Showing papers in "Review of Metaphysics in 2016"

Marenbon, John. Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz

Abstract: MARENBON, John. Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015. xi + 354 pp. Cloth, $35.00--Marenbon writes about Christian views on pagan knowledge, pagan virtue, and pagan salvation in the medieval West. But he extends the Middle Ages into the "Long Middle Ages," which thus brings him down not to plus or minus 1500 but to Leibniz about 200 years later. Though he presents this longer Middle Age as a heuristic device to show how the "problem of paganism," as set up by Augustine, is still prominent among the concerns of seventeenth-century rationalists, he cannot but raise the question whether the concept of the Long Middle Ages is applicable only to the problem of paganism or whether it can more generally help correct earlier and more piecemeal divisions of Western civilization: Late Antiquity, the Dark Ages, the High Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, Early Modernity. However, although such rigid distinctions are rather arbitrary, and though there is much overlapping, he offers no reason to suppose that a longer Middle Age is especially helpful with problems other than that of Western Christian concerns about pagans. Indeed, there are good reasons to think it is not: for instance, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the succeeding scientific revolution. There are two somewhat distinct problems in Marenbon's sights: that of pagan philosophers and that of pagans more generally. The latter only reoccupied center-stage with the discovery of the Americas and of China, where pagan societies were found flourishing in complete ignorance of the Christian Redeemer. Did that ignorance entail, some wondered, the inevitable damnation of so many apparently innocent people? Yet this came to be seen as a serious problem at least in part because of the earlier, more specialized, and much debated question of how the pagan philosophers of antiquity were to fare in the afterlife. For that the scene, as we have noted, was set primarily by Augustine who, perhaps with slight hesitation, as in Letter 102, insisted on a literal interpretation of biblical texts emphasizing that after the coming of Christ baptism (or martyrdom) is necessary for salvation; before that, pious Jews apart, only a tiny group, by special dispensation, were destined for heaven. Such theorizing--and it was admitted that only God knows the truth of the matter--was supported by a centuries-long misinterpretation of the text of Cyprian in which we read that "outside the Church there is no salvation." Originally aimed at heretics and schismatics, Cyprian's dictum was taken to refer to all non-Catholics. Aristotle was the most significant test case because, although from Bonaventure to Luther there were those who understood that many of his ideas in physics and psychology (discussed by Marenbon) and in ethics (less by him treated) were radically incompatible with Paul and with Augustine's interpretation of Paul, most in the High Middle Ages (not least Aquinas) thought that his supposed ideas could be substantially harmonized with those of Augustinian theology. Much could be learned from Aristotle--but theologically it seemed he must be packed off to hell. Aristotle and a few other philosophers were one thing; perhaps casuistry could make a few exceptions. Millions of American Indians and Chinese were another, and the latter at least could not be written off (by another misinterpretation of Aristotle) as natural slaves. Hence the growing rejection of anti-Augustinian casuistry about salvation that characterized the later Middle Ages was embraced by many early Protestants (as by the would-be-Augustinian Jansenists) to confirm the certainty among many believers that pagans were largely if not universally damned. By this time a related thesis had kicked in: the gradually developing (and anti-Augustinian) tendency to separate virtue from salvation. Augustine always taught that God's grace really does improve the sinner even in his earthly life, and thus make him more fit for salvation, even though he remains a sinner and must persevere to the end: no question yet of a merely imputed righteousness. …

The Triplex Via of Naming God

Abstract: IN A DELIGHTFUL SHORT STORY entitled "The Nine Billion Names of God," Arthur C. Clarke describes the task that the monks of a Tibetan monastery have set themselves, namely, to list all the possible names of God. This, they maintain, is the purpose for which the world was created, and they have been working on the project for three centuries, ever since the lamasery was founded. They believe that all of God's names can be written with not more than nine letters in a special alphabet they have devised. To speed up the job the high lama has hired a computer and engaged two operators to write a program that can complete the task in a hundred days instead of 15,000 years. He explains the importance of the task: Call it ritual, if you like, but it's a fundamental part of our belief. All the many names of the Supreme Being--God, Jehovah, Allah, and so on--they are only man-made labels. There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here, which I do not propose to discuss, but somewhere among all the possible combinations of letters, which can occur, are what one may call the real names of God. By systematic permutation of letters, we have been trying to list them all. (1) Only when the computer is up and running do the programmers learn the consequences of their work. Once the last of the divine names is deciphered, the universe will be extinguished: They believe that when they have listed all His names--and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them--God's purpose will have been achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won't be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy. Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide? There's no need for that. When the list's completed, God steps in and simply winds things up ... bingo! (2) Despite taking what one of them calls the "Wide View," the computer experts are fearful of the outcome and anxious to depart. As they trek down the mountain road, under a sky "ablaze with the familiar, friendly stars," one of them lifts his eyes to heaven: "Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out." (3) The "philosophical problem of some difficulty," to which the lama refers, has been a challenge for Western philosophy since the start: how to speak of the supernatural. When Thales declared that "all things are full of the gods," he expressed an early and confused pantheism. The problem is to discern the divine, distinguish it from the natural, and somehow describe it in the only terms available, namely, those of nature. One of the fundamental tasks of philosophical theology is to explain how it is possible to speak validly of God, whose nature must by definition lie beyond human cognition. The early philosophers and poets recognized the difficulty and ambiguities involved. According to the cryptic utterances of Heraclitus, for whom "the way up and the way down are one and the same," (4) the Logos "is both willing and unwilling to be called by the name of Zeus." (5) Euripides has Hecuba proclaim: You who support the earth and have there your sanctuary, whoever you are, you are difficult to know. Zeus, whether you are a necessity of nature or the mind of mortals, I pray to you. (6) The Greek philosopher Xenophanes identified the challenge when he observed that humans depict the gods in their own likeness: If oxen and horses and lions had hands or could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen of gods like oxen, and they would make the bodies of their gods in accordance with the form that each species itself possesses.... Ethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with grey eyes and red hair. (7) It is no surprise that humans fashion the image of the gods in their own likeness: human nature is not only what we know best, but the best of what we know. …

Aquinas on Testimonial Justification

Abstract: A FULL HUMAN LIFE IS IMPOSSIBLE without believing the testimony of others. Without such testimony we would be ignorant of almost all truths about history, geography, and the thoughts and feelings of others. Important practical decisions about what school to attend, what vehicle to buy, whom to marry, and so on, also significantly depend on testimony. Such dependence on testimony was largely glossed over by ancient philosophers, but has been emphasized by C. A. J. Coady, Elizabeth Fricker, Jennifer Lackey, and many other recent philosophers, who often trace the historical roots of their discussion back to an eighteenth-century debate between the Scottish philosophers David Hume and Thomas Reid. Hume took what I will call an "inferentialist" view of belief on testimony. "No kind of reasoning," he said, is more common or more useful--even necessary--to human life than the kind derived from the testimony of men.... [O]ur confidence in any argument of this kind is derived wholly from our observation of the truthfulness of human testimony and of how facts usually conform to the reports witnesses give of them. (1) Reid, by contrast, took what I will call a "defaultist" view: It is evident that, in the matter of testimony, the balance of human judgment is by nature inclined to the side of belief; and turns to that side of itself when there is nothing put into the opposite scale. If it was not so, no proposition that is uttered in discourse would be believed, until it was examined and tried by reason; and most men would be unable to find reasons for believing the thousandth part of what is told them. Such distrust and incredulity would ... place us in a worse condition than that of savages. (2) Sadly, accounts of testimonial justification from before Hume and Reid remain largely unexamined. (3) As C. A. J. Coady notes in his pioneering work Testimony: A Philosophical Study, medieval Christian philosophers were especially disposed to see the value of testimonial belief, for which Aquinas had an "interesting and subtle theory." (4) In this article, I provide the first detailed interpretation and reconstruction of Aquinas's account of testimonial justification. (5) His unique pluralist approach, I argue, does not fit nicely into either the Humean or the Reidian camp. Elizabeth Anscombe and others have recently pointed to another way of believing a speaker--trusting the speaker for the truth--that is not reducible to Humean inference from observations, nor to Reidian default acceptance. (6) I argue that Aquinas has a similar but distinctive interpersonal view of some testimonial belief, as well as a separate account of some testimonial justification that is purely inferentialist. I begin by highlighting several ways in which everyday testimonial "faith" was important to Aquinas (section I), and by clarifying what he means by "faith" (section II). Then I describe more precisely the defaultist, inferentialist, and interpersonal accounts of testimonial justification (section III). I explain that Aquinas does not take a defaultist approach, but rather, with regard to at least some cases of testimony, he takes an inferentialist approach (section IV). With regard to other cases of testimony he takes an interpersonal approach (section V) that has certain advantages over recent interpersonal approaches (section VI). I conclude with some comments on the advantages of Aquinas's pluralist view (section VII). I The Christian tradition with which Aquinas was familiar often dealt with testimony under the heading of "faith" (fides). Apologists in that tradition often drew attention to instances of valuable testimonial belief in everyday life, to support the idea that by analogy we ought to accept religious testimonial belief. For example, in the second century Theophilus of Antioch said: Do you not know that faith [pistis] leads the way in all actions? …

Aristotle on Parts of Time and Being in Time

Abstract: I ARISTOTLE BEGINS HIS DISCUSSION of time in Physics 4.10 by presenting doubts and puzzles one might raise about its reality. The first puzzle turns on a familiar-sounding conflict between what look like some straightforward assumptions about time and about existence: For some of it [sc. time], on the one hand, has been and is not, while some is going to be and is not yet. And both infinite time and any given time are composed of these. But it seems impossible for what is composed of nonexisting things to share in being. Besides these concerns, of anything with parts, should it indeed exist, necessarily when it does, either all or some of its parts exist. But, of time, though it is divided into parts, some of them have been and some of them will be, but no one of them is. Nor is the now a part; for the part also measures, and it is necessary for the whole to be composed of its parts. But time does not seem to be composed of nows. (1) The opening puzzle, then, presents a challenge to the reality of time that runs roughly like this: the future and the past do not exist; if these are the only parts of time, then, since the "now" does not constitute a further part, it follows that there are no parts of time that exist; hence, the whole cannot exist either. Aristotle then moves on to discuss puzzles raised by the concept of the "now" (to nun), since we seem to land in difficulties whether we say it is always "one and the same" or "other and other." (2) By the end of his discussion it is clear that Aristotle thinks that time is real, and that he thinks he has said enough to establish its reality. (3) Notoriously, he nowhere argues for these claims, nor does he say how one might put one's doubts about time's existence to rest. At their broadest, these puzzles raise challenges to a familiar notion of time as constituted by the past and the future with a now in between. How does Aristotle respond? If he were to follow his own prescribed method of inquiry, as he does elsewhere in the corpus and even in the preceding discussion in the Physics about place, (4) he would at some point in these chapters either show how to solve the puzzles in light of our more developed understanding of time, or show what confusion produced them, and he would indicate what features of our pretheoretical understanding of time survived the inquiry. (5) While he does return to the concept of the now, and attempts to describe it in a way which will dissolve the puzzles raised about it, (6) he does no such thing for the puzzle about the parts of time, which was the one that most directly raised the question of realism. Thus, we are left with Aristotle's discussion of time itself to attempt a reconstruction of his reasoning as to (1) why we should accept that time is real, and, more importantly perhaps, (2) how his grounds for rejecting the puzzle's conclusion would impact our overall understanding of time. These two goals are distinct, and in general the first has received more attention than the second. That is, most commentators who have addressed the first puzzle about time have offered various ways in which Aristotle might offer a counterargument to the effect that we should agree that time is real despite these (evidently crude or crudely stated) arguments to the contrary. Some commentators, for example, suggest an implicit defense of realism arising out of Aristotle's famous account of time (chronos)--usually considered a definition--as "the number of change in respect of the before and after." (7) Since time is to be defined as a number or feature of change, we can then claim that insofar as we have reason to believe that change exists, we have reason enough to believe that time does as well. (8) If this type of response broadly captures Aristotle's attitude, however, it is dissatisfying. Supposing we can make good sense of this definition, we may have established that time exists in some acceptable but seemingly narrow sense, but we have not yet done anything either to recover or to correct our broader understanding of time as involving the existence of a past, a future, and something in between, (9) and it is not clear how the seemingly narrow notion relates to the broader one with which we began. …

On the Primacy of the Spectator in Kant’s Account of Genius

Abstract: In [section]46 of his Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant defines genius as "the inborn predisposition of the mind through which nature gives the rule to art," and he argues that "beautiful art is possible only as a product of genius." (1) Kant thereby indicates that beautiful art cannot be a product of rational deliberation, but always depends on a rule that originates in some natural, that is, nonrational, mental capacity. If this conclusion seems plausible, however, we must nevertheless recognize that it is vague; for, though Kant claims that a natural mental capacity must be responsible for genius's production of beautiful art, he does not specify what this capacity is. Accordingly, Kant's initial account of genius in [section]46 raises the question of the essential nature of genius. Kant attempts to answer this question in [section]49. Thus, [section]49 sets forth the foundational principles of Kant's account of genius qua the source of beautiful art. Given [section]49's project, the Kant scholarship has focused on the question of what [section]49 teaches us about artistic production, and unsurprisingly, scholars have tended to read Kant's account of aesthetic ideas and the productive imagination in [section]49's opening paragraphs as descriptions of genius's products and creative process, respectively. (2) In this essay, however, I argue that such artist-centered interpretations of [section]49's opening paragraphs are misguided. For, though [section]49 clearly aims to elucidate the nature of genius, Kant does not pursue this goal directly, through an analysis of genius's creative process. Instead, Kant approaches the question of the nature of genius indirectly, through an analysis of the spectator's interaction with beautiful artworks. Recognizing the primacy of the spectator in [section]49's opening paragraphs is of vital importance both for interpreting Kant's conception of genius and for understanding the broader significance of KU within Kant's philosophical system. This essay will highlight the following six points. First, attending to the primacy of the spectator clarifies Kant's notion of aesthetic ideas and implies that beautiful art provokes a productive imaginative activity in the spectators who appreciate it. Second, recognizing Kant's focus on the spectator at the beginning of [section]49 reveals that Kant does not take up the question of the nature of genius in earnest until [section]49's tenth paragraph, and that he does not characterize genius's creative process but merely identifies the mental capacities that make genius's production of beautiful art possible. Third, a proper appreciation of Kant's focus on the spectator uncovers problems with John Zammito's and Henry Allison's influential interpretations of [section]49, both of which assume an artist-centered interpretation of [section]49's opening paragraphs. Fourth, Kant's characterization of the spectator's productive imaginative activity elucidates his conception of art criticism as a cooperative exploration of the possible meanings of beautiful works of art that contributes to the cultivation of a genuine intellectual community. Fifth, Kant's characterization of the spectator's response to aesthetic ideas in [section]49 serves as a vital resource for interpreting Kant's account of judgments of taste; for, since "beauty ... can in general be called the expression of aesthetic ideas," (3) Kant's description of the spectator's imaginative response to aesthetic ideas must ultimately be understood as a description of the intellectual activity that constitutes judgments of taste, as such. Sixth and finally, recognizing the primacy of the spectator in [section]49's opening paragraphs reveals an important parallel between aesthetic judgment and metaphysical inquiry. Indeed, the interpretation that follows indicates that the imagination's productive activity may satisfy theoretical reason's unrequited desire for transcendent knowledge. …

Suárez on Aristotelian Causality

Abstract: FINK, Jakob Leth. Suarez on Aristotelian Causality. Investigating Medieval Philosophy, vol. 9. Leiden: Brill, 2015. x + 172 pp.--Suarez's scholarship is in ascendency, and this volume, edited by Fink, is an excellent contribution to it. Unlike many recent contributions, which canvassed much of Suarez's extensive output, Fink's is tightly focused on a single yet crucial topic--causality and its Aristotelian character. This book should appeal to Suarez scholars as well as historians of seventeenth-century philosophy generally. Each of its chapters will generate lots of discussion. Indeed, early modernists should not overlook it because it was published in a "medieval" series. Fink's introduction offers overviews of Aristotle and Aquinas on causation as background to Suarez. Given that the audience of the book is scholarly, the introduction might have been better focused on sketching specific problems and challenges Suarez saw himself as needing to address in his analysis of causation. Fink's presentation is clearer, however, than that in Freddoso's translation of Disputationes metaphysicae 20-22. In the first chapter Fink considers first why Suarez included causality within his metaphysics and interprets Suarez's account of the generic characteristics of causality. Fink then reads Suarez as identifying causality as a transcendental property of being and examines Suarez's redefinition of cause as a principle that per se inflows being to another thing. His major contribution, however, lies in arguing for a tension in Suarez's account regarding the univocality-analogicality of labeling the four Aristotelian causes as causes: efficient and final causes are causes univocally, but material and formal causes are causes only analogically, because the "inflowing" relation is not the same for each pair. But it does not make sense for a genus term to apply univocally to some species and analogically to others, Fink argues. The remaining chapters address each of the four Aristotelian causes. In chapter two, Erik Akerlund considers Suarez's resolution of a central problem underlying material causality, the actuality of prime matter. Akerlund argues that Suarez found a way of preserving the "pure potentiality" of prime matter while allowing that it had some sort of reality. By distinguishing between an absolute and a relative conception of potentiality, Suarez could maintain that prime matter exists in an absolute sense, but that it can be understood only relatively in relation to the role it plays supporting substantial form. This problem is important, to be sure, and occupies a considerable amount of Suarez's energy, but more extensive discussion of how Suarez deals with the problem of material causality would have been nice--how does he understand matter's "inflowing" of being into a hylomorphic composite? …

Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

Abstract: POLANYI, Michael. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, Enlarged Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. xxviii + 428 pp.--This is an old book, first published in 1958 but still relevant, that the University of Chicago Press has seen fit to reproduce in a new edition with a valuable forward by the distinguished historian of science Mary Jo Nye of Oregon State University. Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) was a Hungarian-born chemist and philosopher who, after earning two degrees at the University of Budapest, a medical degree in 1913 and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1917, left Hungary to pursue a career in Germany. He subsequently became director of the chemical kinetics research group at Fritz Haber's Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin. He was in that position when Adolph Hitler was appointed German chancellor in 1933. As a Jew he reluctantly fled the Germany that had in his own account "treated him so well" when the Nazis began to implement their anti-Semitic laws. Polanyi accepted an appointment to the University of Manchester, where he headed the university's physical chemistry laboratory until 1948, when he exchanged his appoint in chemistry for a chair in social studies that was specifically created for him. He eventually became a member of the British Royal Society and a fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He is the author of many books including Science, Faith, and Society and The Tacit Dimension. The present volume is based on Polanyi's Gifford Lectures of 1951-52, in which he talks about objectivity, probability, randomness, chance and order, doubt, and evolution. The book is not a monograph but a collection of essays written largely for professional audiences. In his reflections on the nature of scientific explanation, Polanyi targets a series of "isms" that dominated mid-twentieth-century philosophy of science, especially positivism and a kind of Kantian idealism. Personal Knowledge is primarily an enquiry into the nature and justification of scientific knowledge. A realist in the classical sense, Polanyi will say, "An empirical statement is true to the extent that it reveals an aspect of reality, a reality largely hidden from us and existing therefore independently of our knowing it." All assertions of natural fact empirically uncovered are necessarily universal in intent. Polanyi takes exception to the usual view that scientific knowledge is detached and impersonal in nature. …

Christofidou, Andrea. Self, Reason, and Freedom: A New Light on Descartes' Metaphysics

Abstract: CHRISTOFIDOU, Andrea. Self, Reason, and Freedom: A New Light on Descartes' Metaphysics. New York: Routledge, 2013. 269 pp. Cloth, $ 140.00--This book explores the main themes of Descartes's metaphysics, depicting them as the fruit of the will's struggle to escape from the influence of preconceived opinion into the true liberty of alignment with reason. Christofidou writes here for scholars who know the secondary literature on Descartes as well as the broader history of modern philosophy (especially Kant); however, interested nonspecialist philosophers or graduate students will follow her arguments and should find Christofidou's perspective on Descartes invigorating. Self, Reason, and Freedom is organized as a commentary on the Meditations, devoting two chapters to each meditation (except for the first and fifth, which each get one chapter). My summary emphasizes distinctive aspects of her interpretation of each meditation. Christofidou suggests that Descartes's method of doubt is internal dialogue--Socratic elenchus practiced on oneself. When practiced, it progressively undermines the "principle of empiricism" (all our knowledge comes either from or through the senses), the "principle of rationalism" (knowledge of mathematical truths is perfectly stable and requires no metaphysical foundation), and the "principle of theology" (knowledge can be obtained from authority). When discussing Descartes's first certainty ("I am"), Christofidou defends Descartes against several important objections leveled by Kant and shows how Descartes's treatment of self-knowledge reveals his "essentialism," the view that we cannot know that something is without knowing (at least partially) what it is. Though disagreeing about essentialism, Descartes and Kant both think that the exercise of freedom--whether moral (Kant) or epistemic (Descartes)--is necessary for achieving self-knowledge. Christofidou finds only one argument for God's existence in the third meditation, rather than two (as is often thought). This God is a metaphysical principle, not the God of religion. Her Descartes thinks that much of reality has its own structure independent of human thought, and that our judgments are true when they correspond to that structure. He is a direct realist who rejects the "veil of ideas": to have an idea of something is just to think directly about that thing. Furthermore, he accepted formal causation, which helps elucidate not only his claims about the causation of ideas but also his contention that God is self-caused. For Christofidou, the fourth meditation (often dismissed by commentators) is central to Descartes's project. Descartes explains error as a misuse of freedom, but his remarks on freedom are confusing, sometimes suggesting that freedom requires the ability to do otherwise, and sometimes not. …

Seneca. Hardship and Happiness

Abstract: SENECA. Hardship and Happiness. Translated by Elaine Fantham, Harry M. Hine, James Ker, and Gareth D. Williams. In The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, edited by Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014. xxix + 318 pp. Cloth, $55.00--This is the fourth in a set from the University of Chicago Press that purports to be a "fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations [of Seneca] in eight accessible volumes." Previous entries include Seneca's sole scientific work, Natural Questions (2010), Anger, Mercy, Revenge (2010), and On Benefits (2011). Since the release of the present work, the fifth, Lectures on Ethics (2015), has also appeared. Those unfamiliar with Seneca (4 B.C.E.-65 C.E.) will find the introductory essay--which prefaces this and the other volumes--to be a brief yet thorough guide. A wealthy Spaniard by birth, Seneca received a stellar oratorical education at Rome. His genius for administration and political survival catapulted him to the post of Nero's tutor and shadow philosopher-king during the tranquil quinquennium. Later, as a member of the failed conspiracy to supplant the enfant terrible with C. Calpurnius Piso or Seneca himself, he enjoyed a front-row seat to the legendary Julio-Claudian dysfunctions. Seneca's life, like Socrates', ended dramatically: he slit his own veins in a warm tub, choosing suicide over the confiscation of his heirs' property that was de iure for exiled enemies. While Seneca's life ebbed away prematurely, fortunately for students of Stoicism the body of his philosophy has gone from strength to strength. The nine essays of varying length which constitute this volume are introduced individually by their distinguished translators. A very short list for "Further Reading" is also included for each, and a series of brief endnotes immediately follows. These, ranging from as few as twenty-two pages for the shortest treatise, On Leisure, to ninety-six pages for the more substantial Consolation to Marcia, explain points from the text that are philosophically difficult or historically unfamiliar. Note sixty-four to the Consolation to Helvetia, for example, identifies for us the "sister" in the text as "Apparently Helvia's stepsister ... [t]he wife of Gaius Galerius, prefect of Egypt 16-31 CE." Thanks to the authors' erudition and careful editing, these notes are of quite even quality. The translations themselves, as in previous volumes, are a significant improvement over what has been available in English of the previous century. Though John Basore's Loeb series has owned the market for nearly eighty years, it is genuinely surprising, given Seneca's great popularity, how few options are available in English. …

Aristotle, the Pythagoreans, and Structural Realism

Abstract: I Two basic QUESTIONS OF PHYSICS ARE: what is the world made of, and why do these constituents do the things they do? These two questions are closely related. If certain kinds of things are the ultimate constituents of the world, it can only be because their characteristics explain what we observe to be the case. Further, if it were possible to grasp laws or necessary truths that explain absolutely everything, there would be no need to appeal to any kind that underlies those truths or laws; such a move would do no theoretical work. Nonetheless, in the West most scientists have offered explanations that appeal to both what the basic things or stuff are, and the fundamental features they possess or laws they obey. This approach goes back to Aristotle, who insisted that explanation in physics requires identifying both a material substrate and a formal basis for what is to be explained. He argued that this holds in regard to explaining both the existence of substances and the fact that they bear certain attributes. In order to explain both why a substance exists and why a substance does what it does, one must appeal to its essence, as expressed in a definition that includes both matter and form. (1) An event or attribute (such as anger) is to be accounted for both by pointing to the persisting substrate (the blood around the heart) and the form it takes on (a kind of boiling that is the result of perceived anger). (2) Metaphysics 1 tells the story of how, in fits and starts and to varying degrees, earlier thinkers came to realize that explanation demands identifying all four causes, including both the material and formal causes. Aristotle's earliest philosophical predecessors, the Milesians, are credited with offering explanations on the basis of matter. (3) Aristotle criticizes their accounts as radically incomplete on the grounds that matter alone cannot account for all things and their characteristics. For example, it cannot account for goodness or beauty. (4) While the Milesians are said to have identified certain kinds of stuff as basic, Aristotle takes other predecessors, the so-called Pythagoreans, to have done the same for number. Aristotle associates them with the Milesians, insofar as he understands them to give at least some numbers the status of matter. The explanatory strategy of explaining derivative kinds on the basis of the characteristics of the basic kinds is the same; their dispute with the Milesians concerns what basic characteristics are most explanatory. (5) Aristotle is dismissive of the Pythagorean notion of numbers that are not quantities of substances: "[A] number, whatever it is, is always a number of certain things, either of fire or earth or of units." (6) Aristotle dismisses the ontology of the Pythagoreans by indicating the confusion of positing as basic what must inhere in a substrate. Perhaps it is a similar reaction to the notion of a number ontology that has led some contemporary scholars to deny that Philolaus (Aristotle's likely source for Pythagorean number ontology) could have possibly thought that all things are made of number. (7) Aristotle takes the Milesian explanatory strategy to be one of accounting for things on the basis of their being made up of certain stuffs, which, if not identical with the perceived constituents of familiar objects, are at least conceivable along the same lines. Today there are few, if any, neo-Milesians. As Planck wrote: "the physical world has become progressively more and more abstract; purely formal mathematical operations play a growing part, while qualitative differences tend to be explained more and more by means of quantitative differences." (8) Mathematical features are formal. Nonetheless, Planck himself did not follow the path of Aristotle's Pythagoreans. He felt compelled to posit a kind of substrate to physical reality, even though he cautioned that imagining that substrate as like the stuffs or particles familiar from sensation can be highly misleading. …

Plotinus. Ennead V.1: On the Three Primary Levels of Reality

Abstract: PLOTINUS. Ennead V.1: On the Three Primary Levels of Reality. Translated by Eric D. Perl. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2015. 224 pp. Paper, $42.00--Plotinus is one of the most recognizable philosophers of late antiquity (perhaps ranking only behind Augustine in name recognition). Yet in spite of this, his work receives substantially less attention than Plato or Aristotle. In terms of influence, he is unquestionably notable in the history of philosophy, as some of his own treatises (in paraphrased form) were confused for Aristotle's work in the so-called Theology of Aristotle. In addition, he greatly influenced Augustine, Proclus, and Pseudo Dionysus, three figures whose work features prominently in the medieval era. Despite the relative tardiness with which scholars have recognized the extent of Plotinus's influence, the gaps from Aristotle to Augustine, and from Augustine to Aquinas, have steady become more informed--Plotinus's work is certainly crucial for understanding these periods. There are a few translations of the Enneads already available in English, chief among them the Loeb edition by Armstrong. The present volume is part of a recent project to translate most of the Enneads into English along with commentaries. Eric Perl has presented us with a fine translation of Ennead V.1, which is, chronologically speaking, the tenth treatise Plotinus wrote in the corpus. The author has chosen to substitute the title given by Porphyry (Plotinus, we are told in his biography, did not title his works). Thus, rather than "On the Three Principal Hypostases," we have "On the Three Primary Levels of Reality." While this reader is not sure such a move was necessary, Perl justifies it with two reasons. His first reason is that this treatise is principally concerned with the self. However true this statement may be, Perl's substitution does not appear to follow to his own justification, as the new title does not explicitly reference "the self." The second is that (apart from Plotinus never using the term "hypostasis" himself) each level of reality is not as separate from the others as the original title would otherwise suggest. The translation itself is valuable. Consistently in the commentary, Perl notes where his translation is significantly at odds with Armstrong's and provides justification to warrant his alterations. An example of this occurs at 4.34-35. Where Armstrong translates, "These then are primary, Intellect, Being, Otherness, Sameness," Perl translates, "Thus intellect becomes these first: being, difference, sameness." Perl explains this move by pointing out that Plotinus is probably not adding a sixth genus to the megista gene of the Sophist but is rather articulating what the Intellect itself becomes. If Plotinus does not consider himself an innovator of Plato's philosophy, the latter translation seems preferable. One glaring difference between the two translations is that kakon, usually translated as "evil," is here translated as "badness." Perl justifies his choice by citing the narrowed definition which "evil" has taken on in the English language. Kakon, however, can refer to any bad or evil thing. For instance, a teacher who is kakon more likely fails to impart knowledge to his students or instructs them with falsity; it is less likely that he destroys the lives of his students. …

Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History

Abstract: BERNSTEIN, Jeffrey. Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History. New York: SUNY Press, 2015. xxix + 228 pp. Cloth, $85.00; paper, $24.95--Reading Leo Strauss can be an exciting experience. While it is true that Strauss does not appeal to everyone, some readers become captivated when they sense the importance (for their own lives) of the issues Strauss examines. Jeffery Bernstein is one of these readers, and there is a palpable excitement in his ambitious arguments throughout Leo Strauss: On the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History. Bernstein's effort is so ambitious that it is difficult to summarize his complicated argument in a way that is useful for readers who are less familiar with Leo Strauss's contentious legacy and writings. What follows is only an overview of the most accessible highlights. Bernstein's Strauss is an anachronistic philosopher. According to this view, contemporary students of philosophy are unable to appreciate fundamental issues that must be addressed in order to know whether a life guided by human reason is possible, or even desirable. The most important of these issues is the antagonism between philosophy and religion. The existence of a god (or gods) who issues commands to human beings is no longer taken very seriously, and the success of modern liberalism makes it less and less likely that religion will be viewed as anything more than a source of fanaticism for the foreseeable future. The current historical situation occludes from us what was so immediately obvious in former epochs: if there is a god who intervenes in human affairs, or disrupts the physical world, the human attempt to understand politics (or anything else) is impossible. Expressed metaphorically, the contest between Jerusalem and Athens must be wrestled with before either the life of religious belief or that of philosophy can be justified or pursued. For readers of this review who are unfamiliar with Strauss, however, questioning the possibility of philosophy in this seemingly archaic way must sound bizarre. All the more so for those (both believers and nonbelievers) who fail to see any antagonism between matters of private conscience and the more certain grounds of reason that make peaceful political life possible. According to Bernstein, the situation in which the contest between Jerusalem and Athens is no longer seen as important is the result of the influence of those thinkers who compose the history of political philosophy. As Strauss himself came to see the importance of understanding the competing claims of reason and revelation, he was also faced with the difficult task of excavating or "reoriginating" the issue for others. …

Aquinas, Kant, and the Eclipse of Practical Reason

Abstract: Contemporary debates on the nature and scope of practical reason are often framed in terms of the viewpoints of a few major figures in the history of philosophy. Whereas advocates of skeptical or procedural approaches to practical reason generally seek historical support from Hume, defenders of more substantive conceptions of practical rationality tend to draw inspiration from Aristotle or Kant. This paper argues that it is in fact the work of Aquinas which offers the best material for a defense of a substantive conception of practical rationality. After outlining the distinction between procedural and substantive conceptions of practical rationality (employing the positions of Hume and Aquinas as ideal-types of such theories), I turn to Christine M. Korsgaard's rearticulation of a Kantian viewpoint on practical reason. Korsgaard's interpretation of Kant is particularly instructive insofar as it allows for consideration of some assumptions regarding the relationship between nature and normativity which led to the decline of substantive conceptions of practical rationality in modernity. Insofar as the advocate of a Kantian framework accepts such assumptions, I argue, she is less well equipped than the defender of the Thomistic conception to meet necessary constraints on an adequate substantive account. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the way contemporary versions of natural law theory proposed by John Finnis and Mark C. Murphy can meet these constraints and do so without illicitly deriving normative from factual claims. I In general terms, practical reason refers to the capacity for determining, through deliberation or reflection, how one should act. The standpoint of practical reason is accordingly distinctively normative. (1) Given a set of alternatives for action, practical reason is concerned with assessing what it would be best to do, and perhaps also with what one ought to do (in the moral sense). It is thus concerned not only, or primarily, with matters of fact and explanation, but with normative claims about the most desirable course of action. Neo-Humean approaches to practical reason continue to exert a strong influence in contemporary metaethics, moral psychology, and philosophy of action. Such approaches reflect, at the very least, skepticism about the possibility of practical reason offering us noninstrumental reasons for action, and sometimes even skepticism about the very idea of practical reason. (2) The less robust form of skepticism, which allows for the possibility of practical reason but places severe constraints upon its employment, is characterized as proceduralism, insofar as it regards practical reason as instrumental to the realization of goals set by antecedent motivations, inclinations, or desires. (3) For the proceduralist, reasons for action cannot motivate, and practical reason lacks the capacity, or is severely constrained in its capacity, to criticize our reasons for action, understood as what is instrumentally valuable to the attainment of our desires. (4) Substantivism, by contrast, is the thesis that practical reason is capable of evaluating and criticizing our desires. Contemporary versions of substantivism generally set out from Aristotelian or Kantian assumptions on the scope of practical reason. For the substantivist, although we have instrumental reasons for action, we also have noninstrumental ones, which should inform our actions at pain of irrationality. Examples of noninstrumental reasons for action are Kantian universalizable principles and Aristotelian eudaimonia. Both universalizable principles and eudaimonia are reasons which orient reflective deliberation about what action it would be best to perform in a particular circumstance. The above characterization of substantivism follows contemporary orthodoxy in its focus upon the capacity of practical reason to evaluate and criticize our antecedent desires. Yet the capacity of practical reason to carry out evaluation and criticism is severely constrained unless the reasons to which it provides access possess motivational and normative force. …