BMCR 2009.04.78: Dillon on Scott, Maieusis: Essays in Ancient Philosophy in Honour of Myles Burnyeat

Dominic Scott (ed.), Maieusis: Essays in Ancient Philosophy in Honour
of Myles Burnyeat.  Oxford/New York:  Oxford University Press, 2007.
Pp. xi, 425.  ISBN 9780199289974.  $120.00.

Reviewed by John Dillon, Trinity College Dublin ([email protected])
Word count:  1601 words
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This is indeed a most distinguished collection of essays, befittingly
in honour of a most distinguished recipient. Myles Burnyeat has been
for decades now acknowledged as one of the most outstanding minds of
his generation in the area of ancient philosophy. Personally, I have
always found him a formidable intellect to encounter, but one full of
courtesy and consideration, as well as restlessly interested in corners
of the ancient intellectual world with which he might not previously
have concerned himself, such as later Neoplatonism, but on which he
could always bring acute insights to bear.

This collection reflects many, though not all, of his interests,
starting from Platonic epistemology and ethics, and extending forward
to Aristotle and Hellenistic thinkers. Of the nineteen contributors,
seven (Hankinson, Harte, Hobbs, Johansen, Lane, Notomi, and the editor,
Dominic Scott, are former students), while of the others, another seven
(Sorabji, Denyer, Lloyd, McCabe, Schofield, Sedley, Wardy) are former
colleagues at London or Cambridge, the remaining five (Barnes, Bobzien,
Broadie, Cooper, Nehamas) being friends and collaborators from
elsewhere. One can see from this roll-call what a feast of
philosophical speculation is in store for the reader.

I will first list the papers in order, and then make some comments upon
them:

1. Mary Margaret McCabe, 'Looking Inside Charmides' Coat: Seeing Others
and Oneself in Plato's Charmides'.
2. John M. Cooper, 'Socrates and Philosophy as a Way of Life'.
3. Melissa Lane, 'Virtue as the Love of Knowledge in Plato's Symposium
and Republic'.
4. David Sedley, 'Equal Sticks and Stones'.
5. Nicolas Denyer, 'The Phaedo's Final Argument'.
6. Alexander Nehamas, 'Beauty of Body, Nobility of Soul: The Pursuit of
Love in Plato's Symposium'.
7. Dominic Scott, 'Eros, Philosophy, and Tyranny'.
8. Robert Wardy, 'Virgil's Sacred Duo: Phaedrus' Symposium Speech and
Aeneid IX'.
9. Angela Hobbs, 'Plato on War'.
10. Verity Harte, 'Language in the Cave'.
11. Malcolm Schofield, 'Metaspeleology'.
12. Sarah Broadie, 'Why no Platonistic Ideas of Artefacts?'
13. Noburu Notomi, 'Plato on What is Not'.
14. Thomas Johansen, 'The Soul as an Inner Principle of Change: The
Basis of Aristotle's Psychological Naturalism'.
15. Suzanne Bobzien, 'Aristotle's De Interpretatione 8 is about
Ambiguity'.
16. Jonathan Barnes, 'Sextan Scepticism'.
17. G.E.R. Lloyd, 'The Wife of Philinus, or the Doctors' Dilemma:
Medical Signs and Cases and Non-deductive Inference'.
18. R.J. Hankinson, 'Self-Refutation and the Sorites'.
19. Richard Sorabji, 'Ideas Leap Barriers: The Value of Historical
Studies to Philosophy'.

The volume is completed by a valuable list of Burnyeat's publications,
and a set of indices.

This is a formidable line-up, on an admirably well-connected sequence
of topics. By way of beginning, M.M. McCabe focuses on the argument of
Charmides 166-9, and the distinction between 'knowledge of the self'
and 'self-knowledge'. She has most stimulating remarks to make on the
status of perception. This is followed by a useful discussion by John
Cooper, taking off from Pierre Hadot's writings on philosophy as a way
of life in antiquity, which shows how this conception properly goes
back to Socrates, for whom "it consisted in constant and continued
philosophizing: that is to say, in discussion and critical examination
of one's own and others' opinions on questions of human life, and how
best to lead it" (p.42). This is turn leads well into the essay of
Melissa Lane, taking off from a remark of Alexander Nehamas that there
is a paradox in respect of Socrates, in that Plato regards him as
perhaps the best (i.e. most virtuous) man who ever lived, but virtue,
on his own account, requires knowledge, and this Socrates denies that
he possesses. Lane's solution is most plausible: Socrates may be
regarded as possessing the natural virtues, as set out (by himself) in
Republic VI, 485a- 487a.

On a rather different tack, David Sedley and Nicholas Denyer address
various aspects of the doctrine of Forms in the Phaedo. Sedley analyses
in detail the argument from physical 'equals' to the Equal Itself at
74a9-c6, with sound remarks on the conundrum of auta ta isa at 74c.
Denyer takes on the 'final argument' (95e-107a), showing it to be
rather more persuasive than it is often taken to be. I still do not
see, though, that anything more is proven than that soul in general
cannot perish; the specific soul of Socrates is another matter.

Changing the subject yet again, Alexander Nehamas treats us to an
extended (37pp.) and thought-provoking meditation on the theory of
Beauty in the Symposium, and in particular the implications of the
ladder of ascent to the Beautiful Itself. I quite agree with him, as
against Gregory Vlastos, that the philosophic lover does not just
exploit and then discard his beloved boy as he 'ascends', despite some
rather misleading language by Plato; while in a somewhat complementary
essay, Dominic Scott makes the interesting point that the philosopher
and the tyrant, while polar opposites, are both extremists, as being in
the grip of one or other form of eros, and thus both essentially
anti-social; which is why the philosopher has to be forced to return to
the Cave.

The sequence continues with a fine meditation by Angela Hobbs on
whether Plato regards war as inevitable in human society. She
concludes, I think correctly, that in an ideal world where all states
were run by philosopher-kings warlike impulses would be transcended,
but admits that anywhere short of that, Plato envisages war, and
prepares for it.

There follow two stimulating essays on aspects of the Cave analogy in
the Republic. Verity Harte focuses on the intriguing problem of the
language of the prisoners -- what they talk about, to what objects they
are referring (e.g. how do they know to refer to the shadow of a model
of an ox as 'ox'?). In all this she perhaps presses Plato's allegory
rather harder than he intended, but her discussion is no less
interesting for that. Malcolm Schofield, for his part, tries to
disentangle two strands of allegory that Plato is combining here: a
critique of the democratic polis and an analysis of the
sense-perceptible realm.

Following these, we have a number of essays which, while still
concerning Plato, move beyond him into a discussion of Aristotle and
the Academy. Sarah Broadie, starting from the Aristotelian critique of
the Ideas, wonders why Plato and his successors rejected the
possibility of Ideas of artifacts, and doubts that Xenocrates'
'eternalist' interpretation of the Timaeus is an improvement over a
more literal, 'creationist', version. I must say I don't see the force
of this; Xenocrates' demythologized Nous-Monad seems to me just as
coherent a concept as Aristotle's Unmoved Mover.

Noburu Notomi addresses the question of Not-Being as it is set out in
the Sophist, developing creatively the 'joint illumination' or 'parity
assumption' first identified by G.E.L. Owen. For Notomi, the structural
parity of the arguments about 'what is not' and 'what is' is more than
a mere literary device; it is the key to understanding what Plato is
doing in the dialogue. He ends, interestingly, by seeking some
enlightenment on the unspeakability of 'what is not' from Damascius,
that master of ineffability from later antiquity.

With Thomas Johanssen we turn to Aristotle. Starting from one of Myles
Burnyeat's seminal articles, that on 'De Anima II 5' (Phronesis 47
[2002]), he gives a convincing account of how the soul is the efficient
cause even in the case of perception, where this honour might seem to
be accorded to the external object. Still on Aristotle, Suzanne
Bobzien, on a logical topic, sets out to argue, against such
authorities as John Ackrill and C.W.A. Whitaker, that De
Interpretatione 8 is in fact concerned with homonymy, and specifically,
homonymy as it may occur in dialectical arguments; and I think she
proves her point.

Bobzien in an end-note thanks Jonathan Barnes for 'incisive comments'
on her paper; and the next paper is a characteristically lively effort
by Barnes himself, dissecting the specific features of the skepticism
professed by Sextus Empiricus in the Outines of Pyrrhonism. Barnes has
a rather poor opinion of Sextus' consistency, and he makes a persuasive
case.

We have next a fine essay from Geoffrey Lloyd, also taking off from an
article of Burnyeat's ('The Origins of Non-Deductive Inference'),
studying the use of arguments that are less than syllogistically valid,
in that still neglected body of works (but one which Lloyd had made his
own) the Hippocratic Corpus. The details of various patients' urine
samples, including those of the wife of Philinus, hardly make jolly
reading, but the analysis of the texts is superb. This is followed in
turn by a most useful essay by R.J. Hankinson on the Sorites argument
and its importance -- or more precisely, the importance of its
refutation -- for Stoic logic. I must say I rather like what I take to
be Chrysippus' suggestion (reported by Sextus, p. 360) that the Sage,
faced with a Sorites, will at a certain stage simply keep silent --
though I'm not sure if that entirely solves the problem!

The collection is rounded off by a most stimulating meditation by
Richard Sorabji on the transferability and preservation of
philosophical concepts, drawing on his own vast experience and his many
conversations with the honorand. His conclusion that philosophy does
not 'advance' like a science, but more in the way that art might be
seen to do-- a thought borrowed from Burnyeat (p. 389) -- fittingly
brings this excellent volume to a close.

The list of Burnyeat's publications at the end is also most useful to
have, and remind us what the world of ancient philosophy owes him.