Showing papers in "Phronesis in 1977"

Chance and natural law in Epicureanism

Abstract: When Epicurus discharged the gods from running the world he gave new fuel to a controversy which had been raging off and on for the past hundred years and which was to continue, at least as fiercely, into the Christian era. In preferring atoms and void to gods as ultimate causes of all natural phenomena, Epicurus knew perfectly well that he was entering an arena in which Plato and Aristotle had already done battle against the mechanistic explanations of earlier thinkers.2 How could a purely mechanical combination of atoms moving in empty space account for the regular movements of the heavens and the orderly structure of living things? Plato and Aristotle had inferred divine causation and inherent purposiveness in the world or goal-directed processes from the evidence of such regularities, and within Epicurus' own lifetime the Stoics took up the same fundamental position as the Academy and the

Why did Socrates refuse to escape

Abstract: I want to take as my starting point an essay on the Crito by Professor A. D. Woozley.1 As will emerge in what follows, I disagree with several of Woozley's views, and I have given this article something of the form of a reply to them. But the main function of this approach is to give mne a definite focus around which to marshall some positive contentions. My aim is not primarily polemical: on the contrary, I am trying to bring out some important ethical theses which I take to be represented in the Crito, and which are of significance not only for students of Socrates and Plato, but for anyone concerned with central questions in ethics. One other point by way of preliminary. It will be seen that I have annotated the text of the paper with a number of references to the Gorgias and to the first book of the Republic. For the most part the philosophical relevance of these references is not spelled out: but that should be clear enough to anyone who looks them up. I mention them here simply in order to say, in case anyone is worried about the historical legitimacy of these cross-references, that I am aware of the problems, and that I believe that they can be overcome, though there is no space to deal with them in this article. Let me begin by sketching one group of Woozley's arguments, with some parts of which I shall venture to take issue. They concern the reasons which Socrates puts forward in the latter part of the dialogue (50 ff.)2 why a man should always obey the law, and specifically why Socrates, at the present time, should not disobey the law by trying to escape from prison. The crucial reason which Woozley picks out (p. 315) is that a man should always obey because 'the consequences of disobedience are, or would be, socially destructive'. He goes on First, it should be noticed that Socrates is using a "What would happen if ... ?" argument. And we have to distinguish more clearly than he appears to do the question what would happen if

The Relative Dating of the Accounts of Pleasure in Aristotle's Ethics

Abstract: Tn EN1 there are two separated accounts of pleasure, (A) H 11-14 and (B) K 1-5. The orthodox opinion nowadays developed most fully by Festugiere2, who has persuaded Lieberg, Gauthier & Jolif and others" is that B is later and better than A. This view may have a superficial plausibility, but I shall contend in this paper that a closer examination of the evidence together with more precisely formulated arguments leads one to a different conclusion, and that the evidence clearly favors the view that A is in fact later than B. More precisely I shall suggest that it was Aristotle's intention to make

Daimon Parallels the Holy Phren in Empedocles

Abstract: H ow the physical and religious views of Empedocles are related has long been a controversial question.' His two poems, On Nature and The Purifications, suggest that the cycles undergone by daimon and elements are similar, but how daimon is related to Love, Strife, and the four elements or to the god, mysteriously called a "Holy Phren" in B 134 (Diels-Kranz), remains a problem. B 134, in my view, contains a clue to the unity of Empedocles' thought. This fragment describes the way in which the god's phrontides bring about the world-order and also gives characteristics of the god which daimon will be seen to parallel.

Anaximander and Anaximenes: The Earliest Greek Theories of Change?

Abstract: To talk about Anaximanderl and Anaximenes2 is to talk about Homer and Hesiod on the one hand (and as some believe, also about the East-) and to talk about Aristotle and Theophrastus on the other.4 For we have to examine the reports on the early thinkers in the light and in the framework of the writings of those to whom we owe these reports; and we have to relate the early thinkers to their own time and to the modes of thought and of expression current in their time. Of course, we have to allow for personal contributions and innovations; but we also have to beware of importing modem notions. By modem notions I mean not only our own, but also those e.g. of Aristotle and Theophrastus. There is no need, here, to dwell on these basic problems. But as the general theme of this colloquium5 "Change in Aristotle and the Presocratics" might suggest that Aristotle is or should be the starting point for our discussion, a few general remarks seem to be called for as regards the procedure adopted in this paper. I shall not begin with Aristotle's theory or theories of change nor with the question which of them, if any, is found in Anaximander or Anaximenes. Nor shall I go through all the doxographical reports on Anaximander's views. Instead, I shall first try to single out those pieces of information which seem to bear most clearly the stamp of the individual early philosophers and which seem least likely to have

Zeno and Stoic Consistency

Abstract: "r,' reek ethics is eudaimonistic", observed Max Pohlenz at the beginning of his account of the ethical theories of the Stoa;1 and it is certainly true that, as Aristotle said,2 L)?ovta is regularly regarded by the Greeks as the moral good. But the Stoic version is rather complicated, and although some of the complications of their theory of the telos and skopos of the moral life have been sorted out, in particular by Rieth3 and Long4, many problems remain, perhaps less in the work of Diogenes of Babylon and Antipater of Tarsus than among the earliest members of the school, indeed in Zeno himself. Part of the difficulty lies in the relation in the thought of Zeno between virtue and happiness, and an investigation of this relationship may conveniently begin with a passage which deals not with Zeno in particular, but with the Stoics in general. According to Stobaeus,5 the Stoics were in the habit of saying that the telos is being happy (TO 68nl[ovCZv). To be happy is something with which we are satisfied; we do not use happiness as a means to achieving something else. Such a state consists in (U7Pv&s) and living naturally (xavr (p9vv). We are not told who specifically made these equations, though the impression we are left with is that all the Stoics would have accepted them. But the passage then goes on to say that Zeno defined happiness as a smooth flow of life (cupoLoc rLou). Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and the rest accepted this definition,6 but, says Stobaeus, they called happiness the skopos, while identifying the telos with "achieving happiness" (r6 ruqeNv rr-iq

Protagoras ... o r Plato? II. The Protagoras

Abstract: From the viewpoint of Plato's techniques in manipulating historical figures, Protagoras is even more startling than Republic I or Theaetetus.1 Like them, it is organized around themes Plato wanted to discuss; and like them, it reaches the themes by deliberately perverting an ambiguous foimula of its chief antagonist. But in the accompanying arguments neither of the other two quite approaches (though Rep. I 343 c comes close) the violence of the means employed in Protagoras: the passages apparently irrelevant to the main strategy; the disproportionate length of some of these; the false leads; the use of acknowledged fallacies; the awkward transitions; the internal inconsistencies.2 We shall not be here concerned in detail with most of these features as they appear in the sections on the identity of the virtues (330c-334 b, 349 a-351 b), on Simonides' poem (338 e-349 a), and on hedonism (351 b-359 a) and its application to the problem of the unity of courage and wisdom (359 a-360 a). All these sections and the Dialogue as a whole constitute a kind of manipulation of Protagoras, to be sure; but an adequate analysis of them would carry us far beyond the permissible limit of space; and, in any case, they are not quite the kind of manipulation we have becn chiefly examining in Republic I and Theaetetus, as Prof. Kerferd has pointed out to me. This kind of manipulation the kind that turns on deliberate misinterpretation of an opponent's formula, either by Socrates (Theaetetus) or by the opponent himself (Republic I)3 appears in full light only in

Plato's Meno: 86E-87A: The Geometricul Illustration of The Argument by Hypothesis'

Abstract: The formal structure of Plato's conception and application of the geometrical illustration to the question of virtue's teachability is clear The objective is to state an hypothesis which will determine whether or not a given property is ascribable to a given object; that is, whether the property, inscribable triangularly, is ascribable to the joint object, a given area and a given circle, or whether the property, teachable, is ascribable to the object, virtue Yet the hypothesis adopted to provide the determinative criterion in the case of the geometrical illustration is stated so succinctly that it has been subject to diverse interpretations We use W H S Rouse's translation of 87 A 3-6 to serve as a point of beginning for our interpretation "If the space is such that when you apply it to the given line of the circle, it is deficient by a space of the same size as that which has been applied, one thing appears to follow, and if this be impossible, another "2 Further, R S Bluck13 has given a selective review of the literature on this question which we take as representative and from which the linguistic issues are drawn as follows: Does auroiU in "its" given line (87 A 3) refer to xcpLov (space) or to xixXoc (circle), as Rouse presumes and Butcher argues despite the necessity to twist the Greek a bit at this point?" Is Cook Wilson correct in holding that "the given line" has to be a line of the circle; for if not, then the line "would not bring it [the space] into relation with the circle? "5 Or can "the given line " be considered as "a line or side of the figure into which, as its equivalent area, it has been transformed," as A S L Farquharson argues?6 Does -orou'vp olov with the addition of octu'ro in the clause specifying the deficient area (87 A 5), state that the area is similar to (Butcher)

Aristotle on Substance, Accident and Plato’s Forms

Abstract: At Metaphysics 990 b 27-991 a 8 (= 1079 a 19-b 3) there is a very puzzling argument of Aristotle's against Platonic Forms. Aristotle is trying to embarrass the Platonists with a contradiction in their theory. On the one hand they want to say that there are Forms not only of substances but also of accidents of substances (qualities, relations, etc.) On the other hand, they are committed to the belief that there are Forms only of substances. The contradiction shows that they should give up at least one of the beliefs concerned. Clearly, however, Aristotle thinks that a more radical response is called for, namely, rejection of the theory of Forms altogether. Aristotle's dilemma has not been thought a compelling one. The first horn is supported convincingly enough; he appeals to two Academy proofs,' but he could as well have pointed to famous passages in Plato's dialogues, where there are Forms of Beauty, Equal, Just and other qualities and relations.2 It is the second horn of the dilemma that causes the trouble, since Aristotle does not (and could not) claim that the Platonists themselves consciously accepted that belief; rather he argues that, given certain premises which they accept, they ought to hold it, and it is the force of his argument for this that has