective and Objective" (and also in his book, The View from Nowhere) that progress in science often takes the form of moving from a subjective or perspectival view of the world, to an ostensibly objective framework, in which the perspectival view is one among many other such views, and which accounts for why that perspectival view appears as it does.

We see the sun rising now. Problem is, people to the East saw the sun rising earlier. Did it, then, both rise and not rise? The difficulty is solved if we say that in fact the earth is turning, hence people in different longitudes see the sun cross the horizon at different times. That the sun 'rises' is perspectival; that the earth turns is (ostensibly) objective.

Similarly apparent versus absolute magnitude: I see the penny as an ellipse stretched out from North to South. You, at a right angle to me, see it as an ellipse stretched out from East to West. By supposing that, objectively, it is circular, and by supposing, too, the principles of optics, we can explain why it looks the way it does to each of us.

Heracleitus is clearly concerned these sorts of issues, with whether there are any claims that are non-perspectival: he suggests that predications (many? most? all?) which appear to be absolute are in fact perspectival because relative to some implicit class of comparison. Sea water is foul and fresh water healthy-- to us, of course; but to fish it's the other way round. Helen is beautiful--that is, only so long as we do not compare her with a goddess. (And yet, one might wonder, what about the claim, "A goddess is beautiful"? Is that similarly perspectival? What could show that claim to be true only relative to some class?)

Suppose we take Xenophanes to have a similar concern. There is a fragment which suggest that he does:

If god had not made yellow honey, men would consider figs far sweeter.

ei) mh\ xlwro\n e)/fuse qeo\j me/li, pollon\n e)/faskon
glu/ssona su=ka pe/lesqai

If he does have this concern, then we might plausibly take him to hold, furthermore, that remarks about gods cannot in this way be perspectival. In the theological fragments, then, he would be arguing, in effect, that the gods do not have bodies, on the grounds that any attribution of bodily form to the gods is evidently perspectival. His theological views would then become important because, like Milesian cosmology, they would be an example of someone's insisting upon the shift, so important for scientific progress, from a subjective to an objective point of view.

Now I am not proposing this, so far, as an interpretation. My point here is merely to sketch an interpretation which seems interesting and which has some plausibility, but which we wouldn't even happen upon--we wouldn't think we needed to formulate it-- once we had applied the crude 'reason/authority' distinction in interpreting Xenophanes.

Upcoming BACAP Lecture, September 22, at Boston College

B. A. C. A. P.

The Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy
presents

The Togetherness of Thought and Being:
A Phenomenological Reading of Plotinus’ Doctrine
“That the Intelligibles Are not Outside the Intellect”

By Prof. Eric Perl
(Loyola Marymount University)

Commentator:
Prof. Robert Berchman
(Dowling College, Bard College)

Thompson Room, The Burns Library, Boston College
Thursday, 22 September 2005 at 7:30 p.m.


Prof. Perl’s public lecture will be preceded by a seminar on Ennead V.5 and V.9
Conference Room (St. Mary’s Hall), 3:00-5:00 p.m.

Both the lecture and the seminar are open to the public
For more information, please contact:
Prof. Gary Gurtler, S.J., gurtlerg@bc.edu

The Analysis of Presocratic Thought

Refute me if I'm wrong. You'd be doing me a favor.

I've been harping on Xenophanes, I now realize, because I want to make a larger point about how we analyse presocratic thought and therefore properly assess its contributions.

The interpretation of Xenophanes that I see in McKirahan and Hussey strikes me as 'encyclopaedist' history, in MacIntyre's sense. It takes a distinction from the Enlightenment, which opposes Reason to authority and tradition; it holds that 'Reason' is a single, uniform, framework; it supposes that 'Science' arises once the viewpoint of 'Reason' is adopted; and therefore it looks to find, in the presocratics (who are at the origin of science) the adoption of this viewpoint and framework, to the exclusion of competitors.

Besides going beyond the evidence, that sort of interpretation seems to me on broad grounds to be inappropriate. Thales perhaps takes his ideas from Near Eastern creation myths--or at least, if he did, no one would be surprised. Pythagoras is evidently not a proponent of Reason, in any usual sense. Parmenides presents his doctrine as if a revelation. So does Heracleitus (although he is doing the revealing). One sees the same thing in what comes after: Socrates accepts revelations from a spiritual being; he takes received views seriously, as received. Plato takes inspiration from myths. Aristotle's method of sifting through endoxa is all about giving authoritative views their due weight. Etc.

Yes, of course, there are various moves one can make--"It's insofar as they adopt the viewpoint of Reason that they are philosophers (or scientists)"; "The religious language is allegorical (conventional, demythologized)"; and so on--but at what point is theory driving data, then?

However, a more serious concern, for me, is that this reason vs. tradition opposition is too blunt. It may, therefore, lead us to overlook more interesting things, that perhaps better account for the importance of the presocratics ... even Xenophanes (yes, yet another post to come).

Once More with Xenophanes

There is a point to this. I don't want to be flogging a dead horse.

It's interesting that Hussey, in his admirably concise and elegant book, makes the same unjustified leap as regards Xenophanes that McKirahan does. After citing the four extant theological fragments, Hussey claims (on p. 14):

For the first time, a conscious and deliberate attempt had been made to set up a standard of what was and was not 'reasonable' or 'fitting' in theology.

This is undeniable; that such a thing has been attempted is clear. (And yet that this is the first time is not so clear. 'Second Isaiah', notably not a 'philosopher', attempts something similar, perhaps earlier than Xenophanes.)

But then Hussey says, in the next sentence:

Everything was to be judged in terms of this standard alone, and the authority of tradition, or of a general consensus, or of a great scholar, was to count for nothing.

But why should we go on to say this? What grounds do we have for saying that Xenophanes wanted to judge everything by this standard? Why should we say that authority, tradition, consensus, and scholarly judgment (even), for Xenophanes, were to count for nothing? (Quite outrageous, really. It makes Xenophanes into a lunatic.)

This looks to me like an Enlightenment polarity, imposed upon texts where it doubtfully belongs.

One might say, "Well, we interpret Xenophanes in the context of Ionian philosophy, and that is what the Ionians accepted." --And yet Hussey argues the other way round. He says that we can understand what the Milesians thought, by beginning with Xenophanes and using Xenophanes to represent or 'shed light' on them (see p. 13). It's a circle to say: 'We can be confident that Xenophanes rejected authority and tradition because he was like the Milesians in this regard; and we can infer what the Milesians are like by working back from what Xenophanes said.'

And yet that is how Hussey reasons.

What Bloggers Might Do

I didn't post yesterday, contrary to my resolve, because it never even crossed my mind.

Bloggers can be fanatics, after all. I once saw a humorous cartoon about golf. A golfer with a worried look on his face approaches a foursome and says, "Mind if I play through? My wife is in labor."

Bloggers are so fanatical, that they might do the same: "Mind if I keep this post short? My wife is in labor?" Not I, of course--wouldn't think of it.

A Distinctively Philosophical Way of Thinking

I had the following exchange with Hilary Putnam when I was a grad student.

I had just read one of Putnam's papers (I can't recall which), where he says something to the effect that no one should even attempt to do serious philosophy without first gaining a good background in advanced mathematics. I was a serious student, so I took this very seriously. I had an ordinary mathematics background, up to basic calculus, and then the usual courses in first-order and meta- logic. This was clearly not 'advanced mathematics'. I therefore combed carefully through the course catalogue and devised a four-year sequence of courses, which I could take in the remainder of my graduate education, and which would certainly count as training in 'advanced mathematics.'

I presented this plan to Putnam when I next saw him. But I was taken aback by his response. Far from being pleased and excited by it, as I expected, he was disturbed. "Oh no, Michael", he said, "this is not what you should be spending your time doing. You need to devote your years in graduate school to acquiring a distinctively philosophical way of thinking. A sequence in mathematics such as that would be a distraction."

I thought about that. How does one acquire a distinctively philosophical way of thinking? What did that mean? Would that mean, perhaps, reading Naming and Necessity over and over again? Or were Quine's paradoxes especially illuminating for philosophy--Quine who effectively denied that there was any distinct discipline of philosophy? Quine who denied that the phrase 'in that respect' made any sense? Dreben I knew had an answer: grapple with problems from Wittgenstein--or perhaps Frege. But Dreben notoriously denied that one should ever assert a doctrine. How could philosophy not arrive at resting points in thought? Most of the literature of recent philosophy I dismissed, and I was (I think) taught to dismiss--largely 'logic chopping', the prosecution of a clever point in isolation from its real philosophical or historical significance. (This is harsh and exaggerated, admittedly, but perhaps not very far from the truth.)

When I turned to the history of philosophy, I found largely figures who (as Gilson says) were amateurs--who worked piecemeal, and who had one or two clever ideas or admirable intellectual traits (such as Hume)--or thinkers who were comprehensive in a way, but who nonetheless aimed too much to warp all of reality so that it fit within the scope of a few attractive but limited ideas (such as Leibniz).

I don't think I found the answer to my question until I began the systematic study of Aristotle (and I would include now Plato). In Plato and Aristotle one finds the breadth, flexibility, variation in types of argument, and array of viewpoints, that can help one to acquire, easily and reliably, a genuinely philosophical habit of thought.

And this seems to me the most important reason for graduate students, or more advanced undergraduates, to study ancient philosophy--to learn how to think philosophically.

What's the Use?

I like to begin lectures in ancient philosophy with something I learned from Aristotle, namely, I give some of the reasons why someone might want to study the subject.

I'm interested in whether others do the same and, if so, what you say. I've had a longer and a shorter list. This year, I mentioned three things:

1. The study of ancient philosophy helps us to know ourselves better, and this in two ways: (i) where we are like the ancients, because we have inherited something from them (and this will be frequent), then, by becoming aware of that inheritance, we can deal with it critically, and either accept it deliberately or reject it, accordingly; (ii) where we are unlike and differ from the ancients, then we are faced with the usually fruitful problematic of 'ancient vs. modern' (which Strauss rightly took to be important); this challenges us to see things in a new way, a way which very often proves to be intelligent, but which we could not have anticipated or conceived of beforehand; also it helps us to transcend the tyranny or bias of the present moment, by which we take what is recent to be ipso facto better.

2. The study of ancient philosophy helps us to develop those habits of thought, argument and speech which constitute civility. The ancients, and especially Plato, with the example he sets in his dialogues, and his explicit remarks on 'refuting and being willing to be refuted', teach us how to examine difficult and important matters, together--and with reasonability, tact, and a sense of humor.

3. Finally, it just might happen (shockingly) that the ancients are worth studying because they at times say something that is importantly true--and that we would likely not find this truth any other way.

But what would you add? What, perhaps, do you add?

No Longer Bekos

Someone told me that the most common first word now of babies is 'goo-gle'.

Okay, google 'ancient philosophy' and you get, in this order:

1. The papers on ancient philosophy from the 20th World Congress of Philosophy in Boston.
2. Lecture notes for Philosophy 320, taught by S. Marc Cohen.
3. The website for the journal.
4. Lecture notes for Philosophy 201, taught by Cythia Freeland.

And Google stock keeps going up?

(This is not to say that Cohen's and Freeland's notes are not very good.)

He Would Have Missed the Photo Op

I saw this headline: "Roberts' Kids Steal Show As Hearings Open" and then perhaps unfairly thought of the following passage:

Well, Athenians, this and the like of this is nearly all the defence which I have to offer. Yet a word more. Perhaps there may be someone who is offended at me, when he calls to mind how he himself, on a similar or even a less serious occasion, had recourse to prayers and supplications with many tears, and how he produced his children in court, which was a moving spectacle, together with a posse of his relations and friends; whereas I, who am probably in danger of my life, will do none of these things. Perhaps this may come into his mind, and he may be set against me, and vote in anger because he is displeased at this. Now if there be such a person among you, which I am far from affirming, I may fairly reply to him: My friend, I am a man, and like other men, a creature of flesh and blood, and not of wood or stone, as Homer says; and I have a family, yes, and sons. O Athenians, three in number, one of whom is growing up, and the two others are still young; and yet I will not bring any of them hither in order to petition you for an acquittal. And why not? Not from any self-will or disregard of you. Whether I am or am not afraid of death is another question, of which I will not now speak (a)ll' ei) me\n qarrale/wj e)gw\ e)/xw pro\j qa/naton h)\ mh/, a)/lloj lo/goj). But my reason simply is that I feel such conduct to be discreditable to myself, and you, and the whole state. One who has reached my years, and who has a name for wisdom, whether deserved or not, ought not to debase himself. At any rate, the world has decided that Socrates is in some way superior to other men. And if those among you who are said to be superior in wisdom and courage, and any other virtue, demean themselves in this way, how shameful is their conduct! (Jowett)

Yet then I was struck by the italicized line, which I had not noticed before. The quoted passage comes, of course, from Plato's Apology (34b-35a), at the place where Socrates gives his summation, just before he is found guilty. A short while later in the dialogue, after Socrates has been given the death sentence, he then (apparently) speaks directly to this issue, explaining why death is not something to be feared.

But the italicized sentence seems strange to me. (Grube incidentally renders the line: "whether I'm boldly facing death or not is a separate story"'--which seems even less understandable. Fowler has: "Whether I fear death or not is another matter.') Why does Socrates say this? Is it that he would make a bad impression on the jury, or encourage them in finding him guilty, if he appeared not to fear death? Also, hasn't it already become clear in his speech that he isn't afraid of death?

I'm probably not seeing something simple and obvious.

Hermeneutic Hype

Okay, this will be my last post on Xenophanes--except to disclose, tomorrow, the Magical Mystery Text. (Hint: You may easily arrive at the answer, if you look without ease.)

You are familiar, no doubt, with what is probably the most famous fragment of Xenophanes, used as the motto of the journal, Ancient Philosophy:

ou)/toi a)p’ a)rxh=j pa/nta qeoi\ qnhtoi=si’ u(pe/deixan,
a)lla\ xro/nw| zhtou=ntej e)feuri/skousin a)/meinon.

Yet the gods have not revealed all things to men from the beginning;
but by seeking men find out better in time. (KRS text and translation)

I find Richard McKirahan's comment on this interesting. He says that the fragment "unsurprisingly rejects divine revelation as a source of knowledge. That is not the sort of thing that Xenophanes' god (note the plural in the fragment) does" (67-8). In a footnote about the plural, 'gods', McKirahan adds: "The point of [the fragment] is that knowledge does not come from divine revelation, not that there are gods that reveal things to mortals."

Yet last time I looked, 'not everything' meant the same 'at least one thing not'. And even if 'not everything' were a litotes, it would still mean no more than 'few things'. So how does McKirahan get from this the interpretation that nothing is revealed? And this interpretation is so settled and clear, in his mind, that he uses it in his footnote to rule out other things in the fragment, as not seriously meant. That is, he uses something not in the fragment to dismiss something in the fragment.

He's not alone in this, of course. I find the same interpretation of the fragment in other sources. (A common claim is that a deity who 'shakes all things by his thought' wouldn't be the sort of deity who revealed anything. Oh, really?)

But what I wish to emphasize is simply that the interpretation is unjustified. It's an instance of what I shall give the name 'hermeneutic hype', quite common in the interpretation of the presocratics:

hermeneutic hype. Def. The magnification of a philosophical view without warrant, especially by assimilating it to some position, similar to it, which is clear and attractive because exaggerated.

The view that 'nothing is to be accepted on authority' or 'only reason, not tradition or revelation has merit' is attractive because it is so clear and simple. We make out Xenophanes to be proposing something novel and radical if we make him out to be saying something like this. The only trouble is, the attributed view isn't warranted by the text.

How Did Adam Do This So Quickly?

We thought carefully and for a long time about 'Wozzeck' but in the end decided to call the dog 'Lulu' (allowing family members not fond of serial music to call her 'Lu', with the mental reservation, 'Lucia di Lamamoor').

We're still undecided on a name for the pig.

Magical Mystery Philosopher

If you know it, it's easy. If you don't know it, it's not easy. What is the source of the following?

Those who intended to control a house or a city, he said, needed the help of divination. For the craft of carpenter, smith, farmer or ruler, and the theory of such crafts, and arithmetic and economics and generalship might be learned and mastered by the application of human powers; but the deepest secrets of these matters the gods reserved to themselves; they were dark to men. You may plant a field well; but you know not who shall gather the fruits: you may build a house well; but you know not who shall dwell in it: able to command, you cannot know whether it is profitable to command: versed in statecraft, you know not whether it is profitable to guide the state: though, for your delight, you marry a pretty woman, you cannot tell whether she will bring you sorrow: though you form a party among men mighty in the state, you know not whether they will cause you to be driven from the state. If any man thinks that these matters are wholly within the grasp of the human mind and nothing in them is beyond our reason, that man, he said, is irrational. But it is no less irrational to seek the guidance of heaven in matters which men are permitted by the gods to decide for themselves by study: to ask, for instance, Is it better to get an experienced coachman to drive my carriage or a man without experience? Is it better to get an experienced seaman to steer my ship or a man without experience? So too with what we may know by reckoning, measurement or weighing. To put such questions to the gods seemed to his mind profane. In short, what the gods have granted us to do by help of learning, we must learn; what is hidden from mortals we should try to find out from the gods by divination: for to him that is in their grace the gods grant a sign.

I ask because the passage seems to me entirely consistent with the texts on human knowledge, its scope and limits, one finds in Xenophanes. (By consistent I mean: there is nothing that would hinder someone who wrote what is attributed to Xenophanes, from accepting this.) And yet the person to whom these views are attributed, it seems, did not share the epistemological views often attributed to Xenophanes (scepticism, rejection of the possibility of divine revelation, thoroughgoing fallibilism)--or did he?

What Has Athens to Do with Vienna?

Carlo Celluci is a mathematician and philosopher of mathematics at the University of Rome ('La Sapienza'), who has written a series of provocative articles, widely discussed, arguing that no received view in the philosophy of mathematics is tenable. The basic problem, he thinks, is the failure of professional philosophers of mathematics to follow out seriously the implications of Goedel's work: "[M]athematical logicians are most illogical people," Celluci writes, "even when they agree that the axiomatic method provides a distorted picture of mathematical practice, they go on as before as if they had forgotten their own criticisms or the latter did not concern them."

It's not that he thinks Plato or Aristotle's views are satisfactory either; but he does seem to hold that a familiarity with the views of the ancients can help one to appreciate the diverse character of mathematics, as it is actually practiced:

As Wittgenstein points out, even centuries ago a philosophy of mathematics was possible, a philosophy of what mathematics was then. Indeed, centuries ago there were philosophies of mathematics incomparably more articulated than those produced by the foundational schools. For example, Plato and Aristotle developed views of mathematical knowledge where the latter is seen as part of scientific knowledge, forming an integrated system with it, contrary to the foundational schools where theoretical mathematics is treated as a secluded subject, essentially unrelated to the rest of scientific knowledge...

It is not accidental that the most passionate supporters of the view that mathematics is a profoundly uniform subject based on the axiomatic method should be found among mathematical logicians rather than among mathematicians. While for the latter the axiomatic method is just a tool, for mathematical logicians it is the essence of their subject: without the axiomatic method, there would be no mathematical logic. Thus for mathematical logicians to defend the axiomatic method is to defend their very right to be on the map.

The axiomatic method provides an extremely simplified view of mathematical knowledge. From the viewpoint of mathematical logic, this has the advantage that the method can be easily approached in terms of straightforward notions, such as set-theoretic consequence, formal system, or mechanical process. On the other hand, such notions are patently inadequate to dealing with the variegated features of past and contemporary mathematics. On account of this it appears amusing that Kreisel should claim that philosophy deals only with immature notions and that preoccupation with them draws attention away from genuinely rewarding questions. As a matter of fact just the opposite is true. As already mentioned, both Plato and Aristotle developed a philosophy of the mathematics of their time incomparably more articulated than the limited view of contemporary mathematics provided by mathematical logic. In particular Aristotle--the first theorizer of the axiomatic method--was wise enough not to claim that the latter is the method of mathematics: he only claimed that it is a pedagogical method. Contrary to his modern followers, he did not confuse the presentation of mathematics with the process of mathematical discovery. It is somewhat ironical that the misconceptions of mathematical logicians about the nature of mathematics should be rectified by historians of mathematics like Crowe rather than by professional philosophers of mathematics.

The last line I take as implying a rebuke, also, to the Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics, for its shortsighted view of 'history'.

Cellucci's complete article, "Mathematical Logic: What Has It Done for the Philosophy of Mathematics?", may be found here . (The reference to 'Crowe' is: M. J. Crowe, "Ten misconceptions about mathematics and its history", in W. Aspray and P. Kitcher, eds., History and Philosophy of Modern Mathematics, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. XI, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988, 260-77.)

Incorporeality

[Xenophanes' god] had a body of sorts because totally incorporeal existence was inconceivable, but that body, apart from its perceptual-intellectual activity, was of secondary importance, and so perhaps was its location.

Thus KRS. But I'm not sure I understand the claim that "totally incorporeal existence" was "inconceivable". Is it inconceivable now, as well? Or did it become conceivable at some point? (But not because someone had first conceived of it?)

Also, doesn' t the claim that the deity "without toil shakes all things by the thought of his mind" show that "totally incorporeal" action, and thus existence, has been successfully conceived?

That thought or intelligence can affect things outside the thinker, without the agency of limbs, is a development--but a very bold one--of the Homeric idea that a god can accomplish his end merely by implanting, for example, Infatuation ( )/Ath) in a mortal (KRS, 170).

If it is without agency of limbs, then presumably it is without agency of body. (And, if Xenophanes were some kind of pantheist, then why wouldn't he explain divine action, more naturally, as akin to the way the soul moves the body, rather than in the way that he does, which suggests action from the outside?)

Why Xenophanes?

Forgive me for pressing the point, but why is Xenophanes important?

An odd question for a blog, perhaps, but relevant to professors who actually teach Xenophanes. Why teach him? Why include him as a philosopher? Why is he interesting?

The problem is illustrated well by Hussey, who seems to contradict himself on this matter. Moreover, in chapter 2 (p. 14) he promises to say more about Xenophanes, whereas in chapter 3 (p. 33) he refers back to the preceding chapter, a nearly empty circle.

The seeming contradiction is this:

..whether or not any inspiration came from these quarter, Xenophanes' theology is still something quite new. ...He relies on entirely on certain general principles--certain conceptions of what it is reasonable or fitting that a god should be....This way of thinking, it must be repeated, was something quite new. For the first time, a conscious and deliberate attempt had been made to set up a standard of what was and was not 'reasonable' or 'fitting' in theology. Everything was to be judged in terms of this standard alone, and the authority of tradition, or of a general consensus, or of a great teacher, was to count for nothing (p. 14, my emphasis).

Xenophanes, a poet and a professional reciter of poetry who wandered about the Greek world, was not an original or systematic thinker (p. 33, my emphasis).

The circle involves this reference forward (coming after the just quoted lines):

Xenophanes will be considered again in the next chapter. He has been introduced here, out of turn, because it is by working back from his fragments that one may best hope to understand the intellectual atmosphere of the earliest Presocratics, the thinkers of sixth-century Miletus (p. 14).

Followed by this fulfillment of the promise:

Xenophanes, a poet and a professional reciter of poetry who wandered about the Greek world, was not an original or systematic thinker. There is nothing to suggest that he tried to improve the Milesian framework where it seemed in danger of inconsistency. His own views were in certain crucial places vague and incoherent, if we may trust Aristotle, and in one fragment (fr. 34) he takes refuge in the thought that, after all, no man can know anything for certain. Still, Xenophanes is illuminating: he casts light, as has been seen, on the Milesians, and his difficulties and deficiencies cast light on the situation as it presented itself to the other Ionian thinker of this period, Heracleitus of Ephesus (p. 14).

That's all on Xenophanes' importance in Hussey, about 30 lines of text, less than a full page.

KRS are equally uninformative on this point. They say that "Widely different views have been held on the intellectual importance of Xenophanes," but then they quote a difference in the extent, not the nature, of his importance, with Jaeger saying that he was enormously influential in theology, and Burnet saying that Xenophanes would have been amused to find that he had become regarded as a 'theologian'. "He was a critic, primarily," KRS add, "with an original and often idiosyncratic approach...His opinions on almost all subjects deserve careful attention" (168).

Okay, but why?

You Can't Get There from Here

Quine said on a variety of occasions (I heard him say it once myself) that he always regretted that he hadn't studied more medieval philosophy of logic. Perhaps it was his friendship with Geach which had led him to think this.

This seems to be a true counterfactual: He wouldn't have been helped in this regard by the new Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic--at least if the review in NDPR is accurate (see it here). According to the reviewer, J.C. Beall, the history covered by the handbook begins with Mill and Kant, entirely neglecting ancient and medieval logic. Here is Beall's summary:

Section One: Historical Background

Lisa Shabel. 'Apriority and Application: Philosophy of Mathematics in the Modern Period'. This essay discusses Kant's relevant views, and the views of his predecessors.

John Skorupski. 'Later Empiricism and Logical Positivism'. This essay lays out the influence of later empiricism on the target fields, and discusses the impact and ideas of John Stuart Mill and the logical positivists.

Juliet Floyd. 'Wittgenstein on Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics'. Like the other chapters in this section and their target figures, Floyd's essay nicely sketches the content and history of Wittgenstein's thought, as well as the ongoing impact that surfaces in different interpretations -- for example, inconsistency approaches to truth, and so on.

What explains the omission of about 2200 years of philosophy of logic? Not having the book, I can only conjecture. Perhaps the editor thinks that ancient and medieval logic have already been covered elsewhere. True, but then the philosophy of recent mathematics and logic, too, have been covered elsewhere. Isn't the point of a handbook to have it all in one source? Or maybe the Handbook takes itself to cover only 'mathematical logic' and its philosophy. Fine: but then the book misses entirely the question of the 'two logics', surely an important part of the philosophy of logic .

Beall writes:

If I were introducing someone to 'core, analytic philosophy', I would send them to the philosophy of mathematics and logic -- or, at least, I would like to, if a suitably accessible guide were available. As it turns out, there is now such a guide: Shapiro's Handbook does the trick.

Good enough, but then call it the Handbook of Analytic Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics. One must concede, of course, that the analytic movement is most important in this area. But if only that contribution is to be covered, make that condition explicit.

Evidence of Body?

Does the following fragment imply that, for Xenophanes, the deity has a body or not?

170 One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or in thought.

ei}=j qeo/j, e)/n te qeoi=si kai\ a)nqrw/poisi me/gistoj,
ou)/ti de/maj qnhtoi=sin o(moi/oj ou)de\ no/hma.

KRS say that it does: "The one god is unlike men in body and thought--it has, therefore (and also in view of 172), a body; but it is motionless, for the interesting reason that it is 'not fitting' for it to move around."

The other fragments that KRS are referring to are these:

171 Always he remains in the same place, moving not at all; nor is it fitting for him to go to different places at different times, but without toil he shakes all things by the thought of his mind.

ai)ei\ d' e)n tau)tw=| mi/mnei kinou/menoj ou)de/n
ou)de\ mete/rxesqai/ min e)pipre/pei a)/llote a)/llh|,
a)ll' a)pa/neuqe po/noio no/ou freni\ pa/nta kradai/nei.

172 All of him sees, all thinks, all hears.

ou(=loj o(ra=|, ou(=loj de\ noei=, ou(=loj de/ t' a)kou/ei.

But here's a problem about 170. It seems to contain at the start a contradiction: there is only one God, it says, but there are also many gods.

Commentators handle this by saying that the phrase "among gods and men" is used by Xenophanes poetically, as a 'polar opposition'. That is, he picks out extremes in order to pick out an entire dimension, of which these are extremes. Thus, "among gods and men" means, formulaically, something like "in the universe" or "in the realm of life".

Very well. But then why should we interpret "either in body or in thought" any differently? Why isn't that phrase, too, an example of 'polar opposition'? (It's possibly even a better candidate for it.) In that case it means something like "in nature", and all that Xenophanes would be saying in the fragment, in a poetical way, is that the deity is one, and that the deity is very much unlike us (and the gods also, as these are usually understood).

I don't see that the one opposition can be interpreted so lightly and the other so demandingly, as the KRS interpretation requires.

One might add that it's not clear that 'mortals' (qnhtoi=sin) means 'men'. If it means 'mortal creatures' generally (as seems preferable, because then the new contrast does not overlap with the preceding one) it would be even clearer that the fragment is merely emphasizing the distinctness of the deity from other things.

Moreover,172 cannot have the implication KRS claim. Presumably their line of reasoning is: seeing and hearing require sense organs, which implies a body. Yet in the fragment Xenophanes puts seeing, hearing, and thinking all on the same level, and that line of reasoning wouldn't evidently work for thinking. Also, surely Xenophanes denies that the deity has human or animal-like sense organs. But if so, then all bets are off: why suppose that he believes that these require a sense organ at all? (Maybe he does, after all, but you can't get that from 172.)

As for 171, doesn't that imply, rather, that the deity does not have a body? As KRS themselves point out, if the deity had a body, it would be the 'stuff' of the entire universe, and yet that is rotating. And if he had wanted, perhaps, to claim (strangely) that, although the universe was rotating, its 'stuff' (the divinity within) was not, it would be odd to express this as he does, by saying that it would be unseemly for the divinity to travel from place to place (a phrase which is clearly meant to evoke the wanderings on earth of Homeric deities).

If You Have to Explain a Joke...

Courtesy of a friend:

Q: Why is one side of a flying "V" of geese always longer than the other?
A: Because there are more geese on that side.

To some, it's obvious why this is funny. If not, here's an explanation: According to Aristotle, our natural tendency is to look for the cause. When we see that something exists, we inquire into its cause. Now apply this to the joke. Presumably, anyone hearing the joke would have experience of the phenomenon, but it's very unlikely that the reason would be known. So when the question is posed, the hearer naturally awaits the reason. This sets up the laughably unsatisfying answer.

According to Aristotle, there are four causes in nature: the formal, material, agent, and final. Take for example a sculptor sculpting: the causes of the statue would be the idea the sculptor intends (formal cause), the marble block (material cause), the sculptor himself (efficient cause), and the finished product(final cause). In this case the equivalent of the joke would be to explain the finished statue by saying that the marble is in the cause of the statue, without even a reference to the sculptor. But that clearly doesn't say why there statue is there, or how, only what it is.

And then Milesian philosophy becomes a handbook of humor, e.g.:

Q. What is the reason for the universe?
A. Water.

Very funny.

And yet I think that my friend analyzes the joke incorrectly. We laugh because we see that it must be the case that, in a V formation, one side is longer than another: even in a balanced V, the side that includes the lead goose is longer than the other. That is--if we must use Aristotelian language here--we take the question to be looking for an 'efficient' or 'final' cause, and an obvious 'formal' cause is given instead.

Golden Doodle Doo

No, it's not the cry of the coq d'or, but rather what I must be careful to avoid, now that we have yet another addition to the household, namely, a 5 month old puppy dog, which is a cross between a golden retriever and a poodle--hence the name, 'golden doodle'.

Now, can you guess why we got a dog? It has to do with our pig. (Answer: storgh/ now has another object.)

They called her 'Cindy Lou' at the store, which is a stupid name. We're all at odds over what new name to use in its place. Current favorites: Dixie, Lu (for 'Lucia'), Sandy, and Ginger.

Does Xenophanes Attack 'Anthropomorphism'?

It's one of the few things having to do with Will Durant that I actually like. Google 'define: anthropomorphism', and one finds, at willdurant.com, "the interpretation of God in the likeness of man", which is very nice.

That seems to me exactly the sense that is meant when commentators say, as they do, that one of Xenophanes' great contributions was his critique of 'anthropomorphism.' To wit, McKirahan:

Like the Milesians, Xenophanes does not question the presence of the divine in the universe, only the way it was conceived. His attacks imply that god is not immaterial or responsible for evil, is not anthropomorphic, is eternal, self-sufficient, independent and master of everything, and unmoving (62).

In keeping with the Milesian conception of the divine, god is demythologized and impersonal, but not isolated from the universe, of which he is fully aware (though not through human sense organs) and over which he exercises control ('shakes all things'), though not by physical might, but effortlessly and through his thought, without having to move from place to place.

It's clear that McKirahan takes Xenophanes to be criticizing anthropomorphism in the Will Durant sense, because he says that Xenophanes' God is impersonal. (Yet then in a footnote McKirahan must explain why he nonetheless refers to Xenophanes' God as 'he': "In describing god, Xenophanes uses masculine forms of adjectives." --Well, yes, but not only that: it's hard also to see how an impersonal being "sees, hears, and thinks" (DK 21B24).)

And yet there is a narrower sense as well of 'anthropomorphism' as applied to God, namely: 'taking God to have a human shape or appearance', that is, a human or human-like body.

So, my question: Is Xenophanes' criticism directed at anthropomorphism in the broad or narrow sense? I think: in the narrow sense. Xenophanes wishes to deny that God has a body, yet he does not wish to deny that human thought and reasonability give a clue as to what God is like.

Admittedly, DK 21B23 (KRS 170) might seem to count against this:

One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or in thought.

ei}=j qeo/j, e)/n te qeoi=si kai\ a)nqrw/poisi me/gistoj,
ou)/ti de/maj qnhtoi=sin o(moi/oj ou)de\ no/hma.

I'll say something about that tomorrow.

Neo-Sotion

Josh Dever at the University of Texas, Austin, is compiling a modern list of successions, a 'family tree' of dissertation supervisors and their philosophical descendents. You can see it here and add to the genealogy, if you wish.

The influence of Mourelatos, Owen, Cooper may be discerned. Some smile-provoking reconstructions of ancient successions are added. But Vlastos is conspicuous for his absence so far, and European universities are hardly represented. Still, it's a worthy and time-honored project. (Do we still all flourish at 40?)

BACAP 2005-6

I'm very pleased that the commentators as well as speakers for this year's Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy have now been settled. It looks to be an excellent program.

All lectures are on Thursday evenings at 7:30 pm. (But note: the April 25 lecture is on a Tuesday.)

~September 22, at Boston College~
Eric Perl (Loyola Marymount)
The Togetherness of Thought and Being: A Phenomenological Reading of Plotinus' Doctrine 'That the Intelligibles are not outside the Intellect'"
commentary by John Berchman (Dowling College)
seminar topic: Ennead V.5 and V.9
contact: Gary Gurtler, gurtlerg@bc.edu

~October 27, at Clark University~
Kevin Flannery (Gregorian)
Force and Compulsion in Aristotle's Ethics
commentary by Thornton Lockwood (Fordham)
seminar topic: Force and Compulsion: Texts in NE and EE
contact: Michael Pakaluk, mpakaluk@clarku.edu

~November 17, at Holy Cross College~
Ed Halper (Georgia)
Metaphysics X
commentary by Arthur Madigan (Boston College)
seminar topic: "The One" in Met. I.2, 7-8
contact: May Sim, msim@holycross.edu

~February 9, at Boston University~
Deborah Modrak (Rochester)
Aristotelian Substance, Functional Unity, and Embedded Matter
commentary by Mary Louise Gill (Brown)
seminar topic: Substance in Met. VII.17 and VIII.2
contact: David Roochnik, roochnik@bu.edu

~March 16, at Boston College~
Suzanne Stern-Gillet (Bolton Institute)
Introspection, Plotinian and Augustinian
commentary by John Kenney (St. Michael's College, Vermont)
seminar topic: The Concept of Introspection
contact: Gary Gurtler, gurtlerg@bc.edu

~April 25, at Brown~
Pierre-Marie Morel (Paris I, Pantheon-Sorbonne)
Method and Evidence (enargeia): the Epicurean Prolepsis
commentary by Brad Inwood (Toronto)
seminar topic: Preconception in Epicurus
contact: Mary Louise Gill, mlgill@brown.edu
N.B. This is a Tuesday night lecture.

~May 18, at Dartmouth~
C.D.C. Reeve (North Carolina)
Plato's Goat-stags: Philosophers and Cities in the Republic
commentary by Mark McPherran (U. of Maine, Farmington)
seminar topic: Glaucon's Challenge to Socrates in Republic 2
contact: Margaret Graver, margaret.r.graver@dartmouth.edu

Did Anaximander Accept "Sufficient Reason"?

This post falls in the category: what a non-expert wonders about when teaching X. (I expect to post many things of this sort, as I work through "History of Ancient Greek Philosophy" this Fall. May I hope that others, on the same path, will find such posts of interest?)

For years I've repeated the common claim that Anaximander, especially in his teaching about the earth, was relying upon something like the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Here are those familiar texts about the earth (texts and translations from Kahn):

The earth is aloft, not dominated by anything; it remains in place because of the similar distance from all points (Hippolytus).

th\n de\ gh=n ei)=nai mete/wron u(po\ mhdeno\j kratoume/nhn, me/nousan de\ dia\ th\n o(moi/an pa/ntwn a)po/stasin.

There are some who say that the earth remains in place because of similarity, as did Anaximander among the ancients; for a thing established in the middle, with a similar relationship to the extremes, has not reason to move up rather than down or laterally; but since it cannot proceed in opposite directions at the same time, it will necessarily remain where it is. (Aristotle, De Caelo, 295b11-16.)

ei)si\ de/ tinej oi(\ dia\ th\n o(moio/thta/ fasin au)th\n me/nein, w(/sper tw=n a)rxai/wn A).: ma=llon me\n ga\r ou)qe\n a)/nw h)\ ka/tw h)/ ei)j ta\ pla/gia fe/resqai prosh/kei to\ e)pi\ tou= me/sou i(drume/non kai\ o(moi/wj pro\j ta\ e)/sxata e)/xon: a(/ma d’ a)du/naton ei)j ta)nanti/a poiei=sqai th\n ki/nhsin: w(/st’ e)c a)na/gkhj me/nein.

And here are typical things that people say about this:

"...this explanation is the earliest certain instance of an appeal to the principle of Sufficient Reason" (Hussey, 26).

"For the history of ideas, Anaximander's theory of the earth's position is of an entirely different order of importance. Even if we knew nothing else concerning its author, this alone would guarantee him a place among the creators of a rational science of the natural world. ... More important for us is Anaximander's own use of this geometric idea [sc. of a circle] , as a general expression for the principle of symmetry or indifference. It is indeed the same notion which was glorified in modern times by Leibniz as his Principle of Sufficient Reason, according to which everything which is true or real implies a reason why it is so and not otherwise" (Kahn, 77).

But did Anaximander in fact accept this principle? I think not:

1. His famous fragment specifically supposes that Sufficient Reason is false. Extremes dominate at different times and places (e.g. hot in summer, cold in winter) for no apparent reason; the only 'reasonability' of the scheme is that these extremes get equalized over time.

2. An appeal to equipollence of forces or conditions is not an appeal to Sufficient Reason. Suppose I embed a glass marble in a slab of heavy jelly. Someone asks why it doesn't move in the jelly. I reply that it is similarly affected by the jelly on all sides. No 'Principle of Sufficient Reason' there.

3. The correct way to describe Anaximander's innovation (and he does have an innovation) is something else. It involves (we may say) "re-characterizing the explanandum". E.g. Galileo postulated that a body in motion remains in motion: in doing so, he re-characterized the explanandum, from "Why does this continue moving'?" to "Why is this not slowing down?" Anaximander does this also with his theory of heavenly objects. E.g. we might want to ask: "Why is that planet shining brightly there?" But since (it seems) Anaximander takes a planet to be (roughly) a tube with a puncture, he thinks the question is properly posed, rather, as "Why is Venus not shining everywhere else?" (Answer: Because the tube with fire inside is punctured only there.") Similarly also with the earth. The correct question to ask is not: "Why isn't it moving?" but rather "Why shouldn't it remain at rest?" This sort of shift happens all the time in science; it is not a matter of an appeal to Sufficient Reason.

The Problem Is That I Read Too Fast

Can you guess which two volume work is referred to by the following?

Wittgenstein once wrote, "Sometimes a sentence can be understood only if it is read at the right tempo. My sentences are all supposed to be read slowly". Similarly, to benefit from reading these volumes you need to read slowly. Read quickly, they can seem a superficial, repetitious, somewhat incoherent collection of allusions to halfway developed ideas -- or, worse yet, a sham version of a style Wittgenstein perfected in his later thought, but which it is well-nigh impossible to imitate with any authenticity.

Answer here.

But of course it's one thing to say that sentences won't be understandable if they are read quickly. It's another to say that they will appear to be superficial, repetitious, and half-baked sham imitations.

The Uniqueness of Persons

Did ancient philosophers lack a proper appreciation of human individuality, and does their ethical thought show this? Such is the charge presented by John Crosby, a leading ‘personalist’ philosopher, in his book, Personalist Papers (which I recently reviewed for the Journal of Markets and Morality).

According to Crosby, ethics is properly based on some notion of the ‘dignity of the human person’. Ancient philosophers, correctly so, recognized that the rational powers of the human soul conferred a special dignity on human beings. But they failed to see that there is a distinct and additional basis of human dignity, namely, an ineffable individuality, which is bound up with the fact that each human being is, as we say, a person.

Crosby argues that, if this individuality is not taken into account, then we must treat human beings as fungible, objectionably so, because each human being would serve equally well as an instance of rational nature. To illustrate this, Crosby uses a problem posed by Peter Singer. Singer says: suppose that a woman of limited means, who already has one child, has a second child who upon birth is discovered to have severe Down’s Syndrome; the woman believes with good reason that she could conceive another child, who would likely be healthy; she barely has the means to care for this Down’s Syndrome child in addition to her healthy child. Why, then, shouldn’t she kill the Down’s Syndrome child and ‘replace’ it with a healthy child? Crosby argues that, if all that is important about us is captured in this notion of ‘the dignity of our having a rational nature’, then there is no reason why she shouldn’t. By ‘replacing’ the Down’s Syndrome child, she brings into the world a better instance of rational nature, and a human being whose rational powers may be more fully developed.

We can avoid this conclusion, Crosby maintains, only by stressing that each human being has some ineffable individuality, which is not replaceable.

A similar argument has been put forward by Linda Zagzebski, "The Uniqueness of Persons." The Journal of Religious Ethics 29 (2001): 401-23, for which I give the abstract:

Persons are thought to have a special kind of value, often called "dignity," which, according to Kant, makes them both infinitely valuable and irreplaceably valuable. The author aims to identify what makes a person a person in a way that can explain both aspects of dignity. She considers five definitions of "person": (1) an individual substance of a rational nature (Boethius), (2) a self-conscious being (Locke), (3) a being with the capacity to act for ends (Kant), (4) a being with the capacity to act for another (Kant), and (5) an incommunicably unique subject (Wojtyla). She argues that none is capable of grounding both aspects of dignity since they are incompatible kinds of value; it is impossible for the same thing to ground both. Human persons are infinitely valuable in virtue of shareable qualities of their nature, whereas they are irreplaceably valuable because of a nonqualitative feature of their personhood.

And thus, two questions:

(1) Is it correct that ancient philosophers were blind to human individuality?

(2) Is it correct that, if individuality is not taken into account, then we must treat one another as in some sense ultimately replaceable?

(Vlastos’ “The Individual as Object of Love” seems to answer ‘yes’ to both of these questions, as regards Plato at least.)

Eristic, or Deep Nonsense?

Christopher Shields has a review in NDPR of Gail Fine’s collected essays, Plato on Knowledge and the Forms (see the full review here), which focuses mainly on the paradox about inquiry in the Meno. Shields poses the question: if the paradox involves fallacies, and Plato (as it seems) is aware that it does, then why does Plato bring in the doctrine of recollection to answer it?

Here is Shields’ representation of the paradox:

(1) For all x, either S knows x or not;
(2) If S knows x, S cannot inquire into x;
(3) If S does not know x, then S cannot inquire into x; hence,
(4) For all x, S cannot inquire into x.
If S is any arbitrary inquirer, then for any x unknown by S, S should not waste her time with x.

And here is Shields’ attempt to show that it involves fallacies:

…if (2) has any chance of being true then 'know' must mean something like 'knows all about x', whereas if (3) has a prayer, 'does not know' must mean not 'does not know all about x' but rather 'does not know anything about x' with the result that either (2) is true and (3) is false, or (3) is true and (2) is false, or, if we give both (2) and (3) true readings, then (1) is false and not the instance of the excluded middle it may have first seemed to be.

To simplify: Shields claims that the paradox commits the fallacy of false alternative. It is false that we either know a thing or we fail to know it. Things have parts, and thus we can know them in part and reasonably wish to inquire about the rest.

But this doesn’t really get around the problem, does it? For instance, suppose one holds (as it seems Plato does) that true objects of knowledge cannot have parts?

Or, even if we granted that they did, the problem would break out all over again, as regards each part. You either know that part, or you do not. Assume that you know it. Then you know all about that part. But then you know, in particular, the whole of which it is a part and to which it is connected—and then, once again, there would no need for inquiry. (And if you retort that you knew only a part of that part, an infinite regress results.)

So perhaps Plato reasonably thought that he needed something like the doctrine of recollection to resolve the paradox? Of course, the paradox would still, for all that, be a piece of eristic, insofar as it was proposed with the intent merely to dazzle or stun.

A Contribution to One's Mikrokosmos

In today's Wall Street Journal, Walter Mossberg reports on two web-based personal organizers. This is an ideal solution for keeping a calendar if, like me, you have easy access to the internet and almost always work when connected to the web, and if you need to work from a variety of machines (for me: a desktop in my office; a desktop at home; my own laptop; my wife's Mac), so that synchronizing them all to a single calendar is impractical. As Mossberg writes:

It's a pain to keep updating calendar programs that live on multiple computers, even if you only use one type of computer, and even with the help of a PDA or smart phone, like my Palm Treo. And it gets far worse if you use both Windows PCs and Macs, or if you'd like to occasionally rely on public computers or borrowed computers on the road.

The two programs seem to be fairly equivalent in features, however Trumba OneCalendar costs $39.95 to subscribe for the year, whereas AirSet is free. (Yet amortize the cost of a good PDA, and even that fee turns out to be a good deal.)

One nice feature:

Reminder emails for appointments can be set up on both programs...AirSet emailed us daily reminders of the next day's schedule every evening at the same time. Currently, AirSet and Trumba offer to send free reminders to your cellphone using text messaging, and AirSet can also send free daily schedule summaries using the same method.

I've started using AirSet already.

Aristotelian Particularism

On another note , I finally was able to study Anthony Price's BACAP contribution from last year, "Was Aristotle a Particularist?" I may eventually post something on his arguments, but for the moment I wanted simply to show how he defines the question, which I found very useful (I cite with his permission):

A recent line of thinking which may further our understanding of Aristotle is particularism. This label, being applicable to somewhat different claims, rather identifies a tendency than a dogma. We may oppose particularism to generalism, trying to identify where he stands, through a variety of issues. The questions that I shall try to answer, each within a section of this paper, are the following:

(1) Does Aristotle suppose that an agent’s practical decisions apply to a particular situation an articulate general specification of eudaimonia?

(2) Does he suppose that there are any principles to guide decisions that apply without exception?

(3) Does he suppose that there are factors to be taken into account whose valence is invariable between different contexts?

(4) Does he suppose that, as Jonathan Dancy has put it (1993: 50), ‘there is nothing that one brings to the new situation other than a contentless ability to discern what matters where it matters’?

An extreme particularist reading of Aristotle would answer ‘no’ to the first three questions, and ‘yes’ to the last. I shall argue for positive answers to (2) and (3), and negative ones to (1) and (4).

Ergon Taken

My piglet has additionally given me a better appreciation of the force of the ergon argument. The truth is, my pig is very good at enjoying himself. He eats his fill, pushes some dirt around, mixes up some comfortable mud, and then lies down in it with complete contentment. A pig satisfied.

It's easy to look at him and think: He does that very well indeed. There' s no way that I could possibly achieve anything like that contentment. That role is, so to speak, taken already. I'd better look for something else--something I can do, which a pig can't.

The Sun is New Each Day

Well, I've been bad and plan to return today, now, to my practice of daily posts on Dissoi Blogoi.

In part I've been distracted by a new arrival. Yes, I have some very good news to share: we have a piglet. Yorkshire breed, very cute. In the last week I've built a small pen for him and a servicable pig ark. We don't yet have a name (suggestions welcome). Since we're not vegetarians, people advise 'Pork Chop' or the equivalent.

I'm thinking of arranging a philosophy field trip for my students in ancient philosophy. They'll find ample corroboration of "Pigs wash themselves in mud, birds in dust or ash" and "Pigs rejoice in mud more than pure water." Indeed.

Correction to Review of Roochnik

Michael Kochin has published in BMCR a correction to his review of David Roochnik's Retrieving the Ancients. You may see the review here and the correction here. Here's the text of the correction:

In footnote 4 to my review of David Roochnik's Retrieving the Ancients (BMCR
2005.07.44) I wrote that "Roochnik nowhere in Retrieving the Ancients explains
who Diels is or the distinction between A and B fragments." As Michael Pakaluk
pointed out (on Dissoi Blogoi), my claim is false: Roochnik explains both what
Diels is and the distinction between A and B fragments on pp. 11-12, in the
initial paragraphs of his chapter on the Presocratics. I should not have
ventured such a comment relying only on memory and the absence of an entry for
Diels in Roochnik's index.

We'll leave it at that.

Teaching Ancient Philosophy

As the new academic year approaches, perhaps some of you, like me, are thinking about new ways to teach ancient philosophy in the fall.

Here is a question I'd very much like to pose to readers of DB--timely, too, given our discussions of the relationship between doing history of philosophy and doing philosophy.

I've always taught history of ancient chronologically. But has anyone had success teaching it by topic (or 'problem', even)? E.g. logic, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of nature, theory of knowledge, psychology ('philosophical anthropology'), etc. I've thought of changing to teaching it in this way, and I'd be very interested to hear about others' experiences. Can this work in a semester? How?

Forgot to Say

I forgot to say that we (my daughter, Maria, and I) arrived in Austria via Munich, where I was able to meet briefly with Richard King, an ancient philosopher who teaches at the University of Munich. A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of reviewing his book, Aristotle on Life and Death, for Bryn Mawr Classical Review (here). Richard is a wonderful scholar and fine man. We visited some churches in the Marienplatz together and sampled a pastry together--this at the request of my daughter, who aspires to be a pastry chef.

Really Wish I Could Post, But....

Greetings from Mayrhofen, in the Zillertal Alps of Austria, where I'm hiking these next few days. I've found one internet terminal in a cafe and another in a bar (where I am now!). I've had to take care of some business in the occasion I've had to use these machines. I do have some items to post, and will aim to get at them soon?

Have any D.B. readers been here? It's an amazing place.

A Silent Spring

A question directed at those who think that there is, or might be, a 'perennial philosophy', pagan or Christian, expressed in the writings of Plato and Aristotle:

If there is such, why is no one writing books that are new contributions to this philosophy?

Why do we have only historical studies, which are half-hearted, almost cowardly ways of affirming a Platonic or Aristotelian philosophical viewpoint? It's much too easy, isn't it, to profess belief in something like eros (f0r instance) through an exposition of the Symposium, rather than through writing something like the Symposium (however imperfect it might turn out in comparison).

Why do we find works such as After Virtue, which point and say that philosophy should be done in a certain way, but which fail actually to do philosophy in that way?

Presumably, if Aristotle's Physics (for instance) is correct, it is still basically correct. Where are the works in philosophy of science that don't use the name 'Aristotle' even once but which make sense of contemporary science in the fashion and spirit of the Physics?--so that any intelligent person might read it and become convinced that that is the most sensible way of looking at the natural world.

An exception: Fred Sommers' work on term logic. Perhaps another: Philippa Foot on ethics.

A Single, Perennial Pagan Philosophy

"... one of the most important contributions to the study of ancient Greek philosophy in our time."

That's how Lloyd Gerson describes Richard Sorabji's project of translating the Greek commentators on Aristotle into English, in Gerson's review in BMCR (read it here) of a three-volume sourcebook derived from that project.

Yes, that is undoubtedly true. And yet, I cannot make sense of Gerson's two arguments for that claim.

First, he says, now that the commentators are translated into English, "the study of the entire canon of ancient Greek philosophy will be reinvigorated". This will correct for the "overfishing in the waters of the 4th century B.C.E. and a consequent marginalization of ancient Greek philosophy within the larger enterprise of professional philosophy."

This strikes me as bizarre. Ancient Greek philosophy is currently marginalized (is it, more than any other specialization?) because of attention to Aristotle and Plato primarily? And then because they can now read in English lots of ancient commentaries on Aristotle, scholars (students? philosophers generally?) will be motivated to study (say) Xenophanes and Epicurus? I don't get it.

Second, Gerson says, the Greek commentators show us a different way of reading Aristotle. They believed that Aristotle's thought was a unified system which did not develop; that it was in harmony with Plato's thought; and that the study of Aristotle was a good way to become initiated in the higher mysteries of Plato's thought.

Yet one might suppose that this different way of reading Aristotle will prove significant, in English translation, only if it is correct. Is it true that Aristotle's philosophy did not develop? Is it true that his thought constitutes with Plato a single, harmonious philosophical outlook? In what seems a relativistic passage, Gerson stops short of endorsing this:

([T]he commentators assumed that Aristotle's philosophy was a whole... and [that] that philosophy was a version of Platonism, albeit a version coming from a dissident within the Platonic school. Accordingly, they read all of the works in the corpus as based on identical (Platonic) principles. But of course their assumption was no less of an assumption than was Jaeger's.

But Jaeger's view was a conclusion, not an 'assumption'. And can't we judge whether the commentators were right in what they 'assumed'?

My suspicion is that Gerson gives such poor reasons, because he does not quite state his real reasons. The review looks to me as if written by someone who wants to say--but does not quite find the nerve to affirm it outright--that there is indeed "a single perennial pagan philosophy" (as Gerson puts it), which is a vigorous alternative to philosophy as practiced since Descartes; that the study of this philosophy could in principle replace, almost without loss, philosophy as now practiced; and that we can see that this is so--and perhaps even become converted to it--by entering into a community in which this sort of philosophy is practiced, which is precisely what is constituted by the ancient Greek commentators. The Greek commentators, on this view, are meant to play a role relative to this 'single perennial pagan philosophy' analogous to Aquinas' Summa and an ostensible 'single perennial Christian philosophy'.

I don't know; this is speculation. But it's how I would make sense of the strange mixture of noble enthusiasm and poor argument that I find in that review.

The Troubling Mix of Scholarship and Politics

"I became thoroughly disgusted when one day he came into class, sat down, and asked, 'Now what would Plato have said about the train strike?' How fatuous! And Vlastos was his student, but he put an end to that sort of thing. He changed the field, and, with Gwil Owen, brought in English and European standards, so that it became completely unacceptable even to say that sort of thing."

Thus remarked once my teacher, Burton Dreben, about Raphael Demos. (I think I remember it correctly.) Which raises the question: Is it ever appropriate, and if so when, to consider 'What would Socrates (or Plato, or Aristotle) say?'

Dreben apparently thought never. But I wonder: was he consistent? (Did he equally disapprove of Martha Nussbaum's applications of ancient philosophy to contemporary politics? I don't know.)

And Vlastos certainly did not engage in ancient philosophy without serious ethical aims, at least. (I don't know his politics.) But if you allow ethical applications, why not political ones?

Moreover, don't all of us--perhaps especially when we are caught up in some philological or logical technicality--think that ancient philosophy should lead to something good, some good change (in ourselves, in society), besides being inherently worth thinking about, as it surely is? But if we allow in some general way that it should lead to some good, why not try to figure out how, more particularly, it might do so?

And Dreben had no difficulty with Rawls' political idealizations. Now suppose Rawls were to confess: "My theory of justice is entirely the result of thinking about how Kant would respond to contemporary questions of justice." (He did not say that: but he might have.) What's the difference between speculating in this way about Kant (or Mill, or Hume) and about Plato?

Your thoughts appreciated.

Did I Miss Something?

We discussed at some length in this blog the theory of G.R. Lear that ethical reasoning, for Aristotle in Nic. Eth., is an 'approximation' to philosophical contemplation, and yet, unless I missed something, we never succeeded in clarifying that relationship.

Here's an attempt by Henry Dyson in his review, in BMCR, of John Cooper's second volume of collected papers, in which, recall, Cooper declares himself persuaded by the 'approximation' view:

The first thing to note is that moral action is not subordinated to contemplation as a means to an end. Rather, Cooper notes that moral virtue and contemplation are both excellences of the reasoning part of the soul. The proper selection of independent goods is undertaken with an eye to the perfection of this expression of our rationality. Contemplation, however, is the highest and most perfect expression of our rationality and moral virtue merely aims at the same good as contemplation via lower instantiation. Thus Cooper concludes: "One would, as a result, be fairly described as pursuing even in one's moral actions the ultimate end of excellent theoretical thinking" (305)

Okay, I understand that it is not supposed to be a means to an end (and I acknowledge relations of ordering that are not instrumental orderings). Also, I understand what it would be to want practical rationality to be a 'lower' version of philosophical contemplation. But I still don't understand how it is supposed to be that--and, if that isn't explained, isn't this wishful thinking rather than an interpretation?

In reply to the old difficulty that, if practical rationality is a 'lower' version of philosophical contemplation, then presumably one must always prefer and choose philosophical contemplation over practical expressions of rationality, when these are exclusive, Dyson represents Cooper as holding:

... excellent contemplation is sufficient in and of itself to insure the choice-worthiness of a life. Carrying on such an activity over a greater period does not make the life thereby more choiceworthy than it would have been otherwise. On the contrary, to disregard one's moral duty for the sake of a greater extension of contemplation "would entail the loss of the value not only of the omitted moral action, but of all the 'moral' actions one had done while harboring the misunderstanding of morality that allowing such 'exceptions' would imply." (308). Thus, what is required is first to satisfy all the demands of morality including those that might take one away from contemplative activity, and then to give oneself over to such contemplation as the circumstances permit. In this way the appreciation of moral virtue as a fundamental human value is not undermined by the recognition that contemplation is the highest human good and the final end of human life.

So once someone actualizes the virtue of sophia even once, then nothing more is to be gained by further actualizations? That idea hardly jibes with Aristotle's e)f’ o(/son e)nde/xetai a)qanati/zein kai\ pa/nta poiei=n pro\j to\ zh=n kata\ to\ kra/tiston tw=n e)n au(tw|= | (1177b33-4).

And what Dyson takes to be, or represents as, a consequence ('Thus, ...') looks to me like a distinct, unsupported idea.

Shouldn't we expect more from a critical review?

A Philosophical Docudrama?

What Roochnik gives us in Retrieving the Ancients is a kind of television miniseries presentation of [Stanley] Rosen's ideas in the form of a historical introduction to Plato and Aristotle. The book before us is indeed derived from a set of recorded lectures "produced for the Teaching Company" (10 n1). Roochnik's book is plot-driven, rather than technique-driven, and it gives us a lecture-style digest of ideas, without much attempt to tell where his debts lie. Nor does he introduce the reader to the scholarly tools required to wrench these ideas out of the Greek texts.[[4]]

Ouch!!! A fairly harsh judgment by Michael S. Kochin in his review in BMCR of David Roochnik's attempt to give an accessible if schematic overview of the history of ancient philosophy. You may see the review with its other unflattering comments here, or order Roochnik's book and judge for yourself here.

Since Roochnik is a colleague of mine in BACAP, I read the book when it came out last year. I'm puzzled because the book that Kochin describes, and the book that I remember, are quite different.

Here's something that troubles me about Kochin's review. It's a small concern but the sort of thing that, in my mind, casts doubt on his judgment. If one looks to footnote 4, appended to the end of the passage quoted above, one finds:

4. See e.g. p. 17, where Roochnik, discussing Thales, cites a "statement of Aristotle, listed by Diels as an A fragment," though Roochnik nowhere in Retrieving the Ancients explains who Diels is or the distinction between A and B fragments. For a model account of these tools and the philosophical commitments embodied in them, see the beginning of Heidegger's essay on Anaximander, translated in Martin Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track, ed. and tr. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Heidegger's account would not, I think, require much reworking to be presented to an American popular audience.

But this is not true. Roochnik introduces Diels, albeit briefly, and explains the distinction between 'A' and 'B' fragments, on p. 11.

Oops.

We know that Kochin had the book open to that page, since he refers to Roochnik's footnote on facing page 10. So why the mistake? For my part, I cannot have confidence in a reviewer who, it seems, reads a book so sloppily, while criticizing its author so harshly.

Oh, and we'll be waiting for Kochin's efforts to rework Heidegger's scholarship for American popular audiences.

This Blog to Resume

Did you ever notice how students writing dissertations have the cleanest apartments? Even sweeping the floor, in comparison, looks good as a diversion. I half wonder whether I've had little inclination to blog because I'm between major writing projects: resume that translation of Nic Eth (for instance), and the blog will take on once again an aspect of inevitability.

But probably the reason is that I'm a man of extremes. I either work with intensity at something, or do not work at all, and my travels this summer has made the former impossible, as regards this blog at least.

You know about my trip to Vancouver, and immediately after that was the May Week Seminar in Cambridge. A couple of weeks after that, I participated in a colloquium at Princeton, at the James Madison center, and read a paper on "Lincoln's Intellectual Virtue". The colloquium was devoted to how one teaches the American Founders and Abraham Lincoln's thought in undergraduate classes. Lincoln is a side interest of mine. Lincoln is of course often taken to be a paradigm of phronesis, correctly so. In my paper, using (roughly) Aristotle's framework, I broadened the focus slightly and asked whether and how he exemplified intellectual virtue generally.

In the first two weeks of July I was teaching in an institute in Mexico City, called the North American Leadership Institute. The course brought together exemplary students from Canada, Mexico, and the United States with the aim of fostering pan-American solidarity in an era of NAFTA and globalization. Students took courses in philosophy, the history of indigenous peoples in Mexico, and in the language and culture of Mazahua. They went on various cultural excursions in the city and on weekends visited health clinics in Mazahua villages. I designed the philosophical curriculum for the institute, the theme of which was how the understanding of human rights developed through the encounter of Old World civilization with the indigenous peoples of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The centerpiece of this was of course the famous debate between Bartolome de Las Casas and Sepulveda.

While in Mexico City I gave two seminars in the philosophy department of the Universidad Panamericana, on the Doctrine of the Mean and on the two discussions of pleasure in Nic Eth. The Universidad Panamerica is distinctive in centering its undergraduate philosophy curriculum on ancient philosophy and (even) medieval commentators. In theory, their best students finish well-prepared for graduate work. (For instance, all undergraduate majors take two years of Greek and a full sequence of logic courses.) I particularly enjoyed my discussions with Hector Zagal, a prolific Aristotle scholar; Luis Xavier Lopez, an accomplished scholar of medieval Arabic philosophy; and Rodrigo Guerra, a phenomenologist and 'personalist' who is a friendly critic of Aristotelian ethics. I also had the opportunity to meet Ricardo Salles of UNAM, an accomplished ancient philosopher, who attended the seminars.

I'm at home for this week and next, and then I travel to Vienna, via Munich and the Salzburg Music Festival, to teach in another institute. I'll try to blog in the midst of all this, but I cannot promise much success until late August, when I'll return to my old regimen.

But there will be a development. I've been collaborating with IT students at Clark to design a BACAP website, which will have many attractive features: a forum for discussing BACAP lectures; a place for scholars to post 'working papers' in ancient philosophy; a place for syllabi and teaching materials in ancient philosophy to be made widely available; etc. The website should be extremely useful in assisting BACAP's mission to promote both scholarship and pedagogy in ancient philosophy. I expect it will come online by mid-August.