Not Likely

Two ways of deciding upon the truth value of P:

1. By the Cartesian Canon: "It's possible that not-P; therefore not-P."
2. By the assessment of likelihood: "Not-P is more likely than P; therefore not-P."

Now which of these do KRS in their arguments below mean to exemplify? They are commenting on an excerpt from the passage in Simplicius:

... ἀλλ' ἑτέραν τινὰ φύσιν ἄπειρον, ἐξ ἧς ἅπαντας γίνεσθαι τοὺς οὐρανοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἐν αὐτοῖς κόσμους· ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών. διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν, ποιητικωτέροις οὕτως ὀνόμασιν αὐτὰ λέγων·

Which they render as:

... some other apeiron nature, from which come into being all the heavens and the worlds in them. And the source of coming-to-be for existing things is that into which destruction, too, happens, according to necessity; for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of Time', as he describes it in these rather poetical terms.

Their commentary on the excerpt begins:

Simplicius is undoubtedly quoting from a version of Theophrastus' history of earlier philosophy, and from the section on the material principle, περὶ ἀρχῆς. The concluding clause, a judgement on Anaximander's style, shows that what immediately precedes is a direct quotation. Thus κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν, which many have held to be a Theophrastean paraphrase of κατὰ τὸ χρεών, should provisionally be accepted as original. διδόναι -- ἀδικίας is certainly original, and well exemplifies the poetical style noted by Theophrastus. κατὰ τὸ χρεών, too, should probably be accepted as by Anaximander: χρεών retained a marked poetical colouring (except in the special usage χρεών ἐστι) until the expression τὸ χρεών became popular in the Hellenistic period as a circumlocution for death...

So far so good; and the contrast between 'certainly' on the one hand, and 'provisionally' and 'probably' on the other, suggests reasoning by likelihoods. It's the remainder of the argument that worries me:

The preceding words, ἐξ ὧν -- εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι, have been much disputed. The use of the abstracts γένεσις and φθορά, well established in Peripatetic but not (from the other extant evidence) in Presocratic vocabulary, suggests that these belong to Theophrastus.

But although KRS use the word 'suggests', their argument seems too weak to yield a likelihood.

After all, we concede that Anaximander coined a strange word, ἄπειρον; we do not hesitate to consider that he might have taken a common word, ἀρχή, and used it with a new and technical sense; γένεσις and φθορά were not themselves technical terms over which Peripatetics had a proprietary claim; and Plato (not a Peripatetic) in referring back to early Greek natural philosophy uses the phrase, περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς, as if this were an already well-established usage then. All of these things and more would need to be evaluated to establish a likelihood.

In short, it seems that this argument alone can 'suggest' something only if the Cartesian Canon is implicitly in force.

Next KRS continue:

The sentiment, too, looks Peripatetic: it is a close restatement of one of Aristotle's basic dogmas about the primary substance of the physical monists, 'all things are destroyed into that from which they came-to-be' (Phys. III.5, 204b33, ...).

Of course it's possible, too, that Anaximander actually said something along the lines of that which Aristotle ascribed to him! KRS' remark can establish only the possibility that the sentence is a Peripatetic interpretation rather than a quotation. It does nothing to establish a likelihood. (Oddly KRS later, on pp. 121-22, propose that ἐξ ὧν -- εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι is a Theophrastean paraphrase of something that Anaximander actually said. But one can't have it both ways: the clause either conveys Anaximander's 'sentiment' or it does not.)

KRS next add, by way of conclusion:

Theophrastus was given to quoting single words or phrases; thus, he could have quoted the concluding phrase of a sentence, the rest of which he had paraphrased, in order to emphasize the connexion with the following sentence which he quotes in full.

Indeed he could have done so. But similarly he could have quoted an entire sentence. Again, no likelihood is established by this argument (which is masked by the phrase, 'given to').

What would be relevant here, to establish a likelihood, is something like the following: In cases in which Theophrastus quotes an entire sentence, it is more likely than not that he introduces that quotation by leading in with a fragment of a preceding sentence; moreover, he is disposed to do so even when what is contained in that fragment is essentially repeated in the wholly quoted sentence (as in κατὰ τὸ χρεών / κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν).

Whether that is true or not, I don't know.

Taking Aim with the Cartesian Canon

Call the Cartesian Canon the principle that whatever one has reason to doubt should be rejected as false. This is a useful principle, perhaps, when one is engaged in foundational epistemology, but its appropriateness elsewhere is disputable.

Now my question is: Do KRS rely on the Cartesian Canon in their conclusion about how far the fragment of Anaximander extends in the passage from Simplicius?

Their view, which I believe is the most widely accepted view, is that the fragment consists only of the words in bold:

ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών. διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν, ποιητικωτέροις οὕτως ὀνόμασιν αὐτὰ λέγων·

"And the source of coming-to-be for existing things is that into which destruction, too, happens 'according to necessity; for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of Time', as he describes it in these rather poetical terms" (KRS).

Using the Cartesian Canon, one might reason about the passage thus:

The words "as he describes it in these rather poetical terms" mark the end of a quotation, surely. But then how far back should the fragment be counted as going (since obviously it does not go back to the beginning)? It goes back only as far as we are certain that it is a quotation. The words γένεσις and φθορά are stock Peripatetic terms; the thought expressed by ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι is also endorsed by Peripatetics (see Arist. Phys. 204b33). Thus that might have been written by a Peripatetic (Theophrastus). Thus we should not count it as part of the fragment.

Now is this how KRS argue, or is their view, rather, simply that it is most plausible (all things considered) that the quotation extends thus far? After all, one might consider it possible that ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι were the words of a Peripatetic historian, but still ascribe them to Anaximander, all things considered.

To be continued.

Tisis and Anti-tisis?

My thoughts have turned recently to the famous passage (see below) from Simplicius, depending on Theophrastus, about Anaximander.

The passage raises several interesting questions, which I hope to post on in the week to come. For today, I'll put up the passage in full, and not piecemeal or partially, as one tends to see in collections.

I began thinking about this because of an offhand comment by Kurt Pritzl in his lecture on Anaximander last week (in the Presocratics Lecture Series at CUA) --that διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας perhaps contains two distinct claims, not one.

I hadn't ever raised that question to myself, which is why I began thinking about the passage from this entry point.

For example, Burnet apparently takes δίκην καὶ τίσιν to be a unit, a repetition of the same thing, since he renders, "for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice according to the appointed time". Here reparation and satisfaction amount to the same thing: when one party is making reparation, it is at the same time making satisfaction. Note that on this reading ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας governs both. Note too that on this reading the passage refers only to what each party gives up to the other.

KRS render: "for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of Time".

But here I don't know whether the clauses are supposed to mean the same thing or something different, because "paying retribution to someone" is not idiomatic English. Do KRS take the same view as Burnet, or do they think that διδόναι δίκην and διδόναι τίσιν are correlative: that is, that when the one party is paying the penalty, it's the other which is exacting retribution? On that reading, the passage would be talking both about what each party gives up to the other, and about what each takes from the other.

This seems like a small point, but I'm not sure it is. And, even if there are difficulties, given the importance of the fragment shouldn't we at least be precise about how we resolve them?

For a somewhat extreme version of understanding the clauses differently, consider the following, a translation of Heidegger: "for they let order and thereby reck belong to one another (in the surmounting) of disorder", in which, as Lucid explains, 'reck' means 'esteem'. (Hah, and now I've linked to Daily Kos!)

---
Τῶν δὲ ἓν καὶ κινούμενον καὶ ἄπειρον λεγόντων ᾿Αναξίμανδρος μὲν Πραξιάδου Μιλήσιος Θαλοῦ γενόμενος διάδοχος καὶ μαθητὴς ἀρχήν τε καὶ στοιχεῖον εἴρηκε τῶν ὄντων τὸ ἄπειρον, πρῶτος τοῦτο τοὔνομα κομίσας τῆς ἀρχῆς. λέγει δ' αὐτὴν μήτε ὕδωρ μήτε ἄλλο τι τῶν καλουμένων εἶναι στοιχείων, ἀλλ' ἑτέραν τινὰ φύσιν ἄπειρον, ἐξ ἧς ἅπαντας γίνεσθαι τοὺς οὐρανοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἐν αὐτοῖς κόσμους· ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών. διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν, ποιητικωτέροις οὕτως ὀνόμασιν αὐτὰ λέγων· δῆλον δὲ ὅτι τὴν εἰς ἄλληλα μεταβολὴν τῶν τεττάρων στοιχείων οὗτος θεασάμενος οὐκ ἠξίωσεν ἕν τι τούτων ὑποκείμενον ποιῆσαι, ἀλλά τι ἄλλο παρὰ ταῦτα. οὗτος δὲ οὐκ ἀλλοιουμένου τοῦ στοιχείου τὴν γένεσιν ποιεῖ, ἀλλ' ἀποκρινομένων τῶν ἐναντίων διὰ τῆς ἀιδίου κινήσεως· διὸ καὶ τοῖς περὶ ᾿Αναξαγόραν τοῦτον ὁ ᾿Αριστοτέλης συνέταξεν.

Tabula Rasa, pro and con

About an intersection of ancient and modern, and a contribution from a frequent interlocutor of this blog and colleague:

The second essay, "Locke's Polemic against Nativism," is written by Samuel Rickless. As Rickless notes, "a proper understanding of Locke's polemic serves to deepen one's understanding of the whole book" (66) since, for example, the anti-nativist arguments of Book I lead to the detailed discussion of the origin of every idea in Book II. Rickless begins by identifying the type of nativism (dispositional nativism) that Locke's polemic is directed against and its supporters. This part of the essay is useful inasmuch as it allows Rickless to dismiss the widespread view that Locke was addressing a straw man in his polemic (59). But the most impressive part of the essay consists in identifying and analyzing in detail the various arguments Locke provides against nativism. This is no easy task and Rickless does an exceptionally good job. He argues that although Locke is successful in criticizing the nativist "Argument from Universal Consent", Locke's own arguments against nativism are much less successful. I particularly agree with Rickless that Locke's appeal to memory in the argument that Rickless calls "The Argument from Lack of Universal Consent" "gives solace to the dispositional nativist" (61). Locke's account of memory (E.II.x.2) allows for the possibility that an idea can be in the mind without being brought to consciousness. But "if we say this, then why can't we say, in defense of dispositional nativism, that ideas that are never brought to consciousness but we have the ability to 'paint' on the canvas of our minds without any accompanying perceptions of having had them before [that is, innate ideas] are also in the mind?" (61) In cases like this, in my view, Locke blatantly begs the question against dispositional nativists like Descartes (at least in the case of some ideas). I also concur with Rickless that Locke's "argument from lack of innate ideas" (roughly the argument that there are no innate principles because their constitutive ideas are not innate) rests on the questionable premise that the ideas, for example, of identity and substance are unclear and hence not innate. But unlike Rickless I do not see the force of Locke's argument that it would be pointless for God to give us innate latent principles. "If Men can be ignorant or doubtful of what is innate, innate Principles are insisted on, and urged to no purpose" (E.iii.13), argues Locke. But why should these principles' not being known to us imply that they serve no purpose for us? In fact, in a famous passage where Descartes discusses the innateness of the idea of a triangle in an exchange with Gassendi, he argues that the latent presence of the idea of the triangle allows us to recognize triangular shapes in the physical world although we may never be aware of the true idea of the triangle.

A Novum Organon

For those unfazed by new technology, much can be learned from the excellent website, Scholasticon, maintained by Jacob Schmutz of the Sorbonne (Paris-IV).

Thus from a footnote to M.W.F. Stone's contribution, "Scholastic Schools and Early Modern Philosophy", in the Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy (ed. Donald Rutherford).

The footnote is a comment on Stone's claim that:

Few students of philosophy recognize that ideas and doctrines advanced by scholastic thinkers made a distinctive contribution to philosophical inquiry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For most, scholasticism is believed to have been eclipsed and subsequently displaced by self-styled "modern" movements in philosophy and science associated with Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Newton.

Stone thinks that a partial remedy, at least, might be found in a general history of early modern scholasticism, but as he points out:

There is no complete or authoritative survey of early modern scholasticism presently available in any language, a fact which is explicable more in terms of the profusion of sources rather than the indolence or disinterest [sic] of scholars.

No one who had perused the vast resources contained simply on Scholasticon could doubt this last claim.

Two Books Drawn from a Long Queue

I've just finished reading through all of the book reviews that I've allowed to accumulate in my Inbox from summer months. A minor accomplishment.

Which books seemed most appealing to me? I would select two:

Andre/ Laks, Introduction a\ la "philosophie pre/socratique". Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 2006. Pp. 172. ISBN 2-13-055663-9.
EUR 16.00,

not least for its attention to Cassirer, and also (one might say "of course"):

Daniel Graham, Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of
Scientific Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Pp. viii, 344. ISBN 0-691-12540-6. $45.00.

If you missed them, reviews are here and here.

And that's all I'll say -- as reading not writing has been my task this morning.

The Honor of One Redounding to Us All

One thinks that things are going as they should when a philosopher, in the true sense, is honored.

Professor Richard Sorabji
Cyprus Global Distinguished Professor
Inaugural Lecture

"What Zeno of Cyprus Started: Why Stoic Thinking
on Justice is Important"

to celebrate the establishment of the Cyprus Chair in the History
and Theory of Justice at New York University

in the presence of
His Excellency Mr. Tassos Papadopoulos,
President of the Republic of Cyprus

Monday, September 24, 2007
6:00 p.m.
Eisner and Lubin Auditorium
Kimmel Center for University Life
60 Washington Square South
New York City

The Buk Stops Here

"Ohmygosh," I thought, as I looked at the final paragraph to the preface of a newly published book by Nelson Goodman, "there's a disastrous typo here!"

I simply had to point it out to him. So, somewhat self-satisfied that I had found the error, I approached Goodman and drew his attention to it. "Professor Goodman," I said, "I've been looking at your recent book, and there seems to be an unfortunate typo in the Preface." "What is it?" he said, gruffly. I opened the book and turned to the page, "A 'not' seems to be missing. Look: what it says is that the people who commented on earlier drafts are responsible for any errors that remain in the book, but you wanted to say that they are not responsible."

Goodman looked at me with a deadpan expression and said, "No, that's just what I wanted it to say."

And then I realized, I've had to have a joke explained to me.

You see, by then it had become so perfunctory for authors to add a clause absolving readers from any responsibility for perduring errors, that Goodman had cleverly seen that the point could better be made by pretending to blame them!

Now I don't think that Gabriel Lear is joking when at the end of an admirable and vigorous review she writes:

In conclusion, I want to draw attention to a problem that is not Garver's fault. The University of Chicago Press has done a shoddy job of proof reading this book. I counted nineteen obvious typos in 224 pages of main text; that's roughly one every twelve pages. Most of these were easy to read around, but one was quite confusing. [“Young men with innate hos and love of the noble (philokalon) can be influenced by virtue . . . , and I want to end this chapter by exploring that innate hos and love of the noble,” (p. 116). Hos is the masculine relative pronoun. Eventually I realized that hos should have been êthos.] A book published by a major university press ought to be produced better than this.

But book production is one thing, and proofreading is something else. I guess it's been naive of me to suppose that when the press sends an author final proofs to read, the author is supposed to do proofreading.

Wanted: Eric Brown!

No, I do not mean Hopeton Eric Brown, who for a long time was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted fugitive list (no longer-- see below), but rather Eric Brown the ancient philosopher.

It was once difficult to find him in cyberspace, because there are literally hundreds of Eric Browns on the web.

However, some time ago Eric Brown the ancient philosopher compiled a helpful web page, a "Guide to Eric Browns on the Web", where one may ostensibly find links to, among others, Eric Brown the author of a pocket guide to numerology, and Eric Brown the magician.

The Guide of course also links you to Eric Brown the assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis. (However, when I click on the link I find it takes me to Eric Brown who is an associate professor at Washington University. Is that like, "The woman drinking gin across the room?")

No matter, it's easy to find the Eric Brown we want, because his meta-web-page, as it collates web pages for all other Eric Browns, is very nearly at the top of any Google search for "Eric Brown". (And if its links were current, no doubt it would be at the very top.)

Thus the distinctive mark of a philosopher: as no other Eric Brown in hyperspace has seen fit to assemble the class of Eric Browns. (We might follow Russell, refer to this process as abstraction, and say that Eric Brown has now identified for us the property, "named Eric Brown".)

As for Hopeton Eric Brown -- alas, you won't be able to find him, either, if you follow the link from Eric Brown's Guide. This dangerous criminal is no longer with us, having been slain in a shoot-out in Jamaica in March 2004.

Early Greek Philosophy in the District

Since I've posted on the BACAP program for the year, here's a major lecture series on presocratic philosophy in the Washington area...

Fall 2007 Lecture Series
"Early Greek Philosophy: Reason at the Beginning of Philosophy"

September 14

Kurt Pritzl, O.P., The Catholic University of America
"Anaximander’s apeiron and the Arrangement of Time"

September 21

James Lesher, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"A Systematic Xenophanes?"

September 28

Carl A. Huffman, DePauw University
"Reason and Myth in Early Pythagorean Cosmology"

October 5

Patricia Curd, Purdue University
"The Immateriality of Love and Strife in Empedocles"

October 12

Kenneth Dorter, University of Guelph
"'Changing, It is at Rest': Whole and Parts in Heraclitus"

October 19

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

October 26

Daniel Graham, Brigham Young University
"Anaxagoras: Science and Speculation in the Golden Age"

November 2

Georg Wieland, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
"Source and Quotation: Early Greek Philosophers in Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics"

November 16

John McCarthy, The Catholic University of America
"Bacon’s Third Sailing: The 'Pre-Socratic' Origins of Modern Philosophy"

November 30

Richard Velkley, Tulane University
"Primal Truth, Errant Tradition and Crisis: The Pre-Socratics in Late Modernity"

December 7

Charles Kahn, University of Pennsylvania
"From Myth to Reason"

All lectures are held at 2:00 p.m. in the Auditorium of Aquinas Hall (formerly the Life Cycle Institute) at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., 20064.

For further information, contact the Office of the Dean, School of Philosophy, 202-319-5259, cua-philosophy@cua.edu.

This series is made possible by a generous grant from the Franklin J. Matchette Foundation and the support of the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation and the George Dougherty Foundation.

Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, 2007-8

The program for the year, fyi. Lectures are Thursday nights at 7:30 pm.

Oct 25 at Dartmouth College
David Charles (Oxford), “How Aristotle Avoided the Mind/Body Problem”
Victor Caston (Michigan) commenting

Nov. 8 at Boston College
Alvaro Vallejo (Granada), “The Ontology of False Pleasures in the Philebus”
Rachel Singpurwalla (CHS) commenting

Nov. 15 at Holy Cross College
Daniel Russell (Wichita State), “Is Virtue Sufficient for Eudamonia?”
Timothy Roche (Memphis State) commenting

Nov. 29, at Brown University
Rachana Kamtekar (Arizona), “The Power of Plato’s Tripartite Psychology”
Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) commenting

Dec. 6, at Clark University
Priscilla Sakezles (Akron), “On the Aristotelian Origins of Stoic Determinism”
Joel Martinez (Lewis and Clark) commenting

Feb. 28, at Boston Univeristy
Helen Lang (Villanova), “Body and the Science of Nature in Aristotle”
Silvia Carli (Xavier) commenting

Mar. 27, at Boston College
Harvey Yunis (Rice), “Dialectic and the Purpose of Rhetoric in Plato’s Phaedrus”
Adam Beresford (U Mass, Boston) commenting]

April 10, at Brown University
Heike Sefrin-Weis (S. Carolina), "Pros Hen and the Foundations of Aristotelian Metaphysics"
commentator TBA

I Hereby Say That I Hereby Say It

The smallest of points, but a curiosity.

If you found your way to the end of a recent review of David Velleman's Self to Self, you would have encountered the following as its conclusion:

The papers in Self to Self merit much more detailed engagement than I have been able to undertake here. The volume collects some of the best papers written on the topics of self, moral psychology, and Kantian ethics in the last decade. It almost goes without saying that Self to Self is required reading for anyone who has any interest in any of these topics. But I hereby say it anyway.

I'll say straightaway that I think the claim that "almost goes without saying" is false (required for what?).

But I'm puzzled by the concluding performative. It looks like a conflation between "I hereby require it" (which the author would be conscious he had no authority to say) and "I here say it" (which would be lame and weak).

Isn't merely saying that something is the case eo ipso not a performative? Or, if for someone it must be, and he needs to flag the fact that he is saying something in order to succeed in saying it, then presumably everything else that he says (without the flag) was never said.

In which case the entire review, as it were, goes without saying.

Marshall's Query on the Mouthpiece View

I resume blogging--in August, as promised!--by quoting from a thoughtful letter I had received earlier this summer from Mason Marshall, a graduate student at Vanderbilt, on the so-called 'mouthpiece view' of Platonic dialogues. This was in connection with an earlier thread on this blog.

I quote with Marshall's permission, who solicits readers' reactions to his argument:

In comments attached to that [earlier] post . . . Sam Rickless and others got into a conversation about the so-called mouthpiece view concerning the Platonic dialogues. In part, Rickless pointed out that Aristotle's writings represent strong evidence that Plato meant for Socrates to speak for him, say, in the Republic: Aristotle apparently thought that that was Plato's intention as author, and Aristotle apparently knew Plato personally. I realize that it's common to make the sort of point that Rickless made. And something puzzles me about how heavily he and many other interpreters want to lean on the evidence which Aristotle's writings represent. Terry Irwin, for example (Plato's Ethics, p. 6; The Cambridge Companion to Plato, p. 77), effectively says that in light of that evidence, the "mouthpiece" view should be a default in interpreting Plato: the evidence is compelling enough that the burden of proof rests firmly on opponents of the mouthpiece view.

But I keep wondering whether the Aristotle evidence isn't nearly counterbalanced by certain other evidence, and whether the other evidence isn't close enough to being a counterpoise that the Aristotle evidence isn't enough to make the mouthpiece view a default (even if something else should grant that status to the mouthpiece view).

Here's the other evidence I have in mind. Academic and maybe even some Pyrrhonian skeptics seem to have read Plato as a skeptic: they apparently rejected the mouthpiece view, in effect. Granted, in looking at the Platonic corpus, they seem to have focused far more on early, "Socratic" dialogues than on works such as the Republic. But they also seem to have identified themselves with Plato simpliciter. And at least as long as one of their critics at the time had access to enough of Aristotle's writings, and to versions that were similar enough to the most authoritative editions we now have, the critic could have, in effect, made the point which Rickless and Irwin make---viz., that Aristotle affirmed the mouthpiece view and that Aristotle knew Plato personally. That point about Aristotle seems obvious enough for these skeptics and their critics to have seen it in the 3rd century. Plus, if there was enough reason at the time to think that Aristotle was in significantly better position than the skeptics to tell what Plato's authorial intentions were, then in making the point about Aristotle a critic could have landed a particularly heavy blow against the skeptics' interpretations. And that, too, seems obvious enough for the skeptics and their critics to have seen it. Further, it looks likely that the skeptics had read enough of the Aristotle we're familiar with, and that they would think a potential critic could read enough Aristotle, to be aware that he affirmed the mouthpiece view.

So in short, it also seems likely that if there were enough reason at the time to think that Aristotle was in significantly better position than the skeptics to tell what Plato's authorial intentions were, the skeptics wouldn't have openly implied or claimed that the mouthpiece view is false. And presumably, there's no more reason now than there was then to think that Aristotle was. So all told, the evidence which Rickless and Irwin offer in referring to Aristotle's writings seems to tip the scales toward the mouthpiece view only a little, and too little for the Aristotle evidence to rightly make the mouthpiece view a default.

Dear Friends

What's going on here:

• attempting to finish four books (1 down, 3 to go)
• vacation
• moving household to Washington, DC (for a one year visiting appointment at Catholic U. of America)
• teaching in Europe
  

You may have figured something from the silence.

Anyway, despite my best intentions, and near-best efforts, I resign myself, reluctantly, to not blogging on a regular basis until August. Until then...

Schofield on the 'Mouthpiece View'

Malcolm Schofield in Plato: Political Philosophy is so confident that the 'mouthpiece' view is incorrect, that he uses this as evidence against the authenticity of the Seventh Letter.

The author of the Seventh Letter writes:

I was compelled to say ... that the classes of mankind will find no release from their troubles until either the class of those who engage properly and truly in philosophy take on political positions, or the class of those who wield power in the cities engage in real philosophy by some dispensation of divine providence (326A-B).

Schofield points out that the passage is written in such a way as to intend to refer to the Republic. Whence his objection:

But in the Republic it was not Plato speaking in his authorial person who said he was compelled to argue for truly philosophical rulers. It was Socrates--Plato's character, 'Socrates'. If we are to believe that Plato himself wrote the Seventh Letter, it must follow that he is implying here that the Socrates of the Republic is him, or at any rate his spokesman. Is that credible?

Schofield then argues that it is hardly credible that (i) Plato "would speak as though the Republic were not a dialogue, but a pronouncement in his own person", or that, (ii) although recognizing that it was a dialogue, Plato nonetheless "saw Socrates as his spokesman" in the dialogue.

Against (i): Plato "might have expounded views in his own person in a continuous discourse" but instead "he invests huge energy and remarkable literary ingenuity in the creation of philosophical dramas--and dramatis personae to people them--in which he must in some sense be all and none of the characters whose voices are heard in the conversation." Schofield quotes John Cooper approvingly: "It is in the entire writing that that author speaks to us, not in the remarks made by individual speakers."

Against (ii): Schofield favors the view put forward by David Sedley (in his Cratylus book), who "has called attention to the analysis in several later dialogues of thinking itself as an internal dialogue of question and answer. [Sedley] suggests that the question-and-answer sequences in the dialogues constitute externalizations of Plato's own thought processes. That is how Plato maintains a 'dominating and inescapable presence' in the dialogues. An answer to the question of authorial point of view suggests itself. The dialogues are to be read as 'Plato thinking aloud'."

(Schofield distingushes (i) and (ii), but I don't see how he succeeds in keeping these distinct. His answers look like answers to the same question. "Does a dialogue say something; does it make a statement or pronounce something?" That's not answered by pointing out that the author took pains to write in dialogue form. Yet once one adds: "the author does not speak to us in the remarks made by individual speakers", one has moved on to answering the other question.)

CBE for Burnyeat

Congratulations to Myles Burnyeat ("the foremost authority in ancient philosophy in the world") who has been made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) through the Queen's Birthday Honours of June 15, 2007.

The Scottish Aristotle

He did write on Aristotle's logic; and he is perhaps as close to Aristotle in temperament as any modern philosopher.


The Universities of Aberdeen and of Glasgow--I discovered today--are planning a full-week conference on Thomas Reid in March 2010. "Reid in His Time and in Ours". Available information may be found here. With three years' advance notice, even extremely fussy and cautious writers will have time to contribute something.

But What is Political Philosophy?

The most interesting replies to a question will reformulate that question.

This I find in Malcolm Schofield's answer to the question of whether the Republic or the Laws counts as the first work of political philosophy proper.

What gives life to the question, he allows, is that the Republic cannot be conceived to be a work in any branch of philosophy, not simply because at that time there simply weren't any departments within philosophy, but also because:

Philosophy as the Republic conceives it involves a passionate desire for unifying comprehension of everything there is. No doubt Plato could recognize points of view from which such knowledge might properly be parcelled out into different departments, but philosophy itself is basically undepartmental. Any reader who asked Plato, "But what sort of philosophy--moral, political, metaphysical--are you doing in the Republic?" would be entirely missing the point.

Nonetheless, the Republic is a work in political philosophy--among other things--because "a lot of philosophy in the dialogue is preoccupied with political questions" and "[m]any subsequent contributions to political philosophy in antiquity ... make the Republic their main point of reference".

But that is only a provisional answer. Schofield goes on to the suggest that the question itself is misguided, because it presupposes that the 'political' is a matter of the legal and the constitutional--and thus that a philosophical discussion could count only as a 'sketch' in political philosophy, if it failed to reach detailed conclusions about laws and constitutions.

What is at issue, rather, is what should properly be meant by the notion of the 'political' at all. Here Schofield centers his discussion on what Plato meant by the title, Politeia:

Translators of [Aristotle's] Politics have found that for Aristotle 'constitution' works fairly satisfactorily as an English equivalent for politeia, preoccupied as he is with the system of offices or positions of rule operative in a city. The politeia, on his definition, is a certain ordering of positions of rule, particularly the one that is sovereign over all the others ... Armed with this formulation, [Aristotle] is well placed to address the merits and demerits of monarchical, oligarchic and democratic forms of government and associated constitutional arrangements. In the Republic and much other writing on politeia, however, the focus is rather different.

Schofield then argues that Plato's Republic falls within a tradition of politeia writing, according to which "the core meaning of politeia is 'citizenship', 'the condition of being a citizen'":

Education, upbringing, rules governing marriage, the role of women in society: these are the subjects a contemporary reader would have expected to find discussed in a work entitled Politeia.

But then, from this point of view, the Republic and Laws are not to be contrasted, but are rather different attempts to address one and the same thing. On this, Schofield approvingly quotes Diskin Clay: "the greatest part of the Laws is devoted to acculturation rather than to legislation" .

The Laws the First Work of Political Philosophy?

I was puzzled by the claim of Pradeau and Brisson that Plato's Laws, not the Republic, is the first work of political philosophy 'in the strict sense'.

Schofield points out (p. 7) that something similar has "recently been claimed" by André Laks, in his contribution on the Laws to the Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought. This is news to me, and a good example of why I wanted so much to read Schofield's book.

Laks' view is that the Laws "can be considered the first work of genuine political philosophy in the Western tradition" because (I give now Schofield's summary):

...it builds an elaborate legal and theologico-political superstructure on the foundations it discusses.

According to Laks, "the Republic is at best a sketch, whereas the Laws breaks ground for future political thought".

Admittedly the Laws executes something in the way the Republic does not, but still I think Laks' view should be rejected:

(i) If the Republic is not political philosophy because it is a sketch, then neither is Rousseau's Social Contract, Locke's Second Treatise, or Rawls' Theory of Justice--which is absurd. (Neither of these other works builds on foundations to any greater extent than the Republic does. They leave that sort of building to others.)
(ii) It's difficult to claim that future political thought is responsive to the Laws more than to the Republic. But if so, how is it that the former alone 'breaks ground for future political thought'?

Schofield has some counterarguments of his own, which I'll give in the next post.

But where do you stand on this question?

A Standard of Importance

It helps to have a standard of importance, in deciding whether Plato's Laws is important. Malcolm Schofield articulates such a standard at the very beginning of his Plato: Political Philosophy. Quoting Jeremy Waldron, he describes political philosophy as "a dialogue across the centuries". Thus: the Laws is important, if it contributes importantly to this dialogue. --That would be the case one would have to make, to show its importance.

Here is how Schofield develops this point in the very first paragraphs of his Introduction, which begins:

Is Plato our contemporary? Well, yes and no. When he philosophized about politics, he was thinking of the long-vanished Greek polis or 'city-state' of ancient Athens and Sparta.

(Small Quibble Allowable in a Blog: I don't think I like that last sentence. Doesn't 'long-vanished' naturally fall within the scope of 'thinking', and thus what the sentence suggests is that these city-states were long vanished when Plato was thinking? Perhaps better: "When he philosophized about politics, he was thinking of the Greek polis or 'city-state' of ancient Athens and Sparta, now long-vanished." But to continue:)

Democracy for him meant the direct participation of all adult male citizens in the decision-making processes of the popular assembly and the courts of justice, not the representative systems of today.

(True, but do those systems of today preserve the spirit and point of representation? Is the distinction between pure and representative democracy even understood today by most citizens? Thus it may not be entirely true to say that:)

The intensity of his obsession with political rhetoric as an inbred democratic disease is intelligible only against the background of an interpretation of fifth-century Athenian imperialism and its downfall in the Peloponnesian War that he probably borrowed (not without twists of his own) from the historian Thucydides.

(But one might accept this as a concession that Plato's political theory is embedded in history, as Schofield next emphasizes:)

One particular event dominated Plato's conception of politics: the trial and execution of Socrates in 399 BC. So this book will begin by immersing the reader in the historical contexts of Plato's writing; and there will be recurrent re-immersions.

(Then comes a very clever argument, ad homines and a fortiori, that we can't but regard Plato as a contemporary--which Dissoi Blogoi now "brings to you without commercial interruption":)

When Nietzsche spoke with enthusiasm of Plato's 'genuine, resolute, "honest" lie' (he had in mind the Nobel Lie of Book 3 of the Republic), however, he was thinking abouit general questions to do with morality, and more specifically of a contrast with the 'dishonest' lying--as he took it to be--of Christian morality. Similarly Hegel thought 'the Idea' of Plato's Republic contained 'as a universal principle a wrong against the person, inasmuch as the person is forbidden to own private property'. Hegel, of course, believed like Nietzsche that a philosophy such a Plato's could appear only at a particular moment in the historical process. Nonetheless in these remarks about lying and property Plato is treated not as a writer simply of a certain time and place, but someone still to be disputed with or invoked in aid. The assumption is obviously that at a certain level of generality there are themes and questions in moral and political philosophy, as in other areas of philosophy, which stay close enough to being the same over the centuries for a conversation of some sort between us and Plato to be possible and profitable.

That at any rate is an assumption I shall be making in this book.

For French Horn Fanatics Only

If you are a French horn fanatic (like myself), you'll love this--extremely impressive, if you know about the perils of the "Vienna horn".

But if you want to see someone really showing off, watch this.

Three Reasons Why the Laws is Important

I had asked why Plato's Laws is important, and Pedro de Blas, in a pleasing coincidence, gives four distinct answers. I mean his review today in BMCR of J-F Pradeau and Luke Brisson's annotated translation.

(1) The Laws is not important at all, but "the late work of a worn-out mind".

Admittedly, I don't know anyone who has actually read the dialogue, who thinks this. On the other hand, by a well-known law of psychology, anyone who had expended the time and effort necessary to study the Laws, would be disposed to presume that his, and Plato's, effort was not wasted.

(2) (a very common view) The Laws is important, because of what it tells us about the unity or development of Plato's thought.

de Blas expresses a certain disdain for this approach, which he traces to the "mouthpiece" method of reading a Platonic dialogue, viz. the approach which "seeks to attribute to Plato himself what is said by Socrates, or the main speakers of the dialogues in which Socrates is merely an onlooker or is altogether absent":

This ["mouthpiece"] theory, despite its obvious textual hurdles, has nevertheless governed the interpretation of the Platonic dialogues for a long time, and has arguably forced Plato students to approach the study of the dialogues in a way that constantly requires the explanation of different and contradictory philosophical positions between dialogues. Even though Plato does not give conclusive evidence for the "unity" or "development" of his thought, the grip of the theory on many scholars is so strong that it can still be considered mainstream. I can only reference again, as Blondell also did in her review cited above [ BMCR 2003.07.02 ], some of the recent attacks on that theory that deserve urgent consideration [e.g. Press, G. A. (ed.) Who Speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic Anonymity]. Perhaps the "mouthpiece" theory is responsible for the problem that B-P themselves allude to concerning the apparent obsession with the general aspects of the Laws and with the question whether or not this dialogue "fits" with the previous ones, especially with the Republic and the Statesman.

I can't accept de Blas' attempt to blame the "mouthpiece" theory for developmentalism: surely one might hold that Plato's view is something other than that expressed by any character in a dialogue, yet still wonder whether that view changes or develops. (Or does de Blas hold that we should resist attributing any doctrine to Plato at all?)

de Blas' real objection, I take it, is against developmentalism itself: a concern with developmentalism, he wishes to say, naturally leads one to consider the dialogue above all in relation to something else--other dialogues--rather than as a worthy object of study in its own right, and therefore to consider only the "general aspects" of the Laws, because its points of overlap with other dialogues are relatively slight.

(3) (de Blas' own view) The hidden assumptions and limitations of the legal code of the Laws are worth investigating:

... we should be less concerned with other dialogues, and we should stop trying to elucidate any Platonic system or unity of thought (tempting as it may be in the case of the Laws because of the thoroughness of the material, which seems to relate to so much else that Plato wrote). In my view the most productive reading of the dialogue would be a study the legal code itself that asks questions about its normative topics out of the order in which they are presented, in order to reveal its hidden assumptions and its limitations. It is not really possible to elaborate further on this point within the scope of this book review.

Yet de Blas doesn't tell us why it would be important to uncover these "hidden assumptions and limitation". (And did you note the contradiction?: de Blas now concedes that a developmental study of the Laws need not, after all, confine itself merely to "general aspects" of the dialogue.)

(4) (Pradeau and Brisson) ??

Here de Blas' review falls short, as he does not succeed in telling us what Pradeau and Brisson think. He states a few themes from the introduction, but without enough precision for us to assess their merits:

"...the dialogue evinces a strong theoretical ambition and is in fact the first work of political philosophy stricto sensu (pp. 13-14)" --It's strange to learn that Republic is not strictly a work in political philosophy. I'd like to hear more about this. (And in using "first", is de Blas committing himself to developmentalism after all?)

"...the law is for Plato a means to regulate life to its most minute detail, and in this sense it is both a prescriptive and a pedagogical discourse (p. 18-19)" --Okay, and why is this important?

"...Book V is a treatise on practical ethics that seeks to establish virtue in a political community in an enduring manner by means of human intellect alone, as shown by the rest of the dialogue (p. 23-26)". --Is "intellect alone" meant to be contrasted with "force" or "emotion"? (I haven't a clue what de Blas means.)

"...the preambles to the laws seek to enhance compliance with the law by creating an inner conviction in the citizens about the goodness of the norms and the unavoidable harm that will ensue from their contravention, thereby combining persuasion and compulsion in a new way, according to the Athenian (pp.45-50)". --This point I appreciate and accept, yet how is it important other than as a reply to Bobonich?

A Youthful Desire to Know

"Can we do chemistry today?" A question I hear every day after dinner from my seven year-old, Joseph, since I purchased on ebay the Smithsonian Micro-Chem XM 5000 chemistry set.

And then, "I love science!", said with a big grin, as we do the first elementary experiments on surface tension and paper chromatography.

Why does he love science? --Above all, I suspect, it's because he's spending time with his father when he does science.

But that is accidental to it. In itself, he loves that we use special equipment; that we measure and need to be precise; that 'science' is something that is evidently beyond him, for adults. He loves the wonder of it, the surprises: You mean the dyed water in those thin tubes won't fall out when you turn the tubes upside down? You mean the color of that brown marker really consists of three colors, orange, blue, and green? He loves that it is arcane: no one else among his friends knows about these things, or takes any thought about them.

Of course, he knows no more of science than these few simple experiments. How, then, can he say that he loves science? He's learned what the word 'science' means, in the way that Hilary Putnam has described our learning of any natural kind word, such as water. 'Science' is what we are doing here, and whatever is like it. On trust, he accepts that science is good. But not only on trust.

"Joseph," I said, "would you believe there are men who started studying science just like you when they were boys, and by the time they were men they used their science to build bombs to destroy cities?" (Yes, I said this. I don't know what possessed me to say it. I think I wanted to test his natural love of it, and maybe also to put him on guard a bit.)

"That would be very bad," he replied. Then, later, "Did men really blow up cities with bombs?" --And, very sadly, I gave a brief description of the Manhattan Project, and I had to explain how it was our country which had done this very bad thing.

Another remark I had in mind but left unsaid: "Joseph, do you realize that there are men who began studying science just as you are, but by the time they were men they came to think--because of science, they thought --that they were just like this water or these dyes that you are studying?--that they were simply hunks of flesh, without souls or minds?"

I didn't say it because it would be incredible, much more so than bombs that destroy cities. And then I thought to myself: If science were like that, I would no more introduce my young son to it than give him a Ouija board to play with, or a scorpion.

Homo sapiens

Why is Plato's Laws Important?

I raised the question earlier: When is a mistaken interpretation fruitful, and when not?

Here's a dilemma for ancient philosophers: We wish that our scholarship be fruitful. Some of us therefore wish that it be 'relevant'. But then in arguing that it is, we risk imposing an alien set of questions and concerns.

(An aside: Suppose we show that something in ancient philosophy is relevant to contemporary philosophy. That only postpones the problem, since it remains to be shown that that bit of contemporary philosophy is itself in the right way 'relevant.')

(Task: Show that most expressions of more recent philosophy depend upon the presumption that philosophy derives its worth from something other than itself, such as mathematics, natural science, the hope of political progress, or the promise of resolving ethical cases.--The suspicion is that, if we limit our consideration to the question of whether some philosophical activity is itself valuable, then ancient philosophy will fare as well as anything else.--"But surely recent philosophy is better off by way of truth!" --Yet recent philosophy can hardly give an account of what it is true of; and its account of truth itself is empty.)

Now as regards Plato's Laws, an interpretation is likely to be fruitless, I think, to the extent that it distracts from our discovering and attending to what is important about the work.

And so my question becomes: Why is the Laws important? What valuable lessons does it teach? What should we above all hope to gain from a careful study of it?

How would you answer that question?

Malcolm Schofield has some interesting remarks along these lines in his Plato: Political Philosophy, which arrived yesterday. I'll share these with you in subsequent posts.

Citizenship, Virtue and Fraternity

Perhaps this does have something to do with fraternity--that is, a third interesting objection that Luc Brisson raises against Bobonich.

In an earlier post, I had emphasized that, as a matter of method, when one proposes a developmental explanation of some change, it is crucial first to describe that change correctly. The explanandum will not be correct, if the explanans has not first been given correctly.

Bobonich maintains that a crucial change between the Republic and the Laws is that in the former only philosophers can be virtuous and happy, whereas in the latter apparently all citizens can be so.

Now, is this change as great as it appears? One way to argue that it is not, is to suggest that 'virtue' (or 'true virtue') gets used in different senses in the two works. For instance, in the Phaedo (and presumably in the Republic), true virtue is salvific: it liberates the person who has it from cycles of reincarnation. The difference between true and false virtue, is the difference, really, between eternity and transience. Now: does Plato in the Laws come to believe that all citizens in a well-governed city are liberated upon death from cycles of reincarnation? If not, or even if his discussion prescinds from that question, then evidently the meaning of 'true virtue' has changed across the two works, and therefore we cannot yet speak of a change in doctrine (as opposed to emphasis or purpose).

But another way is to argue that the subjects to which virtue is attributable or not differ, so that what appears to be a wider extension of the term really is not so. This is the approach that Brisson takes, thus:

In the Laws, Plato replaces the functional class of producers in the Republic by metics and slaves, responsible for taking care of agricultural and manufacturing labour (5, 741 E) and commercial exchanges (ibid.). There is no money in the city of the Magnesians (5, 742 A-B), and no one must seek to become wealthy (5, 741 E). There can be no place for poverty and wealth (5, 728 E-729 B) in a city that seeks virtue in its totality. One might say, then, that with regard to production and the exchange of wealth, the city of the Laws is much more strict than that of the Republic. Here the economy is completely set aside. In theory, therefore, the Republic is less radical than the Laws, for in the former we find a place for a class of producers who can possess land, a workshop, or a business, who may have a wife and children, and who do not seem subject to any particular constraint. But we must qualify this last assertion, in so far as the producing class is under the domination of the military class, who subject it to constant control (4, 421 D-422A), which would probably not be tender, although practically nothing is said on the subject. Ironically, it seems that the major work of making all citizens happy is done by taking those people who are lower-class citizens in the Republic, and denying them citizenship in the Laws. These people lack happiness, and they still inhabit the territory of the city, but because they are not citizens they are not part of the city (emphasis mine).

Autonomy without Equality?

Another ingenious line of criticism offered by Luc Brisson, very much worth mentioning, proceeds as follows:

1. Autonomy (in the sense in which we value it) implies equality.
2. Plato in the Laws shows no concern for equality.
3. Thus, Plato in the Laws shows no concern for autonomy (in the sense in which we value it).

As regards 1., Brisson contends that autonomy is properly speaking a characteristic of the will (as in Kant), but:

First, it is practically impossible to speak of 'will' in Plato's time. Second, unlike will, reason varies from individual to individual, which implies hierarchy and dependence: for instance, when it comes to steering a boat, the pilot is not on the same level as the passenger, which implies that the passenger is dependent on the pilot. Plato consistently applies the consequences of this viewpoint throughout both the Republic and the Laws (117)

As regards 2., Brisson claims that the basic approach of both the Republic and the Laws is "to reserve power for those who know":

...the principle of autonomy implies an equivalence between all citizens in terms of rationality. Yet in the Laws, Plato never believes in arithmetical equality among citizens, which is the presupposition on which universal suffrage is based. For him, equality is proportional (6, 756E-758A). This is natural in a political context where power is assigned to those who possess knowledge (118).

Brisson concludes with a global rejection of any attempt to find a notion of 'autonomy' in Plato:

The historical context of Plato's work being what it is, it seems to me dubious to wish to find in it similarities to our own time. On the contrary, it is by measuring the profound differences that separate us from it that we can appreciate the specificity of our own situation (119).

So much, then, for autonomy in its relation to liberty and equality.

Now wouldn't it be appropriate if Brisson also had an argument that it requires fraternity....

Autonomy without Liberty?

Does moral autonomy for individuals imply also their economic, social and political autonomy? Must a concern for the first carry with it a concern also for the others? Luc Brisson would answer "yes" to both of these questions--which then provides the basis for an ingenious critique Bobonich.

Bobonich holds (in Plato's Utopia Recast) that Plato's political thought undergoes a radical shift between the Republic in the Laws. In the Republic, Plato is concerned simply that citizens (i.e. besides the Guardians) do what is right, regardless of whether they understand the reasons for what they do, and regardless of whether this makes them virtuous and happy. In the Laws, he is concerned, rather, that all citizens understand and rationally embrace the reasons they are doing what they do, so that thus they will be both virtuous and happy. Bobonich characterizes this as Plato's newfound concern for "autonomy", and he says that this new concern brings Plato much closer to us, in our political thoughts and aspirations.

Brisson replies first that it is anachronistic to attribute a concern for "autonomy" to Plato. He's right about that, of course (see this earlier post). But I find Brisson's second argument more interesting.

Brisson reasons that autonomy is a kind of self-determination: it's good that someone grasp for himself the reasons for his action, precisely because he can thereby structure and determine his own actions. Thus, autonomy requires that a person be given scope to structure and determine his own actions in matters of importance. And thus also: we should be reluctant to attribute a concern for autonomy to a political theorist who did not allow citizens scope to structure and determine their own actions in matters of importance.

Brisson then carefully examines Plato's provisions for the economy, the family, and political authority in the Laws and concludes that the economic, familial and political life of the society envisaged by the Laws is so tightly constrained by the imposition of ideal policies, that it allows almost no scope for individual decision or self-determination. And certainly Plato shows little concern for allowing that sort of scope; that is not what is of interest to him.

So then, what is the sense of attributing such a concern to Plato? Some representative remarks of Brisson:

As regards economic life:

It is the allocation of a share that makes a person a citizen. This share can therefore not be considered private property, but rather the undivided and inalienable property of the city; the citizen is only the smallholder of the share that has been allocated to him; that is, he is a sharecropper. He can neither sell his share, nor exchange it, nor even replace it with another one (98).

As regards social life:

...society in general and the family in particular are strongly hierarchical... As far as the family is concerned, it is valued only as a means for preserving the share.... The individual, then, definitely lacks genuine indpendence in the context of the family, and the family itself is not independent with regard to the city (105-6).

As regards political life:

...in the Laws the Assembly and Council are deprived of their legislative and judicial role, as well as their power of control, in order to transfer these powers to the magistrates. In addition, and above all, the Assembly and Council have nothing to say on the definition of the city's goals. ... In short, power no longer resides in the discourse which, particularly at Athens, unfolds at the Assembly and the courts, but in the knowledge possessed and cultivated by the members of a Council established by law, which escapes all control (107). Etc.

Fruitless vs. Fruitful Mistakes

"That's a seriously mistaken view. It will set scholarship back for years as people try to argue against it."

--So spoke a friend as regards the most controversial thesis in a then recently published book on Aristotle by a very prominent scholar.

Perhaps under the influence still of Popper from my undergraduate years, I was taken aback by his remark. (Popper, you will recall, held that Zeno's paradoxes were among the most important ideas ever put forward by philosophers, since they inspired so many refutations--an unsurprising view for someone who held that science proceeds largely through falsification.)

Isn't it always worthwhile to put forward an interesting idea?, I thought to myself after he spoke. If that scholar's thesis--sharply formulated and controversial--generates attention and discussion, isn't that all for the better?

I couldn't understand my friend's view then, but I think I do now. Surely there can be fruitless as well as fruitful mistakes. Can't a scholarly community take a wrong turn in its discussion, just as an individual can in his research? (And by a "wrong turn" I mean one looks back and thinks that the time was simply wasted.) Doesn't it at least sometimes happen that considerations of soundness and truth outweigh those of ingenuity and originality?

Furthermore, as regards a major scholar in particular: Doesn't he have a responsibility simply to get things right? To the extent that a scholar has prominence, to that extent he is something of a leader: Can he be reproached, then, if he leads a community of scholars down a false path, just as a political leader can be reproached for a bad decision, even if made with the best of intentions?

My thoughts have turned in this direction as a result of reading Luc Brisson's contribution to OSAP XXVIII (which I am reviewing), "Ethics and Politics in Plato's Laws", which is a reply to Chris Bobonich's Plato's Utopia Recast. It's no surprise to readers of this blog that I find Bobonich's book to be misguided (see e.g. here and here). But is it misguided in a fruitful way? Have the various replies and critiques directed against it, such as Brisson's essay, led to new and genuinely sound insights, which would likely not have been achieved but for the putting forward of the mistaken idea that needed correction?

I'll say something more about this in my next couple of posts.

A One-Clickable Book

Every once in a while there is a book in ancient philosophy which one feels one must read or be from that time onward considerably impoverished as a scholar. Malcolm Schofield's Plato: Political Philosophy has been described to me as such a book (it's been described, even, as a page-turner that is difficult to put down).

Richard Kraut's informative review today confirmed that judgment, and made the decision unavoidable. After reading Kraut I went directly to Amazon One-Click....

(Now, if OUP wishes to use this as a blurb, they will have to cite a blog. I wonder if that's been done before?)

Awe-Inspiring Meticulousness

It's not common that Brian Leiter draws attention to a book review. I too found Jeffrey Brand-Ballard's review of F.M. Kamm's Intricate Ethics noteworthy, although not quite for the same reasons as Leiter, who praises the review for being "generous and gracious in its praise for Kamm's work, but also perceptive and efficient in criticisms of a certain kind of approach to moral philosophy".

I noticed the criticisms (conveniently distinguished and lettered A through I), but I was unclear about what was being praised, and on what grounds.

Nearly all of my concerns show themselves in the first paragraph of the review:

Reading F.M. Kamm's latest book is like watching a brilliant astronomer map an uncharted galaxy. The details are often difficult to follow, but the meticulousness and the display of mental stamina must inspire awe. There is a kind of beauty in the performance alone. Intricate Ethics is a major event in normative ethical theory by a living master of the subject. Its innovations may not receive as much attention as they deserve.

I was lost by the comparison, myself never having watched a brilliant astronomer map an uncharted galaxy. What exactly would that be like? Brand-Ballard has evidently seen this many times, because it's only often that he has found the details difficult to follow: presumably on some occasions the brilliant astronomers he has watched are perfectly clear in their mappings.

I also wondered why mere "meticulousness" and "display of mental stamina" must inspire awe? What if the supposed galaxy does not exist? And what if it is not a galaxy but something less awe-inspiring that is being mapped (such as, say, the contours of one moral philosopher's hunches)? Consider: do the meticulousness and mental stamina even of a clever attorney, accountant, or engineer inspire awe? Must they?

In the next sentence: a book becomes an event. (He meant its publication, of course. Not awe-inspiring writing.)

Then: a declaration that someone is a living master over a "subject" the existence of which the review later tends to call into question.

Then: a final sentence which is a non sequitur relative to the paragraph, and which never gets substantiated in the review, because we are never told what the important innovations of the book are, or why they deserve attention.

(By this point in the review, admittedly, I would have found mere meticulousness at least a welcome relief.)

What does the reviewer praise about the book? Almost exclusively that it is "theoretically intensive", "dense", and shows a "formidable imagination". As for substantive theses, only two are pulled out for attention. First, that:

...one who denies that distance matters must reject a whole range of common intuitions according to which an agent has relatively greater responsibility to rescue victims or neutralize threats that are physically near to him, or to instrumentalities that he controls

(that is, if you deny that distance matters, then you deny that distance matters); and, second, the Doctrine of Productive Purity, which, whatever can be said for it, certainly lacks the beauty and simplicity of the astronomical theories that a brilliant astronomer would likely be relying upon:

(1) If an evil* cannot be at least initially sufficiently justified, it cannot be justified by the greater good that it is necessary (given our act) to causally produce. However, such an evil* can be justified by the greater good whose component(s) cause it, even if the evil* is causally necessary to help sustain the greater good or its components.

(2) In order for an act to be permissible, it should be possible for any evil* side effect (except possibly indirect side effects) of what we do, or evil* causal means that we must use (given our act) to bring about the greater good, to be at least the effect of a [greater good that] is working itself out (or the effect of means that are noncausally related to that greater good that is working itself out). (p. 164)

Something to live by, that.

Xenophon Symposium

If you are on the SAGP mailing list, you've seen this already ...

I am writing to invite paper proposals for a panel devoted to Xenophon and Xenophon Studies which will be sponsored by the Society for Greek Political Thought at the 2007 NPSA annual meeting (Philadelphia, November 15-17). William E. Higgins, whose well-known study of “Xenophon the Athenian” was first published thirty years ago, has kindly agreed to serve as Chairperson/Moderator for this SGPT panel.

Higgins’ work appeared at a time when – with the exception of Leo Strauss – the writings of Xenophon had been largely neglected or dismissed by scholars. Within a few years, however, pioneers had emerged who studied Xenophon’s works with requisite seriousness, blazing trails and marking signposts for a new generation of Xenophon scholars. The subsequent and vital renaissance which occurred in Xenophon Studies, especially during the last decade of the 20^th century, in part due to the publication of new translations and studies of Xenophon’s Socratic writings, has (thankfully) rendered superfluous the kind of apologia that all-too-often was necessary in the prolegomena to those studies.

Since 2000, a similar resurgence in studies related to Xenophon’s ‘non-Socratic’ writings has occurred, with the appearance of numerous annotated translations [Anabasis: Ambler (forthcoming), Waterfield 2005; Lak. Pol.: Jackson 2007, Lipka 2002; Hellenika: Doty 2006; Hiero, Poroi: Doty 2003; Cyropedia.: Ambler 2001; Cynegetikos.: Doty 2001], as well as full monographs [Waterfield 2006, Rood 2005, Bearzot 2004, Azoulay 2004, Nadon 2001] and edited collections of essays [Fox 2004, Tuplin 2004]. Articles and book chapters on Xenophon's Socratic writings have continued apace during this same period, so much so that a comprehensive bibliography has become a desideratum.

In the wake of this on-going revival of scholarly interest in Xenophon, it seems an appropriate occasion for reflecting on recent developments, trends, and even future prospects – for research and publication – in Xenophon Studies. Proposals for papers which undertake retrospective or prospective reflections on the state and/or character of Xenophon Studies (in politics, philosophy, classics, or history) will be given special consideration. Proposals for papers focusing exclusively on any aspect of Xenophon’s corpus, thought, or life are also welcome, as always.

Please submit brief proposals, with contact information and academic affiliation, by June 15. For further information about the 2007 NPSA annual meeting, the conference announcement is attached. It will be necessary at some point for all panelists to register their participation on-line through the conference website. Meanwhile, in addition to sending proposals, please feel free to contact me directly with any questions related to this particular panel, or other SGPT panels.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to hearing from you: gish@ohio.edu or dustingish@hotmail.com.

What's the Point of Vengeance?

Two cases.

First case: A man in a heated argument with his girlfriend kills her and escapes to another country. Twenty years later he is finally apprehended, tried for murder (in a jurisdiction which recognizes capital punishment), and executed.

Now consider his punishment. It accomplishes nothing. The evil was done in the past. The punishment only adds evil to evil already done. Even apart from any objections we might have to capital punishment, we might find it difficult to approve of, or justify, his punishment. It can easily seem pointless, a mere exercise in vengeance.

Second case, taken from Monday's news:

A man trying to kill his girlfriend by stopping a car in front of an approaching train was himself killed Monday when the train hit the vehicle and launched it into him as he tried to flee, police said.

The girlfriend survived.

The man drove the car in front of a group of other vehicles stopped at a railroad crossing in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Sunland, Officer Mike Lopez said.

The driver, who was seen arguing with his girlfriend, parked the car on the tracks and jumped out, leaving her behind, Lopez said.

A northbound commuter train hit the rear of the car, hurling it into the man. The girlfriend was taken to the hospital, where she was in stable condition, Lopez said.

"She gets hit by a train and lives. He gets hit by his own car and he dies," Lopez said.

Now consider what happened to the man (not the woman's miraculous survival). It accomplished nothing. His evil act (of abandoning his girlfriend on the tracks) was in the past. His death only added evil to evil already done. --Yet, I think, we would find it difficult not to approve of and find justifications for his fate.

Casuistry and Internet Research

A news item yesterday raises questions about two topics of interest to this blog--casuistry and internet research.

The question about casuistry is this. Suppose you must decide a difficult ethical case, and you receive conflicting advice about its resolution. Must you act on the advice most likely to be correct (probiliorism), or the advice which is least problematic if wrong (tutiorism), or is it enough if you act on advice which has substantial merit (probabilism), even if another view would reasonably be judged more likely?

Here's the analogy from yesterday's news. Suppose a pharmaceutical company conducts several clinical trials for a new drug. All of them are ostensibly well-designed, but only one, and maybe not the best study of the group, gives evidence that the drug is effective. May the pharmaceutical company then claim that the drug is effective on the basis of that single study (cf. probabilism), or must it either conduct a meta-analysis of the various studies (probiliorism) or favor that study which (say) also attributes the worst side-effects to the drug (tutiorism)?

Now in casuistry probabilism has generally been judged the most sensible opinion. (Please don't raise here the problem of a regress, as opinion is also divided as to which view about casuistry should be followed!) Yet in pharmaceutical research the law seems to be tilting, rather, toward tutiorism. At least, in 2004 GlaxoSmithKline agreed to post on the internet the results of all its clinical trials for any drug, after it was prosecuted by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for consumer fraud:

Mr. Spitzer filed suit in June against GlaxoSmithKline, contending that it committed fraud by publicizing the results of only one of five trials studying the effect of its antidepressant, Paxil, in children. That single study showed mixed results. The others not only failed to show any benefit for the drug in children but demonstrated that children taking Paxil were more likely to become suicidal than those taking a placebo.

And the market apparently favors probabiliorism. Two days ago the New England Journal of Medicine published online a study by Dr. Steven Nissen, who used the GlaxoSmithKline database of clinical trials for its drug Avandia to conduct a meta-analysis and found that the studies, taken all together, suggest a link between Avandia and heart attacks. The following day GlaxoSmithKline's share price fell 7%.

The related question about internet research is this: For which academic disciplines is it already the case that facility with the internet is indispensable for responsible research, and, is ancient philosophy (or classics generally) such a discipline?

The question is raised because Dr. Nissen said that he had discovered the GlaxoSmithKline database, which was not widely-advertised, only through a Google search!

Through a Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) search, Nissen found a Web site put up by Glaxo that contained results from all of its clinical trials. The site had been created as a result of a settlement with former New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer. He found the 42 studies, and he and statistician Kathy Wolski did the analysis and wrote the paper in a matter of days