|
Rembrandt, Aristotle
Contemplating a Bust of Homer |
PHILOSOPHY
PAGES |
|
The
above image from 1653 (for enlargement click here)
gives at least part of one early modern artist’s
interpretation of Aristotle interpreting Homer. But any
statement about the opinions of the earliest
Presocratic “philosophers” that has been made by
anyone after Aristotle’s own time must similarly be viewed as an
interpretation of him interpreting those
figures. That is to say, all of our
information about their opinions, if not about all
aspects of them such as their practical
achievements, ultimately derives either from statements about them that he made
by way of comparing them with his own opinions in his works Metaphysics,
Physics, On the Heavens, and others, or from a now-lost work on
their opinions by his student and successor as head of the Peripatetic school
Theophrastus, whom we must assume was heavily influenced by his intellectually
dominating mentor. Therefore any
subsequent statement about them must perforce entail an interpretation of his
interpretation.
That circumstance, to be sure, has
usually been downplayed, as if what Aristotle said about the Milesian
But this assumption is immediately
seen to be wanting as soon as we realize a fact, long understood by
philologists, that when Aristotle said the Milesians had said a given material
was the “principle and element” of things, he may have gotten “principle” (in
the sense of “origin”) right, but he used a technical term for “element”
(stoicheion) which simply had not been available in their time. That is to say, he interpreted
whatever they had said was the relation of the chosen material to the world as
being the relation of constituency.
His interpretation may or may not have been close to the actual relation,
but in any case it was an interpretation.
Moreover, there are some grounds
to suspect that Aristotle’s interpretation of the Milesians was biased. We may grant that he was probably the
most intelligent thinker to have existed up to his time (and more so than most
of us after), but still he was human and therefore subject to bias. And it is easy to see where bias could
creep in, because his discussion of earlier philosophers was by way of
representing them as groping toward his own philosophy. That philosophy included saying that
everything has a “material cause,” such as the bronze of a statue. So when for example he contemplated
Thales saying that the fundamental principle of the world was in some sense
water (for which we have zero testimony other than what Aristotle himself says),
he might have simply neglected any aspect of the earlier theory that did not
specify water as a material constituent of the world.
Indeed, one can perhaps convict
Aristotle by negative example. Namely, he says of the slightly later
thinker Heraclitus that he held fire to be the principle in the same sense that
Thales held it to be water. Now we
do have some of Heraclitus’s own words, transmitted by people who were
independent of the Aristotelian tradition.
What he said about fire was statements like “neither gods nor humans
created this world order, the same for all; rather it always was, is, and will
be ever-living fire, being kindled in measures and being extinguished in
measures.” One can choose to interpret this
oracular-sounding declaration as indicating that fire is the material
constituent of things (as does Jonathan Barnes, to take a leading recent
example), but most of us will think that it invokes a quasi-mystical notion of
“living” fire which, to be sure, does partake of the realm of quantitative
measurement. Surely something is
being left out of the equation when we claim, with Aristotle, that to Heraclitus
the relation of fire to the world was neither more nor less than that of bronze
to a statue.
That opens up a wealth of
possibilities, but historically, most scepticism of the traditional,
neo-Aristotelian interpretation of the Milesians has taken the particular form
of asking whether or not their advance beyond the myth-making of the earlier
Homeric and Hesiodic poems was qualitative, as opposed to simply
incremental. In other words, if Aristotle contemplated Homer as
Rembrandt has it (and as he indeed did in his Poetics), perhaps he should
not have made a hard and fast distinction between such activity and what he
thought the Presocratics did.
Another issue for which Aristotle
cannot be held responsible, but for which moderns have less excuse, is claiming
that the Milesians were really the first to say what they said. Perhaps they were so within
Thus in the 1980s I wrote two
pieces on these issues:
* “Syntactical Ambiguity at
Taittirīya Upaniçad 2.1,” Indo-Iranian Journal 29 (1986),
97-102. This short article takes as
its point of departure a claim by Charles Kahn in his 1979 book The Art and
thought of Heraclitus, to the effect that Heraclitus used syntactical
ambiguity as a means to enhance the import of his sayings. My paper argues that there is a
comparable example in an ancient Sanskrit text that was composed in the general
era of the early Presocratics.
* “Concerning Milesian ‘Science’
in the Context of Archaic Literature Generally.” This is a background essay for a paper I
read at the annual meeting of the International Society for the Comparative
Study of Civilizations, in
It is also of interest to examine
how people writing on the Presocratics between Aristotle’s time and our own have
treated these questions. Here I
have written two works:
* “Hegel and the Milesian ‘Origin
of Philosophy,’” Classical and Modern Literature 13 (1993), 241-56. This article observes that Hegel’s
(subsequently influential) adoption of the neo-Aristotelian hermeneutic which
makes the Milesians the “first philosophers” is predicated on two
assumptions. First, in
contradistinction to his predecessors in history of philosophy such as
Tiedemann, who saw the earliest personified principles cited in Hesiod’s
Theogony as structurally similar to the Presocratic idea of archē
(“principle”), Hegel draws a rigid distinction (in fact even more rigid than
Aristotle himself had drawn) based on the formal criterion that Hesiod’s work
had constituted religion. Second,
although he was more knowledgeable about ancient Indian philosophy than his
predecessors had been, he failed to see that the fragments of the Milesians had
structural parallels, not with Indian classical philosophy, but with the
pre-“philosophical” Upanishads.
This is because he simply dismissed the latter as
“religion.”
* “Averroës on Aristotle’s
Criticism of his Predecessors: An annotated translation of the long
commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics A.” This work, which I completed in March,
2007, is a translation of the Arabic text of Averroës’s commentary on the
portions of Metaphysics A dealing with the “causes” of things in the
world posited by the Presocratics, together with detailed annotations and with
concluding remarks. It is otherwise
unpublished and can be read here.
Peripherally, just to be complete,
I have one other published paper on ancient philosophy, “Diogenes Laertius on
Aeschines the Socratic’s Works,” Hermes 129 (2001), 142-44. (There is a typographical error: in the first paragraph
Ðåñóáῖïöçóéò
should
be
Ðåñóáῖïò.)
This note is not about a
Presocratic, but rather an actual follower of Socrates, and simply argues
against the common interpretation of the text of the doxographer Diogenes
Laertius that he accuses the man of plagiarism.
Here
is a select bibliography of relevant work by others, in reverse chronological order
(last updated
*Daniel
Graham, Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific
Philosophy (
*André
Laks, Introduction à la “philosophie présocratique” (Paris,
2006). I
have not yet had access to this book, but according to John Palmer’s review (in
Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.06.42) it offers critical
analyses of, among other concepts, the very categories “Presocratic” and
“philosophy” as they apply to the thinkers of interest, in a manner that “draws
upon and synthesizes” recent articles by the author. Of these I mention in particular
“Remarks on the Differentiation of Early Greek Philosophy,” in Philosophy and
the Sciences in Antiquity, ed. R. W. Sharples
(Aldershot and Burlington, 2005), 8-22. Here Laks
argues such points as that the category “philosophy” can have meaning to us in
discussing the Presocratics even if it did not to them themselves, and that, as
against counterposing it to myth, “myth is not a
genre, but a function” (19).
(However, according to Palmer the 2006 volume also analyzes the concept
“origin” in the Milesian origin of Presocratic philosophy and says it is a
fallacy to believe that this origin had, in Palmer’s words, “genuine
determinative efficacy.”) See also
the 2001 entry for Laks below, on an issue that Palmer
does not cite as being included in the book.
*Jørgen
Mejer, “Ancient Philosophy and the Doxographical Tradition,” in A Companion
to Ancient Philosophy (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy 31), ed. M. L.
Gill and P. Pellegrin (
*Peter
Manchester, The Syntax of Time. The
Phenomenology of Time in Greek Physics and Speculative Logic from Iamblichus to Anaximander (Leiden and Boston, 2005). The author works backward
from the view of the phrase “taxis of time” (where he renders
taxis, generally construed as “arrangement,” as “syntax”) on the part of
the neo-Platonist Iamblichus, through Parmenides and
Heraclitus, to Anaximander’s original use in his sole surviving
fragment. Manchester avers (pp. 150-51) that at least in the case of
the latter, the taxis is able to shape nature by collecting its processes
into the reciprocity of the cosmic oppositions suggested by the fragment, while
time itself gives taxis to the “boundless” (apeiron) entity that Anaximander posited as the basic
principle. (But as to whether the fragment really means that time
arranges something, rather than something arranging time, see the entry for
Colaclidès below.)
*Dirk
Couprie’s website, dirkcouprie.nl, is probably the most
complete resource available concerning the key figure of Anaximander in
particular. Couprie himself largely adheres
to the traditional view of the Milesians that I question herein, but his site’s
bibliography (containing entries up to 2005 as of July, 2007) is rather
comprehensive.
*Michael
Gagarin, “Greek Law and the Presocratics,” in Presocratic
Philosophy.
Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos,
eds. V. Caston and D. W. Graham (Aldershot, 2002), 19-24. Apart from speaking of the
taxis of time, the Anaximander fragment says that entities in the world
“pay the penalty to one another for their injustice,” and this use of a
nominally social concept is generally considered to be
metaphorical. However, while still thinking of the citation in that
general way, Gagarin allows that it may have been influenced by contemporary
notions of social justice, and that the idea in Anaximander was thereby
procedural in character as opposed to a principle.
*Patricia
Curd, “The Presocratics as
Philosophers,” in Qu’est-ce que la Philosophie
Présocratique?
What
is Presocratic Philosophy?,
ed. A. Laks and C. Louguet
(Villeneuve-d’Ascq, 2002), 115-38. This article
focusing on the post-Milesian figures Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Xenophanes argues that it is wrong to consider “the
Presocratics” to have thought poetically or mystically and that their thinking
emerges as rational and naturalistic if we do not expect too much of
it.
*Cecelia Martini, “La tradizione araba della Metafisica di Aristotele
Libri á-A,”
in Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella tradizione araba: atti del Colloquio La ricezione araba ed ebraica della filosofia e della scienza greche, Padova, 14-15 maggio 1999
(Padua, 2002), 75-112. This
article in Italian treats the extent to which accurate content of the key text
for Presocratic opinions, Book A of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, was actually
available to the medieval Arabic commentators.
*André
Laks, “Écriture, prose, et les débuts de la philosophie grecque,” Methodos, 1 (2001) (an on-line journal: the URL for this article is http://methodos.revues.org/document139.html). This
article in French reviews the issues surrounding the claim sometimes made that
prose writing was necessary for the onset of rational thought. In particular it points out that prose
was the form used not only by the Milesians but also by their contemporary Pherecydes of
*Emil
Angehrn, Der Weg zur Metaphysik. Vorsokratik.
Platon. Aristoteles
(Weilerswist, 2000). Angehrn’s treatment in German of the Anaximander fragment
(pp. 84-89) is an elegant formulation of the claim that its underlying
metaphysics cannot be solely descriptive in character, but has a
prescriptive aspect.
*Ivan
Gobry, La cosmologie des Ioniens (Paris,
2000). This
recent view in French stressing a mythical aspect in Milesian thought suggests
that Anaximander’s “apeiron” notion was similar to the
tohuwabohu initial state cited in Genesis 1:1,
and that the water principle of Thales is reminiscent of the symbolic value
assigned to the substance in hunter-gatherer cultures.
*Cameron
Shelley, “The Influence of Folk Meteorology in the Anaximander Fragment,”
Journal of the History of Ideas 61 (2000), 1-17 (for those with access to
the Project MUSE service, read the article here
[html] or here
[pdf]). This is a novel proposal that
Anaximander’s notion of justice, far from stemming from an abstract division of
the world into nature and society and then from their comparison, was actually
suggested to him by everyday events, particularly the
weather.
*Walter
Burkert, “The Logic of Cosmogony” in From Myth to
Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek Thought, ed. R. Buxton
(
*Roger
Arnaldez, Averroes: A rationalist in
Islam, transl. D. Streight (Notre Dame, 2000
[French 1998]). A readable treatment of the philosopher, Aristotle
commentator (for which see pp. 31-78), theologian, and
jurist.
*Jonathan
Barnes, The Presocratic philosophers (London and New York, 1999
[1982]). The most recent comprehensive treatment of the Presocratics from a
completely traditional point of view.
*Steven
Harvey, “Conspicuous by His Absence: Averroes’ Place
Today as an Interpreter of Aristotle,” in Averroes and the Aristotelian Tradition, ed.
G. Endress and J. A. Aertsen
(Leiden, Boston and Köln, 1999. One of the
suppressed truths of the history of philosophy is that, although such works as
the commentaries of Boethius on logical questions were
transmitted in the West through medieval times, on physical and metaphysical
questions there was no substantial tradition that did not pass through the
Arabic writers. This article treats one aspect of the
suppression.
*Jean
Jolivet, “From the beginnings to Avicenna” and Alfred
Ivry, “Averroes,” in
Medieval Philosophy, ed. J. Marenbon (London
and New York, 1998), 29-48 and 49-64, respectively. Two scholarly
articles on the Arabic component of the history of
philosophy.
*Albert
de Jong, Traditions of the Magi. Zoroastrianism in
Greek and Latin Literature (Leiden and New York,
1997). The classical world already speculated on the influence of
Zoroastrianism, and this is a source book on the
point.
*Laurence
Bauloye, “La traduction arabe de la
Métaphysique et l'établissement du texte grec,” in Aristotelica
secunda: Mélanges offerts à Chritian Rutten (Liège, 1996),
281-89. The Arabic translation used by Averroës for most of his
commentary on the Metaphysics antedates the earliest of our extant Greek
manuscripts. Bauloye is the latest scholar to stress the often
ignored point that it thereby offers assistance in deciding between their
readings at a given location in the text. She also notes that some
authorities who claim to take the issue into account (in particular Jaeger) only
do so partially.
*Aristotle
transformed: the ancient commentators and their influence, ed. R. Sorabji (Ithaca, 1990). The essential starting
point for research on Aristotle’s Greek commentators. (added
*G.
S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic philosophers: a
critical history with a selection of texts, 2nd ed. (Cambridge,
1983). A commonly used reference for the texts of the most important
Presocratic fragments.
*Herbert
S. Long, “The Milesian School of Philosophy,” Ultimate Reality and
Meaning 3 (1980), 256-63. This article takes a semi-traditional view of
the Milesians, but nonetheless denies that Anaximander made a distinction
between nature and society (as is implied when one considers the citation of
justice in the surviving fragment to be metaphorical), saying that the fragment
“obscures” human ethics and morals.
*Pierre
Colaclidès, “Sur le sens d’une phrase d’Anaximandre,”
in Langue, discours, société;
pour Émile Benveniste,
ed. J.
Kristeva, J.-C. Milner and N. Ruwet (Paris, 1975), 41-43. This is a linguistic
argument that the “taxis of time” phrase in the surviving Anaximander
fragment does not refer to the metaphysically-construed concept of time
arranging things, as the traditional interpretation assumes, but rather to some
agency arranging time. This possibility has been ignored by virtually
everyone who has since spoken on the fragment, including the authors cited
above.
M.
L. West, Early Greek philosophy and the Orient (Oxford, 1971). A
treatment of the allegation that the latter influenced the
former.
*Michael
C. Stokes, “Hesiodic and Milesian Cosmogonies - II,” Phronesis 8 (1963), 1-34. A detailed study of
possible continuity between Hesiod’s Theogony and what is attributed to
the Milesians.
*George
P. Conger, “Did
Services:
*I will carefully consider comments
on the site or on my work published elsewhere; send them here.
|
*If you want to learn
whether or not some concept or scholar’s name is included within the site
and don’t mind a modicum of commercial advertising on the results page,
FreeFind will conduct the search indicated on
the right. (Use "+" or "AND" for a combination, quotation marks for a
phrase. Type a diacritical directly if your keyboard allows it or else
enter "?".) |