Showing papers in "Phronesis in 1991"

Is Aristotle's teleology anthropocentric?

Abstract: Aristotle holds that nature does nothing pointless that natural processes are structured by the good ends they serve. But there is a strong current tendency to read him, in line with the priorities which govern his zoological works, as refusing to extend the workings of this finality in nature beyond the internal structure and functioning of individual organisms.' Some do continue to attach importance to the occasional remarks in his corpus which appear to acknowledge a broader, interactive teleology.2 My object is to support the latter party, and to do so by seeking to illuminate the actual structure of the global teleology in question. In a word, I hope to show that this structure is anthropocentric. What do I mean by suggesting that Aristotle might have a natural teleology centred on man? After all, if there is one thing that we know for certain about Aristotle, it is that he believes in a cosmic hierarchy in which god, not man, is the best being. To explain what I have in mind, I will take

Galen's Anatomy of the Soul

Abstract: This paper presents the first half of a two-part investigation into the nature and coherence of Galen's philosophical psychology. In it, I shall consider Galen's account of the structure of the soul, his vigorous defence of a Platonic tripartitional psychology in contrast to the unifying account of the Stoics, paying particular attention to his attempted demonstrations of the distinctness and various locations of the soul's parts, and to the epistemological and methodological principles he brings to bear in this effort. Part of the purpose of this will be to demonstrate in some detail how Galen's twin professions of philosopher and physiologist combine to inform his particular treatment of these issues. In the second part,' I shall turn to the moral aspects of Galen's philosophical psychology, and in particular to his account of the passions, and the question of whether they can be tamed, or whether rather they require root-and-branch eradication; and I shall attempt to show how Galen's physicalism is to be made compatible with his belief that, at least in their general condition, our passions, and the extent to which we are the slaves of them, are up to us. From all of this, I hope, there will emerge a picture of Galen engaged in what Fodor has called 'speculative psychology',2 that is the attempt to steer a middle course between a purely empirical and hence potentially impoverished approach to the science of psychology on the one hand, and an overly aprioristic and rationalistic psychology of the mind carried through with no regard for empirical adequacy on the other. And, I hold, Galen engaged in it in a sophisticated manner for, properly carried out, such a project need be neither bad science nor inadequate philosophy, but indeed the only fruitful and intelligent way of going about either.3

The Logic of Negation in Boethius

Abstract: Boethius' de Hypotheticis Syllogismis is by far the most extensive account of the conditional and its logic to have survived from antiquity. A rather obscure and tedious work, it has puzzled commentators from Peter Abaelard to Jonathan Barnes. Most of the difficulties that they have had in extracting the principles of Boethian logic seem to me to follow from the assumption that what he offers is an account of the application of propositional operators to propositional contents. Though generally not made explicit by modern historians, the concepts of propositional content and propositional operation are nevertheless presupposed by the symbolic apparatus which they typically use to represent the claims of ancient and mediaeval logics. I will try to show that an examination of Boethius' theory of language forces us to give up the assumption that his logic is propositional and that when we do so his remarks on compound propositions turn out to be rather less mysterious than they have seemed. *

Aristotle on Pleasure and Perfection

Abstract: Aristotle clearly distinguishes himself from the hedonists when he claims that there is no such thing as undifferentiated pleasure. Pleasure cannot serve as the final goal of our actions because pleasure is not one thing, i.e., the word "pleasure" as applied to specific instances of pleasure is not univocal. Pleasures differ in nature just as the activities which they accompany differ in nature (T E6E L). The pleasure which we take in eating is simply not the same kind of thing as the pleasure which we take in thinking. This means that one cannot in a hedonistic calculus compare the two pleasures as being different amounts of the same thing. They are simply different kinds of pleasures and as such it seems that there can be no comparison between them as pleasures. Yet Aristotle clearly believes that such a comparison between different pleasures is possible. He speaks of contemplation as being the most pleasurable activity.' But if Aristotle's critique of hedonism rules out the possibility of saying that contemplation brings with it a greater amount of pleasure than does eating (since these pleasures differ qualitatively and not quantitatively), what can he mean by saying that contemplation is the most pleasurable activity? What does the superlative mean here?2

Aristotle and Copernican revolutions

Abstract: Aristotle, Professor Irwin tells us, was a realist.' There are, of course, many different sorts of realist: realists as opposed to nominalists, realists about possible worlds, realists about moral values, realists as opposed to idealists. Like the word "real" on Austin's view of the matter,2 the word "realist" gets its meaning in any given context from its contradictory in that context, from what it is opposed to. We do not understand William when he tells us that the ducks over there are real ducks until we see that he is telling us that they are not decoy ducks. Similarly, a philosopher can be intelligibly said to be advancing a realist doctrine, only if we have some idea what the "-ism" is which she is supposed to be rejecting. The realism Irwin is attributing to Aristotle is the realism that is opposed to idealism. The trouble here is that it is difficult to see that there were in Aristotle's day any idealist doctrines around for him to take the trouble to oppose.3 Protagorean teachings might reasonably be described as subjectivist, but they hardly amounted to idealism in the sense in which the term applies to eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophies. Kant had not yet made his monstrous proposal: "Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge

Sense‐experience and the Argument for Recollection in Plato's Phaedo

Abstract: At Phaedo 65a9ff., in the course of his description of the philosopher's 'practice of death', Socrates maintains that the senses are a hindrance to the philosopher in his pursuit of truth and wisdom (qpQovoGL), and that it is only by means of pure reason, or reasoning without the aid of the senses (atUTjj xctO' czrv ELXQLVEI In bLavoiv XW,UVO (66al-2), that the philosopher, in his present life, can attain knowledge of Forms. We are explicitly told that these Forms the Just, the Beautiful, the Good, and even Tallness, Health, Strength and all the rest cannot be seen with the eyes, nor can they be apprehended by any other form of bodily perception (65a4-e5). Accordingly, the true philosopher will 'as far as possible' (xaO' OCov 8v oTL taiktaXa, 65c7, 66a4) leave the body behind, rid himself of eyes and ears, and seek truth with reason alone, knowing that the senses, one and all, are deceptive (65b1-7) and that one can never apprehend reality and attain truth and wisdom with the eye (65a9-66alO). A few pages later, however, in the argument for recollection (72e3-77a5) which forms the second half of the first proof of the immortality of the soul, Socrates claims, apparently in flat contradiction to what he has just said about the worthlessness of the senses to the philosopher in his pursuit of knowledge, that, in fact, it is only through sense-experience, which we all do have right from the very moment of birth, that we recollect the Forms, knowledge of which we acquired in a previous discarnate existence and forgot at the moment of birth. Taking our knowledge of Equality as an example, Socrates maintains that we know it, and that we derive our conception of it from no other source indeed, to do so is impossible than from sight or touch, or from some other one of the senses (74a9-75a7). In such a case, Socrates argues, we recognize the sensible equals, e.g. equal sticks, equal stones, etc., as striving to be like Equality, but succeeding only imperfectly, and it is

Socrates and Callicles on Pleasure

Abstract: Que dans le « Gorgias » de Platon Callicles croit du plaisir qu'il est non rationnel et Socrate croit de lui qu'il est rationnel

Kinesis und Energeia bei Aristoteles

Abstract: In Met E 6 unterscheidet Aristoteles zwei Typen von Handlungen: den VeranderungsprozeB (xLvloLg)' und die Verwirklichung (iv6QyELa). Bereits bei dieser Aussage beginnen die Schwierigkeiten. Sie beruhen u.a. darauf, daB die zweite Hailfte von Met. E 6, der einzige Text, wo Aristoteles diese Distinktion explizit einfuhrt, sehr wenig sorgfaltig ausgearbeitet ist. Nicht nur, daB der uberlieferte Wortlaut des Textes ungewohnlich korrupt ist, auch sachliche Ungereimtheiten finden sich. So betrachtet Aristoteles offensichtlich die Handlung (Jtn) als die gemeinsame Gattung fur xLvqotL und EvE'yQYEa. Unter seinen Beispielen fuir eine xtvTlosL finden sich aber solche (abmagern, genesen (gesund werden), entstehen), die er kaum als Handlungen klassifizieren wurde. Um diese nicht wesentliche terminologische Schwierigkeit zu ubergehen, wollen wir als Oberbegriff einen allgemeineren Terminus, namlich 'Vorgang', zugrundelegen. Als Prufungskriterium, ob ein bestimmter Vorgang ein VeranderungsprozeB oder eine Verwirklichung ist, bedient Aristoteles sich eines sprachlichen Indizes. Er fragt, ob bei den entsprechenden Verben, die bezeichnen, daB jemand diesen Vorgang vollzieht, durchmacht oder in einem anderen bewirkt (dies gilt von 'bauen' wir werden noch darauf zu spre-

Cosmic Justice in Anaximander

Abstract: In what may be our oldest surviving fragment of Greek literary prose,1 Anaximander refers to the redress of injustice among parties alternately injured and injuring. Since the parties in question are impersonal entities, and the redress is a cosmic process, Simplicius, probably repeating a remark of Theophrastus, comments on Anaximander's mode of expression as 'rather poetical'. What in plain terms was the meaning of the metaphor? In this paper I wish to look again at what Viastos has described as the most controversial text in Presocratic philosophy.2 The preceding clause in Simplicius indicates that the process of redress is one of perishing or passing away, phthora: not absolute phthora, but phthora 'into' something. Two main views have been taken of this process. It has often been thought that that into which perishing took place was the infinite, and that that which perished was what Simplicius referred to as ta Note on translation: - Kahn (Appendix II) has shown that the derivation (e.g.in Liddell and Scott) of 6nfLQog from the nouns nEtQae or nkQag, 'limit', is to be discarded in favour of a derivation from the root occurring in the verbs nd'Qw, 'try, prove', nerdw, 'traverse', nEDatv', 'complete'. Etymologically speaking, therefore, lo 6JEELQOV means not 'the infinite', 'the boundless', 'the unlimited', but 'the inexhaustible', 'the untraversable', etc. The structurally correct English renderings all suffer from two disadvantages: they are clumsy, and, more seriously, the verbal stems they contain are too precise to afford an equivalent to 6?1EtLDq. 'Inexhaustible', for example, suggests material supply, 'untraversable' suggests motion. Each of these suggestions is included in CMrELqog, but not to the exclusion of the other. Since 'the infinite' is devoid of specific (because of any) verbal suggestions, it is convenient to use it or one of its synonyms as a translation of l6 &6ELQOV; and since in the context of Anaximander's cosmology there is little or no effectual difference between the negation of the verbal idea and that of the nominal idea - in either case the a5nELQOV is incompassably vast - in practice this does not set up unwanted associations.

Particular Forms Revisited

Abstract: Late in the 1950s, Peter Geach wrote that there was scarcely a sentence of Metaphysics Z that is not inconsistent, at least verbally, with some sentence that appears elsewhere in the book. Since then, interpreters have attempted to discern a consistent position, but have commonly conceded that there is no coherent doctrine that will accommodate all that Aristotle says. It is one of Michael Frede and Gunther Patzig's achievements* to offer a unitary interpretation of the whole book, leaving very little to be explained by the hypothesis of editorial intrusion. Their first volume contains introductory essays not only dealing with the structure of the argument but also setting out what they are happy to call the theory of Metaphysics Z. This Introduction is followed by a translation with a facing Greek text. They found that the readings that they wished to adopt for their translation diverged from those of Jaeger in 130 places, so that it became indispensable to print the text translated and defended in the Commentary. The convenience of readers would have been served even more if they had felt able to give some rudimentary critical apparatus, with no pretensions to completeness, in which at least those textual variants thought worthy of mention in the Commentary were listed. As it is, readers may still prefer to have Jaeger or Ross's Greek text to hand when they use this commentary. The translation is clearly intended to be used as an adjunct to the Commentary. Although they rightly remark that a good translation should not aim to iron out the roughnesses, obscurities and ambiguities of the original, the attempt to reproduce these features of Aristotle's text in German is at times overshadowed by the role of the translation in making clear exactly how they read the text. As an example, we may take their translation of 1033b7f: