BMCR 2009.08.19: Hogg on Brancacci, Studi storiografia filosofica antica. Accademia toscana di scienze e lettere. La Colombaria - Serie Studi 243

Aldo Brancacci, Studi storiografia filosofica antica. Accademia toscana
di scienze e lettere. La Colombaria - Serie Studi 243.  Firenze:  Leo
S. Olschki editore, 2008.  Pp. vi, 161.  ISBN 9788822257727.  EUR 20.00.

Reviewed by Daniel Hogg, University of St Andrews
([email protected])
Word count:  1529 words
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[Contents and correspondence with original publications are listed at
the end of the review.]

The defining focus of Aldo Brancacci's broad and varied career has been
the history of ancient philosophy.[[1]] The key theme of this book is
the methodology of the history of philosophy. In nine chapters,
Brancacci combines studies of modern and late antique doxography,
Italian scholarship in the late twentieth century, and discussions of
method in classical philosophy. Throughout, Brancacci adopts the
positions, sometimes polemically, that have been the keystone of his
work over the last thirty years: that a sense of history is a crucial
element of the study of ancient philosophy; and that to do the history
of philosophy is to do philosophy.[[2]] The work is extremely valuable
for specialists, whether interested in philosophy or its
historiography. I will not discuss each chapter, but will attempt to
provide an overview, selecting examples for illustration.

Brancacci aims with this collection to make available a set of studies
which are otherwise difficult to obtain. He has amplified and
occasionally rewritten versions of articles he has published over the
last three decades, and he has organised them into three triptychs. The
first triptych is a retrospective of Italian historiography of
philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. Brancacci
begins (Chapter 1, 1-18) with a conspectus of Italian scholarship. This
is framed around a discussion of the usefulness of the terms
Presocratic and Preplatonic. In Chapter 2 (19-44), Brancacci analyses
the processes which underpinned the production of Mario Untersteiner's
seminal and controversial work of 1949, I Sofisti. Untersteiner's
approach was radical in its methodology and its conclusions, avoiding
reliance on Plato where possible, and refusing the temptation to unify
individual 'sophists' under an umbrella 'sophistic'. Brancacci argues
that the seeds of this radicalism can be detected in Untersteiner's
previous works, Le origini della tragedia (1942) and La fisiologia del
mito (1946). The picture is vivid, though I felt that the arguments
could have gone deeper at certain points. In particular, Untersteiner's
correspondence is the subject of an extremely interesting footnote at
pp. 42-43 on his arguments with Dupre/el, but not much more, and the
controversy that the book caused receives only brief comment at pp.
43-44. Nevertheless, Brancacci makes his case persuasively. More
obviously personal is Brancacci's account of the career of Giannantoni
(Chapter 3, pp. 45-59), with whom Brancacci began his career (pp.
v-vi). The threads of Giannantoni's publishing, administrative and
personal impact are here woven impressively together.

In the second triptych, Brancacci provides three case-studies of
classical philosophy. Brancacci, who has a close relationship with
French scholarship,[[3]] engages critically with French work on Plato
in chh. 4 & 5, and in Chapter 6 with an Italian article in French on
Aristotle. Brancacci hereby playfully develops the Italocentrism of the
first three chapters. In Chapter 4 (pp. 61-79), Brancacci expounds and
criticises the structuralist argument of Re/mi Brague's 1978 Le
Restant. Through his discussion of the esoteric as a polarity between
what is thought and what is spoken, Brague (says Brancacci) makes
valuable advances, but this polarity forces Brague's interpretation to
rely on what is 'implicit' in a given text (pp. 68-69). Brancacci
objects that Brague's approach also risks conflating literary and
philosophical interpretation (p. 67). Brancacci makes the case (with
Brague) that the Meno contains a degradation of dialectic, but does not
go as far as Brague, who argues that the dialogue provides a
theorisation of the degradation of dialectic. In the following chapter
(Chapter 5, pp. 81-96), Brancacci uses a sympathetic reading of Monique
Dixsaut's 2001 Me/tamorphoses de la dialectique dans les Dialogues de
Platon to expand the narrower interest of the previous chapter. He
provides a very useful discussion of the nature of dialectic across the
dialogues of Plato. Ch. 6 (pp. 97-104) explicates the issue of being
and not being in Aristotle to which Brancacci had referred in passing
in the previous chapter (p. 89).

The third triptych (pp. 105-145) considers the historiography of Cynic
philosophy. Brancacci discusses <greek>a)/skhsis</greek> in chapter 7
(pp. 105-117), using as his foundation a serious (and seriously
critical) engagement with Goulet-Caze/'s 1986 commentary on Diog.
Laert. 6.70-71. The article segues from a criticism of Goulet-Caze/'s
use of fragmentary sources and translation of <greek>po/nos</greek>
(106-108) to a genuine contribution, namely Brancacci's proposal that
logos is an important, though generally unacknowledged, aspect of
Diogenes of Sinope's conception of <greek>a)/skhsis</greek>. The final
two chapters form a pair. In Chapter 8 (pp. 119-130), Brancacci
considers the historical value of Dio of Prusa's 'Diogenian orations',
especially Orat. 6, as sources for the reconstruction of the philosophy
of Diogenes of Sinope. Brancacci is positive, arguing that Dio can be
shown to have known genuine writings of Diogenes. In Chapter 9 (pp.
131-145), Brancacci gives an annotated reading of Themistius' oration
<greek>Peri\ a)reth=s</greek>, preserved only in Syriac. He argues that
Themistius is a much more useful source for Cynic philosophy than has
been realised, ranking him alongside Dio of Prusa, Lucian, Epictetus
and Julian (p. 133). Much of the latter half of the chapter is taken up
by lengthy quotation, of the modern Latin translation and an Italian
translation of Themistius, perhaps necessary for a text which is not
well known. Both chapters are illuminating and authoritative, though
some readers may be sceptical about Brancacci's willingness to name
exact, common and lost texts to which Dio of Prusa, Themistius and
Diogenes Laertius may have had access (pp. 129-130, p. 143).

I will now consider the collection as a whole. The links between
triptychs are effective: chapter 3 ends with dialectic, the subject of
chapter 4, and chapter 7 carries on the engagement with Francophone
scholarship which characterised chh. 4-6. All of the chapters have a
formal similarity, in that their point of departure is an analysis of
the modern status quaestionis combined, in six cases (chh. 2-7), with a
direct engagement with another scholar's arguments. There is a brief
preface, but no introduction or conclusion, so the reader is left to
make connections and draw an overall picture.

The nine chapters are not mere reprints of earlier publications. Take
Chapter 8, which purports to reprise in an amplified form a section of
Brancacci's article produced in pp. 141-171 of Giannantoni's Scuole
socratici minori e filosofia ellenistica of 1977. This indeed reprises
verbatim parts of the second half of the older article, but it also
clarifies ambiguities and shifts Brancacci's position slightly. For
example, the Brancacci of 1977 stated that the typically Cynic
technical terms of Dio of Prusa's sixth oration demonstrated that
passage's Cynic character (pp. 164-5), before using other evidence to
argue that Diogenes of Sinope is the Cynic influence in question. In
2007, Brancacci has made his argument more efficient, taking all the
Cynic traces in the passage to argue that Dio uses Diogenes as a
foundation for this passage (pp. 124-125).

The bibliography has been updated, though not fully. Indeed, Brancacci
suggests at one point that it would be fuori luogo to undertake such a
task (p. 63). Supplements naturally comprise Brancacci's recent output,
though Brancacci also refers to fresh work by other scholars (e.g. pp.
107 n. 5, 128 n. 26). This can sometimes feel selective. In particular,
I felt that there was room for a consistent approach when indicating
where his interlocutors had updated their position. He does this with
Re/mi Brague (p. 63 n. 2), but not with Goulet-Caze/.[[4]] Thus the
collection cannot quite be considered a one-stop shop for those making
their first foray into this literature. Furthermore, while there are
indices locorum and nominum, there is no cumulative bibliography. This
would have been very useful.

My chief reservation about this book is whether a series of
case-studies on a wide range of themes can really stand quite as
unsupported, without introduction or conclusion, as these chapters are.
In covering such a variety of material in just 145 pages, Brancacci has
also given the work an allusive quality which can frustrate.
Nevertheless, this collection possesses a clear, if rather implicit,
organising framework. Brancacci's style is very enjoyable to read. He
stands as a persuasive exponent of the importance of studying the past,
whether ancient or modern.[[5]] [[6]]

Contents:

Ch. 1: Presocratici/preplatonici. Contributo a un bilancio di
cinquant'anni di storiografia filosofica in Italia [Omaggio a Carlo
Augusto Viano edd. E. Donaggio & E. Pasini, Bologna: Il Mulino 2000:
43-55]
Ch. 2: I sofisti di Mario Untersteiner. [L'etica della ragione. Ricordo
di Mario Untersteiner edd. A.M. Battegazzore & F. Decleva Caizzi,
Milano: Cisaplino: 97-123]
Ch. 3: Gli studi di filosofia antica di Gabriele Giannantoni. [Elenchos
21 (2000): 39-55]
Ch. 4: A proposito del Menone platonico. [Elenchos 2 (1981): 193-210]
Ch. 5: Monique Dixsaut. Interprete della dialettica di Platone.
[Elenchos 26 (2005): 403-419]
Ch. 6: L'opposizione tra essere e non essere in Aristotele. [from
'Studi recenti sulla Metafisica di Aristotele', Elenchos 6 (1985):
163-179]
Ch. 7: Askesis e logos nella tradizione cinica. [Elenchos 8 (1987):
439-447]
Ch. 8: Le orazioni diogeniane di Dione Crisostomo. [from an article in
Scuole socratici minori e filosofia ellenistica, ed. G. Giannantoni,
Bologna: Il Mulino: 141-171]
Ch. 9: Temistio e il cinismo. [Elenchos 21 (2000): 381-296]
------------------
Notes:


1.   E.g. (recently) Aldo Brancacci and Pierre-Marie Morel (eds.),
Democritus: Science, the Arts, and the Care of the Soul, Brill, 2007;
Aldo Brancacci, Musica e filosofia da Damone a Filodemo: sette studi.
Accademia toscana di scienze e lettere La Colombaria - Serie Studi 245.
Firenze: Leo S. Olschki editore, 2008.

2.   Brancacci, A. (ed.) Philosophy and Doxography in the Imperial Age.
Accademia toscana di scienze e lettere La Colombaria - Studi 228.
Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2005, p. vii.

3.   See e.g. Aldo Brancacci, Antisthe\ne. Le discours propre, Vrin,
Paris 2005 and his contribution in M.-O. Goulet-Caze/ & R. Goulet
(eds.) Le cynicisme ancien et ses prolongements, Actes du colloque
international du CNRS (Paris, 22-25 juillet 1991), Paris: PUF, 1993:
pp. 35-55.

4.   Ch. 7 might have made brief reference to, for example,
Goulet-Caz's edition in 1997 of The Cynics. The Cynic Movement and its
Legacy with Bracht Branham.

5.   Typically for the Leo Olschki publishing house, the book is
attractively produced and competitively priced. However, translation of
longer Greek passages varies within and between articles. Older
articles keep the Greek, and sometimes translate it too (e.g. Chapter
4); newer articles, such as Chapter 5, sometimes include passages of
Italian in place of Greek (e.g. 84, 84-85). There are only a few minor
typographical errors, normally clustered together (e.g. pp. 30-32,
89-90, 110-111).

6.   I would like to thank Stephen Halliwell, Alex Long and Julietta
Steinhauer for reading and commenting on earlier drafts. All
inaccuracies, ambiguities and errors are mine.