BMCR 2009.06.46: Maher on Sedley, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. Vol. 34, Summer 2008

David Sedley (ed.), Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. Vol. 34,
Summer 2008.  Oxford/New York:  Oxford University Press, 2008.  Pp.
423;  2 p. of plates.  ISBN 9780199544899.  $50.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Daniel P. Maher, Assumption College ([email protected])
Word count:  2269 words
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The eleven papers in this volume, from long-established scholars such
as Burnyeat and Ferrari as well as relative newcomers, continue the
tradition of serious scholarship, mainly in the analytic tradition, for
which the Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy series is highly
regarded.  Four papers are devoted to Plato, six to Aristotle, and one
to Plotinus.  Nearly all of the contributors specifically thank the
editor, David Sedley, which implies he is to be commended not only for
selecting these articles, but also for improving them.  No single theme
unifies the essays, but most of the papers aim at the correction of
some interpretation that is uniformly or widely shared in recent
scholarship.  It would not be right to call the papers equally weighty,
but each requires serious study and none is for beginners.  Scholars
will want this collection on their own shelves or in a nearby library.

"Socratic Irony as Pretence" G. R. F. Ferrari

Ferrari brings a version of contemporary "pretense theory" of irony to
bear on Socrates.  Specialists in ancient philosophy have not noticed
the inadequacy of the "traditional theory" of irony, which emphasizes a
contrast between a statement's true meaning and its literal meaning.
According to pretense theory, irony involves pretending to be in a
context where one's (actually inappropriate) action or speech would be
appropriate (6).  Socrates pretends, e.g., to be in the presence of
someone superior by being (inappropriately) deferential.  Socratic
irony is "solipsistic" not communicative, since he wants it to go
unnoticed as he disturbs his interlocutor's unfounded self-satisfaction
(16).  Those who see through Socratic irony see what Socrates still
tries to hide (18-19).  Whereas Socrates never drops his irony and aims
to test or improve his interlocutors, Platonic irony needs an
appreciative audience because it aims to be understood (29).  Platonic
writing is self-assertive display, not moral or philosophical
exhortation.  Ferrari's interesting paper makes one wish it were always
as clear as it sometimes is.  At the least, a taxonomy of forms of
irony (solipsistic, everyday, communicative, Platonic, etc.) would
help.  Also, given that Plato is the source of both Socratic irony and
his own markedly different irony, has Ferrari made Socrates the central
victim of Platonic irony?

"Appearances and Calculations:  Plato's Division of the Soul" Jessica
Moss

Moss examines two arguments in Republic X that use internal conflict to
divide the soul into a calculating part and a non-calculating part
(602c-603a and 603e-605c).  Calculation is opposed to a violent
emotional part and to a part that assents to mere appearances.  Moss
takes these [ latter two parts] to be the same, non-calculating part:
appetite plus spirit.  On this reading, pleasures and desires become
(fallible) perceptual states of awareness, and the soul's emotional
evaluations stand in need of correction by calculation (or measurement
or deliberation) since they may be illusions just as some sense
perceptions are.  She defends the non-rational parts as capable of
beliefs, means-end "thinking," and as susceptible to persuasion, but
also as unable to transcend appearances (65).  Reason has its own
desires based on its calculation of what is truly good.  Against many
who would diminish the significance of these passages, she finds in
them the key to Plato's distinction between rationality and
non-rationality.  It is unfortunate that Moss does not address the
chimera image of the soul (588b ff.).  Also, when reading this paper
after Ferrari's, one cannot but be struck by the absence of any appeal
to Socratic irony.

"Glaucon's Challenge and Thrasymacheanism" C. D. C. Reeve

Dissatisfied with received accounts of the beginning of Republic II,
Reeve sets aside most scholarship and presents a fresh reading.  He
examines closely the demand to praise justice Glaucon and Adeimantus
make on Socrates.  This challenge arises secondary to their own
critique of common opinions about justice, which usually go unstated,
but which Thrasymachus presents as his own wisdom.  Reeve takes
Thrasymachus as expressing a naturalistic view of justice based on
egoistic eudaimonism, and he makes a strong case for its internal
consistency.  Reeve sees the Republic as the Socratic response to
Thrasymacheanism as it is (faithfully) restated by Glaucon and
Adeimantus (84-86).  This paper is notable for its careful attention to
the text and serious consideration of the philosophical questions
raised by the text.

"The Copula and Semantic Continuity in Plato's Sophist" Fiona Leigh

Leigh examines Lesley Brown's influential interpretation of uses of
einai in Sophist.  On Brown's view, some copulative uses of esti are
not merely copulative but have existential force, i.e., they are
semantically continuous with complete, existential uses that admit no
complement.  Leigh defends Brown against recent criticism from John
Malcolm as a prelude to her own criticism that this reading is
insufficiently supported by Sophist.  Although this is the shortest
paper in the collection, it makes considerable demands on the reader.
One must juggle murky passages in Sophist concerning whether 'what is
not' is, Brown's reading of those passages, Malcolm's construal of
Brown's reading, Leigh's defense of Brown as (mis-)construed by
Malcolm, and Leigh's own critique of Brown.  Such complexity is not
Leigh's fault, to be sure, but the paper does seem to presuppose fresh
familiarity with Brown's thesis.

"What's the Matter with Prime Matter?" Frank Lewis

Lewis defends the view that Aristotle genuinely endorsed at least most
of what he is traditionally understood to have held about prime matter.
In Lewis's "philosophical reconstruction," prime matter essentially
has only the capacities to be affected by the various occurrent
contraries (hot, cold, wet, dry) of the elemental bodies.  Prime matter
is found only as affected by pairs of these accidental properties and
is the persistent principle underlying, not all substantial change, but
elemental change.  Matter is spoken of in many ways, and Lewis takes
being matter to be "a second-level functional property" that belongs to
something in virtue of its first-level causal powers.  For example,
bronze and wood  both have determinate first-level passive powers for
receiving specific contraries, and thus each has the second-level
functional property of being matter.  Lewis engages a multiplicity of
Aristotelian texts and contemporary interpreters in an illuminating
way; one issue he does not address is the relation between matter and
extension.

"Elemental Teleology in Aristotle's Physics 2.8" Margaret Scharle

Scharle's paper extends much more widely over the corpus than her title
suggests.  Aristotle's puzzling discussion of whether rain falls for
the sake of an end is the focal point for a discussion of multiple
texts.  She rejects both those who argue that rainfall is
non-teleological and those who argue that winter rain falls for the
sake of crop growth.  She emphasizes that natural motions for the sake
of an end must be referred specifically to the nature or natural being
that has the end.  Her own account is that winter rainfall is
teleological in the sense that elemental motions to natural places
imitate the Prime Mover.  This preserves an important sense of cosmic
teleology, without claiming that rain falls to make the crops grow and
without removing the accidental character of rare, summer rain.  The
argument is complex, with a number of moving parts.  She says so much
to make Aristotle's non-biological teleology intelligible that it would
be interesting to know whether she thinks any of his teleology remains
defensible in light of modern and contemporary challenges.

"Alteration and Aristotle's Theory of Change in Physics 6" Damian
Murphy

Murphy examines Aristotle's account of unified change as continuous in
time and as infinitely divisible because time is infinitely divisible.
Murphy defends Aristotle's claim that infinite temporal divisibility
(ITD) holds for all changes by concentrating on the case of alteration
(specifically, change of color).  Alteration presents more difficulties
than does locomotion, due in part to questions about positing an
infinite array of shades of color and in part to texts that have led
many interpreters to deny that Aristotle thinks alterations are
infinitely divisible.  Murphy draws some fine distinctions, e.g.,
between infinite divisibility of a change and infinite divisibility of
the "path" of that change.  The persuasiveness of these fine
distinctions is uneven, not least because the texts are treated in
isolation from consideration of what is at stake philosophically for
Aristotle or for us in these passages.  In the concluding section of
the paper Murphy constricts the scope of his argument for ITD to
changes in color; for other qualitative changes, he says ITD is "not
obviously false" (217).

"Kine^sis vs. Energeia:  A Much-Read Passage in (but Not of)
Aristotle's Metaphysics"  M. F. Burnyeat

This seventy-page article, some thirteen years in the making, devoted
to eighteen lines of Aristotle's Metaphysics, approaches the status of
a short book.  Burnyeat argues that "the Passage" (Met. Theta 6,
1048b18-35), which asserts an exclusive distinction between motion
(kine^sis) and actuality (energeia), is genuinely Aristotelian but does
not belong to Metaphysics; the distinction is unique in Aristotle's
corpus and should not be brought to bear on other parts of it (220,
259).  Ultimately, Burnyeat reconstructs a version of the Passage that
he considers a genuine fragment that was introduced into the text here
perhaps to prevent a misinterpretation (that all actualities are
motions) arising from the identification of motion as one sort of
actuality (1048b8-9).  His argument, with its extensive analysis of
manuscripts, its meticulous attention to detail, and its comprehensive
examination of Aristotle's writings, casts serious doubt on the textual
tradition:  he found no ancient author other than Michael of Ephesus
(Pseudo-Alexander) exhibiting knowledge of the Passage's exclusive
sense of energeia (231-32, 278).  Burnyeat's argument for the Passage's
uniqueness in the corpus also provides support for its authenticity,
especially by showing its affinity to arguments in Nicomachean Ethics
that distinguish pleasure from motion.  However genuine the Passage may
be, it will no longer be possible to treat it as belonging to Theta
without confronting Burnyeat's study.

"Aristotle's Argument for a Human Function" Rachel Barney

Barney attempts to delineate precisely how Aristotle argues for the
claim that human beings do have a function without identifying what
that function is.  She argues that Aristotle alludes to and rejects a
Platonic conception of function as instrumentality (Republic 352d9-e4),
which would render a human being something that some user uses to
accomplish a task (299-300).  Barney resists any reading that would
make the Ethics depend directly on teleological principles from
Aristotle's theoretical treatises.  The ethical argument should be
construed as supportive of natural teleology, not as a deduction from
it.  Barney offers two "complementary" (319) readings of the argument,
the more interesting of which she calls the "realization" argument.
According to this reading, Aristotle invites us to see that the
functions of the various artisans instantiate or realize the good of
the artisans themselves as human beings (not merely as artisans of a
particular type).  The most attractive dimension of this reading is
that, according to it, the human good is not the isolated privilege of
the virtuous few, but it is found in differing modes of realization
throughout the various human lives and even in the good functioning of
the parts of the human body (318).

"Nicomachean Ethics 7.3 on Akratic Ignorance" Martin Pickave/ and
Jennifer Whiting

Pickave/ and Whiting defend the argumentative and textual integrity of
this chapter as a "progressive articulation" of Aristotle's analysis of
akrasia; the price of this interpretation is that one must abandon the
widely shared reading "that Aristotle seeks to explain akratic
behaviour by a failure either to have or to use knowledge of some
particular" (324).  They emphasize Aristotle's claim that the akratic
agent acts voluntarily (1152a6-19), which includes "knowing the
particulars" (1111a22-23).  Akrasia is a genuine problem only when the
agent avoids the kind of ignorance of universals characteristic of vice
and the kind of ignorance of particulars that makes action involuntary
(110b24-1111a26).  The distinctively akratic impairment of knowledge is
revealed only when Aristotle addresses matters phusiko^s (1147a24-b12).
The presence of epithumia (and its effects), the authors say, explains
which universal beliefs get activated or used and which do not; this
preserves the voluntariness and the humanness of akratic action and
shows how the relevant "practical syllogism" issues in action, not in
change of belief (353-56).  This paper goes a long way toward making
the details of Aristotle's text intelligible without explaining away
the puzzling character of akratic action.

"Automatic Action in Plotinus" James Wilberding

"Automatic action" is spontaneous, non-deliberative action in the
sensible world performed by the sage without being drawn away from
contemplation of the intelligible and becoming thereby engrossed in the
world.  Wilberding finds several (not all) Plotinus scholars embracing
this interpretation in passing, without an examination of the evidence
in its favor, an account of its origin in the soul, and a determination
of the limits of this sort of action.  He defends the view that
Plotinus is committed to some important role for automatic action
emerging out of the ascent of the soul, much as art makes possible
intelligent bodily action without deliberation or conscious attention.
In addition to this, he argues that some deliberative (i.e.,
non-automatic) action might still be required and that this mundane
engagement would not necessarily prevent the sage from being
"continually directed to the intelligible" (389-90).  By "continually"
Wilberding means only that the sage does not lose his train of thought
despite interruptions that force him to suspend contemplative activity
intermittently, an interpretation drawn from Porphyry's Life of
Plotinus.  Moreover, some deliberative attention to the "delicate
neglect" of the body is necessary to preserve reason's capacity to look
upward (394-97).  The sage attends to practical action not as genuinely
noble, but as something necessary or compulsory, although Wilberding is
non-committal on just what sort of necessity this is (note 82).  Might
such action be fairly described as, in some important sense, automatic?