At Carnuntum (Thoughts to Myself)

I've been leading a seminar on John Rawls' philosophy in Vienna these past days and today, after it was finished, had the chance to visit Carnuntum (about 25 miles East of Vienna), the site of the largest Roman encampment north of the Alps, and the place where Marcus Aurelius is said to have written parts of his remarkable Meditations. (But someone told me that recent scholarship has indicated that Vindabona--Vienna--is where he actually wrote, but that he used the name 'Carnuntum' since that was the better known place. Is that true? I haven't been able to check it.)

I enjoyed most of all seeing a reconstruction of a Roman house at the excavation of the town associated with the encampment, in Petronell. The reconstructed house was built entirely using authentic materials, designs, and tools similar to those used by the Romans.

Carnuntum itself has an excellent museum but no ruins, except for one of the most important and well-preserved gladiator amphitheaters outside Rome (see Mary Beard's book on the Colosseum), where gladiatorial munera are regularly re-created, as this one between a secutor and retiarius.

Difficulties, Lecture II

Sarah Broadie's second Whitehead lecture may, I think, be encapsulated in two assertions:

(I) For Aristotle, divinity is manifested in the natural world solely in the perfect, physically necessary rotational movement of the heavenly spheres;
(II) yet on Aristotle's own principles, this movement is 'natural', and so it is unclear why he would need to appeal to anything outside of nature to account for it.

But there seem to be many texts at odds with (I). Consider simply the passage from Cicero with which Broadie began her lecture, and which she took as exemplary of Aristotle's attitude: the evidences of divinity (opera deorum) mentioned there include many sublunary phenomena, such as land, sea, sky, clouds, and wind (terram et maria caelumque vidissent, nubium magnitudinem ventorumque vim cognovissent).

And then I think of the famous passage at the end of Parts of Animals, book I, where Aristotle says that the study of living things yields the same sort of marvelous insight, though in a different way, as the study of the heavens--and he even quotes Heraclitus to make the point, "gods are present there too."

I wonder too why Aristotle would use the word theion (godlike) for human nous unless he thought it somehow manifested divinity.

(Doesn't (I) seem plausible only if we leave animate things out of the picture, and put to the side Aristotle's willingness to view living things and their powers as organized in a teleological hierarchy?)

I'm doubtful about (II) also, for two reasons:

• Aristotle explains the movement of earth, air, fire, and water as the realization of a tendency to go to a place: but what would be the place toward which an eternal rotational movement is tending?
• To say that the terrestial elements have a natural movement is to say that they admit of being hindered in that movement: e.g. to say that earth tends to the center is to say that it can be hindered from going to the center, and that it resumes its movement to the center when the hindrance is removed. That's just what a natural tendency is. But presumably the celestial spheres could not be hindered.

Difficulties, Lecture I

The following are in my view the chief difficulties in Broadie's first Whitehead lecture. (One of these I have already stated in a post.) I don't regard these as decisive objections.

1. The answer to the question, Why did Plato postulate a maker god in addition to a pantheistic cosmic god?, is presumably that a pantheistic, cosmic god is corporeal; thus (for Plato) it 'comes into being' and has an unstable existence on its own; thus its continuing existence must be attributed to a cause which does not similarly 'come into being'. Plato gives this argument explicitly at Tim. 28b-c. Thus there is no need to say that he postulates a Maker god to account for human action.

2. Broadie says that if human beings were not made by the Maker god, but were temporary portions or manifestations of the cosmic god, then their being 'first causes' of their actions could not easily be accounted for. But why should the fact that we are made (produced, manufactured) serve to account for our autonomy as causes? Products seem to have nothing in them except what is put in them by their maker. (It's implausible to hold that Plato is relying here on his limited acquaintance with automata.) Doesn't generation lead to autonomous offspring more than production? But then if human autonomy were his concern, wouldn't he have favored an image involving generation?

3. Again, Broadie claims that, for Plato, if human beings were portions of the cosmic god, then there would be no guarantee that we could have access to the Forms we need as paradigms of human government. But: presumably the cosmic god would have in its intellect suitable enough Forms or ideas of goodness and order at least, as well as mathematical forms (since the cosmos is so beautiful, according to Plato); and Plato nowhere suggests that harmony with the cosmos would be inadequate as a standard for human virtue and sociability (quite the contrary--cf. the Gorgias); and in the Republic, at least, the order that Plato thinks human society should take is presented as something natural (the three natural classes in a natural order); and what would be the reason to think that any Forms above the intellect of the cosmos would be those especially relevant for human society?

4. It would seem that Broadie needs to explain, not merely why Plato would be dissatisfied with a cosmic god alone, but also why, if he were especially concerned with vindicating human beings as 'first causes' of their actions, he did not adopt another hypothesis which was available to him--I have in mind the view that the souls of human beings are immortal and divine, insofar as they consist of self-moving substance (a view that he seems to flirt with in the Meno, Phaedrus, and Laws).

How Is It Relevant? How Is It Philosophy?

Questions I sometimes hear about ancient philosophy.

Suppose someone were to raise these very same questions as regards Sarah Broadie's Whitehead Lectures. After all, the Whitehead lectureship is a distinguished position, held in the past by such philosophers as Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Cora Diamond, Syndney Shoemaker and Tyler Burge. How does a discussion of naturalism and theology in Plato and Aristotle count as the same sort of endeavor? What is its contribution to a contemporary understanding of the world, or to truth?

My first reaction is to think it unfair that any particular excercise of philosophical skill should have to defend its existence in this way. Broadie's lectures were excellent exhibitions of "ancient philosophy" , that is, philosophical reflection as at work on classical texts; so her lectures can be defended on whatever grounds ancient philosophy as whole can be defended.

My second reaction is a tu quoque, and a reminder of how frail the existence of any philosophy really is. I understand Hume's Fork ("Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? ... Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?") as a demand for relevance. (Recall that Hume begins his first Enquiry defending the importance for society of the 'abstruse' philosophy he engages in.) And what havoc must we make if we approach any other Whitehead lecture with these demands. Shoemaker's ruminations on the inverted spectrum problem? Kripke's idea that the base ten number system is metaphysically privileged? Diamond's reflections on conceptual change?-- Commit these to the flames.

I am willing to bet a large sum that no paper in mathematics or natural science ever cites a Whitehead lecture.

Let's not deceive ourselves, then (or suppose that a contribution to the program of philosophical naturalism is the same thing as a contribution to natural science).

But if we can articulate criteria for excellence in philosophy, I am confident that Broadie's lectures will fare as well as anything else.

Comments Un-Blocked

I don't know how it happened, but somehow comments were blocked on my post on Sarah Broadie's first Whitehead lecture. That's now been remedied.

Nature and Divinity in Aristotle's Cosmology: A Precis

Sarah Broadie's second Whitehead lecture was an exploration of Aristotle's conviction that heavenly spheres are divine, and of the resulting dualism, and tensions, in his philosophy of nature.

Broadie began by recounting Aristotle's cave argument, as reported by Cicero in De Natura Deorum II.95:

“If there were men who had always lived underground in fine and well-lit houses which had been adorned with statues and paintings, and equipped with all the things which those who are considered well-to-do possess in abundance, who had, however, never come forth into the upper world, but had learned by fame and hearsay of the existence of certain divine powers and natures, and had then at some time, through the jaws of the earth being opened, been able to come forth from those hidden regions, and to pass into these parts which we inhabit,—when they had suddenly obtained a sight of the land and seas and sky, and had marked the vastness of the clouds, and the force of the winds, and had beheld the sun, and had marked not only its size and beauty, but also its power, since by diffusing light over the whole sky it caused day,—and when, again, after night had overshadowed the earth, they then perceived the whole sky studded and adorned with stars, and the change in the light of the moon as it alternately waxed and waned, and the rising and setting of all these bodies, and the fixity and unchangeableness of their courses through all eternity,—when they saw those things, they would assuredly believe both that the gods existed and that these mighty works proceeded from them (haec tanta opera deorum esse arbitrarentur).”

The passage, Broadie said, gives an elegant version of the Argument from Design. It is not unlike an Ideal Observer argument, as the hypothetical circumstances of the cave dwellers are constructed in such a way as to eliminate circumstances that could hinder their arriving at a sound judgment, e.g.

Q. Why doesn't everyone agree that the gods exist? A. Because we take for granted the evidence of their existence, from familiarity.
Q. Isn't it only the humble outlook of primitive peoples that leads them to believe in gods, when they see impressive phenomena in nature? A. No, even if people lived all their lives in luxurious circumstances, they would still be so impressed by nature as to be disposed to believe in gods.

The passage, if it truly does express Aristotle's view (as it was taken from a dialogue, On Philosophy), would however simply be one among many examples of what seems to have been constant feature of Aristotle's thought, viz. he is not disposed to explain away the gods or belief in gods.

Aristotle was a theist. However, his theism is not to be located principally in his famous arguments for a Prime Mover: these arguments are not intended as bits of theology but rather as basic explanations in a philosophy of nature. Rather, his theism is bound up with his belief that it is physically necessary that the heavens are in eternal, rotational motion. Yet this belief leads to a certain dualism and tension in his theory of the universe.

Unlike Plato, Aristotle holds that the universe is eternal, going back into the past, and not only going forward into the future. For Plato, eternity into the future was guaranteed by each thing's having a kind of 'stamp' of its divine origin, an immaterial pattern, which, when we grasp it, leads us back to a consideration of the original, divine Mind. But for Aristotle, because the universe is eternal stretching back into the past, every generation of mortal beings must have come about by natural processes. Admittedly, these processes are end-directed and craft-like, but the ends are non-mental, and the 'craft' never involves control by external agency. Explanation by appeal to natural processes is internal to the things explained and "naturalistic through and through". Thus, for Aristotle, in the sublunary world the 'craft of God', so important for Plato, is "completely out of the picture." Thus, we cannot survey the realm of generation and passing away and see in it the stampt of the same deity who made the heavens. The evidence for theism, and its chief object, becomes the heavens alone.

Note that it is not appropriate to regard Aristotle's philosophy of nature as part of some general project of 'demystification', and then wonder why he didn't extend the same outlook to the heavenly spheres. Aristotle did not develop his philosophy of nature as part of such a project; and he thought the universe could not be explained apart from the view that the movement of the heavenly spheres is eternal and physically necessary.

The result is that one finds in Aristotle a radical disparity between the sublunary and the celestial, which cannot be bridged in the manner of Plato, by tracing both back to a common cause.

Not that Aristotle does not try to bridge this gap through various devices:

1. he reaffirms Plato's dictum that mortal animals participate in immortality through reproduction;
2. he holds that processes of mortal generation depend upon regularities in celestial motion;
3. he emphasizes that every science, even one dealing with the sublunary realm, must be general and appeal to universals;
4. his view of human investigation is such that this also binds the sublunary to the celestial, as human beings have always existed, and have always wondered at the heavens;
5. the cycles of the four sublunary elements, he holds, mimic the rotational movement of the heavens;
   
6. indeed, in Met. XII he refers to both domains as including "perceptible substances", which unifies them in constrast with the non-perceptible.
7. he employs the same notion of natural locomotion to explain both the natural motion of the four sublunary elements and the motion of the celestial spheres.
   

Broadie then focussed attention on 7. for the remainder of her lecture. She said that this particular way of binding the sublunary to the celestial "backfires", because it ends up actually highlighting, rather, the immensity of the gap between them.

The theory of natural motion of the elements is that each element moves through space in a way natural to itself, towards its natural place, and that it moves away from its natural place only because of the continuous application to it of external force. Aristotle wishes to apply this theory to the celestial spheres: a necessarily eternal motion could not be enforced from without; therefore it must be the manifestation of the natural motion of sui generis celestial stuff, the 'aither'.

However, the consequence is that this 5th element has no role to play vis-a-vis the other four. It cannot enter into sublunary processes. And, although the 5th element has a place (it surrounds the sublunary), it does not really share the same space as the other four elements, because it is not as though there is some common space, to which in principle they might all go.

So the dualism remains. Aristotle seems content with it, because of his conviction of the eternal, physically necessary motion of the heavens.

But one might wonder in the end: Why wasn't Aristotle tempted to extend to celestial stuff the same outlook as he applied in the sublunary, which apparently "takes the craft of God completely out of the picture"? Why didn't he say that it is as absurd to view the motions of the heavens as the work of divinities, as to view the motion of earth, air, fire, and water as the work of 'minds' implicit in them?

But Aristotle regarded it as absurd to postulate minds to explain the motions of the four sublunary elements, because they are formless. Yet the celestial spheres are not formless. They maintain forever a perfect spherical shape. But he would think that this could not be achieved by a mere body or element. (Compare what it takes for the body of a terrestial animal to maintain a certain shape, on Aristotelian grounds, and one might begin to see Aristotle's way of looking at this.)

Nature and Divinity in Plato's Timaeus: Precis

In Sarah Broadie's first Whitehead lecture yesterday afternoon, she posed the question, "Why couldn't Plato have been satisfied with pantheism?", and her answer was that he thought that he needed to postulate a God who is above nature, and who makes human beings, in order to account for our responsibility as individuals for our actions.

Broadie began by recounting the basics of Plato's creation story (Tim 28bff.). Since the universe is visible, tangible, and corporeal, it comes to be. Everything that comes to be, comes to be through an intelligent cause which fashions it with respect to some model. The universe is visible, tangible, and corporeal; therefore it has been fashioned by a Maker who made use of a model.

Broadie drew attention to Plato's language in these passages suggestive of a religious prohibition (themis, 29a4, 30a6), and said that this indicated that we were dealing here with Plato's most fundamental premises; we shouldn't expect that we would find them obvious, but we would have to grant them if we wanted to keep company with Plato in the remainder of his discussion.

Broadie offered a correction of a common interpretation of Plato's famous remark that the Maker lacked envy (phthonos): "He was good, and one who is good can never become jealous of anything. And so, being free of jealousy, he wanted everything to become as much like himself as was possible" (29e). Because of its resonances with some religious traditions, Broadie said, this has often been interpreted in the sense that the goodness of the Maker overflows, in the manner of bonum diffusivum sui. But Broadie claimed that it had a different sense: Plato was explaining why it is that the Maker could indeed make another god. For the cosmos which he makes is a god, and a very great god, according to Plato. Since the Maker lacks jealousy, he isn't concerned about making a god who might compete with him, or obscure him.

Broadie contrasted this idea of a god making a god with traditional theogonies, in which once a new god is begotten, it typically destroys the parent god. Plato's Maker isn't threated or destroyed by the god he makes, yet at the same time, after he makes the universe, he fairly withdraws to the background and does not remain as the most prominent god.

She then raised the key question of her lecture. Plato postulates two chief gods:

(1) the ultimate Maker god, and
(2) the cosmic god.

Thus, if he admits (2), why does he think he needs to postulate (1) as well? Why does he need two chief gods? Why isn't one god sufficient, and why can't it be simply (2)? Plato is unlike moderns who might think they need to postulate a Maker god because otherwise there would be no god at all; he accepts a pantheistic god. Thus the question for him is not "Either a Maker god or no god" but rather, "Either a Maker god together with a cosmic god, or a cosmic god alone." The latter seems the simpler hypothesis: why wasn't that Plato's view?

That there was available to Plato a serviceable notion of a cosmic god is shown by Diogenes of Apollonia. Simply add the Forms to his pantheistic god, and the result would presumably be a satisfactory enough pantheistic god for a follower of Plato.

Broadie then considered, and set aside, two possible answers to her question.

(i) One might argue that here Plato was simply influenced by Anaxagoras, whose Nous is separate and unmixed. We know that Aristotle and Socrates admired Anaxagoras, and surely Plato did also. --But Broadie pointed out that Plato did not accept Anaxagoras' reason for making Nous entirely separate, and so he would have no reason for following him on this point: Anaxagoras believed that only a completely separate agency could effect the "separating out" which was the process by which the universe was formed, but Plato did not accept this.

(ii) One might argue that Plato postulates a Maker because this kind of causation is easier for us to imagine. After all, we have experience of making things by deliberate action, whereas we do not experience (say) the organization of our bodies as the effect of deliberate agency. --But Broadie replied that considerations of what it's easier to imagine would have little force with Plato, and, besides, in fact it's not very easy to imagine how an incorporeal being might make anything in the way that we do.

Broadie then said that she thought that the correct answer to her question could be found, rather, in Plato's anthropology.

Suppose Plato had postulated only a cosmic god. Then how could he have accounted for the origin of human beings from this cosmic god? There would seem to be only two alternatives, neither of which would be acceptable to Plato.

(a) Human beings are the offspring of the cosmic god.--But Plato would reject this, because the cosmic god is immortal, and Plato thinks that reproduction occurs only insofar as mortal things aim to imitate the immortal. The cosmic god has no need of this, thus it would have no need of reproduction.

(b) Human beings are a transient portion or image of the cosmic god (a view like that sometimes ascribed to Heraclitus). --But then everything about how we are constituted does not belong to us; it belongs rather to the universe. And there would be no principles for our action other than those that we might have borrowed from the cosmic god. In short, this view cannot account for our individual responsibility.

Thus, Plato needs to postulate some distinct origin for us, and, given that he does so, it is simpler for him to make this cause also the cause of the cosmos.

Broadie then supported this suggestion with a brief recounting of the story in the Timaeus about how human beings are fashioned--where each human soul is assigned to a star, and the human body is composed of stuff left over from the making of the universe. Plato is purposefully describing a process that is analogous to the making of the universe: "Human beings are more like siblings of the cosmic god than offspring," she said, "We are not parts of the cosmic god but as it were parasites living within it."

Again, suppose that Plato had postulated only a cosmic god, and that the intellects of human beings were therefore parts or sparks of the cosmic intellect. Broadie insisted: on that picture, it is at least doubtful that a human intellect could gain access to intelligibles other than those that were available to the cosmic intellect. But if our ability to go beyond what the cosmic intellect thinks about is in doubt, then it also becomes doubtful that we can arrive at suitable ideal paradigms for human government--since certainly systems of government of human society mean nothing to the cosmic animal.

In conclusion: Plato's reasons for postulating a Maker god have nothing to do with "raising up human beings above the natural world." That project makes sense only on a naturalistic view of the world, but (as Plato's willingness to regard the cosmos as a god reveals) Plato is not concerned with naturalism in that sense. Rather, he wishes to explain how we can have responsibility for our actions, as being in some way 'first causes' of our actions, and he therefore traces our origin to a cause which is responsible for the cosmos as well.

-----

That' s the precis. If you have observations or objections, why not raise them as comments? I suspect some of the objections you might have were raised also in the Q&A, and I can tell you how Broadie replied then. (I have some concerns of my own--of course!--but for now I prefer to hear what you think.)

Other Music Based on Greek Philosophy (or Philosophers)

From Nick Denyer:

What other musical works are based upon ancient Greek philosophy?

From Klaus Döring's fascinating "Socrate sur la scene de l'opera", Philosophie Antique: Problemes, Renaissances, Usages, 1 (2001) 205-220, I learn of Socrates operas by Ernst Krenek (Pallas Athene Weint, 1955) and Antonio Draghi (La Patienza di Socrate con Due Moglie, 1680). Krenek wrote his own words; Draghi used words by Nicolo Minato. Draghi/Minato did other pieces too, among them Gl'Atomi di Epicuro (1672).

Do not forget the way that the winged souls of Plato's Phaedrus reappear as the fairies in Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe.

And there is the influence of Heraclitus' doctrines of the unity of opposites, and the flux, on Cole Porter: "Wrong's right today, and day's night today, and black's white today; and heaven knows, anything goes."

Telemann, too, wrote an opera, The Patience of Socrates and his Two Wives (Der geduldige Sokrates), although not as philosophical as Cole Porter, it seems.

Eric Satie, Socrate

Gymnopédie is, I think, unusual as a French word. In English the OED lists only "gymnopaedic, a., The distinctive epithet of the dances or other exercises performed by naked boys at public festivals." LSJ of course reference the Spartan gumnopaidi/ai.

But it's not entirely clear what Satie meant by the word, or whether he meant anything at all having to do with ancient Greece:

The anecdote of Satie introducing himself as "gymnopedist" in December 1887 runs as follows: the first time Satie visited the Chat Noir cabaret, he was introduced to its director, Rodolphe Salis, famous for serving sharp comments. Being coerced to mention his profession, Satie, lacking any recognisable professional occupation, presented himself as a "gymnopedist", supposedly in an attempt to outwit the director.

Thus Wikipedia (wikipedie?), and corroborated by Grove.

We all know Satie's three Gymnopédies. But did you know that his most influential work is considered to be his three-act "symphonic drama", or quasi-opera, entitled Socrate?

I didn't know that, until Victor Caston yesterday told me about his find, in a used record shop, of:

Eric Satie, Socrate: Drame Symphonique avec voix (1919)

which includes

• Portrait de Socrate (Le Banquet)
• Bords de l'Illissus (Phédre), and
• Mort de Socrate (Phédon)

with a text based on the translation of Victor Cousin.

Victor pointed me to the lengthy article in Wikipedia and an old site for discography. "Originally it's for four voices and chamber symphony," Victor wrote, "but the version I found (on Nimbus, 1977) is just for voice (Hugues Cuenod) and piano (Geoffrey Parsons)."

I later discovered in Grove that Virgil Thomson conducted the American premier in 1922-3 when he was an undergraduate at Harvard; and the world premier of a stage version was in Hartford ("a famous production designed by Alexander Calder, with Eva Gauthier and Colin O’More") in 1936.

Satie's Socrate inspired John Cage to write a piece with an appropriately Platonic title, Cheap Imitation (1969). (Excerpts from both may be heard here.) I'm quite sure, however, that John Cage's use of the I Ching in composing the piece is incompatible with Plato's understanding of technê.

Last year I had blogged on Leonard Bernstein's Symposium for solo violin and orchestra. Victor Caston's discovery (for us at least) of Satie's Socrate raises the question: What other musical works are based upon ancient Greek philosophy?

2007 Whitehead Lectures

Sarah Broadie
University of St. Andrews

"Nature and Divinity in Plato's Timaeus"
"Nature and Divinity in Aristotle's Cosmology"

Thursday and Friday, May 10 & 11
4 pm
Emerson 210
Harvard University

Genesis and Timaeus

It seems that the following exchange stemming from an earlier post might itself be promoted to a post.

Thomas Johansen
My penny’s worth. I tend to agree that we should not think of genesis simply as the moment of birth but the process of coming-into-being. This is a process that begins before birth (cf. 91d4: megala entos ekthreptôntai) and continues after (cf. 44b1ff.). There are two ways of looking at this genesis in Timaeus’ account: as the coming-into-being of the individual and that of the original human being. The duality is deliberate and Timaeus makes it explicit at 44a8: nun kat’ arkhas te. Compare genesis at 69c4, the reference here is to the entire process by which the human being is to be generated.

As for en tôi paronti at 43c7, it is right that it marks a particular moment in the coming-into-being of the embodied human being. But note that the orbits of the soul have already before that been disrupted by exposure the bodily rectilinear motions, through nutrition in particular (43b5-6: pollou gar ontos tou katakluzontos kai aporreontos kumatos ho tên trophên pareikhen…). The moment when the circle of the Same is stopped and that of the Different is thrown off course is the moment when the motions caused by perception join in with those of nutrition: meta tou reontos endelekhôs okhetou, ktl. So the corruption of the soul is rightly understood as occurring not just at the moment of birth (assuming that this is the moment that perception starts: certainly there can be no vision of the sort described at 45bff. prior to birth), but throughout the process of growing up which started before birth (cf. again also 91d4) and continues afterwards. Compare 44a7-b1: ‘And it is indeed because of all these affections that today, as in the beginning, a soul becomes irrational when first bound within a mortal body. But when the stream of growth and nourishment flows less strongly, the soul’s orbits take advantage of the calm and as time passes steady down in their proper courses, and the movement of the circles at last regains its correct natural form…’. ‘All these affections’ clearly refer not just to perception but also to the nutritive affections, whose disruptive influence continues as we are growing up. The cessation of growth is here singled out as one of the two factors that will allow the soul to regain its circular motions. The other (mentioned next, 44c1) is the right education; this clearly includes the regulation of the perceptual affections, through observation of the planetary revolutions.

Given my view of the relevant meaning of genesis (i.e. not so much a datable event as a type of process which causes continuous disruption to the intellect), I’m sceptical about relevance of the chronological peri. But Sedley's understanding of peri (LSJ C.3 'the object about which one is concerned') is not the only other option. It seems to me preferable to invoke the use of peri in which it means ‘in respect of’, ‘in regard to’, ‘in connection with’; LSJ (s.v. C.5). So the sense would be 'the revolutions in the head that were corrupted in connection with our coming into being'.

I note also what seems to me to be a problem for Sedley’s reading. For Sedley, genesis stands in contrast with ousia, eternal being, which is the object of the study by which we should correct our psychic motions. But in the immediate context (90d3) Timaeus tells us that we should learn from 'tas tou pantos harmonias te kai periphoras', which can mean nothing other than the circular motions of the world soul. And the world soul is not an instance of eternal ousia, as opposed to genesis. Rather the world soul came into being (37a2: aristê genomenê tôn gennêthentôn) as a mixture of eternal ousia and the ousia that comes into being in bodies (35a1-4). That is the immediate context: that is not to exclude that immortal being should also be studied (cf. 90c1-2), and probably even more so that the generated cosmos (cf. 59c7-d2). But it is to say that it cannot be Timaeus’ point at 90d to exclude any kind of genesis as a worthy object of study for him who would become a better man.


David Sedley
Far from posing a problem for it, the lines Thomas cites at the end of his post seem to me strong evidence for my interpretation. What Timaeus recommends is learning the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, not as an end, but as a means to rectifying the revolutions in your head and thus re-assimilating your intellect to its object. This has close continuity with Republic 7, 528e-530c, where the advice is to study the heavenly motions created by the demiurge in order to focus your mind, precisely not on those visible revolutions, but on Being (529d, to on tachos kai he ousa bradutes en twi alethinwi arithmwi; cf. 529b4-5), i.e. on the immutable principles that lie behind the celestial motions. (Those who think the point of astronomy is to look at what goes on in heavens will according to Timaeus be reincarnated as birds, so that they can go up and take a closer look, 91d-e.)


Michael Pakaluk
Sedley's reply to Johansen's problem seems sufficient: it's thoroughly Platonic to say that we should strive to attain to the immutable by attaining to that which best approximates the immutable and is available to us....


Thomas Johansen
I quite agree with Michael’s observation that ‘it's thoroughly Platonic to say that we should strive to attain to the immutable by attaining to that which best approximates the immutable and is available to us’. However, my concern is with a somewhat different matter. On Sedley’s interpretation, if I have understood it correctly, the soul has been corrupted through its attention to genesis as opposed to ousia. I am quite happy with the idea that the study of the heavenly motions may in some way help towards the study of the forms. I am also quite happy with the idea that some, or most, kinds of attention to genesis will corrupt the soul. My problem is with the suggestion that the attention paid to genesis understood generically and without further qualification explains why our intellectual motions have been corrupted. (I infer that this is Sedley’s suggestion from n.12 of the 1997 version of ‘Becoming like god’ – I’m sorry I don’t have the later version to hand – where he says that he takes genesis with the definite article at to be used in the sense of “becoming” in general, as opposed to ousia in general’.) But since the study of the motions of the world soul is the study of something that moves and has come into being, there is at least one case of attention to genesis which will not corrupt the soul, but rather cure it. Readers may compare the similar comment on Sedley’s reading by G.Carone (Plato’s Cosmology and Its Ethical Dimensions), p.222, n.49: ‘Becoming as such could hardly be bad for the soul when the intellections of the world-soul themselves that we are recommended to imitate in this passage are described as motions (90c8-d1), and to that extent pertain to the realm of becoming (35a).’

For the point that attention paid to genesis as such does not explain the corruption of the soul, it is worth comparing the activity of the word soul itself at 37b3-8. In Cornford’s transl: ‘Now whenever discourse that is alike true whether it is takes place concerning that which is different or that which is the same, being carried on without speech or sound within the thing that is self-moved, is about that which is sensible, and the circle of the Different, moving aright, carries its message throughout all its soul – then there arise judgments and beliefs that are sure and true.’ It cannot simply be attention to what is perceptible that corrupts the soul if the world soul, while moving aright, has true and certain beliefs about what is perceptible.

In his reply to me, David points to two supporting texts. I read the reference to the ‘bird brains’ at Tim. 91d-e1 differently from David, namely not as a reference to those who have neglected the study of the forms – though no doubt they have also neglected this – but to those who have not studied the motions of the world soul in the right way. The contrast is between two ways of approaching the motions in the heavens: one by mathematically calculating the numbers of the motions of the world soul, where the world soul itself is invisible (36e6), the other simply by observation of what can be seen of the heavenly bodies without any attention to the underlying mathematical regularities. (For the parallel case of music, cf. 47d.) The important point for my purposes is that both kinds of student are studying the motions of the heavens – one doing so correctly, the other not – rather than one kind of student studying the motions in the heavens and the other something else, the forms. As for the relationship between Republic VII and the Timaeus this is clearly a very complicated matter. My own tentative view is rather along the lines of Geoffrey Lloyd’s interpretation: ‘[In the Rep.] Plato is not concerned to discuss astronomical methods as such and in general, but has the limited purpose of identifying the contribution that astronomy can make to training the Guardians in abstract thought’ (Methods and Problems in Greek Science, p. 334). I think both the methodological passage at Tim. 29b-d and later passages such as 59c5-d2 (where producing likely accounts of genesis is something we do when we have set aside the study of eternal being) make it clear that the subject-matter, objectives and standards of cosmology in the Timaeus are distinct from those of the study of the forms as such. On this reading, the Timaeus is not inconsistent with Republic VII; it is just that its project is a rather different one.

A Few Reasons Too Many

"For the most part" (hôs epi to polu) --either a fudge, or an indispensable apparatus of philosophical elegance. Shall I say, then, that this blog deals with ancient philosophy "for the most part"?--since clearly that is true.

And then, if the link with classical sources seemed too tenuous, I would be dispensed from having to give further explanation for why I would wish to post on a fascinating review by Alexander Pruss of a book by Graham Oppy.

Among many arguments in the review that caught my attention, perhaps it was the following that most intrigued me (especially the highlighted sentence):

However, it is not rational to assign to theism a credence interval containing zero, unless one actually has a valid deductive argument for the non-existence of God from indisputable empirical observations and/or from self-evident truths, and Oppy has not given us any evidence to think he has such an argument. For let E be the following event: the skies brighten, everyone's computer screen flashes the words "I am God: listen to my revelation" in colors beyond the chromatic range of one's monitor, each mathematician finds a gold-edged piece of paper (the gold turns out to have no impurities at all and no impurities can be introduced) with a correct solution to a difficult open problem, signed "God", every turned-on Geiger counter has a gold-edged piece of paper on it listing, in very small print and with 20 digit precision, the exact time of every click over the next 48 hours, signed "God", all those with any physical ailments or abnormalities find these ailments and abnormalities gone, and instead find themselves holding a gold-edged piece of paper saying: "I wish I could have done this earlier, but I could not reasonably do so due to reasons you would not understand -- God". Barring a deductive argument against the existence of God from indisputable premises, the occurrence of E should rationally make one believe in God. But if one initially assigns a credence interval containing zero to the existence of God, then (this is a theorem) no evidence whose probability is greater than zero on the no-God hypothesis can in a Bayesian way raise the credence to an interval that does not contain zero. But the probability of E is greater than zero given indeterministic quantum physics -- E could occur out of purely naturalistic causes. Hence, assigning a credence interval containing zero to the existence of God is irrational as it makes it impossible to respond as one rationally ought to possible evidence such as E.

Pruss' argument against Oppy's way of modelling 'credence' with a probability range seems to me ingenious.

Yet as regards Pruss' particular choice of E, I am ready to side with the existentialists and wonder:

1. Suppose E really did happen, then, whether you are an atheist, agnostic, or theist--would you thereby have any more reason to believe that God exists than you have already?
2. Suppose you think that, if God existed, he would not be the sort of being who would try to make others believe that he existed: then how would you interpret this evidence?
3. Does the explanation "I wish I could have done this earlier, but I could not reasonably do so due to reasons you would not understand -- God", seem especially godlike to you (compare: the book of Job). Or doesn't it rather seem, well, foolish?
4. What if very pure silver were used around the edges of the paper, instead of gold?

Identify the Fake

Something one needs to do in scholarship all the time, and not simply for vases or coins.

I can't claim, however, that any skills I might have in that regard assisted me in --correctly-- picking out the fake from this group of four passages from Beethoven's 7th Symphony. One of them was generated by a computer; the others are performances by actual orchestras.

Two experts asked by the Wall Street Journal were stumped. After you make your attempt (and good luck!), I'll tell you how I was able to pick out the fake on my first try. Let me know how you did.

A Philosopher in the Cave

I've spent too much time there and can testify: the place is as wide as it is long; one gets to it from above, by descending through a passageway. Within, it is dark. Men sit stretched out and view flickering images on a wall. Behind them and higher up, where they never look, there is a great and very bright fire, before which men who stay hidden behind a wall make it so that images and likenesses pass by--and these cause the images, as it were shadows, to be cast upon the wall.

And yet, and yet.... occasionally a philosopher will descend to this place. Not only that, but occasionally a philosopher's visit is even scheduled, as for instance this Wednesday evening, at 6pm. Yes, a philosopher is going to speak to those in the cave, not by compulsion but freely.

DAY	DATE	PROGRAM & TIME	TICKETS
MAY
T	1	Special Make Up Screenings! Casablanca - 8:00, 10:00 Cambridge Center for Adult Education Presents Galway Kinnell - 6:00 (See description for ticket information)
W	2	Harvard Book Store Presents Martha Nussbaum - 6:00 (Tickets are $5.00 and are available at Harvard Book Store or by phone with a credit card at 617-661-1515.) Repertory Series Recent Raves! - repertory series Recent Raves! Comedy of Power - 8:00 Recent Raves! Zodiac - 10:00

At the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square, one may see Casablanca today and tomorrow, and Martha Nussbaum the day after.

(In know I said I wouldn't post, but this isn't really a post--it's simply fun.)

Blogging to Resume, After All, Friday May 3

Ah the fragilty of goodness! ... How delicate, it seems, is the biosystem in which a daily blog can thrive.

My travels over, I find myself behind in other work: It's looking unlikely that I can resume blogging before this Friday, May 4. I'll see if I can come up with a last word, too, on Two Births, Two Origins.

However, for your amusement, two stories.

(1) Recently my 3 year old son, Gregory, asked to be excused from the dinner table. I told him that he may be excused, if he behaved, once excused. To which Gregory replied, "But I AM hāved!" (Now, how do I explain to him that, although, pace Quine, sakes really do exist, hāves do not? Also, I continue to wonder how he was so sure that he was already hāved.)

(2) We had to take two long road trips yesterday, during which I played with everyone else in the car, "Punch Buggy", i.e. the first person who sees a Volkswagen Beetle shouts out "Punch buggy, don't punch back!" and gets credit for one 'buggy' sighting--the person with the most at the end of the day being the winner. We have in our apartment a picture of my wife standing next to a yellow Beetle. In between trips, Joseph, 6 years old, asked whether he could count the Beetle in the picture for the purposes of the game. I told him that he could not count it, and of course he knew that he couldn't. But the interesting question was why he couldn't, and yet why he was tempted to ask. "Why shouldn't that Beetle in the picture count?" (I asked), "Because you can't drive it anywhere," was the response--and good enough for both of us.

I didn't have to ask him why he was tempted to ask. I know that he likes jokes, and philosophy.

Blogging to Resume Friday, April 27

I'll not likely post for the next week, as I'll be traveling --and, besides, I wanted to mull over Thomas Johansen and David Sedley's comments (for which many thanks). Until then!

Two Births, Two Origins

I had asked if you could discover what the flaw was in Mahoney's reply, and it is this. He presumes that ge/nesij in the context means 'birth', and then he tries to find an explanation for why Plato might have referred indefinitely (with peri\ th_n ge/nesin) to the time of birth.

And yet ge/nesij, in contexts in which Plato has in mind the origin of a human being, typically means incarnation, the joining of the soul and the body, the soul's 'coming to be in the form of a human' (although it may loosely be translated as 'birth').

It's clearly used in that way in the Timaeus: when Plato contrasts the first ge/nesij of human beings as males (41e3), with their second ge/nesij as females (42c1), he certainly cannot mean two journeys through the birth canal!

Thus, the problem that Mahoney actually has to face, is to explain why Plato should at 90d1-2 have referred indefinitely to the origin of a human being, when (i) Plato typically understands this to occur at a moment, viz. the moment when the soul and body are joined; and (ii) as we have seen, Plato actually uses language indicating a precise moment in the passage to which, on Mahoney's view, 90d1-2 refers.

A 53 Billion Dollar Metaphysical Question

Are only wooden things made from wood? Would charcoal, for instance, also be made from wood, since the process of making charcoal begins with wood?

Similarly, are only sugary things made from sugar? Is the artificial sweetener, Splenda, also made from sugar, if it is produced by beginning with a sugar molecule, and then replacing some of its constituents with chlorine?

Arguably a metaphysician is needed to decide such questions. But, if so, then there is now a legal case in which the expert most relevant to serve as an expert witness would be a metaphysician (and presumably an Aristotle expert too, since Aristotle speaks most directly to such questions)! Expect $500/hour, minimum. (One never knows when a 'liberal art' will prove relevant.)

Merisant, the maker of Equal, is suing McNeil Nutritionals, the maker of Splenda, on the grounds that McNeill's claims on behalf of the product ($53 billion annual sales) are misleading.

From last Friday's Wall Street Journal:

McNeil says that it has used the same promotional claims for Splenda -- "Made from sugar, tastes like sugar" and "Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar" -- in all packaging and advertising since its launch. It declines to comment on having dropped the "But it's not sugar" line. McNeil stands by its claims.

Merisant lodged a complaint with the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus in late 2004, four years after Splenda's launch and two years after privately complaining to McNeil.

McNeil then sued Merisant in Puerto Rico, seeking a judgment that its ads are not misleading, and alleging that Merisant complained after a judge in Puerto Rico had barred Merisant from selling a product with packaging that closely resembled Splenda's.

Merisant responded by filing suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in November 2004, where the case will now be heard before a jury. McNeil then consented to the dismissal of its case in Puerto Rico, according to a memorandum by federal District Judge Gene E.K. Pratter.

Jurors will have to endure a heavy-duty chemistry lesson. One of Splenda's main ingredients is sucralose, a chemical entity manufactured in a lab that McNeil makes from sucrose, or table sugar.

Its patented technique replaces some of the chemical groups found in sugar with chlorine, creating a substance that McNeil says is not recognized by the body as a carbohydrate and has no calories.

Merisant alleges that Splenda shouldn't be able to claim that it's "made from sugar," since sugar is not one of the ingredients on its product label and the use of the phrase misleads consumers into thinking the product is natural or contains sugar. McNeil said in a statement that Splenda is made from pure cane sugar by a patented process that makes three atomic changes to the sugar molecule.

McNeil presumably chose Puerto Rico as a favorable venue because that is where massive quantities of cane sugar used in the making of Splenda are grown and purchased! But if McNeil's lawyers had really been canny, and recognized the dispute as primarily a metaphysical one, which venue should they actually have sought? Princeton? Cambridge? Los Angeles? The Southern District of New York?

Perinatal Perception

Mahoney responds to Sedley's rejoinder, with an explanation of why Plato might have wished to "stress the approximateness of the temporal reference": according to Mahoney, Plato thinks that the "corruption of the revolutions in our heads" begins when we first begin to perceive, but Plato would plausibly have regarded perception to begin, not exactly at birth, but rather 'around the time of birth', peri\ th_n ge/nesin:

Plato suggests that the disruption takes place at a very specific time: 'it was just then, at that very instant' (kai\ dh_ kai\ to&te e0n tw|~ paro&nti, 43 C7). When is this exactly? Sedley and Zeyl agree that the disruption occurs at birth, but this may not be accurate. The disruption begins to occur when a person first encounters external stimuli, which happens no later than the time of birth, but perhaps even earlier. An expectant mother often feels the movements of the child within her womb. It is not unreasonable to think that such movements are the reaction to soem stimulus that has been transmitted to the foetus within the womb. If so, then the disruptions to the revolutions begin even before birth. This would mean that we cannot make any general rule about the precise time at which human revolutions begin to be disrupted, so the most accurate way to describe the time at which these disruptions begin with with a suitably approximate expression such as peri\ th_n ge/nesin, 'around the time of birth', the exact phrase that Plato uses.

But Mahoney's explanation contains a flaw. Can you see what it is? (A hint: it involves an equivocation.) And yet in spite of that his interpretation is, I think, ultimately sustainable, although on slightly different grounds.

But more of this on Monday, as I'll be travelling over the weekend.

"Around the Time Of..."

Yesterday I sketched a dispute over the translation and interpretation of a passage in the Timaeus. Mahoney's reasons in favor of the standard view seemed strong. But Sedley has a rejoinder. Recall that the passage is Timaeus 90d1-2:

...ta_j peri\ th_n ge/nesin e0n th|~ kefalh|~ diefqarme/naj h(mw~n perio&douj e0corqou~nta...

Against taking the highlighted phrase to refer to some time, viz. "at the time of birth", Sedley objects:

...the only point of a chronological peri/ could be to stress the approximateness of the temporal reference--"around the time of ...", and I cannot see what would motivate this in the present context.

The point is strengthened when one considers that Mahoney, as was said, wishes to understand Timaeus 90d1-2 as referring back to 43c-e, and yet in that earlier passage Plato speaks of the corruption of the revolutions in the head as occurring at a definite point in time:

The motions produced by all these encounters would then be conducted through the body to the soul and strike against it... It was just then, at that very instant (kai\ dh_ kai\ to&te e0n tw|~ paro&nti), that they produced a very long and intense commotion (c4-8).

So why would Plato have referred indefinitely to something he takes special pains to identify as occurring at a precise time?

Tomorrow I'll give the reply that Mahoney develops in his article.

Corrupted Revolutions in Our Heads

I've been reading, to write a review, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, summer 2003, and in that volume Timothy A. Mahoney's, "Moral Virtue and Assimilation to God in Plato's Timaeus" raises a point of translation that is perfect for this blog.

Mahoney disputes David Sedley's reading of a passage in the Timaeus. Today I'll give Mahoney's main arguments; tomorrow I'll give Sedley's rejoinder; and the next day I'll give Mahoney's final reply. There's a flaw, I think, in Mahoney's final reply, and my question for you will be whether you can spot it and, if so, whether the flaw is fatal to his position.

The background for the dispute: Sedley and Mahoney differ over what a human being's assimilation to God amounts to for Plato. Sedley has maintained that, for Plato, such assimilatio requires that we put aside all practical matters and enter a state of pure contemplation; Mahoney disagrees and thinks that it involves our having and using the moral virtues, especially justice.

The specific point of dispute concerns a phrase in Timaeus 90d1-2:

...ta_j peri\ th_n ge/nesin e0n th|~ kefalh|~ diefqarme/naj h(mw~n perio&douj e0corqou~nta...

Mahoney follows Zeyl and translates in the received way:

"We should redirect the revolutions in our heads that were thrown off course at the time of birth."

Sedley suggests a clever change and wishes to translate:

"We should correct the corrupted revolutions in our head concerned with becoming."

That translation fits better with Sedley's view of assimilatio, because then the passage seems to be recommending that that we turn completely away from any occupation with becoming, and thus with those things that moral virtue would govern.

Mahoney objects to Sedley's translation on two grounds:

1. "The phrase peri\ th_n ge/nesin is naturally taken as adverbial with diefqarme/naj." (He acknowledges Zeyl for this argument.)
2. 90d1-2 should be understood as referring back to 43c-e, where Plato seems to say that the disturbances of the revolutions in our heads began at birth.

Tomorrow I'll give Sedley's rejoinder, which perhaps you anticipate, if you've looked at that earlier passage, also here.

Mystery Passage ID

The third mystery passage:

From the final chapter ("The Value of Philosophy") of Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell.

If the passage is not merely ad hominem as regards a readership Russell thinks is still in the thrall of Idealism--which I don't believe--then doesn't it tend to call into question Russell's notion that there are two distinct, fundamental sources of interest in philosophy, morality and science?

But I'd be interested to hear your reactions, reflections.

On Being Properly Affected (by Vice)

What is our reaction when we recognize that someone else has a vice?

I doubt that this question has an answer, as it is poorly formulated. To recognize that someone has a vice, presumably we must recognize that there even are vices, and we cannot do this, I think, without our being committed to some system (even if only commonsensical) for identifying and categorizing vices. And not everyone thinks in that way; and there are different systems, and that which we accept can vary, even, depending upon our own character. And then our response to vice will also vary depending upon our relationship to the other person--we respond differently to vices seen (if we can see them) in those under our authority, or those we love, than vices seen in strangers or enemies. Again, we react differently depending upon whether we think we have the same vice ourself, or could have had it.

But Thomas Hurka is certain that we all react to vice in the same way--with hatred. It's all very simple, apparently, and this forms the basis of his main objection to what appears to be a very subtle book by Gabriele Taylor on the 'seven capital vices' (pride, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, anger).

Taylor maintains that what principally makes a vice bad is the harm it constitutes to the person who has the vice. Hurka argues that, if that were so, our reaction to a vice would be pity; and yet that is surely not the case:

If the key feature of vice, the one that makes the vices vicious, is its frustrating its possessor's desires, then our primary response to vice as vice should surely be pity. 'He's arrogant and condescending, the poor man,' we should say. Or 'She wants our happy marriage to end -- how awful for her.' Now if we believe the vices can harm their possessors -- and one cannot finish Taylor's book without having that belief strengthened -- then we may indeed feel some pity for a vicious person. But that is surely not our principal reaction to his vice, and surely not the one we have to it as vice. Our principal reaction is hatred, with the more specific forms of anger at vices like arrogance and envy and contempt for ones like gluttony and sloth.

He tries to buttress his argument by a consideration of malice, which Hurka maintains is the worst of all vices and therefore the central case of vice. What holds for malice, then, apparently holds for all other vices:

Malice is arguably the worst of the vices, and therefore the central case of vice, yet it is surely not made such by its effects on the malicious person. And our principal response to malice, say to a sadistic torturer's glee in his victim's pain, is hardly pity... if [Taylor] retains her general view that what makes any vice such is the harm it causes its possessor -- and there is no indication that she does not -- she seems committed to holding that malice is vicious primarily because it makes the person who feels it unhappy, and that is surely not the intuitive view.

But his objection has clearly gone off the rails when he starts speaking of the 'feeling' of malice, and when he gives the example of some particular act of torture--since to consider someone else's feeling or action is definitely not to consider his "vice as vice", which is what was at issue.

Frankly, I don't know what to say to the view that anger and contempt are 'specific forms' of hatred. Is Hurka supposing that there we have only two ways of responding to things, pro (love) and con (hatred)? Perhaps someone who sees things in that way does react only with variations of hatred to the faults and vices of others.

And I suppose I'm included in Hurka's readership when he writes that "our principal reaction" to someone's vice is hatred. But if so, then I can report that his claim is false. When I reflect carefully on my own reactions, I would say that I feel the following. (I assume that it is the seeing of a vice in a bad action that is the occasion for the reaction.)

• First, perplexity and astonishment--because I cannot usually understand what it would be like to be the sort of person who would act that way.
• Second, fear, because I next consider that I and the other are the 'same stuff', and that what he does reflects on the sort of being that I also am.
• Third, fear once more, from a combination of my first two reactions, since I next consider that perhaps my perplexity is unjustified, given that I am of the 'same stuff', and that I might be ignorant of a similar vice in myself, as presumably that other person is.
• Fourth, sometimes pity, sometimes sorrow, for the other.
  
• Fifth--very often--in my mind I qualify the preceding reaction by looking at the vice in a larger perspective, and then I view the other, as having that vice, as ridiculous, or absurd, or tragically brought down by something he cannot control. That is, I have a humorous or resigned reaction.

To the extent that I identify with the victims, if there are any, of actions which result from the vice, then I feel also anger and indignation. But I believe that nowhere in this tangle do I feel what I would describe as hatred.

But of course these descriptions of how we do feel have little weight; what is relevant is how we should feel. Yet no light is supplied in that regard by assertions about how we all, surely, feel.

Diversity in Ancient Philosophy

One must congratulate the recently founded Ancient Philosophy Society (recent, that is, for the time-scale on which we operate) for their good sense in holding their annual conference in Boston, and for their good taste in holding their annual banquet at the Gardner Museum. The program for the entire conference, which runs April 12-14, may be found here.

According to its mission statement:

The Ancient Philosophy Society was established to provide a forum for diverse scholarship on ancient Greek and Roman texts. Honoring the richness of the American and European philosophical traditions, the Ancient Philosophy Society supports phenomenological, postmodern, Anglo-American, Straussian, Tubingen School, hermeneutic, psychoanalytic, and feminist interpretations of ancient Greek and Roman philosophical and literary works. It is the intention that, within the larger aim of assessing the meaning and significance of ancient texts, the Ancient Philosophy Society serve as the site of critical engagement among these various schools of interpretation and that it encourage creative and rigorous independent readings.

--which is to suggest apparently that, outside of the Ancient Philosophy Society, one finds an insufficient diversity and richness, and that, within the Society, one distinctively finds 'critical engagement' among differing 'interpretations'.

But is either of these suppositions in fact true? A glance of the past programs of the society suggests that its conferences are not very different from what one finds elsewhere, except for a large dose of Heidegger thrown in. And it isn't clear that the conferences, at least, are especially structured to encourage critical discussion as to the merits, or weaknesses, in the various 'interpretations' mentioned in the mission statement.

Another interesting question is whether the supposition of different 'interpretations' should be made at all, and whether it is helpful to foster these directly. The Society's statement at the end seems to say that its ultimate aim is the fostering of creative, rigorous, and independent readings. Would it be preferable, perhaps, to aim directly at these things, and let diversity and richness of interpretation fall as they may?

One suspects that the Society is presupposing that inevitably everyone does fall within one of the mentioned 'interpretations', or some others not mentioned explicitly, and that, if this fact is not acknowledged, then creativity, rigor, and independence suffer as a consequence. But is that presupposition actually true? Couldn't a scholar aim--and largely succeed--at spurning 'feminist' or 'psycholanalytic' interpretations, or any other sort of interpretation such as that? Isn't the project, for instance, of explaining and evaluating, e.g. what Plato said and argued for, a viable project that is different from that of offering a specific 'interpretation'? But, if so, then the Ancient Philosophy Society, to the extent that it succeeded in being distinctive, would actually not be an ancient philosophy society--it would be a place where various 'interpretations' could meet and (perhaps) exchange their reflections on these 'interpretations', insofar as these reflections have been inspired by a relatively accidental encounter with ancient philosophy.

Against the charge that what appears to be a neutral position is actually an 'analytic interpretation', one may distinguish three approaches:

1. The use of tools in analytic philosophy in order to explain better and evaluate (e.g.) what Plato said and argued for.
2. The use of some tools, and principles, of analytic philosophy to read some ancient texts, on the supposition that the former are continuous with the philosophical project found in the latter.
3. Taking for granted some project which is motivated solely from within analytic philosophy (say, logicism, or specifically scientific reductionism or naturalism), and then looking to ancient philosophy for inspiration or assistance as regards the advancement of that project.

1. cannot be faulted, if accomplished with suitable sensitivity, except for being incomplete. (Yet this would not be an incompleteness that could be made up for with an 'interpretation'). 2. is perfectly respectable where the supposed continuity actually holds. Only 3. looks as if it is aiming at something analogous to a 'feminist' or 'psychoanalytic' interpretation; but 3., I take it, represents only a small slice of work in ancient philosophy over the last 50 years.

Admittedly a residual concern is false consciousness--someone thinks and claims he is making clear (e.g.) what Plato said and argued for, but, because he does not know himself, he has actually gotten that wrong and is, rather, advancing some 'interpretation'. And then, precisely because he thinks that he is neutral, and everyone else is offering a biased 'interpretation', he dominates the field and unfairly excludes others.

But I don't see that there is any remedy for that sort of problem except: extreme care in reading texts; good scholarship (as that has always been understood); wide reading; historical senstivity; and --very important--a willingness to be changed through an encounter with an ancient text.

But if we place all of these things first, as apparently we should, wouldn't this be (again) to favor above all 'rigor, creativity, and independence', and let diversity fall where it may?

Third Mystery Passage

To whom should we attribute these declarations about contemplation and greatness of soul? (Googling not allowed!)

For this reason greatness of soul is not fostered by those philosophies which assimilate the universe to Man. Knowledge is a form of union of Self and not-Self; like all union, it is impaired by dominion, and therefore by any attempt to force the universe into conformity with what we find in ourselves. There is a widespread philosophical tendency towards the view which tells us that Man is the measure of all things, that truth is man-made, that space and time and the world of universals are properties of the mind, and that, if there be anything not created by the mind, it is unknowable and of no account for us. This view, if our previous discussions were correct, is untrue; but in addition to being untrue, it has the effect of robbing philosophic contemplation of all that gives it value, since it fetters contemplation to Self. What it calls knowledge is not a union with the not-Self, but a set of prejudices, habits, and desires, making an impenetrable veil between us and the world beyond. The man who finds pleasure in such a theory of knowledge is like the man who never leaves the domestic circle for fear his word might not be law.

The true philosophic contemplation, on the contrary, finds its satisfaction in every enlargement of the not-Self, in everything that magnifies the objects contemplated, and thereby the subject contemplating. Everything, in contemplation, that is personal or private, everything that depends upon habit, self-interest, or desire, distorts the object, and hence impairs the union which the intellect seeks. By thus making a barrier between subject and object, such personal and private things become a prison to the intellect. The free intellect will see as God might see, without a here and now, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge -- knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for man to attain. Hence also the free intellect will value more the abstract and universal knowledge into which the accidents of private history do not enter, than the knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent, as such knowledge must be, upon an exclusive and personal point of view and a body whose sense-organs distort as much as they reveal.

To make this fun: if you don't know, say who you think it might be, who it sounds like. And no harm in remaining Anonymous.

BACAP Lecture, April 12

THE BOSTON AREA COLLOQUIUM
IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

Presents

On Names and Concepts: Mythical and Logical Thinking in Plato's Symposium

Professor Günter Figal
(Universität Freiburg)

Commentator
Professor Dennis Schmidt
(Pennsylvania State University)

Heights Room, Corcoran Commons, Boston College
Thursday, 12 April 2007 at 7:30 PM

Also a seminar on
"Plato and Nietzsche on Soul"
Republic 435a-441c
Beyond Good and Evil, 19
Room 328 (21 Campanella Way)
Tuesday, 10 April 2007 from 4:30-6:30PM
Both the lecture and seminar are open to the public.

For more information, please contact:
Prof. Gary Gurtler, S.J., gurtlerg@bc.edu

Does Socrates Have a View about Eudaimonia in the Apology?

On the relation between virtue and happiness in the Apology... Wouldn't the simple first step be to check Socrates' usage of eudaimonia in the dialogue? Senn doesn't do this. I looked at Reeve's discussion (Socrates in the Apology), and he doesn't do it (he turns to the Euthydemus or other dialogues). And I looked at a few other randomly selected sources and, strangely, could find no such thing.

Anyway, there are four occurrences. Here's my TLG search. I'll paste it in, links and all, for your convenience. (English texts below.)

1. Plato Phil., Apologia Socratis. {0059.002} Stephanus page 25 section b line 7. (Browse)
pa&ntwj dh&pou, e0a&nte su_ kai\ 1Anutoj ou)

fh~te e0a&nte fh~te: pollh_ ga_r a1n tij eu)daimoni/a ei1h peri\

tou_j ne/ouj ei0 ei[j me\n mo&noj au)tou_j diafqei/rei, oi9 d' a1lloi

2. Plato Phil., Apologia Socratis. {0059.002} Stephanus page 36 section d line 9. (Browse)

ei1 tij u(mw~n i3ppw| h2 sunwri/di h2 zeu&gei neni/khken 0Olumpi/a-

sin: o( me\n ga_r u(ma~j poiei= eu)dai/monaj dokei=n ei]nai, e0gw_ de\

(e.) ei]nai, kai\ o( me\n trofh~j ou)de\n dei=tai, e0gw_ de\ de/omai. ei0

3. Plato Phil., Apologia Socratis. {0059.002} Stephanus page 41 section c line 4. (Browse)

diale/gesqai kai\ sunei=nai kai\ e0ceta&zein a)mh&xanon a2n ei1h

eu)daimoni/aj; pa&ntwj ou) dh&pou tou&tou ge e3neka oi9 e0kei=

a)poktei/nousi: ta& te ga_r a1lla eu)daimone/steroi/ ei0sin oi9 e0kei= (5)

4. Plato Phil., Apologia Socratis. {0059.002} Stephanus page 41 section c line 5. (Browse)

eu)daimoni/aj; pa&ntwj ou) dh&pou tou&tou ge e3neka oi9 e0kei=

a)poktei/nousi: ta& te ga_r a1lla eu)daimone/steroi/ ei0sin oi9 e0kei= (5)

tw~n e0nqa&de, kai\ h1dh to_n loipo_n xro&non a)qa&natoi/ ei0sin, ei1per

(There's also emakarisa used in a sense similar to 1. at 20b9 here.)

Some puzzles.

1. and 3. use eudaimonia to indicate a blessing, or 'stroke of good fortune', that happens apart from anything we are striving for. (It just turns out that, unlike every other case, being an expert is the rule in the cultivation of character in youths. It just turns out that the afterlife is an unending conversation with great men about philosophical topics.) In these passages, then, eudaimonia is not a 'good attainable through our own efforts.' (One of our 'distinctions in goodness' proves to be a useful tool!) However, 2. uses the word to indicate something that Socrates can produce. (Or is that said only to make a rhetorical parallel, and what Socrates means is that he produces what leads to eudaimonia, or might aptly be blessed with eudaimonia?--It doesn't matter. Even so, it would show that Socrates does not regard himself obliged to keep to any consistent usage.) --Or does Socrates mean 'I make you happy' in the sense that 'I am a blessing sent by the god for you', in which case 1. and 3. actually are compatible?

4. seems to carry along the implicature that some people 'here' are happy, at least in some respects (whatever that might mean). Maybe Socrates has in mind that some persons here are happy to the degree that they are virtuous. However, given the proximity of 4. to 3., wouldn't one expect the word to carry a similar sense in both instances? So then presumably it means that the men 'over there' are 'blessed', not directly through their own efforts, in various ways other than being immortal--and that some men 'here' are to some extent blessed. But then how would that point fit into Socrates' larger claim, that the men 'over there' won't want to execute Socrates for spending his time in philosophical dicussions?

Isn't it a bit odd in 2. that, after talking about happiness, Socrates next talks about his neediness?--One would think that the argument presupposes that he is happy (which is why he can make others happy), and yet wouldn't it be strange for him to say in the same breath that he is needy?

What conclusion might one draw from all this? Wouldn't it be that Socrates simply does not express any considered philosophical view about happiness in the Apology? We're likely forcing the text to look for one. If he has any view at all, it's that happiness is a gift or blessing, which we cannot attain through our own efforts, but which perhaps 'happens' to us if we are virtuous. But, even still, it seems a stretch to say that this is Socrates' view of happiness in the dialogue.

(English)

1. Certainly it is, whether you and Anytus deny it or agree; for it would be a great state of blessedness in the case of the youth if one alone corrupts them, and the others do them good.

2. For he makes you seem to be happy, whereas I make you happy in reality; and he is not at all in need of sustenance, but I am needy.

3. To converse and associate with them and examine them would be immeasurable happiness.

4. At any rate, the folk there do not kill people for it; since, if what we are told is true, they are immortal for all future time, besides being happier in other respects than men are here.