Passionate Mind: Essays in Honor of John M. Rist 3896658573, 9783896658579

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Passionate Mind’s Contributors
Passionate Mind: Essays In Honor Of John M. Rist
Table of Contents
Abbreviations
Part 1. About John Michael Rist
John M. Rist, in Lieu of an Introduction • John C. McCarthy
Curriculum Vitae • John M. Rist
On The Trail Of Animal Academicum (1956–2013) • John M. Rist
Part 2. Ancient Philosophy
To Be and Not To Be in Plato’s Sophist • Denis O’Brien
Aristotle's Handling of endoxa in Nicomachean Ethics 9.4 and Eudemian Ethics 7.6 • Arthur Madigan
What kind of Stoic are you? The case of Marcus Aurelius • Brad Inwood
Plutarch, Plotinus and the Zoroastrian Concept of the Fravashi • John Dillon
Virtue With and Without Philosophy in Plato and Plotinus • Lloyd P. Gerson
Part 3. Patristics And Biblical Criticism
Gregory of Nyssa and Platonism • Enrico Peroli
Evaluating Augustine’s ‘proof for God’ in De Civitate Dei 8.6 • Barry David
“Socii ad participationem boni.” De Civitate Dei 19: the way of Augustine towards peace • Luigi Alici
Augustine’s Criticism of Philosophers in De Trinitate 4, and Its Epistemological Implications • Giovanni Catapano
The God of Both Testaments? • Ronald K. Tacelli
Part 4. Ethics
On Teaching And Reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics • Robert Sokolowski
Aristotle's Moral Realism: Phronesis in Nicomachean Ethics 6 • Edward Halper
Plato’s Republic and Its Contemporary Relevance in the Ethics of Rist and MacIntyre • Thomas M. Osborne
Augustine and Codes of Life • Miles Hollingworth

Citation preview

Barry David [ed.]

Passionate Mind Essays in Honor of John M. Rist

ACADEMIA

Barry David [ed.]

Passionate Mind Essays in Honor of John M. Rist

ACADEMIA

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The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de ISBN

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data David, Barry Passionate Mind Essays in Honor of John M. Rist Barry David (ed.) 414 pp. Includes bibliographic references. ISBN

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1st Edition 2019 © Academia Verlag within Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden, Germany 2019. This work is subject to copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Under § 54 of the German Copyright Law where copies are made for other than private use a fee is payable to “Verwertungs­gesellschaft Wort”, Munich. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Nomos or the editor. Visit our website www.academia-verlag.de

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Acknowledgements

Many persons, institutions and organizations have made this volume’s publication possible. To begin with, exceptional gratitude is offered to each of Passionate Mind’s contributors not only for their entries but also for their great patience and co-operation in overcoming a number of challenges encountered along the way. Concerning these matters, I am especially appreciative for the help I received from Dr. Edward Halper. Special thanks is also directed to those institutions, organizations and individuals that have facilitated this volume by their generous financial support. In this regard, gratitude is expressed not only to those mentioned above but also to the Department of Classics at the University of Toronto (particularly to Dr. Jonathan Burgess), the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto (especially to Dr. Isabelle Cochelin) and anonymous donors. Finally, considerable thanks is extended to the publishing team at Nomos, Academia/Verlag, in particular to Dr. Steffen Burk and Ms. Alexandra Beutelmann, for their immense help in bringing this volume to fruition, and to some anonymous readers for their insightful comments at an earlier juncture in this project’s development.

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Passionate Mind’s Contributors (listed in alphabetical order):

1.) Luigi Alici: Via Mazzini 11, I-63844, Grottazzolina (FM), Italy. [email protected] Luigi Alici earned his Ph.D. (Philosophy) in 1973 at the University of Perugia where he subsequently served as Research Fellow (1973–1980), Permanent Researcher (1980–1988), and Associate Professor of Moral Philosophy (1988–1995) in the Faculty of Philosophy and Human Sciences. In 1995, he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Macerata, Department of Humanistic Studies. His research activity arises from a re-reading of St. Augustine’s thought in conjunction with contemporary philosophical issues. In this respect, his scholarly work focuses on the relationship between interiority and intentionality, and communication and action, paying increasing attention, from the perspective of morality, to topics like the connection between personal identity, relationality, reciprocity, and affective bonds. 2.) Giovanni Catapano: Via Achille Grandi 8, I-33170, Pordenone (PN), Italy. [email protected] Giovanni Catapano is Associate Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Padua. His research focuses especially on Augustine, and he has authored the following books: L'idea di filosofia in Agostino, Guida bibliografica (Il Poligrafo, 2000); Il concetto di filosofia nei primi scritti di Agostino, Analisi dei passi metafilosofici dal Contra Academicos al De uera religione (Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2001)—which was awarded the Prize of the Pontifical Academies in 2005; and Agostino (Carocci, 2010). Dr.

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Catapano has also translated into Italian and commented on Plotinus' treatise On Virtues (Pisa University Press, 2006), with a foreword by John Rist. 3.) Barry David: Ave Maria University, 5050 Ave Maria Boulevard, Ave Maria, Florida, 34142–9505, USA. [email protected] Barry David is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair Emeritus of the Philosophy Department at Ave Maria University. He has written several articles on medieval philosophy, ranging from Augustine to Aquinas, and on related topics in ethics and metaphysics. Dr. David is co-editor of Aquinas the Augustinian (2007) and author of Pursuing and Praising God; Augustine’s Confessions (2019). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto (2000); his dissertation supervisor was John Rist. 4.) John Dillon: Katounia, Thormanby Road, Baily, Howth, Dublin, D13YD71, Ireland. [email protected] Born 15 Sept. 1939, in Madison Wisc. (USA), he was educated at Oxford (B.A., M.A.), and the University of California at Berkeley (Ph.D., The Fragments of Iamblichus’ Commentary on the Timaeus of Plato). He was on the faculty of the Department of Classics at UC Berkeley, 1969–80 (Chair of Department 1977–80); and was Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College, Dublin, 1980–2006. Dr. Dillon’s main focus of research is Plato and the Platonic tradition. His chief works are The Middle Platonists, 1977 (2nd edn. 1996); Iamblichus, De Anima (with John Finamore), 2000; Alcinous: The Handbook of Platonism (1993); The Heirs of Plato (2003); and three volumes of collected essays.

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5.) Lloyd Gerson: 77 Quaker Village Drive, Usbridge, Ontario, L9P 1A3, Canada. [email protected] Lloyd Gerson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the author of many books, articles, and reviews, mainly on ancient philosophy. Dr. Gerson’s most recent work is Plotinus: The Enneads, edited by Lloyd P. Gerson, with translations by George Boys-Stones, John M. Dillon, Lloyd P. Gerson, R.A.H. King, Andrew Smith, and James Wilberding. 6.) Edward Halper: 126 Henderson Ave., Athens, GA 30605, USA. [email protected] Edward C. Halper is Distinguished Research Professor and Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia. Much of his work is on Aristotle, particularly the Metaphysics, but he has also written on Plato and in a wide variety of other areas. Dr. Halper counts himself extremely fortunate to have worked on Plato with John Rist at the University of Toronto. He is also President of the International Plato Society. 7.) Miles Hollingworth: Villa Miralago, Via G. Finali 31, Valsolda (Como), I-22010, Italy. [email protected] Miles Hollingworth (Ph.D., Durham), an independent scholar living in Northern Italy, is the author of: The Pilgrim City (Bloomsbury, 2010); Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford University Press, 2013); Inventing Socrates (Bloomsbury, 2015); and Ludwig Wittgenstein (Oxford University Press, 2018). Additionally, he is the founder and editor of 11

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the international book series, Reading Augustine (Bloomsbury, 2017—) and co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Political Realism (Edinburgh University Press, 2018). Dr. Hollingworth is also a winner of the Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction from the Royal Society of Literature and of the Elizabeth Longford Scholarship from the Society of Authors. He has also been shortlisted for the Gladstone History Book Prize. 8.) Brad Inwood: 223 Canner St., New Haven, CT, 06511, USA. [email protected] Brad Inwood did his B.A. (1974) in Classics at Brock University and his Ph.D. (1981), under the supervision of John Rist, at the University of Toronto. He taught at the University of Toronto from 1982 to 2015 and, since then, has taught ancient philosophy at Yale University as the William Lampson Professor of Philosophy and Classics. He has written extensively on ancient philosophy, especially Stoicism (with a focus on Seneca), but with forays into the Presocratics (especially Empedocles) and the Aristotelian tradition. In 1994, Dr. Inwood was elected to the Royal Society of Canada; and in 2007, he was appointed University Professor at the University of Toronto. He has been a Fellow of the National Humanities Centre in North Carolina (1995–6) and of the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford (2004–5); and was the Malcolm Bowie Distinguished Visitor at Christ’s College, Cambridge (2008). 9.) Arthur Madigan, S.J.: St. Mary's Hall, Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467, USA. [email protected] Arthur Madigan, S.J. is the Albert J. Fitzgibbons Professor of Philosophy in Boston College. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto and his Master of Divinity degree from Regis College, Toronto, both in 1979. He has been teaching at Boston College since 1979. In 1985–

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6 he was a Junior Fellow in the Institute for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C.; in 1996–7 he was Miller Professor of Classics in John Carroll University; and in 1999–2000 he was Wade Professor in Marquette University. Dr. Madigan has published translations of Alexander of Aphrodisias on Aristotle, Metaphysics Beta and Gamma, and a translation and commentary on Metaphysics Beta in the Clarendon Aristotle Series. He pursues interests in ancient Western philosophy (especially Aristotle), the interaction of ancient philosophy with early Christianity, and ethics in the Aristotelian tradition. 10.) John C. McCarthy: 407 Schuyler Road/Silver Spring, MD, 20910, USA. [email protected] John C. McCarthy is Dean Emeritus of the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, where he holds the rank of Associate Professor. He is also editor of the Review of Metaphysics. Dr. McCarthy’s publications include considerations of the Baconian and Cartesian origins of modern philosophy, of the relation between human reason and Christian faith, of reductionism in modern natural science, and of Husserlian phenomenology. 11.) Denis O’Brien: Château du Chalange, Le Chalange, 61390,France. [email protected] After fifteen years in Cambridge, as a Scholar of Trinity College and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Denis O’Brien joined the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Paris). He is the Honorary President of the Centre for the Study of the Platonic Tradition, founded by John Dillon at Trinity College, Dublin. His extensive publications, in both English and French, range from the Presocratics to Plato and to Plotinus.

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12.) Thomas M. Osborne Jr.: 5603 Portal Dr., Houston, TX, 77096, USA. [email protected] Thomas M. Osborne, Jr. is Professor of Philosophy, Chair Emeritus of the Department of Philosophy, and a member of the Center for Thomistic Studies, at the University of St. Thomas (Houston). He has written (i) many articles on medieval and late-scholastic philosophy and on other topics; and (ii) Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth-Century Ethics (2005) and Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham (2014). 13.) Enrico Peroli: Via R. Amalasunta 8, I-63900, Fermo, Italy. [email protected] Enrico Peroli (Ph.D. Università Cattolica, Milano) is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University “G. D’Annunzio” di Chieti-Pescara. He has a wide range of publications, including Il platonismo e l’antropologia filosofica di Gregorio di Nissa (Vita e Pensiero, 1993), La trasparenza dell’io e l’abisso dell’anima. Sul rapporto tra platonismo e cristianesimo (Morcelliana, 2013), Dio, uomo e mondo. La tradizione etico-metafisica del platonismo (Vita e Pensiero, 2003), the award winning, Essere persona (Morcelliana, 2006), and Persona e comunità. L’etica di G.W. Fichte, (Morcelliana, 2014). Dr. Peroli is currently editing a new Italian translation of the works of Nicholas of Cusa; the first volume appeared in 2015. 14.) John M. Rist: 14 St Luke’s Street, Cambridge, CB4 3DA, England. [email protected] For biographical information, see his c.v. in this Festschrift.

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15.) Msgr. Robert Sokolowski: 2737 Devonshire Place NW, Apt 114, Washington, DC, 20008, USA. [email protected] Msgr. Sokolowski is a native of New Britain, Connecticut. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Hartford in 1961. He obtained his Ph.D. in Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven in 1963, and since then has taught at the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, where he is the Elizabeth Breckenridge Caldwell Professor of Philosophy. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Faculty of the New School University, The University of Texas at Austin, Villanova University, and Yale University. Dr. Sokolowski has taught and written in phenomenology, with a special interest in Husserl; on Aristotle; and on issues dealing with Christian faith and theology and their relation to human understanding. 16.) Ronald K. Tacelli, SJ: St Mary's Hall–Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467, USA. [email protected] Ronald K. Tacelli, SJ, received his B.A. (English and Philosophy) from Boston College (1969); his M.A. and Ph.D. (Philosophy: Greek minor) from the University of Toronto (1980); and his M. Div. and Th. M. from the Weston School of Theology (1983). Since 1984, he has taught philosophy at Boston College, focusing on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the philosophy of religion, and philosophical psychology. Dr. Tacelli has published a number of articles on ethics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion, and he is co-author (with Peter Kreeft) of the best-selling Handbook of Christian Apologetics. He has edited for publication a selection of papers on H.W.B. Joseph, completed a translation of Ontologie by Béla Weissmahr (to be published by Notre Dame University Press as Ontology: The Unity and Diversity of All Things in Being), and is also translating Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (for Norton). Dr. Tacelli is current-

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ly working on a book-length study of Kant’s moral and religious thought, as well as a thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Handbook.

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Passionate Mind: Essays In Honor Of John M. Rist

“καὶ ἔστιν ἐκείνη μὲν ἡ θέα νοῦ ἔμφρονος, αὕτη δὲ νοῦς ἐρῶν, ὅταν ἄφρων γένηται μεθυσθεὶς τοῦ νέκταρος· τότε ἐρῶν γίνεται ἁπλωθεὶς εἰς εὐπάθειαν τῷ κόρῳ· καὶ ἔστιν αὐτῷ μεθύειν βέλτιον ἢ σεμνοτέρῳ εἶναι τοιαύτης μέθης” (Plotinus, Ennead 6.7.35, 23–7). “And that first one is the contemplation of Intellect in its right mind, and the other is Intellect in love [i.e. passionate Mind], when it goes out of its mind “drunk with the nectar”; then it falls in love, simplified into happiness by having its fill; and it is better for it to be drunk with a drunkenness like this than to be more respectably sober.”1 This epigraph, taken from Ennead 6.7, provides the title of this volume of essays, presented to Professor John M. Rist as a Festschrift in honor of his exemplary service to academia. Plotinus’s words are fitting because they evoke the passionate search for truth that Rist, as a ‘nous eron,’ has displayed in his extraordinary scholarship and teaching over the course of his distinguished career. Those who have worked and studied with him have had the pleasure of experiencing and being inspired by that passionate mind at first hand. The essays presented here reflect key aspects of Rist’s interests in Ancient Philosophy, Patristics and Biblical Criticism, and Ethics. Therefore, after reading John McCarthy’s warm and inviting introduction, viz. “John M. Rist, in Lieu of an Introduction,” enjoying Rist’s own entertaining and informative account of animal academicum, viz. “On the Trail of Animal Academicum (1956–2013),” and perusing his extraordinary curriculum vitae, we meet the volume’s essays that specifically engage Rist’s monumental work as a scholar in the aforementioned fields. I now introduce those contributions in their order of appearance. Denis O’Brien’s astute (and self-edited) “To Be and Not To Be in Plato’s Sophist,” considers a topic and text that he and Rist had once studied at Trinity College, Cambridge where they were ‘supervised’ by F.H. Sandbach, with W.K.C. Guthrie, at the time Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy, and D.L. Page (later Sir Denys Page) Regius Professor of Greek. In

1 Ennead 6.7.35, 23–7, translated by A.H. Armstrong, in Plotinus, Ennead VI.6–9 (Loeb Classical Library, 1988), 197 (slightly emended).

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his essay, O’Brien’s inspiration and foil is F.M. Cornford, first holder of the Laurence Chair. While his stimulus is Cornford’s dictum, shared by both Sandbach and Guthrie, that ‘accurate translation depends on interpreting an ancient philosopher’s philosophical and linguistic presuppositions,’ his foil is Cornford’s translation and interpretation of the Sophist [Sph.] (from Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, The ‘Theatatus’ and the ‘Sophist’ of Plato, translated with a running commentary [Keegan Paul et alii, 1935]). O’Brien had studied Cornford’s volume in the 1950’s but had been dissatisfied with it (n. 40). As he now explains, Cornford’s translation and commentary contradict, in one key respect, Cornford’s fundamental methodology. In particular, O’Brien argues that the distinction drawn in Sph. between ‘to be and not to be’ is properly understood by employing what Cornford recommended rather than by following what Cornford did. On this basis, O’Brien claims, the interpreter can overcome the pitfalls in Cornford’s translation and commentary that constantly fail to match the meaning of the Greek text. According to O’Brien, Parmenides, in his opening statement of the Ways of research, “the only ones that can be thought of” (fr. 2), introduces is and is not as the two terms of a contradiction. Careful study of Sph. shows that Plato avoids the contradiction by opposing is, the expression of a predicate complete in itself, to is not, a copulative use of the verb, implying that what is, because it participates in being, ‘is not,’ in so far as it ‘is other than’ the being in which it participates. By persistently casting Plato’s theory in terms of ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence,’ Cornford’s commentary and translation of Sph. feed into the text of the dialogue the very contradiction Plato had tried to avoid. Cornford’s interpretation of the dialogue is shown, therefore, to be untethered, explaining why O’Brien’s initial study, over sixty years ago, of Cornford’s volume proved so perplexing. O’Brien’s present essay, taking its cue from Cornford’s advice, rather than from his practice, grounds its philological analysis on an accurate understanding of Plato’s philosophical presuppositions, the joint approach, at once philological and philosophical, helping to make clear Plato’s purpose and bringing precision to scholarly study of one of Plato’s more difficult dialogues. Although O’Brien’s contribution is long, it is (i) likely ‘ground-breaking,’ (ii) an immensely erudite tribute to Rist’s philosophical method (which O’Brien obviously shares) and (iii) warm-hearted (like every entry in this volume). Arthur Madigan’s insightful "Aristotle's Handling of endoxa in Nicomachean Ethics 9.4 and Eudemian Ethics 7.6," considers Aristotle’s dialectic, in terms of its approach towards endoxa, i.e. concerning common opinion or respected truth-claims, in the aforementioned texts. Madigan intends to show that, from beginning to end, the Stagirite employs endoxa to know 18

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the truth of reality and therefore assesses (for truth) the endoxa themselves. Hence, Aristotle’s treatment of endoxa is not for the sake of justifying them, i.e. they “are not simply accepted and allowed to speak for themselves (ibid.),” but to pursue the truth of being. This is shown by the fact that—contrary to the divergent views of G.E.L. Owen, M. Nussbaum, J. Barnes and T. Irwin—Aristotle employs endoxa to attain truth in different ways. Aristotle’s profound subtlety, Madigan argues, is manifest in two closely related manners, made evident by comparing select endoxa in Nicomachean Ethics (NE) 9.4 with others in Eudemian Ethics (EE) 7.6. First, Aristotle tests his endoxa according to the criteria of the phenomena he aims to explain. Second, the Stagirite employs endoxa in service to either (i) the nature of the question he endeavors to answer or (ii) certain already tested startingpoints and insights into reality stated in propositional form. Aristotle’s handling of endoxa, therefore, shows that his approach towards reality is properly philosophical because it is receptive to ‘what is.’ As such, the Stagirite is not trying to make reality fit into his endoxa or into any uncritically assumed general theories. Rather, he ensures that his theories, and therefore the endoxa he employs, conform to and consequently help to explain reality. Hence, Madigan argues that Aristotle’s usage of endoxa is not about hypostasizing abstracts (something, of course, that Aristotle famously asserts, in Metaphysics 1.9, concerning Plato’s doctrine of Forms). Instead, Aristotle employs endoxa towards knowing the truth of reality. By this, Madigan agrees with Rist (The Mind of Aristotle [MA] [University of Toronto Press, 1989]) concerning the character of Aristotle’s philosophical method. Brad Inwood’s perceptive “What kind of Stoic are you? The case of Marcus Aurelius,” agrees with Rist’s claim2 that Marcus’s philosophical approach and doctrine are unusual. Instead of maintaining that Marcus is in the grips of an eclecticism that takes him outside the bounds of Stoicism, Inwood holds that Marcus is better understood as a unique character within the Stoic context. This is not only in terms of Marcus’s handling of traditional Stoic teaching—which Marcus, Inwood suggests, might at some points be taking through the filter of Seneca’s doctrine—but, more importantly, in terms of his endeavor to make philosophical sense of “the firstperson perspective” he explored and manifested in his philosophical diary. For this reason, Marcus seems to embrace the view that man consists not

2 J. Rist, “Are you a Stoic? The Case of Marcus Aurelius,” in Jewish and Christian SelfDefinition, (edd.) B. Meyer and E. Sanders (Fortress Press, 1982), 23–45.

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only in (i) the psychic pneuma and (ii) flesh-and-bones body, but also in something that appears indeterminate (perhaps even immaterial), whereby human actions are produced by some uniquely human power. So Marcus seems ‘un-Stoic’ at times because his Stoicism aims to come to grips with the traditional Stoic problem of determinism by drawing on a fresh awareness of the phenomenon of psychological inwardness. Put differently, Marcus’s properly philosophical interest in this intellectual challenge requires him to add something novel to his Stoicism. Marcus’s teaching on the mind, though it may have some features in common with certain aspects of Platonism, developed out of his attempts to deal philosophically with the characteristically Stoic problem of determinism. Inwood, therefore, attempts to modify Rist’s thesis concerning Marcus. While Marcus is innovative and unusual, he is neither a dissatisfied nor an incoherent Stoic philosopher, a devotee of a philosophical religion rather than a genuine philosopher. Rather, he is a philosopher whose pursuit of truth motivates him to explain a new phenomenon by assimilating something original into his Stoicism. In a friendly manner, Inwood claims, then, that Marcus’s Stoicism (like Stoicism in general) is more elastic and vibrant than Rist acknowledges. In his fascinating "Plutarch, Plotinus and the Zoroastrian Concept of the Fravashi,” John Dillon shares the intriguing possibility that Plutarch and Plotinus might have developed their teaching on an undescended part of the human being not only from Plato (Timaeus 90a ff.)—whose doctrine, Dillon believes, could have been influenced by Persian Zoroastrianism (part I)—and from Aristotle (De Anima 3.5) but also from the Zoroastrian notion of the fravashi, i.e. of a “separable higher soul also to be regarded as a kind of guardian daemon” (ibid.). Dillon supports his claim by considering the similarities between the Zoroastrian teaching on the fravashi, to the extent he knows of it, with accounts of the undescended soul in Plutarch, the Corpus Hermeticum and Plotinus. In particular, Dillon judges that Plotinus’s somewhat perplexing teaching that the undescended soul is both ‘a part of us’ and ‘distinct from us’ corresponds well with the Zoroastrian teaching of fravashi as both a “superior soul and presiding demon” (conclusion). Concerning this volume, Dillon’s thesis might be combined with Inwood’s account of Marcus Aurelius’s philosophical teaching to show that Marcus’s pursuit of truth belongs to his Stoicism, even though it represents a departure from Stoic materialism towards some kind of Platonic metaphysics. Additionally, Dillon’s thesis could be fruitfully considered in conjunction with the accounts of nous found in essays by Gerson and by Peroli for while these scholars claim that Neoplatonic philosophers identify nous 20

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with man and divinity above, Dillon identifies nous with man and daemon. In this respect, Dillon’s study implies, with Peroli’s account of Gregory of Nyssa’s Christian Platonism, that man requires divine mediation to attain enduring happiness. Lloyd Gerson’s perspicacious “Virtue with and Without Philosophy in Plato and Plotinus,” firmly supports Rist’s general claims (Eros and Psyche [EP] [University of Toronto Press, 1964], and Plotinus [P] [Cambridge University Press, 1967] et al.) concerning Plato’s and Plotinus’s philosophical importance and encourages focus on Plotinus. Beginning with Plato’s teaching on the importance of philosophy, Gerson subordinates Plato’s teaching, in one way, to Aristotle (who is viewed as an intermediate developer of Plato’s teaching on mind) but, most importantly, to Plotinus to show how the latter “enriches” (section 1) Plato’s teaching on the importance of philosophy. Gerson agrees with Rist’s claim (Real Ethics [RE] [Cambridge University Press, 2001] et al.) that ethics is properly joined with metaphysics (this is found in Plato’s and in Plotinus’s teaching on the Good, and perhaps implicitly in Aristotle). However, unlike Rist, Gerson makes the point that moral virtue is only required for the embodied self— it has no ultimate place in the afterlife since it is no longer needed. Section 1 argues, therefore, that Plato maintains the practice of philosophy is required to achieve “the highest grade” in virtue. Section 2 maintains that Plato claims transformation from an “empirical” to an “ideal self” is effected through explicit conformity to the Good. Finally, in section 3, Gerson concludes that Plotinus gives a superior account of these teachings in his Enneads. How so? At bottom, it is because Plotinus (using as material cause various teachings found in Plato and in Aristotle) maintains, in a unique manner, that the virtuous person identifies “himself with his intellect.” In other words, philosophical activity (equated with the pursuit of moral virtue) is needed since attainment of the true self, the proper object of philosophical transformation, consists in identifying oneself with one’s undescended intellect—understood to have an unmediated (i.e. independent of sense-experience and sense-images) access to truth, i.e. to The One/The Good/divinity above. Hence, Gerson (partly agreeing with Rist’s interpretation [MA] of Aristotle’s late account of mind/nous) maintains that moral virtue (and consequently virtue with philosophy) is essentially intermediate. It is necessary so long as we are embodied, i.e. in this life and trying to attain the true self (which could conceivably entail some need for purification in the afterlife). Yet moral virtue, and consequently philosophical activity in the manner of this world, is not required once that metaphysical state is attained in the afterlife. Therefore, since the ‘true’ self is intellect (nous), which has an 21

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unmediated relationship with divinity, and since moral activity pertains to the composite, meaning it is only necessary for the lower part of man’s/ intellect’s journey to divinity, it follows that, so far as this life goes, divinity is both decisively concerned and decisively unconcerned with moral matters. According to Enrico Peroli’s incisive “Gregory of Nyssa and Platonism,” Gregory’s Christian wisdom is neither subordinate to Neoplatonic philosophy, as if Christianity is an implication of Neoplatonism, nor is Christian wisdom completely set over Neoplatonism, as if the latter is one medium (among many) through which Christian wisdom can explain itself. Rather, Christian wisdom is articulated with the decisive aid of Neoplatonic philosophy so that the latter is maintained in some places while transformed in others. Hence, Gregory’s spiritual theology shows that the relationship between Neoplatonic philosophy and Christian wisdom is not ‘old wine in old skins’ but ‘old wine and new wine in new skins.’ Peroli advances his thesis concerning Gregory’s handling of his Christian and Platonic inheritances in four parts. First, he considers various attitudes expressed in earlier centuries and in recent years concerning the relationship between Christianity and Platonism in general and within Gregory’s work in particular. Second, Peroli defines the common ground that early Christian thinkers found in Platonism, especially that man—or at least his best part (viz. nous)—is homoiosis theoi, structured to attain unity with God by pursuing moral and intellectual excellence. Third, Peroli distinguishes the crucial differences, located in the ontology of finiteness or temporality that Gregory (i) noticed between Christianity and Neoplatonism and (ii) articulated through the medium of Platonic philosophy. These are especially (i) that man/soul/mind (nous) is not naturally united with God but requires God’s grace to achieve union and (ii) that the latter, once achieved, entails eternal positive development. And finally, Peroli concludes that perennial interest in Gregory’s work is (properly) due to Gregory’s success in articulating Christian wisdom in conjunction with the truths about God and man found in Neoplatonic philosophy. Peroli aims to show that the relationship between Christian wisdom and Platonic philosophy is philosophically coherent. How so? Whereas Christian wisdom gives the formal structure to what Gregory articulates, for which reason his Platonic inheritance is essentially subordinate, Christian wisdom includes and is therefore impossible to articulate apart from adequately maintaining and transforming key aspects of its Platonic inheritance. Barry David’s provocative “Evaluating Augustine’s Proof for God in De civitate Dei 8.6,” argues that this commonly overlooked argument in Augustine’s body of writings is philosophically sound, represents a significant de22

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velopment in Augustine’s approach to proving there is an immutable God (Augustine: Ancient thought baptized [A] [Cambridge University Press, 1994], 68) and is, therefore, worthy of extended analysis. In certain respects, David’s presentation opposes the widespread notion that Augustine’s proof for God in De Libero Arbitrio Voluntatis (lib. arb.) 2.3–15 is Augustine’s principal, paradigmatic and/or only successful proof for God. By contrast, David’s essay claims that De civitate Dei (civ. Dei) 8.6 is distinguished by its emphasis on ontology and implied ability to bring insight concerning Augustine’s hitherto ambiguous account of a matter that plays an important role in his proofs for God, viz. the ontological character of impressed ideas. David presents his argument in four stages. First, his introduction considers some of the reasons why contemporary scholarship focuses on Augustine’s proof for God in lib. arb. 2, shows that civ. Dei 8.6 is ignored, and advances its thesis concerning the nature and merit of civ. Dei 8.6’s argument. Next, David highlights key aspects of important inheritances Augustine brings to civ. Dei 8.6. This is principally Augustine’s appropriation of an Aristotelian doctrine of substance (gained through studying, at the age of twenty, Porphyry’s translation and commentary on Aristotle’s Ten Categories [Confessiones (conf.) 4.16.28–9]). But Augustine’s inheritance at this juncture also includes his own related considerations of divine immutability, divine ideas and, significantly, impressed ideas—which he (i) claims are a decisive aid whereby mind knows the essence of things and can know there exists an immutable God, and (ii) sometimes implies are immutable as God is immutable. Third, and most importantly, David analyzes civ. Dei 8.6’s proof for God in conjunction with the above factors to show how the argument’s ontological focus helps to make it sound and gives it importance relative to Augustine’s aforementioned teaching concerning the ontological character of impressed ideas. On the one hand, the proof’s consistent reliance on a doctrine of substance helps to support not only Augustine’s principal claim that there is an immutable God but also that mind—which Augustine characteristically analyzes, both here and elsewhere, to show there is a God —is a mutable reality with mutable operations and content. On the other hand, that civ. Dei 8.6 prominently emphasizes mind’s reliance on divine ideas and makes no mention of impressed ideas, strongly implies that the impressed ideas Augustine has spoken of ambiguously elsewhere are properly viewed as immutable-like rather than immutable. Therefore, although civ. Dei 8.6 does not directly consider the ontological status of impressed ideas, its pronounced concentration on ontology and resultant clear distinction between divine immutability and human mutability shows that it contains the wherewithal to instruct that impressed ideas are created rather 23

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than uncreated realities. All told, close examination of Augustine’s proof for God in civ. Dei 8.6 illustrates that the latter has significant philosophical value. Luigi Alici’s perceptive ““Socii ad participationem boni.” De Civitate Dei 19: the way of Augustine towards peace,” argues that Augustine’s account of the citizen’s life in human community is philosophically superior to what is found in his inheritance because Augustine transforms the latter in a twofold manner. In the first place, Augustine takes Cicero’s teaching through the sifter of a pagan Neoplatonic doctrine of participation. Secondly, and more significantly, Augustine guides what results from the latter through the filter of Christian wisdom. By this means a superior doctrine of participation is developed through considering not only the doctrine of creation, which is shared with pagan Neoplatonism, but, more importantly, the unique Christian Neoplatonist doctrine of mediation by Christ, ‘The Word made flesh.’ Taking his cue both from Augustine’s scholarship and from Rist’s (A, et al.), Alici argues his point in several stages. First, he considers Augustine’s handling of Varro’s Ciceronian account of man and society to show that Augustine prefers to analyze the question of man’s orientation and end, i.e. his pursuit of happiness, from a Platonic perspective (1. Auctoritas and ratio). This is because since the Platonists, unlike Cicero and the Stoics, have awareness of human finitude in relationship to the realities of (i) the limited nature of this life and (ii) divine creation. Second, Alici maintains that Augustine’s focus on the universal quest for peace (in 19.10) represents a decisive turn towards Platonism since understanding peace as “the ordered form of participation in the order of the good” (2. Autonomy and Heteronomy) shows that the pursuit of virtue encompasses both this world (as Cicero and the Stoics would agree) and the afterlife or celestial world (as the Platonists would agree based on recognizing the soul’s immortality). Hence, the pursuit of earthly peace, which is horizontal, and enduring peace, which is vertical, are inextricably linked on the outside, i.e. in terms of ontology, and on the inside, i.e. in terms of human motivation, since virtue “is essentially a form of ordered love … that consists in adhering to the truth in order to live in justice” (ibid). Third, after arguing that citizens of the city of God on earth have a “kind of paradoxical citizenship” insofar as “they tend toward pax aeterna” on account “of grace” but “live in the pax terrena” because “of nature” (3. Civitas Dei peregrina), Alici asserts (4. Love and justice) that Augustine reforms coherently the aforementioned Neoplatonic account of participation by his account of Christ as Mediator. This is because both love, i.e. the motive beneath man’s quest for happiness, and justice, i.e. what community pursues in this world, have a common origin 24

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and end that can be partly attained in this life while fully attained in the afterlife—so long as man embraces Christ as the remedy for his waywardness. Therefore through considering, on the one hand, divine creation and, on the other hand, human redemption in Christ, Alici argues that “the paradigm of justice” and “the paradigm of love” are grounded in what is objective and are essentially complementary. Most importantly, this transformation of the pagan Neoplatonist teaching on participation means that the Christian, at least, can pursue at once true justice by true love and, contrariwise, true love by true justice. The Christian teaching on participation, then, gives a unity to the life of the citizen that was missing from the pagan Neoplatonic teaching on participation insofar as the latter is clear about man’s origin but leaves open the matter of man’s end. Put differently, while the pagan’s love of God can, in varying ways, oppose love of neighbor and vice-versa, the Christian can, at least in principle, everywhere practice love of God and love of neighbor. Since the Christian is ordained by grace to a celestial community, his love for God and neighbor can never be opposed in any earthly community. Thus, by contrast with the rival Stoic and pagan Neoplatonist paradigms of thought and action, the Christian Neoplatonist paradigm does not present any contradiction between horizontal love and vertical love or, looked at another way, between autonomy and heteronomy. Giovanni Catapano’s subtle “Augustine’s Criticism of Philosophers in De Trinitate 4, and Its Epistemological Implications,” considers Augustine’s reply to some Neoplatonic philosophers who criticized the Christian faith in the resurrection of the flesh based on their own knowledge of eternal reasons. According to Catapano, Augustine maintains that a humble philosophical mind can peer, to some extent, into the divine reasons. For instance, while pagan Neoplatonist philosophers claim that the Christian doctrine of bodily resurrection is false (because it contradicts the evidence of experience), Augustine claims that the Christian Neoplatonist can uphold the doctrine of bodily resurrection on the basis of faith. In particular, this is due to the faithful exercise of reason that, by God’s grace, is made capable of seeing the reasonability of what God reveals concerning His divine reasons. Catapano supports Augustine’s assertion in several steps. First, he shows that Augustine argues against Neoplatonist philosophers in De Trinitate (Trin.) 4.16–17. Second, he claims Augustine teaches that the pagan Neoplatonist philosophers know of the eternal reasons in God but, since their accounts of the future rely on studying past events as these are recounted in histories, they acknowledge their inability to deduce temporal realities from the divine reasons. Third, Catapano cites four ways Au-

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gustine distinguishes how the future can be known and that the philosophers cannot know the future through knowing God. On this basis, Catapano concludes that Augustine’s teaching concerning access to the divine reasons is reasonable. Why so? Under normal conditions, i.e. when mind’s sin makes it unfit to peer into the divine reasons, mind can only predict the future based on studying the past. However, the ‘purified’ mind—usually found among those in heaven but sometimes present, by God’s help, in certain prophets and saints—is made fit to peer into the eternal reasons by the grace of faith in Christ whereby pride can be conquered. Accordingly, by the gift of the Holy Spirit some are allowed to see into “the things God always knows” (main body). Hence Catapano argues that, by faith in Christ, some Christian philosophers might see not only that God knows and governs the future (which the pagan Neoplatonist philosopher also knows) but give assent to certain future occurrences, like bodily resurrection, that contradict experience. On this matter, Catapano implies agreement with Augustine’s claim that the decisive difference between Christian wisdom and pagan Neoplatonist philosophy is found in faith in Christ, ‘The Word made flesh’ (conf. 7.9.13–15). Ronald K. Tacelli’s smart “The God of Both Testaments?” aims to show how the apparent brutality and intrinsically evil actions countenanced by God in the Old Testament can be reconciled with the claim that Christ, as presented in the New Testament, is the God Who Is Love. Taking his cue from Rist (RE), C.S. Lewis, F. Sheed and Christ’s words in the New Testament, Tacelli argues that we can both (i) be repelled by certain events attributed to God in the Old Testament, and (ii) claim that the God Who Is Love, in fact, authorizes these events. How so? We hold that God Is Love but make distinctions, on the one hand, between God’s absolute and permissive will and, on the other, between the kinds of people or degrees of receptivity (of God’s Love) within the peoples through whom God has deigned to progressively disclose, in Christ, both Who He Is and who man is. Tacelli argues his thesis in three stages. In the first place (I: The Problem), he distinguishes the philosophical problem. Next (II: Dead Ends), he considers the ostensible solutions to that problem but judges them to be inadequate because they fail to admit (i) the abhorrent acts that God apparently commanded and (ii) the normative character of divine love. Finally, Tacelli argues (III: Towards the Light) that a coherent solution, though beset with difficulty, might be found in the distinction (as stated above) between God’s positive and permissive will. Tacelli’s point is that God’s progressive revelation of Himself and, therefore, of human nature allowed some accommodation to the problematic characters of His Old Testament recipi26

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ents. As Christ says of polygamous marriage in the New Testament (Mt 19.3–8), certain evils were permitted in earlier times due to the ‘hardness’ of His patients’ ‘hearts.’ Tacelli claims that, for the overall good of manifesting His normative standard in Christ, God permitted, rather than positively willed, the atrocities reported in the Old Testament. Right interpreting, argues Tacelli, includes keeping in mind that God presents His Love positively in the New Testament, on account of the positive character in its recipients but negatively, in a way, in the Old Testament, on account of its recipients’ darkened hearts. While God does not change, man does; and God shares His Love with man in a manner that (i) meets him where he is to elevate him towards where he should be and (ii) makes evident the divine standard Who is Christ. Robert Sokolowski’s instructive “On Teaching And Reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics,” has primary and secondary purposes. On the one hand, as his title states, Sokolowski’s primary undertaking is to provide an account of how to teach and read NE. On the other hand, as if to help develop, test and prove that thesis, he measures accordingly Rist’s endeavor in RE. Concerning Sokolowski’s secondary purpose, he claims that Rist’s noble project in RE, identified with a strong current in Plato’s project “to validate moral realism in the face of widely accepted … opinions that there is no such thing” (section 5), overlooks how NE corrects and develops Plato’s project to bring us “closer to the truth” (ibid). However, since recognition of Aristotle’s superiority requires contrasting and comparing his approach to ethics with Plato’s (since their ventures are essentially complementary), Rist’s project helps us to do this and, consequently, to come closer to the truth. Therefore, although RE does not disclose Aristotle’s higher truths about ethics it helps towards that end. Sokolowski argues this point in two phases. In the first phase (viz. in sections 1–4), he introduces NE, explaining how it is best studied and some of Aristotle’s key methods and principal teachings. As mentioned before, this is Sokolowski’s principal undertaking and is immensely valuable in its own right. In section 5, however, he completes his analysis of Rist’s reading of NE through the filter of what was argued in sections 1–4. On this basis, Sokolowski claims, above all else, that Aristotle seeks to know the truth of human being, i.e. of human nature and action, rather than of human action alone. At first, therefore, Sokolowski claims that NE is a “an ontology as well as an ethical study” (introduction), and explains why one should read NE in the order of book 7.1–10, books 2–6, books 7.11–10.9 and finally, book 1. Then, he considers the kinds of agents Aristotle presents in book 7 (section 2) and Aristotle’s account (in 3.1–5) of the “range of human wishing and responsibility” (section 3). On this basis, Sokolowski focuses (section 4) on a 27

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key aspect of Aristotle’s philosophical method, viz. “The Aristotelian array,” to make clear how and why Aristotle’s study of ethics focuses on knowing the truth of man’s moral activity in light of understanding the truth of man’s nature. On this basis, Sokolowski argues that Aristotle’s pursuit of truth is found in two manners. First, there is his approach of defining and clarifying things by employing “constellations,” “arrays,” or “clusters”— wherein each usually has “a paradigmatic instance, from which the others get their entity and understandability, as well as their nameability” (ibid.). But, more importantly, there is the fact that Aristotle’s distinctions (i.e. the aforementioned “clusters”), being centered in his notion of energeia (actuality), “are realistic and not abstract, hypothetical, or dialectical” (ibid.). With these matters in mind, Sokolowski argues (in section 5) that RE sometimes misreads NE because RE’s specific project of validating “moral realism” (ibid.) causes it to overlook the most significant portion of what Aristotle actually says and means. Sokolowski gives three examples, rooted in Aristotle’s metaphysical theology and philosophical anthropology, to support his claim that Rist’s principal criticisms of Aristotle are somewhat off the mark. All told, Sokolowski lauds RE’s ultimate aim while voicing disagreement with its reading of Aristotle’s NE. In this respect, Sokolowski affectionately implies that Rist’s project might be fortified by a more sympathetic approach towards Aristotle. Edward Halper’s illuminating “Aristotle’s Moral Realism: Phronesis in Nicomachean Ethics 6” explores Rist’s claim, in Plato’s Moral Realism (PMR) (The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), that Plato grounds moral realism in separate forms. Since Halper holds that Aristotle clearly intends to advance some sort of moral realism, the problem he considers is how Aristotle can do so without separate forms. However, this is a difficult matter to tackle. To begin with, since Aristotle recognizes the real existence of virtue and of virtuous acts, but what counts as virtue depends on the circumstances and the agent, it follows that virtue, rather than being a standard itself, seems to depend on other things. Moreover, unlike Aristotle’s immanent forms of natures, his immanent acts of virtue are not unchanging and not graspable by nous, in its usual sense. Nor, for Aristotle, can an objective morality be grounded solely in the objectivity of happiness as a properly human function; for, though human happiness is the ultimate end, its characterization is too internal and has too little content to use as a standard in most circumstances. How, then, does Aristotle uphold moral realism? According to Halper, Aristotle’s immanent forms do provide, in fact, an objective standard of moral virtue. On what basis? Aristotle holds that an objective counterpart to human happiness is found in the political life and the contemplative life 28

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and, importantly, in the circumstances in which such lives can be lived. Hence, the existence of concrete, objective goods allows one to appreciate Aristotle’s description of moral reasoning as a process of attaining such ends. The paper’s central claim, therefore, is that Aristotle models his discussion of phronēsis on his accounts of nous and epistēmē (scientific knowledge) in Posterior Analytics 2 to show that the former faculty sufficiently resembles the latter two in that it can grasp forms of moral action in such a way that they can serve as attainable standards. Thus, phronēsis grasps not only the external end but also a course of action that wills it, and this latter is, as it were, a kind of demonstrative knowledge. However, like the theoretical demonstrative syllogism, the practical syllogism is not used to draw a conclusion, as has been widely supposed, but to discover the middle terms, the sequence of actions that will lead to the desired end. Halper maintains that this strategic role of the practical syllogism has not been appreciated. Phronēsis exists as both an internal reasoning toward an end and an external sequence of actions that attain that end. Since, as Physics (Phys) claims, the development of a nature is also nature (2.1.193b12–13), not only does a nature have a form, but the fixed path of development through which it is realized in a matter also has a form. So, too, not only do objective ends, that is, the counterparts to the exercise of our faculties in accordance with reason that Aristotle calls “happiness,” have forms, but also the rational sequences of actions that lead to these objective ends have forms. Although the course of a nature’s development is more fixed than the sequence of actions that attain an objective end, both are functions of the form that comes to be instantiated (cf. Phys 2.8.199a11–15). Thus, Aristotle’s immanent forms can serve as the objective moral standards that ground moral realism. Finally, Halper adds that if his analysis is correct, the extensive literature on Aristotle’s ethics is mistaken in supposing the model phronimos to be a country gentleman with all the right opinions, like Squire Allworthy. Instead, the phronimos is better identified with someone who successfully uses strategic reasoning to attain intellectual and practical ends that benefit himself and others—someone, Halper suggests, like John Rist. Thomas M. Osborne Jr.’s carefully reasoned and intriguing “Plato’s Republic and Its Contemporary Relevance in the Ethics of Rist and MacIntyre” sets Rist’s approach to ethics (e.g. RE, On Inoculating Moral Philosophy Against God (OI) [Marquette University Press, 1999] et al.) into relationship with Alasdair MacIntyre’s better known project (e.g. After Virtue [University of Notre Dame Press, 1984], and Whose Justice? [University of Notre Dame Press, 1988]). Therefore, after identifying Rist as ‘Platonist and Augustinian’ and MacIntyre as ‘Aristotelian and Thomist,’ Osborne cites four 29

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reasons why they share a profound common ground. To begin with, each thinks that (i) philosophical doctrines are indissolubly linked with accounts of the relationship between philosophy and culture, (ii) the ancient Greeks faced problems similar to those we face today, and (iii) contemporary philosophers have difficulty engaging present-day problems and encounter great difficulty from those philosophers addressing the aforementioned matters. Most importantly, though, Rist and MacIntrye share the view that Plato’s Republic (Rep.) is relevant to the current study of ethics. Why so? It is because each maintains that Rep. can address the principal problems found in the contemporary study of ethics. Therefore, using Rep. as his medium, Osborne proposes to show, albeit in a preliminary way, the considerable merit within Rist’s teaching by contrasting and comparing his view of Rep. with MacIntyre’s. Osborne claims that, generally speaking, Rist takes an ontological view of Rep.’s teaching on ethics while MacIntyre takes an epistemological view—but MacIntyre’s view becomes more ontological as his thought develops. Rist’s approach to Rep. is characterized in a twofold manner. First, he views Plato’s dialogue in terms of the opposition between nihilism or relativism (found in Thrasymachus) and objectivism, i.e. the claim that there is an objective standard and motive (which Socrates embraces) to which the agent should conform—viz., the Form of the Good. Second, Rist maintains that Rep.’s focus on the Good is a significant step in the right direction, that Aristotle neglected to follow, but was decisively and adequately developed by others, like Augustine and Aquinas, in their philosophical theologies. By contrast, MacIntyre makes three principal claims. To begin with, he holds that Rep. engages conflicts in Athens concerning moral “effectiveness and [moral] excellence” (Section 2). In the second place, MacIntyre claims that Aristotle’s approach to ethics helps to answer the issues Rep. raises but fails to answer. Finally, he asserts that a satisfying solution to those problems requires “a broader teleological view of the universe,” i.e. greater emphasis on the ontological ground of ethics, such that “the insights of Plato and Aristotle need to be combined in the way that they were by Thomas Aquinas” (ibid.). Therefore, while Rist and MacIntyre disagree concerning the significance of Plato’s and Aristotle’s contributions to ethics, they agree that (i) Plato and Aristotle make positive contributions to ethics, (ii) ethics is properly grounded in an objective ontology, and (iii) Augustine and Aquinas have made decisive contributions to ground ethics in an objective ontology. Osborne concludes his study with an important distinction: while Rist’s Augustinian-Platonism emphasizes that the only adequate foundation for ethics is God, MacIntyre’s Thomism motivates concentration “more on the 30

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natural order and human institutions” (conclusion). Osborne implies, therefore, that a more complete account of realist ethics is found by combining the one emphasis with the other. Yet, although Osborne’s conclusion states that his essay only intends to give “an account of what their [i.e. of what Rist’s and MacIntyre’s] interpretations are, and how they are related” (Conclusion) and leaves to others the task of philosophical assessment and development, his analysis suggests a way forward. This is because Osborne’s essay seems to slightly favor Rist’s Christian Platonist grounding of ethics, holding that the latter (i) is uniquely valuable because of its focus on ontology and (ii) can be fruitfully developed, perhaps in a sub-alternate way, by engaging MacIntyre’s teaching. In this sense, therefore, MacIntyre’s Thomism needs to be more Augustinian, and Rist’s Augustinianism needs to be more Thomistic. Miles Hollingworth’s delightful “Augustine on the Codes of Life” shows how Augustine’s teaching about ethics in civ. Dei (cf. A, et al.) a doctrine one agrees to in conjunction with Christ’s grace, is the only reasonable response to the human condition. This is because, as ‘the New Religion’ (claiming, among other things, that human happiness is achieved by taking the shortest route to gratification) shows, each of us seeks happiness. Therefore, although the ‘New Religion’ distinguishes happiness in terms of pursuing social success, drunkenness and especially casual sex, it is more truly the case that we are structured by our rational capacities. The latter is located principally in awareness of the moral law whereby we reflect, on the one hand, about how our quest for these goods has caused us to treat both others and ourselves and concerning how we have been treated by others and, on the other hand, about the real value of these besought goods. This is especially so with the sex-drive, says Hollingworth (following Augustine—e.g. civ. Dei 14.15–26), since we can experience ‘shame,’ i.e. self-reproach, both concerning its (i) origin and (ii) completion. With respect to its origination in the individual, sexual desire can oppose rational desire. Concerning the matter of completion, the issue, looked at in one way, is that it might require some kind of self-exertion and self-assertion, i.e. some form of egoism whereby another human being might be used, to cite recent language, as a means to an end rather than be embraced as an end in him/herself. This shows, implies Hollingworth, that what satisfies our rational and therefore self-conscious capacities, including conscience, brings more happiness than the temporary pleasure or satisfaction achieved through sexual activity. Why, therefore, does Augustine often analyze the human sex-drive and sex-act? He is not perverse but notices here a sphere of life where the human condition is made clear. Why is that? It is because the sex-drive is a 31

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reality where, more than any other, man’s biological and rational desires meet head on and conflict with each other. Advocates of the ‘New Religion’ (like Bertrand Russell) might assert that biological goods are more real than rational goods. But rational desire is pervasive—and, in some way, it is a certain kind of self-manipulation by the rational faculties that causes one to embrace the satisfaction of biological goods as the Good in the first place. In any event, a realistic response to the sex-drive shows that we are actually structured to think and to love, rather than to lust, and therefore that our pursuit of biological goods is properly governed by those goods satisfying rational desire. Since true human happiness, then, is found in our determining rational capacities and, as Augustine shows, reflection on the sex-drive allows us to recognize ourselves as problems (i.e. as being in a privative state), it is reasonably inferred that we require divine aid, given in Christ, to become truly happy, and thereby rightly foster the community for which we exist. By the help of grace, then, it becomes possible to progress towards a properly rational ordering of social success, artificial stimulants and the sex-drive. Hollingworth claims, therefore, that it is essentially rational to side with the city of God’s approach to ethics rather than with the ‘New Religion,’ the latest instantiation of the city of man’s deficient teaching on ethics. Concluding our summary of Passionate Mind’s entries, we see in retrospect that some portion of Rist’s strongly argued and forcefully held corpus has inspired this Festschrift’s contributors to engage the topics and subjects on which his extraordinary scholarship has focused. On this basis, Passionate Mind’s essayists both affirm strongly and/or propose to develop some of Rist’s interpretations, whether these are direct or implied, of his philosophical and theological inheritances. While some engage Rist’s scholarly insights on topics found in Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Plotinus, others do so with respect to subjects studied in Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine of Hippo, the Bible and Ethics. Hence, it belongs to the reader and to scholars in the aforementioned fields to weigh the contributors’ opinions in this volume and, consequently, what impact these might have on studying these fields and/or Rist’s theses thereon. Yet there is another dimension to Rist’s academic project that is sometimes in plain view and is worthy of philosophical consideration, viz. its pursuit of something towards what can be described as ‘the ultimate truth of being.’ Following in the footsteps of persons like Augustine of Hippo and John Henry Newman, Rist’s specific studies, as his essay “Where Else?”

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shows,3 have attempted, from beginning to end, to seek and/or share the contemplative and existential implications of insight (including how all of that can develop for the better in the mind of its adherent). Hence, Rist’s earlier projects in Plato, Plotinus, Origen, the Stoics, the Epicureans, Human Value and Aristotle, like his later studies in Augustine, Ethics, What is Truth?, Plato (again), and the Augustinian tradition, decisively influence and, in some instances, are decisively influenced by his turn towards what he ultimately distinguishes as ‘Augustinian Christian Platonism’ (e.g., RE, 2, 7, 39, 283). But Rist’s resting place, if one may put it that way, is not exactly the same as what he characterizes as the sometimes polemical and lop-sided Christian Platonism of the Church fathers and of Augustine (e.g. A, 290–313; Augustine Deformed [AD] [Cambridge University Press, 2014], 365–92; and Reading Augustine [Bloomsbury Press, 2018], 17–18). Although Rist views their thinking, especially Augustine’s, as immensely helpful (e.g. OI, 87; PMR, 42), his central teaching is refined. Indeed, Rist’s doctrine is properly identified as an ‘Augustinian Christian Platonism’ that is taken through the purifying filter of something akin to ‘a teaching on universal human value.’ For its part, the latter is implicitly equated with the best aspects of medieval philosophy and Western modernity, and certain aspects of the Catholic Church’s Council of Vatican II (e.g. RE, 28–38; PMR, 252; AD, i; et al.). On this basis, Rist’s ‘reformed’ Augustinian Christian Platonism attempts to uphold, among other things, the dignity of (i) the human person and community, (ii) male and female, (iii) ‘believer’ and ‘nonbeliever,’ and (iv) all those sincerely pursuing the truth of being. Consequently, as this volume evinces, Rist’s earlier and later work always exudes a profound respect for academic study. We see, then, that Rist’s scholarship has complementary horizontal and vertical dimensions. It exhibits ongoing, developing particular theses concerning the thinkers and movements he engages as well as an ongoing and developing meta-thesis pertaining to how he thinks that the aforementioned fit together. In the latter regard, Rist’s meta-thesis is often in view within his later works, and I strongly believe that he would have us consider it. Nevertheless since human thinking, as Rist vehemently claims, begins from the particular, Passionate Mind’s entries focus on specific topics rather than on general theses. First things first.

3 This essay is found in Philosophers Who Believe, (ed.) K. Clarke (IVP Academic, 1993). Rist qualifies that essay in What is Truth? (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 17.

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Passionate Mind: Essays In Honor Of John M. Rist

It is obvious, therefore, that each participant in this Festschrift honors Rist by engaging his pursuit of truth in the context of his or her pursuit of truth. In a most fitting manner, every contributor to and reader of this volume instantiates Rist’s passionate mind, thereby showing Rist’s profound significance as a scholar and thinker. Enjoy these fine essays, The editor.

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Table of Contents

Abbreviations

37

Part 1. About John Michael Rist John M. Rist, in Lieu of an Introduction

43

John C. McCarthy Curriculum Vitae

53

John M. Rist On The Trail Of Animal Academicum (1956–2013)

71

John M. Rist Part 2. Ancient Philosophy To Be and Not To Be in Plato’s Sophist

93

Denis O’Brien Aristotle's Handling of endoxa in Nicomachean Ethics 9.4 and Eudemian Ethics 7.6

137

Arthur Madigan What kind of Stoic are you? The case of Marcus Aurelius

155

Brad Inwood Plutarch, Plotinus and the Zoroastrian Concept of the Fravashi

181

John Dillon Virtue With and Without Philosophy in Plato and Plotinus

191

Lloyd P. Gerson 35

Table of Contents

Part 3. Patristics And Biblical Criticism Gregory of Nyssa and Platonism

211

Enrico Peroli Evaluating Augustine’s ‘proof for God’ in De Civitate Dei 8.6

233

Barry David “Socii ad participationem boni.” De Civitate Dei 19: the way of Augustine towards peace

263

Luigi Alici Augustine’s Criticism of Philosophers in De Trinitate 4, and Its Epistemological Implications

283

Giovanni Catapano The God of Both Testaments?

297

Ronald K. Tacelli Part 4. Ethics On Teaching And Reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

313

Robert Sokolowski Aristotle's Moral Realism: Phronesis in Nicomachean Ethics 6

337

Edward Halper Plato’s Republic and Its Contemporary Relevance in the Ethics of Rist and MacIntyre

371

Thomas M. Osborne Augustine and Codes of Life Miles Hollingworth

36

393

Abbreviations Aristotle’s Texts: An An. Post Cat EE Met NE Phys Pol Top

On the Soul/De Anima Posterior Analytics Categories Eudemian Ethics Metaphysics Nicomachean Ethics Physics Politics Topics

Augustine’s Texts: b. vita civ. Dei conf. div. qu. divin. daem. doc. Chr. en. Ps. ep. (epp.) Gn. litt. Jo. ev. tr. lib. arb. mag. nat. b. ord. rhet. s. sol. Trin. vera rel.

Beata Vita De civitate Dei Confessiones De diversis quaestionibus octogina tribus De divinatione daemonum De doctrina Christiana Ennerationes in Psalmos Epistula(e) De Genesi ad litteram In Johannis evangelium tractatus De libero arbitrio De magistro De natura boni De ordine De rhetorica Sermones Soliliquia De Trinitate De vera religione

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Abbreviations

Cicero’s Texts: Div. Fat. Fin.

De Divinatione De Fato De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum

Plato’s Texts: Ap. Grg. Phd. Prt. Rep. Smp. Sph. Tht. Ti.

Apology Gorgias Phaedo Protagoras Republic Symposium Sophist Theaetetus Timaeus

Plotinus’s Texts: Enn. Enns.

Ennead the Enneads

The titles rely on Porphyry’s edition and the chronological ordering is stated within the brackets. I.1 [53] What is the Living Being and What is Man? I.2 [19] On Virtues? I.3 [20] I.4 [46] I.5 [36] I.6 [1] II.4 [12] II.8 [35] II.9 [33] III.2 [47] III.4 [15] III.6 [26] III.7 [45] III.8 [30] IV. 3 [27]

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On Dialectic On Well-Being/On Happiness On Whether Well-Being/Happiness Increases With Time On Beauty On Matter On Sight, or on how Distant Objects Appear Small Against the Gnostics On Providence (I) On our Allotted Guardian Spirit On the Impassibility of Things Without Body On Eternity and Time On Nature and Contemplation and the One On Difficulties About the Soul (I)

Abbreviations IV.4 [28] IV.5 [29] IV.6 [41] IV.7 [2] IV.8 [6] IV.9 [8] V.1 [10] V.2 [11] V.3 [49] V.5 [32] V.6 [24] V.7 [18] V.9 [5] VI.1 [42] VI.3 [44] VI.4 [22] VI.6 [34] VI.7 [38] VI.8 [39] VI.9 [9]

On Difficulties Abut the Soul (II) On Difficulties About the Soul (III), or on Sight On Sense-Perception and Memory On the Immortality of the Soul On the Descent of the Soul into Bodies If All Souls are One On The Three Primary Hypostases On the Origin and Order of the Beings Which Come After the First On Knowing Hypostases and That Which is Beyond The Intelligibles are not Outside the Intellect, and on the Good On the Fact That That Which is Beyond Being Does not Think, and on What is the Primary and What the Secondary Thinking Principle On the Question Whether There are Ideas of Particulars On Intellect, the Forms and Being On the Kinds of Being (I) On the Kinds of Being (III) On the Presence of Being, One and the Same, Everywhere as a Whole (I) On Numbers How the Multitude of the Forms Came into Being, and on the Good On Free Will and the Will of the One On the Good or the One

Rist’s Books: A AD E EP

Augustine (1994) Augustine Deformed (2014) Epicurus (1972) Eros and Psyche (1964)

HV MA MSB OI OTD P PCH PMR RA RE SP TS

Human Value (1982) The Mind of Aristotle (1989) Mind, Soul and Body (1996) On Inoculating (2000) On the Independence (1978) Plotinus (1964) Platonism and Its Christian Heritage (1985) Plato’s Moral Realism (2012) Reading Augustine (2018) Real Ethics (2001) Stoic Philosophy (1969) The Stoics (1978)

39

Abbreviations WP WT

40

What is a Person? (2020) What is Truth? (2008)

Part 1. About John Michael Rist

John M. Rist, in Lieu of an Introduction John C. McCarthy, The Catholic University of America

When the American Catholic Philosophical Association conferred its highest honor on John M. Rist those who pay attention to such matters had reason to wonder about the wisdom of the Association’s choice. There were, after all, two very considerable differences between the 2014 honoree and the Association’s holy patron, differences neatly captured by the pair of terms sometimes used to designate Saint Thomas Aquinas: “angelic” and “doctor.” In any truthful characterization of Rist, neither might be thought to have much place. Consider first the adjective. Although his friends would probably concede, if pressed, that he is really not such a bad fellow when all is said and done, none of them ever resorts to supernal panegyrics when his name comes up in conversation. Rist himself would be the first to scoff, moreover, at his inclusion in the ranks of the celestial hierarchy. As one of the world’s foremost authorities on Saint Augustine, he is thoroughly steeped in the Bishop of Hippo’s reflections on the facts of human cussedness, and thus immune to the appeal of half-price hagiography. Indeed, one suspects that it was precisely Rist’s interest in human cussedness that first drew him to study Augustine. He has often acknowledged, for example, that for much of his life he reckoned that the doctrine of original sin was pretty much the only thing that Christians had gotten right. That gimlet-eyed assessment of things human was entirely of a piece with his precocious delight in Machiavelli and Gibbon, Aristophanes and Juvenal. There was, moreover, nothing in his family background to nurture in Rist aspirations of a peculiarly angelic kind. Born in 1936 and raised in Romford, on the edge of East London,1 he was the only child of tolerably middle-class parents. It was from his father, perhaps, that he inherited a pro-

1 Seated astride the London-Harwich rail line, and only a few short miles from Dagenham Dock, Romford afforded the Rist family a target’s eye-view of the Blitz. Although the Luftwaffe scored no direct hits on the Rist abode, blasts from their bombs brought down its plaster ceilings on three separate occasions, and the 1940– 41 German air offensive did manage to damage or destroy several homes in the neighborhood. Rist also recalls once returning from a visit to his grandmother’s to find the road cordoned off on account of an unexploded mine planted in the garden of the house across the street. It was roughly during this same period that his

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nounced impatience with any sort of circumlocution. From his mother he undoubtedly acquired an unusually keen nose for humbug, above all for humbug of a religious variety.2 Were we to pick out the two most distinguishing features of our subject, “doctor” would be almost as wide of the mark as “angelic.” From the age of eight until eighteen Rist was a day student at Brentwood School. There he was introduced to the fabled rites and usages of a traditional English public school, practices that subsequently proved to be of real value in preparing him for his National Service obligation in Iraq, where he eavesdropped electronically on Soviet military communications when he was not dodging knife-attacks launched from alleyways. Brentwood also equipped the young Rist to sit successfully for an entrance scholarship at Cambridge. In his twentieth year he was admitted to Trinity College, where he read for the Classical Tripos, with Ancient Philosophy as his special subject, and performed well enough to earn a double first. Even in those years (1956– 59) a good many English academics still looked down upon the doctoral degree as a German innovation, a “terminal degree,” as we call the thing, no worthier an object of intelligent ambition than a terminal disease. The lack of a Ph.D. was no impediment, accordingly, to Rist’s appointment, on completion of his Cambridge studies, to a temporary lectureship in Greek at the University of Toronto, a city still very proud in those years to be part of the British Commonwealth. Nor did his undoctored state in any way delay his ascent through the ranks, which was astonishingly rapid. After several renewals of the lectureship, and having exercised his right, by virtue of the requisite lapse of time, to an M.A. (Cantab.), he was offered a position as Assistant Professor in 1963. A scant six years later the University of Toronto crowned him Professor of Classics. This was followed, in due course, by his admission as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1976, and a cross-appointment, the following year, as Professor of Philoso-

teddy-bear mysteriously disappeared. He concluded, not unreasonably even if almost certainly mistakenly, that it had been arrested by the Gestapo. Never one to take things too personally, however, he also remembers the pleasure he took, of an evening, in watching the Battle of Britain rage high overhead, and in gathering up odd bits of shrapnel mornings thereafter (as reported in an email exchange with the author). 2 For many of the biographical particulars reported here and in what follows I have drawn upon “Where Else?” Rist’s account of the course he charted to Christian belief, in Philosophers Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of Eleven Leading Thinkers, (ed.) K. Clark (IVP Academic, 1993), 83–103.

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John M. Rist, in Lieu of an Introduction

phy. It seems that no one ever troubled to require from him for an official graduate transcript along the way. Given the record of his accomplishments, offers from other institutions were bound to come in. That the first such offer accepted by Rist was to the Regius Professorship of Classics at the University of Aberdeen must have surprised more than a few of his colleagues, because the appointment also entailed his assumption of the office of Department Head. Not that he has ever been reluctant to shoulder responsibility. Still, the business of academic administration is generally thought to require at least a rudimentary knowledge of the diplomatic arts; and in foreign relations, it must be said, Rist has always favored pith helmet, gun-belt and khakis, so to say, over homburg, white-gloves and tail-coat. Over the years, it is true, he had held a variety of elective and administrative offices, including the Chairmanship, during a particularly turbulent moment (1970), of the University of Toronto’s Faculty Association, as also the Chairmanship, from 1971–5, of the Graduate Department of Classical Studies, and the Associate Chairmanship for an additional year thereafter. Still, these were forms of political greatness thrust in Platonic fashion upon him and surely not, in his eyes at least, opportunity come a-knocking. Just why he accepted Aberdeen’s offer is, therefore, something of a mystery. But accept it he did, and in 1980, he, his wife and children began a new chapter in their lives. They sold their North Toronto home, crated up their worldly goods, shipped them across the Atlantic, and took up residence in the Granite City. The chapter was a short one. After only three years the Rist household was again dislocated, Aberdeen’s Regius Professor of Classics having somehow managed, by his candor, to disconcert the Scots of all people! On learning of his Scottish contretemps the faculty of the University of Toronto gladly welcomed Rist back to their ranks. Whether they did so because they possessed a more exact appreciation of his virtues than did the Regents of Aberdeen or because his absence had made their hearts grow fonder must be left for more competent historians of the academy to determine. Whatever the case may be, his return engagement at Canada’s leading university, which lasted from 1986 until his retirement in 1996, looked like it would be the final leg of his cursus honorum. This is not to suggest that he was showing signs of slowing down. To the contrary, during this same period he was also a Visiting Fellow at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge (1986–7), a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge (1990–1), and in the spring semester of 1995, the Lady Gray Davis Visiting Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, in preparing to quit Toronto he did not attempt this time around to secure another perch elsewhere. And as if to ensure 45

John C. McCarthy

that his second departure would be definitive, the University of Toronto made him Professor Emeritus of Classics and Philosophy in 1997. It was nevertheless easily foreseeable that “retirement” would be with him only a manner of speaking. After only a year in the state of superannuation, he accepted a position as Visiting Professor at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, in Rome, where he taught every fall semester until 2014. Were it not for the Bologna Process and a dispute over a parking space, among other things, he might be there still. His arrangement in Rome also left him at liberty, in the spring of 2012, to accept appointment as the inaugural holder of the Father Kurt Pritzl Chair in Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, which he occupied in alternating semesters until 2015, just short of his seventy-ninth birthday. From his scholarly peregrinations in later years, one might suppose that Rist is unable to stay still. Nothing could be further from the truth, as anyone who has seen him grading term papers will attest. Even if you should arrive on campus at what you supposed to be the first thing in the morning, he will already have installed himself in his office, with his door slightly ajar, his pen in hand, and him straight as a warrant officer in his chair before the mighty stack of essays awaiting his interrogation. Several hours later he will emerge, briefly, for lunch, after which he will be hard back at it, oblivious to hallway conversations and impervious to digital distractions. By day’s end, he will have gone carefully through more essays by far than his younger colleagues can stomach in a week. Such fierce powers of concentration go some way toward explaining his remarkable scholarly productivity. His first book, Eros and Psyche: Studies in Plato, Plotinus and Origen, appeared in 1964. Three years later he returned in more definitive fashion to the greatest of the Neo-Platonists with Plotinus: The Road to Reality.3 These were followed in rapid succession by Stoic Philosophy in 1969, and Epicurus: An Introduction in 1972. After a six-year hiatus, two more books came out under his name: an edited volume of essays entitled sim-

3 Rist here provided the first comprehensive study of Plotinus published, in English, since William Inges’ 1917–8 Gifford Lectures, The Philosophy of Plotinus. Remarkably enough, two friends from his year at Trinity College would also go on, independently, to “discover” Plotinus, there having been nothing in the Cambridge curriculum in those years and no one among its luminaries to encourage interest in neo-Platonic philosophy. Henry Blumenthal, who stayed on at Cambridge for the Ph.D., would go on, in 1971, to publish, inter alia, a revision of his 1964 dissertation under the title, Plotinus’ Psychology: His Doctrines of the Embodied Soul. Twenty years thereafter, Denis O’Brien published Plotinus on the Origin of Matter: An Exercise in the Interpretation of the Enneads.

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ply The Stoics and a broadside against the form-critical school of Biblical misinterpretation, On the Independence of Matthew and Mark (it bears mentioning that he was not at the time of writing a professing member of the Christian fold). Human Value: A Study of Ancient Philosophical Ethics appeared in 1982. With The Mind of Aristotle, he delivered himself, in 1989, of yet another authoritative treatment of still another giant of philosophical antiquity. Refusing to rest on his laurels, he then went on, five years later, to offer a magisterial account of a very different sort of ancient in Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized. Invidious types might grumble that the 2000 Marquette Aquinas lecture, On Inoculating Moral Philosophy Against God, was scarcely long enough to count as real a book. They could not so easily dismiss Real Ethics: Rethinking the Foundations of Morality, which appeared the following year. As if to prove that he was only just getting started, he then published What is Truth? From the Academy to the Vatican in 2008, Plato’s Moral Philosophy: The Discovery of the Presuppositions of Ethics in 2012, Augustine Deformed: Love, Sin and Freedom in the Western Moral Tradition in 2014, and On Ethics, Politics and Psychology in the Twenty-First Century in 2018. His literary output, over the last half-century or so, amounts roughly to a book every three and a half years; and this is not even counting his two Variorum collections of essays, Platonism and its Christian Heritage, issued in 1985, and Man, Soul, and Body: Essays in Ancient Thought from Plato to Dionysius, in 1996. Given such a record, even the most intemperate of his foes must hesitate to believe that On Ethics, Politics and Psychology represents the last of Rist to appear between covers. From the titles of his books alone one can see something of the breadth and depth of Rist’s engagement with the ancient world. His essays amply confirm that impression, the writing of which he seems to have reserved for weekends and bank holidays. There he displays a truly formidable knowledge of both the philosophers of classical antiquity and the theologians, Greek and Latin, of the patristic era and beyond. In some six-score articles and counting, his interlocutors include not only Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Epictetus, Plotinus, Origen and Augustine but also, inter alia, Parmenides, Zeno of Citium, Chrysippus, Aenesidemus, Demetrius the Stylist, Artemon the Compiler, Panaetius, Posidonius, Seneca, Philo, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Amelius, Julian the Apostate, Proclus, Pseudo-Ammonius, Pseudo-Dionysius, Saint Basil, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Saint Anselm and even Saint Thomas Aquinas. Yet this is to say nothing of the many topical essays he has published over the years, or the steady stream of book reviews and critical notices that have issued from his pen—all of which demonstrate that his interests are even more wide-ranging than one might suppose from his books and essays. As the 47

John C. McCarthy

late Kurt Pritzl, no mean scholar of antiquity himself, once observed in my hearing, there seemed to be nothing that Rist had not read, and nothing, Pritzl added with a hint of baffled resignation, that he had read that he had ever forgotten. At no point on his astonishing scholarly itinerary from Cambridge to Toronto and back again (he was made a Life Member of Clare College in 1991) was it ever necessary, to repeat, that Professor Rist obtain the patronymic “Doctor.” Given the prominent role that he has played, over the decades, in the education of so many who were themselves in hot pursuit of a doctoral degree, someone was bound to notice. Was his service as director of Ph.D dissertations and examiner on Ph.D. defenses not a manifest affront to that venerable precept of English property law, nemo dat quod non habet? Possibly in order to rectify the harm done to the public order by his uncredentialled state or, more likely, in order to land a bodyblow against the forces of nominalism, the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross resolved, in 2002, to confer on him the degree Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris Causa, the first time in its history that it had ever given anyone the diploma on such grounds. In awarding him its Aquinas Medal a dozen years later the American Catholic Philosophical Association was perhaps not entirely reckless after all. What, though, of Rist’s pronounced lack of “angelic” qualifications, a defect that no university on earth could hope to remedy “honoris causa”? His sense of humor, it is true, could fairly be described as “devilish”—the address he delivered on receiving the Aquinas medal affords a typical example of the delight he takes in popping vainglorious balloons4—but a metaphorical nod to the fallen angels plainly does nothing to advance the case for his inscription in the heavenly hosts. More to the point, or to his credit if you will, is his abiding concern with the problem of justice, both in theory and in practice. In theory, he had realized early on that either our moral convictions—that genocide is intrinsically evil, for example—take their measure from some order existing prior to human sentiment and convention, or the distinction between morality or immorality is a thoroughgoing delusion. In practice, he has long demonstrated a willingness to follow up the implications of that insight wherever they might lead, even if that should mean taking the unfashionable side in public disputes. Hence 4 “Philosophers and Sophists: Then and Now,” in Dispositions, Habits and Virtues: Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, vol. 88 (2015), 17–25. The present observations derive in large part from remarks read on the medal’s conferral, and subsequently published in the same proceedings. I lean upon them here with the kind permission of the ACPA.

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his service, well before he entered the Catholic Church, as President of the Canadian Coalition for Life, an office plainly not calculated to win him the esteem of the lettered world. What makes Rist’s ability to call a spade a spade especially admirable is that it is joined to an impressive gift for friendship. That capacity has principally been actualized, to be sure, with those happy souls able and willing to put up with his various other gifts. And in this respect no one has shown greater capacity or constancy than his wife. Anna Vogler, as she was when they first met, was then studying classics and English literature at Newnham College, Cambridge. Presumably on a whim—her gracious and kindly demeanor effectively cloaks a keen wit and an adventurous spirit— she had auditioned for a role in a production of Aristophanes put on by Rist and his longtime co-conspirator, Denis O’Brien. Would the marriage of John and Anna have come about even if the producers had not agreed that day to cast her for a part? It is impossible to say, although at this distance the offer of a role in a thing Rist and O’Brien waggishly entitled Angry Young Woman would seem more likely to have discouraged romance than to have ignited it. Nevertheless, a wedding ensued, and in short order. Within a year of their graduation from Cambridge, the twenty-four-yearold Rist returned to England to fetch his bride. Having secured the assurance of a second year’s lectureship in Toronto, he could offer her at least the theoretical possibility of financial stability to undergird the pledge of his undying love. So began their remarkable collaboration. The two shared a devotion to Greek and Latin—until the demands of motherhood made it unreasonable to continue, Anna would herself serve as Lecturer in Classics at St. Michael’s College, the University of Toronto— but from the outset the common affection that was the occasion of their union has found complementary expression. Whereas he found in ancient philosophy liberation from the barren antiquarianism of the Cambridge dons, it was through her love of poetry, ancient and modern, that she escaped their desiccated classicism. This difference between them is reflected in the published record. On the rare occasions that he has repaired to the poets for inspiration, his principal musical sources are bawdy English music hall and soldier’s doggerel. She, in contrast, has published verse translations of the idylls of Theocritus and the minambs of Herodas, as also a volume containing a selection of her own poetry, a one-act play and a novel.5 We may thus be confident that when he credits her with having saved his

5 The Poems of Theocritus, translated with introductions (University of North Carolina Press, 1978); The Mimiambs of Herodas, translated into an English ‘choliambic’ me-

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prose from various infelicities of style and substance—as he has done throughout his career—he is not indulging in mere husbandly courtesy.6 A still more consequential result of their marriage is their four children, two of whom are well along in university careers of their own and, to date, seven grandchildren. Yet to put their partnership fully into perspective, we must consider it in light of another sort of collaboration altogether. Although Anna had been baptized a Catholic, it was not as a Catholic that she was raised. When they met, however, she was already well along on the path from agnosticism back to Christian Rome. As things turned serious between them the prospect of marrying a Catholic could not help but give him pause. Yet John has always been a realist, as we have seen. He was thus aware that in the bargain that is marriage the “for better” is always intermingled with some portion of the “for worse” and that the difference between them is not always what we might at first suppose it to be. Anna, for her part, was confident enough both in her newfound faith and in his love for her to think that the two could in time be fully reconciled. For the first twenty years of their marriage he was content to be, in his wife’s words, a “fellow-traveler.”7 In 1980, he was finally received into the Catholic Church, moved rather by the accumulation of evidence to which he had been privy over the decades than by an uncharacteristic infu-

tre with literary-historical introductions and notes (Bloomsbury, 2016); Festival and Ferial (Kaufmann Publishing, 2015). A novel, entitled The Chain, was published in 2017 (Angelico Press, 2017). 6 The statement of his debt to her in the Acknowledgements (p. xiii) to What is Truth? may be taken as representative of the scope of her contribution to his scholarly and philosophical achievement as a whole. After identifying several others whose suggestions had improved the work, he continues, “But as usual the main supporter both of myself as author and of the text as finally generated was Anna Rist, who read the entire manuscript in great detail twice and corrected hundreds of misdescriptions of fact or sloppinesses of argument and style.” He then goes on to characterize her assistance as “kind, loving and severe.” Their one jointly authored publication to date is entitled, most fittingly, “Augustine and Marriage,” Priests and People 7 (1993), 327–31. 7 See We Etruscans: Old and New in a Forgotten Landscape (Lutterworth Press, 2008), 78, for her charming memoir of some thirty summers spent by the Rist family in rural Tuscany. Telling glimpses of her spouse appear throughout. She notes, for example, that he “saw most possessions except books as unnecessary complications to a life of philosophical investigation” (23). She also speaks of his “characteristic drive for cultural acquisition,” which was “combined with tank-like imperviousness to the impediments nature likes to throw in the way of its pursuit” (61). Those who have seen him operate in other settings will not be surprised to read that he was never much troubled by ordinary household bustle (95, 121).

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sion of ardor. No doubt the evidence of her visible witness carried the greatest weight in his reasoning, but in such matters one must principally reckon upon an initiative hidden from sight and born silently in prayer. In reflecting on the activity of teaching and learning, Thomas Aquinas had to contend with those who, mindful of the Gospel of St. Matthew (23:8) and the mysteries involved in moving from ignorance to knowledge, insisted that God alone teaches and so deserves the name of teacher. By way of responding to such types, Thomas enlists the authority of Augustine, who allows that even the very highest kind of teaching, the teaching concerning our salvation, has been imparted to human beings both “directly by God” and as mediated by angels and by other human beings. Throughout his discussion of teaching in Question 11 of De veritate Thomas readily concedes that only God teaches “from within [interius] and principally.” However, to insist that teaching is a divine prerogative exclusively is, he thinks, to sell God’s creation short. To explain the sense in which human teaching is possible Thomas recalls the difference between the way nature and the doctor bring about health, the former internally and the latter, through the external ministrations of the medical art. Thus “although God alone can infuse the light of truth into the mind,” an angel or a human being can provide external “helps” and remove “impediments” to the perception of that light.8 John Michael Rist has never attempted to impersonate an angel, and wisely so, for he would never have fooled anyone had he done so. For more than half a century, however, he has played the part of a teacher, and to extraordinary effect. He has been energetic in the search for the truth, he has delighted in those portions of it he has found, he has been generous in sharing the fruits of his inquiries, untiring in urging us to join him in the search, and unsparing in his derision for those who arrogantly deny its claim upon us. In paying due tribute to him, we who have been privileged to know this extraordinary teacher also pay down our debt to our common Master.

8 See Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, XI. 1–3.

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Curriculum Vitae John M. Rist, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION 1. Personal Born: 1936, Romford, England Married to Anna Thérèse Rist (née Vogler); 4 children National Service in R.A.F. 1954–56 Address: 14, St Luke’s Street Cambridge, CB4 3DA England Citizenships: British, Canadian

2. Education 1944–54

Brentwood School

1956–59

Trinity College, Cambridge (Minor, then Senior Scholar)

1957

Classical Preliminaries at Cambridge, Class 1, 1958 Classical Tripos Part 1, Class 1

1959

Classical Tripos Part 2 (Special Subject, Ancient Philosophy), Class 1

1963

M.A. (Cantab.)

3. Employment 1959–63

Lecturer in Greek, University College, Toronto

1963–65

Assistant Professor of Greek, University College, Toronto

1965–69

Associate Professor of Greek, University College, Toronto

53

John M. Rist

1969–80

Professor of Classics, University of Toronto

1977–80

Cross-Appointed Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto

1980–83

Regius Professor of Classics, University of Aberdeen

1983–96

Professor of Classics and Philosophy, University of Toronto; cross-appointed St. Michael’s College (1983–90)

1997-

Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto

1998–2015

Part-time Visiting Professor, Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, Rome

2012–15

Kurt Pritzl, O.P. Professor of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America

4. Awards, Fellowships 1958

John Stewart of Rannoch Scholarship in Greek and Latin, Cambridge University Henry Arthur Thomas Travel Exhibition, Cambridge University

1976

Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

1986–87

Visiting Fellow, St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge

1990–91

Connaught Fellowship, University of Toronto

1990–91

Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge

1991-

Life Member, Clare Hall, Cambridge

1995

(February—June) Lady Davis Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

2002

Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris Causa, Università della Santa Croce, Rome

2014

Aquinas Medal of American Catholic Philosophical Association

2017

Inducted as Chief and Father of the Tiv (Benue state, Nigeria) Tribe (Hon.)

54

Curriculum Vitae

5. Administrative Positions 1970

Chairman, University of Toronto Faculty Association

1971–75

Chairman, Graduate Department of Classical Studies, University of Toronto

1975–76

Associate Chairman (Graduate Studies), Department of Classics, University of Toronto

1980–83

Regius Professor of Classics and Head of Department of Classics, University of Aberdeen

PUBLICATIONS (a) Books 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Eros and Psyche: Studies in Plato, Plotinus and Origen (University of Toronto Press, 1964); Italian edition (Vita e Pensiero, 1995). Plotinus: The Road to Reality (Cambridge University Press, 1967); Italian edition with new introduction (Melangolo, 1995). Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1969); Spanish translation with new introduction (Critica, 1995); Czech edition planned. Epicurus: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1972); Italian edition (Mursia, 1978); Catalan translation (Santa Coloma de Queralt, 2008). The Stoics (ed.) (California University Press, 1978). On the Independence of Matthew and Mark (Cambridge University Press, N.T.S. Monograph Series 32, 1978). Human Value: A Study of Ancient Philosophical Ethics (Philosophia Antiqua, 40) (Brill, 1982). Platonism and Its Christian Heritage (Variorum, 1985). The Mind of Aristotle (University of Toronto Press, 1989). Augustine: Ancient thought baptized (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Italian edition (Vita e Pensiero, 1997); Spanish (Ediciones Destino) edition planned. Man, Soul and Body: Essays in Ancient Thought from Plato to Dionysius (Variorum, 1996). On Inoculating Moral Philosophy Against God (Marquette University Press, 2000). Real Ethics: Rethinking the Foundations of Morality (Cambridge University Press, 2001). 55

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14. 15. 16 17 18

What is Truth? From the Academy to the Vatican (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Plato’s Moral Realism. The Discovery of the Presuppositions of Ethics (The Catholic University of America Press, 2012). Augustine Deformed: Love, Sin and Freedom in the Western Moral Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Reading Augustine: Ethics, Politics and Psychology in the Twenty-First Century (Bloomsbury Press, 2018). What is a Person?: Realities, Constructs, Illusions (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

(b) Articles (Those starred appear in the second Variorum reprint, 1996). On the Presocratics, Socrates and Plato (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

“The Order of the Later Dialogues of Plato,” Phoenix (Px) 14 (1960). “The Parmenides Again,” Px 16 (1962). “The Aviary Model in the Theaetetus,” Dialogue (De) 1 (1962–3). “Equals and Intermediates in Plato,” Phronesis (Ps) 9 (1964). “The Immanence and Transcendence of the Platonic Form,” Philologus 108 (1964). (6) “Plato on Knowledge and Value,” Px 21 (1967). (7)* “Parmenides and Plato’s Parmenides,” Classical Quarterly (CQ,), new series (n.s.) 20 (1970). (8) “Plato’s Earlier Theory of Forms,” Px 29 (1975). (9)* “The Theory and Practice of Plato’s Cratylus,” in Greek Poetry and Philosophy (Festschrift for L. Woodbury, [ed.] D. Gerber [Scholars Press, 1984]). (10)* “Plato says that we have tripartite souls. If he is right, what can we do about it?,” in Sophies Maietores: “Chercheurs de Sagesse:” Hommage a Jean Pepin (Brepols, 1992). (11) “On the Aims and Effects of Platonic Dialogues,” Iyyun (Jerusalem) 46 (1997). (12) “Plato and Professor Nussbaum on Acts ‘Contrary to Nature,’” in Studies in Plato and the Platonic Tradition: Essays Presented to John Whittaker, (ed.) M. Joyal (Ashgate, 1997). (13) “The Possibility of Morality in Plato’s Republic,” Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy (BACAP) 14 (1998).

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Curriculum Vitae

(14)

“Moral Motivation in Plato, Plotinus, Augustine, and Ourselves,” in Plato and Platonism, (ed.) J. van Ophuijsen (The Catholic University of America Press, 1999).

On Aristotle (15)

“Some Aspects of Aristotelian Teleology,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 96 (1965). (16) Notes on De Anima 3.5,” Classical Philology (CP) 61 (1966), (reprinted in Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, [ed.] J. Anton and G. Kustas [SUNY Press, 1971]). (17)* “Aristotle: The Value of Man and the Origin of Morality,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 4 (1974). (18) “Pleasure: 360–300 B.C.,” Px 28 (1974). (19) “The End of Aristotle’s On Prayer,” American Journal of Philology (AJP) 106 (1985).

On Hellenistic Philosophy (20) (21) (22) (23) (24)* (25)* (26) (27) (28)* (29) (30)*

“Neopythagoreanism and Plato’s Second Letter,” Ps 10 (1965). “On Tracking Alexander of Aphrodisias,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 48 (1966). “The Heracliteanism of Aenesidemus,” Px 24 (1970). “Categories and their Uses” (from Stoic Philosophy, reprinted in Problems in Stoicism [ed. A. A. Long] [Athlone Press, 1971]). “Zeno and Stoic Consistency,” Ps 22 (1977) (reprinted in Essays in Greek Philosophy II, [edd.] Anton and Preuss [SUNY Press, 1983]). “Stoic Detachment” in The Stoics, (ed.) J.M. Rist (University of California Press, 1978). “Zeno and the Origins of Stoic Logic,” in Les Stoiciens et leur Logique, (ed.) J. Brunschwig, (Vrin, 1978). “Epicurus on Friendship,” CP 75 (1980). “Are you a Stoic? The Case of Marcus Aurelius,” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, (edd.) B.F. Mayer and E.P. Sanders (SCM Press, 1982). “Stoicism: Some Reflections on the State of the Art,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 23 (Supplement 1985). “On Greek Biology, Greek Cosmology, and some Sources of Theological Pneuma,” (Prudentia Supplement, 1985). 57

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(31)* “Epictetus: Ex-Slave,” Dialectic 24 (1985). (32)* “Seneca and Stoic Orthodoxy,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (ANRW) 36.3 (1989). (32) “Plutarch’s Amatorius: A Commentary on Plato’s Theories of Love,” CQ 51 (2001).

On Plotinus and Neoplatonism (34)* “Plotinus on Matter and Evil,” Ps 6 (1961). (35)* “The Indefinite Dyad and Intelligible Matter in Plotinus,” CQ n.s. 12 (1962). (36) “Theos and the One in Some Texts of Plotinus,” Mediaeval Studies 24 (1962). (37) “The Neoplatonic One and Plato’s Parmenides,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 93 (1962). (38)* “Plotinus and the Daimonion of Socrates,” Px 17 (1963). (39) “Forms of Individuals in Plotinus,” CQ n.s.13 (1963). (40) “Mysticism and Transcendence in Later Neoplatonism,” Hermes 92 (1964) (reprinted in Die Philosophie des Neuplatonismus, [ed.] C. Zintzen [Verlag Dr. Kovac, 1977]). (41) “Monism in Plotinus and some Predecessors,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 69 (1965). (42) “Integration and the Undivided Soul in Plotinus,” AJP 88 (1967). (43) “Ideas of Individuals in Plotinus,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 24, no. 92 (1970). (44) “The Problem of ‘Otherness’ in the Enneads,” Colloque internationale du CNRS sur le Neoplatonisme (CNRS Éditions, 1971). (45) “Plotinus and Augustine on Evil”, in Plotino ed il Neoplatonismo in Oriente e in Occidente (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1974). (46) “The One of Plotinus and the God of Aristotle,” Review of Metaphysics (RM) 27 (1973). (47) “Prohaeresis: Plotinus, Proclus et alii,” in De Jamblique à Proclus, Entretiens Hardt, vol. 21 (Fondation Hardt, 1975). (48) “Plotinus and Moral Obligation,” Studies in Neoplatonism vol.1 The Significance of Neoplatonism, (ed.) R. B. Harris (SUNY Press, 1976). (49) “Metaphysics and Psychology in Plotinus’ Account of the Soul,” in Graceful Reason: Festschrift for J. Owens, (ed.) L.P. Gerson (PIMS Toronto, 1983). (50)* “Pseudo-Ammonius and the Soul/Body Problem in some Platonic Texts of Late Antiquity,” AJP 109 (1988). 58

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(51)* “Back to the Mysticism of Plotinus,” Journal of the History of Philosophy (JHP) 27 (1989). (52)* “Is Plotinus’ Body Too Etherialized?” in Multarum Artium Scientia: Festschrift for Godfrey Tanner. 1993 Supplementary Number, (edd.) K. Lee, C. Mackie, H. Tarrant (Prudentia, 1993). (53) “Plotino, Ficino e noi stessi: alcuni riflessi etici,” Riv. Filosofia NeoScolastica 86 (1994). (54) “Plotinus and Christian Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, (ed.) L.P. Gerson (Cambridge University Press, 1996). (55) “On Plotinus’ Psychology,” in Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 61 (2006).

On Patristics (56) (57) (58) (59) (60)

(61) (62) (63) (64) (65)

“In Search of the Divine Denis,” in Seed of Wisdom: Essays presented to T.J. Meek, (ed.) W. S. McCullough (University of Toronto Press, 1964). “A Note on Eros and Agape in Pseudo-Dionysius,” Vigiliae Christianae 20 (1966). “A Note on the Memoria Apostolorum,” Journal of Theological Studies (JTS) 19 (1968). “St. John and Amelius,” JTS 20 (1969). “Augustine on Free Will and Predestination,” JTS 20 (1969), reprinted in Augustine (Modern Studies in Philosophy), (ed.) R. Markus (Anchor/Doubleday, 1972); and in Studies in Early Christianity: vol. 10 Early Christian Doctrines of Human Nature, Sin and Salvation, (ed.) E. Ferguson (Garland, 1993). “Some Interrelations of Agape and Eros,” in The Philosophy and Theology of Anders Nygren, (ed.) C.W. Kegley (S. Illinois U.P., 1970). “The Greek and Latin Texts of the Discussion of Free Will in ‘De principiis’ Book III,” in Origeniana (Quaderni di Vetera Christianorum) 12 (1975). “The Nature and Background of Basil’s ‘Neoplatonism,’” in Basil of Caesarea: Christian, Humanist, Ascetic, (ed.) P.J. Fedwick (University of Toronto, Press 1981). “The Importance of Stoic Logic in the Contra Celsum,” in Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought, (edd.) H.J. Blumenthal and R.A. Markus (Variorum, 1981). “Beyond Stoic and Platonist: A Sample of Origen’s Treatment of Philosophy (Contra Celsum: 4.62–70),” in Platonismus und Christen59

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tum, Festschrift H. Dörrie (Münster 1983). Reprinted in Studies in Early Christianity: vol. 8 Early Christianity and Greco-Roman Thought, (ed.) E. Ferguson (Garland, 1993). (66) “St. Augustine on the Exercise of Power,” Canadian Catholic Review (CCR) 4 (1986). (67) “St. Augustine: Virginity and Marriage,” CCR 5 (1987). (68) “A Man of Monstrous Vanity,” JTS 42 (1991). (69)* “Pseudo-Dionysius, Neoplatonism and the Weakness of the Soul,” in From Athens to Chartres: Neoplatonism and Mediaeval Thought: Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, (ed.) H. Westra (Brill, 1992). (70) (With Anna Rist) “St. Augustine and Marriage,” Priests and People (P&P) 7 (1993). (71) “Augustine: Freedom, Love and Intention,” in Il Mistero del Male e la Libertà Possibile (IV): Ripensare Agostino, (Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1997). (72) “Love, Knowing and Incarnation in Ps-Dionysius,” in Traditions of Platonism: Essays in Honour of John Dillon, (ed.) J.J. Cleary (Ashgate, 1999). (73) “What Will I Be Like Tomorrow? Augustine vs Hume,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (ACPQ) 74 (2000). (74) “Love and Will: Around De Trinitate XV 20, 38,” in, Gott und Sein Bild: Augustins De Trinitate im Spiegel gegenwartiger Forschung, (ed.) J. Brachtendorf (Schöningh, 2000). (75) “Augustine of Hippo,” in The Medieval Theologians, (ed.) G.R. Evans (Wiley-Blackwell, 2001). (76) “Faith and Reason,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, (edd.) E. Stump and N. Kretzmann (Cambridge University Press, 2001). (77) “On the Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa,” Hermathena 169 (2000). (78) “Christianisme et Néoplatonisme: Un Bilan,” in Hellénisme et Christianisme, (edd.) M. Narcy and E. Rebillard (Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2004). (79) “Christian Theology and Secular Philosophy,” in The First Christian Theologians, (ed.) G.R. Evans (Oxford University Press, 2004). (80) “A case of Spiritual Fornication: Casting Pears before Real Swine”, in Agonistes: Essays in Honour of Denis O’Brien, (edd.) J. Dillon and M. Dixsaut (Routledge, 2005). (81) “On the Original Nature of Christian Philosophy,” in Laudemus Viros Gloriosos: Essays in Honor of Armand Maurer CSB, (ed.) R. Houser (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). (82) “Augustine’s Spirituality in the Twenty-First Century,” in Saint Augustine, (ed.) T. van Bavel (Mercatorfonds, 2007). 60

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(83) (84) (85) (86)

“On the Nature and Worth of Christian Philosophy: evidence from the City of God,” in Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide, (ed.) J. Wetzel (Cambridge University Press, 2012). “Il Logos nella Tarda Antichità,” Acta Philosophica 23 (2014). “Can the City of God Help Us Deconstruct Multiculturalism,” in Kampf oder Dialog, (ed.) C. Muller (Augustinus bei Echter, 2015). “Augustine on Religious Freedom,” in Christianity and Freedom, (edd.) T. Shah and A. Hertze (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Other (87) (88) (89) (90) (91) (92) (93) (94) (95) (96) (97) (98) (99) (100) (101) (102) (103)

(With M.E. Marmura) “Al-Kindi’s Discussion of Divine Existence and Oneness,” Mediaeval Studies 25 (1963). “Demetrius the Stylist and Artemon the Compiler,” Px 18 (1964). “Coherence and the God of Love,” JTS 23 (1972). “Notes on Anselm’s Aims in the Proslogion,” Vivarium 11 (1933). “On Quod Deus Immutabilis Sit,” Colloquy 23, Center for Hermeneutical Studies (1976). “An Early Dispute about Right Reason,” Monist 66 (1983). “Where Else?” in Philosophers Who Believe, (ed.) K. J. Clark (IVP Academic, 1993). “The Challenge of Veritatis Splendor,” P&P 8.10 (1994). “Notes on the Politics of Modern Israel,” CCR 14 (1996). “Why Greek Philosophers Might Have Been Concerned About the Environment,” in The Greeks and the Environment, (edd.) L. Westra and T. Robinson (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997). “Knowing Good and Evil,” in Catholic Scholarship in Action, (edd.) D. Sands and J. Stone (Pilgrim Reader Books, 1997). “Augustine on Locke, Lying and Individualism,” Augustinian Studies (AS) 29 (1998). “On the Very Idea of Translating Sacred Scripture,” in Interpretation of the Bible, (ed.) J Krasovec (Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). “Platonic Soul, Aristotelian Form, Christian Person,” in Self, Soul and Body in Religious Experience, (edd.) A. Baumgarten, J. Assmann, and G. Stroumsa (Brill, 1998). “Desiderio e azione: L’eredità del mondo antico,” in Azione e Persona: Le Radici della Prassi, (ed.) L.Alici (Vita e Pensiero, 2002). “Il desiderio da Platone ad Agostino,” in Metafisica del Desiderio, (ed.) C. Ciancio (Vita e Pensiero, 2003). “Homosexuality and Christianity,” P&P 18 (2004). 61

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(104) “Luke 2:2: Making Sense of the Date of Jesus’ Birth,” JTS 56 (2005). (105) “La Filosofia come Dialogo: Il Modello Platonico,” in La Filosofia come Dialogo a confronto con Agostino, (edd.) L. Alici et al. (New Town, 2005). (106) “Freedoms and Would-Be Persons,” in Freedom and the Human Person, (ed.) R. Velkley (The Catholic University of America Press, 2007). (107) “Augustine, Aristotelianism and Aquinas: Three Varieties of Philosophical Adaptation,” in Aquinas the Augustinian, (edd.) M. Dauphinais, B. David, and M. Levering (The Catholic University of America Press, 2007). (108) “A Response to Commentators on Real Ethics,” in Ethics without God? (edd.) F. di Blasi, J. Hochschild, and J. Langan (St. Augustine’s Press, 2008). (109) “Judgment, Reaction and the Common Good,” Political Theology 9 (2008). (110) “Freedom and Nature among the Greeks,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association (PACPA) 81 (2007). (111) “The Divided Self: A Classical Perspective,” in The Psychology of Character and Virtue, (ed.) C.S. Titus (The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). (112) Preface to: P. Bernardini, Uomo Naturale o Uomo Politico? (Rubettino, 2009). (113) “Aesthetics and Ethics: Some Common Problems of Foundationalism,” in Natural Moral Law in Contemporary Society, (ed.) H. Zaborowski (The Catholic University of America Press, 2010). (114) “Morality and Religion: Some Questions about First Principles,” Philosophical Investigations 34 (2011). (115) “MacIntyre’s Idea of a University: Theory and Practice,” in Alasdair MacIntyre issue, Revue internationale de Philosophie 264 (2013), (with MacIntyre’s reply [215–7]). (116) “Divorce and Remarriage in the Early Church: Some Historical and Cultural Reflections,” in Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church, (ed.) R. Dodaro, O.S.A. (Ignatius Press, 2014). (117) “Must Morality be Grounded on God?” Quaestiones Disputatae 5 (2014). (118) “Philosophers and Sophists: Then and Now,” PACPA 88 (2014). (119) “On the Use and Abuse of the Concept of Gender,” Acta Philosophica 25 (2016).

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(120) “From Dreamland ‘Humanism’ to Christian Political Reality, or From Nusquama to Utopia,” RM 69 (2016). (121) “Dionysius’ Christianity: Preconditions of the post-Reformation Debate,” Annali di scienze religiose 9 (2016). (122) Preface to: A. Malo, Uomo o Donna (Vita e Pensiero, 2017).

REVIEWS 1961

E.R. Dodds (ed.), Les Sources de Plotin (Fondation Hardt, 1960), in Px 15 (1961).

1962

W.G. Runciman, Plato’s Later Epistemology (Cambridge University Press, 1962), in Classical World (CW) 55 (1962).

1963

P. Seligman, The ‘Apeiron’ of Anaximander (Athlone Press, 1962), in De 1 (1963).

1965

T. Gould, Platonic Love (Free Press of Glenco, 1963), in AJP 86 (1965). P. Henry and H.R. Schwyzer, Plotinus I-III (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964), in Px 19 (1965).

1966

J. Lyons, Structural Semantics: An Analysis of Part of the Vocabulary of Plato (Oxford, Blackwell, 1963), in CP 61 (1966). I.M. Crombie, Plato: The Midwife’s Apprentice (Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1964), in The Classical Journal (CJ) 61 (1966). E.R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge University Press, 1965), in Px 20 (1966). H.L. Sinaiko, Love, Knowledge and Discourse: Dialogue and Dialectic in the Phaedrus, Republic, Parmenides (University of Chicago Press, 1965), in CJ 62 (1966).

1967

A.H. Armstrong (ed.), Plotinus, Enneads I-II (Harvard University Press, 1966), in CW (1967). J. Trouillard, Proclus: élements de théologie (Éditions Montaigne, 1965), in Journal of Hellenistic Studies (JHS) 87 (1967). G. Ryle, Plato’s Progress (Cambridge University Press, 1966), in De 5 (1966–67). H. Dörrie, (ed.), Porphyre (Fondation Hardt, 1966), in Px 21 (1967).

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D.J. Furley, Two Studies in the Greek Atomists (Princeton University Press, 1967), in Px 21 (1967). 1968

J.N. Deck, Nature, Contemplation and the One (University of Toronto Press, 1967), in Px 22 (1968). R. Ferwerda, La signification des images et des métaphores dans la pensée de Plotin (Diss. Amsterdam, V.U., 1965), in AJP 89 (1968). L.G. Westerink (ed.), Ps-Elias: Lectures on Porphyry’s Isagoge (North-Holland Pub. Co., 1967), in CW 61 (1968). A.H. Armstrong (ed.), The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Mediaeval Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1967), in JHS 88 (1968). R. Arnou, Le désir de Dieu dans la philosophie de Plotin, 2nd édition, (Presses de l’Université Gregorienne, 1967), in JHS 88 (1968).

1969

H.D. Saffrey and L.G. Westerink (edd.), Proclus, Théologie platonicienne 1 (Les Belles Lettres, 1968), in CW 62 (1969). S. Rosen, Plato’s Symposium (Yale University Press, 1968), in CW 62 (1969).

1970

A. Graeser, Probleme der platonischen Seelenteilungslehre (C.H. Beck, 1969), in CW 63 (1970). G.P. Kostaras, Der Begriff des Lebens bei Plotin (Felix Meiner Verlag, 1969), in CW 64 (1970). P. Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus (Études Augustiniennes, 1968), in JHS 90 (1970).

1971

J. Gould, The Philosophy of Chrysippus (SUNY Press, 1970), in Px 25 (1971). J.L. Fischer, The Case of Socrates (Academia, 1969), in American Classical Review (ACR) 1 (1971).

1972

R. Hoven, Stoicisme et Stoiciens face au problème de l’au delà (Les Belles Lettres, 1971), in ACR 1 (1972). R. Palmer and R. Hamerton-Kelly (edd.), Philomathes (Festschrift Merlan) (Nijhoff, 1971), in Px 26 (1971). D. Roloff, Plotin: Die Grossschrift (de Gruyter, 1970), in JHS 92 (1972).

1973

64

R.T. Wallis, Neoplatonism (Duckworth, 1972), in JHS 93 (1973).

Curriculum Vitae

1974

G.F. Else, The Structure and Date of book 10 of Plato’s Republic (C. Winter, 1972), in CW 68 (1974). H.B. Timothy, The Early Christian Apologists and Greek Philosophy (Van Gorcum, 1973), in Px 28 (1974).

1975

A.A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy (Duckworth, 1974), in JRS 65 (1975).

1978

W.K. Werkmeister (ed.), Facets of Plato’s Philosophy (Van Gorcum, 1977), in CW 71 (1978).

1979

B. Orchard, Matthew, Luke and Mark (Koinonia Press, 1976), in The Journal of Biblical Literature (JBL) 98 (1979).

1981

W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy IV-V (Cambridge University Press, 1975, 1978), in Px 35 (1981).

1982

J. Bollack (ed.), Cahiers de Philologie, vol.1, Etudes sur l’épicurisme antique (Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1974), in CP 77 (1982).

1983

D. Heyd, Supererogation (Cambridge University Press, 1982), in CCR 1 (1983). J.M. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford University Press, 1980), in CCR 1 (1983). A. Dihle, The Theory of the Will in Classical Antiquity (University of California Press, 1982), in Px 37 (1983).

1984

D. Westley, Morality and its Beyond (Twenty-Third Publications/ Baryard, 1984), in CCR 2 (1984). L.A. Blum, Friendship, Altruism and Morality (Routledge, 1980), in CCR 2 (1984). B. Bebek, The Third City (Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1982), in CCR 2 (1984). J.M. Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1984), in CCR 2 (1984).

1985

L. Brisson (ed.), Porphyre: La Vie de Plotin (J. Vrin, 1982), in Px 39 (1985). E.J. Bond, Reason and Value (Cambridge University Press, 1983), in CCR 3 (1985).

1986

C.E. Curran, Directions in Catholic Social Ethics (University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), in CCR 4 (1986). H. Tarrant, Scepticism or Platonism? (Cambridge University Press, 1985), in Px 40 (1986).

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1987

A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley (edd.), The Hellenistic Philosophers I (Cambridge University Press, 1987), in CP 7 (1987). M. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Brill, 1985), in JTS 38 (1987). H. Schurmann, J. Ratzinger and H.U. von Balthasar, Principles of Christian Morality (Ignatius Press, 1986), in CCR 5 (1987). J. Miller, The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity (University of Toronto Press, 1986), in University of Toronto Quarterly (UTQ) 57 (1987).

1988

C.E. Curran, Towards an American Catholic Moral Theology (University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), in CCR 6 (1988). S.E. Gersh, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition, 2 vols. (University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), in Ancient Philosophy (AP) 8 (1988).

1989

R.J. O’Connell, The Origin of the Soul in St. Augustine’s Later Works (Fordham University Press, 1987), in International Philosophical Quarterly (IPQ) (review-article) 29 (1989). A. Gotthelf and J.G. Lennox, Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology (Cambridge University Press, 1987), in Px 43 (1989).

1990

C.J.de Vogel, Rethinking Plato and Platonism (Brill, 1986), in AP 10 (1990). M.E. Reesor, The Nature of Man in Early Stoic Philosophy (Duckworth, 1989), in The Classical Review 40 (1990).

1991

D. Furley, Cosmic Problems (Cambridge University Press, 1989), in Classical News and Views (CNV) 10 (1991). G. Steiner, Real Presences (Faber and Faber Ltd., 1990), in CCR 9 (1991). R. Mouw, The God Who Commands (University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), in CCR 9 (1991). A.C. Lloyd, The Anatomy of Neoplatonism (Oxford University Press, 1990), in Classical Philology Review (CPR) 11 (1991). S. Clark, A Parliament of Souls (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990), in JTS 42 (1991).

1992

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C.E. Curran, Catholic Higher Education, Theology, and Academic Freedom (University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), in CCR 10 (1992).

Curriculum Vitae

G. Leroux, Plotin: Traité sur la liberté et la volonté de l’Un (Vrin, 1990), in CPR 12 (1992). C. Kirwan, Augustine (Routledge, 1989), in JHP 30 (1992). J.P. Kenney, Mystical Monotheism; A Study of Ancient Platonic Theology (Brown University Press, 1991), in JTS 43 (1992). S.R.L. Clark, God’s World and the Great Awakening. Limits and Renewals 3 (Oxford University Press, 1991), in JTS 43 (1992). P.R. Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 1990), in UTQ 62 (1991). H.A. Meynell (ed.), Grace, Politics and Desire: Essays on Augustine (University of Calgary Press, 1990), in Px 46 (1992). 1993

S. Callahan, In Good Conscience: Reason and Emotion in Moral Decision Making (HarperCollins, 1991), in CCR 11 (1993). R. Sorabji, Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and their Influence (Cornell University Press, 1990), in AP 13 (1993). P. Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence (Oxford University Press, 1993), in The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 14 (1993).

1994

D.A. Hart, Faith in Doubt: Non-Realism and Christian Belief (Mowbray, 1993), in P&P 8 (1994). P.J. Fitzpatrick, In Breaking of Bread, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), in P&P 8 (1994). R. McInerny, The Question of Christian Ethics (The Catholic University of America, 1993), in CCR 12 (1994). R. Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge University Press, 1992), in CNV 38 (1994). A. Alberti (ed.) Studi sull’Etica di Aristotelei (Bibliopolis, 1990), in AP 14 (1994). J. Dillon, The Golden Chain: Studies in the Development of Platonism and Christianity (Routledge, 1990), in AP 14 (1994).

1995

H. Tarrant, Thrasyllan Platonism (Cornell University Press, 1993), in RM 48 (1995). C. Osborne, Eros Unveiled (Oxford University Press, 1994), in JTS 46 (1995).

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1996

G. Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus (Franciscan Press, 1992), in CCR 14 (1996).

1997

G.S. Harak, Aquinas and Empowerment (Georgetown University Press, 1995), in CCR 15 (1997). S.A. Cooper, Metaphysics and Morals in Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians (Peter Lang, 1996), in JTS 48 (1997). G. Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (Penn State University Press, 1995), in JHP 35 (1997). E. Clark, St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality (Catholic University of America Press, 1996), in CCR 15 (1997).

1998

J. Barnes and M. Griffin (edd), Philosophia Togata II (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997), in RM 51 (1998). C. Crowder (ed.), God and Reality: Essays on Christian Non-Realism (Mowbray, 1996), in P&P 12 (1998).

1999

M. Boulding (trans.), The Confessions of Saint Augustine (Random House, 1997), in P&P 13 (1999). R. Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the Man who Became Pope John Paul II trans. P. Guietti and F. Murphy (Eerdmans, 1997), in P&P 13 (1999). R. Dobbin (trans.), Epictetus: Discourses Book 1 (Oxford University Press, 1998), in IPQ 39 (1999).

2000

R. Dodaro and G. Lawless (edd.), Augustine and his Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner (Routledge, 2000), in New Blackfriars (NB) 81 (2000). G.B. Matthews (ed.), The Augustinian Tradition (University of California Press, 1999), in AS 31 (2000). S. Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1998), in IPQ 40 (2000). S. MacCormick, The Shadows of Poetry: Virgil in the Mind of Augustine (University of California Press, 1998), in Journal of American Academy of Religion (JAAR) 68 (2000).

2001

J. Haldane (ed.), Philosophy and Public Affairs (Cambridge University Press, 2000), in NB 82 (2001). S. Rappe, Reading Neoplatonism: Non-Discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus and Damascius (Cambridge University Press, 2000), in Mind 110 (2001).

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Curriculum Vitae

R.Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford University Press, 2000), in IPQ 41 (2001). 2002

G.P. O’Daly, Platonism Pagan and Christian: Studies in Plotinus and Augustine (Ashgate, 2001), in AS 33 (2002).

2003

“A Critical Review of Studies in Neoplatonism: Ancient and Modern, vols. 8–12” (SUNY Press, 2001) (review article), in IPQ 43 (2003).

2004

“Homosexuality and Christianity,” a review of G. Moore, A Question of Truth (Continuum, 2003), in P&P 18 (2004). G. Mansini and J.G. Hart, Ethics and Theological Disclosures: The Thought of Robert Sokolowski (The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), in NB 85 (2004). J. J. Schuld, Foucault and Augustine: Reconsidering Power and Love in Theology (University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), in Theology Today (TT) 61 (2004).

2005

W. Aiken and J. Haldane (edd.), Philosophy and its Public Role (Luton; Andrews, UK Ltd., 2004), in NB 86 (2005).

2006

M. L. Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs: Ethics for the Common Man (University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), in TT 63 (2006). C. Harrison, Augustine’s Early Theology: An Argument for Continuity (Oxford University Press, 2006), in NB 87 (2006).

2008

C. E. Curran, The Moral Theology of John Paul II (Georgetown University Press, 2006), in NB 89 (2008). R. Rorty, Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers 4 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), in RM 61 (2008).

2012

G.E.M. Anscombe, M. Geach and L. Gormally (edd.), Faith in a Hard Ground: Essays on Religion, Philosophy and Ethics (Imprint Academic, 2008), in Chesterton Review 38 (2012).

2013

L. Karfikova, Grace and the Will (Brill, 2012), in Augustinianum (AM) 53 (2013). G. Caruso, Ramusculus Origenis (Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2012), in AM 53 (2013).

2014

J. Lagouanère, Interiorité et réflexivité dans la pensée de Saint Augustin: Formes et genèse d’une conceptualisation (Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2012), in JTS 65 (2014).

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2015

D.V. Meconi and E. Stump (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, 2nd edition (Cambridge University Press, 2014), in JTS 66 (2015). R. Mortley, Plotinus, Self and the World (Cambridge University Press, 2013), in JTS 66 (2015). E. Jenkins, Free to say No? Augustine’s Evolving Doctrine of Grace and Election (James Clarke & Co., 2013) and J. Couenhoven, Stricken by Sin, Cured by Christ: Agency, Necessity and Culpability in Augustinian Theology (Oxford University Press, 2013), in Studies in Christian Ethics 28 (2015). P. Wynn, Augustine on War and Military Service (Fortress Press, 2013), in Catholic Historical Review 101 (2015). T. Chappell, Knowing what to do. Imagination, Virtue and Platonism in Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2015), in Philosophical Investigations (PI) 38 (2015).

2016

R.L. Fox, Augustine: Conversions and Confessions (Random House, 2016), in The Tablet (April 2016). R. Scruton and M. Dooley, Conversations with Roger Scruton (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2016), in the Catholic Herald (CH) (July 1). P. Singer, Ethics in the Real World (Princeton University Press, 2016), in CH (November 25). G.P. Boersma, Augustine’s Early Theology of Image: A Study in the Development of Pro-Nicene Theology (Oxford University Press, 2016), in JTS 67 (2016). S. Mulhall, The Great Riddle: Wittgenstein, Nonsense, Theology and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2015), in PI 40 (2016). C.S. Celenza, Machiavelli: A Portrait (Harvard University Press, 2016), in RM 70 (2016) 125-7. J. Marenbon, Pagans and Philosophers (Princeton University Press, 2015), in RM 70 (2016) 141-4.

2017

B. Davies, T. Kucharski (edd.), The McCabe Reader (T. & T. Clarke, 2016), in RM 71 (2017) 144-7. T. Scheck, Erasmus' Life of Origen (The Catholic University of America Press, 2016), in RM 71 (2017) 147-9.

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On The Trail Of Animal Academicum (1956–2013) John M. Rist

Experiar quid concedatur in illos Quorum Flaminia tegitur cinis atque Latina Juvenal Satires 1.170 – 71 Aristotle said that human beings are socio-political animals, but there are sub-sets; the one to which I discovered I belong, is the animal academicum, which needs to be portrayed more precisely. Or, as one of my sons’ schoolmasters used to put it: “Specifics, guys, specifics.” I arrived at Trinity College, Cambridge, in early October 1956, just five days after managing to hitch a plane from Baghdad to London (via Cyprus) to give the Royal Air Force (“the mob”) the chance to de-mob me and allow me to study Greek and Latin for three years. It was my first acquaintance with the seriously academic animal, and a mixed blessing: but good insofar as I could study more or less whatever I wanted of antiquity so long as I could translate adequately from Greek and Latin into English and vice-versa to pass the requisite examinations. You had to write a few essays too, but I was smart enough to grasp that chutzpah backed with a smattering of reading could work wonders. Outside the examination room, however, I was to learn that the “dons” knew a lot more than did arrogant young men, and that they expected high levels of technical skill which I was far from possessing. That unpalatable fact was brought home to me when I composed a smart-Alec “Freudian” interpretation of Heraclitus, with which I was well pleased, for Harry Sandbach (who probably knew more about the ancient world that any of his fellows—and so far as one can tell must have written half of their many books). I observed his silence as I read it out to him—as was customary—then eyed him warily as he slowly climbed up a ladder to the top shelf of his bookcases and descended clutching what turned out to be a volume of Plutarch’s Moralia. From this he began to read a couple of sentences, then paused to remark dryly, “What do you think of that, Mr Rist?” Realizing that the two sentences had destroyed my essay I could only hand it back to him and suggest he throw it in the waste-paper basket— which he did.

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I should have been more circumspect. The previous year I had enquired of him whether he was going to send me for Greek verse composition to A.S.F. Gow. The latter was a star pupil of A.E. Housman (whose angry ghost stood behind the shoulders of many of his would-be successors), editor of a superb text and commentary on the Idylls of Theocritus. Gow was also more locally famed—so the story ran—for appearing only once a year at the College Council: to register a solitary vote against authorizing the May Ball. “Send you to Gow,” Sandbach had snorted, “He’d throw you down the stairs.” I saw the point, aware as I was of Gow’s standards—not least from the story that when his Theocritus first appeared, a colleague had met him on the street and addressed him warmly: “Gow, I see your Theocritus is out.” But Gow was wary: “What’s wrong with it?” I have begun with Harry Sandbach, who in many universities would be fired for bad teaching because I learned much from him—even apart from the Heraclitean experience—both then and in later life. Thus when he returned what was to become my book on Epicurus with ample corrections, I rejoiced to note that with reference to one sentence where I had written “Philodemus said that…,” he had crossed this out and written over the top in his precise and minute hand “Jensen printed that….” He was right, of course. When I graduated, I had little idea of what I wanted to do; certainly, I was not lusting either to stay in Cambridge (a near-obsession with some of my smarter contemporaries) or indeed to become an academic animal at all. My opinion of most of them was summed up in Heraclitus’ gnomic saying that they knew a lot but understood little and offered only a bourgeois vision of life. At the time, I failed to recognize that many of them vaguely saw in “The Classics” some sort of cultural substitute for the Christianity that they disbelieved but remained too conventional to deny. As I was to learn, conventions could change and the animals change with them. My suspicions of the academic animal were presumably obvious to Sandbach, who told me years later that he had entered in my College Notes that I was “totally unsuited to the academic life.” I also learned that he further opined, on meeting my fiancée, that she would “never control him (me).” In this at least I fear he was probably right—which was perhaps more an assessment of me than of Anna. Still, since no one seemed to want to employ me in assorted posts I applied for—such as the Colonial Office and the BBC—I was happy enough to accept an offer from Professor Woodbury of the University College, Toronto, Classics Department. He asked me to come and teach mainly ancient philosophy on which I could claim to be a specialist on the strength of one year’s experience of a Cambridge course which at that time was certainly not philosophical and— 72

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with its strong emphasis on the pre-Socratics—looked, if anything, more like an introduction to cultural anthropology. Toronto had apparently become exasperated with one of their staff who was supposed to teach ancient philosophy but—even before burning his boats by allowing a fifty-minute public lecture to go on for an hour and forty minutes—regularly urged his students to find in every Greek philosopher a poor-man’s Hegel. (Now it would probably be a poor-man’s Quine.) He was fired at the last minute; you could do that in the days of “God-professors:” I subsequently heard that for an earlier President at Toronto the preferred mode of operation was to invite the faculty member into his office and begin with “I am sorry that you are not happy here….” Toronto was very different from Cambridge. Generally speaking, the staff knew less but understood more—they at least could not be compared to a high-powered car engine unfortunately unattached to the wheels— and there was an older, odder and more humane group whom I quickly learned to respect. Many of them had been fortunate enough to escape from Hitler: men such as Fritz Heichelheim (thrown out of Giessen—luckily for him—in 1933), Gilbert Bagnani, Hermann Boeschenstein, Emil Fackenheim (well before his Holocaust-theology days). They taught me by example that using one’s brain was not just a smart and amusing thing to do on occasion, but could be inspirational. Luckily, I had already been overtaken by a deep love of Plato, so that meeting such people and such ideals fitted in well with what I had come now to enjoy. Maybe it would be worth becoming a genuine academic animal after all—but to do that I would not only have to teach far better than I had been taught at Cambridge, but to write something that someone would find original enough to publish. The latter demand proved easier—though for somewhat unedifying reasons—than I might have supposed. But I certainly would not desist from studying the strengths and—which were more obvious—the weaknesses of the academic animal itself, even in such better manifestations. And it was in the search for something to write about that (surprisingly) I made some of my earliest veterinarian discoveries. I do not know quite how I began to read Plotinus and to recognize immediately a philosophical master. None of my teachers of ancient philosophy had so much as mentioned him—and I quickly understood both that they would not want to, and that their not-wanting-to was not based on sound philosophical reasons. Perhaps not-wanting-to know was a mark of at least some academic animals. I read Plotinus and I wrote about him, all the while inspecting the scene as carefully as I could and quickly realizing that humane enlightenment 73

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could ever have its unexpectedly comic side. But this brings me back to Fritz Heichelheim, a man wholly without guile, but whose words were often hard to interpret, and not only because of his ever-thickening German accent. Tales of Fritz are numerous, and some should not go unrecorded. As: soon after my arrival in Toronto, University College was given a limited sum of money to buy an artwork and Gilbert Bagnani— who had at one time run an art-gallery in Rome and whose wife was high in the hierarchy of the Art Gallery of Toronto—was appointed to chair a Committee to decide what was to be purchased. Reporting to the College Council, however, Bagnani told us that the only thing agreed was that there was no point in buying a statue for the quad because that would only invite students to paint it. Fritz intervened: “Mister Prinzipal, zat problem is easily zolved. All you have to do is zurround ze statue viz electrivied vire!” And as when the Classics Department had decided they needed to appoint a new professor of Ancient History and I was honoured to be present at the following discussion between Fritz and George Goold (always a delightfully straightforward Londoner—“Slum-boy made good”, as Bagnani put it—despite his great learning). The conversation ran as follows: Fritz: I think that vor ze new appointment ze best man would be Joe (that is, as it turned out, the Cornish name Yeo). George: Joe who? Fritz: No, zimply Joe. I first met Joe in jail (= Yale) and I can zay zat of all Classical scholars Joe is ze most zimilar to Porson. George: You mean that Joe is a first-rate textual critic? Fritz: No, he is an alcoholic. George: But Fritz, why would we want to appoint an alcoholic? Fritz: My proposal vould be a double appointment: halftime in ze Department and halftime as barman at ze Vaculty Club. Years later Heichelheim would be struck down with a serious heart attack and absent from the Department for several weeks. When he returned—he had an office immediately below mine—I went down and greeted him: “Glad to see you’re back, Fritz.” Earnestly and touchingly he replied, “Vell, ze angel of death has visited me but zimply left his card.” And, alas, as all good things and good people come to an end, not too long afterwards he was making his way back from his annual trip to the University Library, to note all the articles in which he was interested which had appeared during that period on a series of old shoe-box tops which he retained for that purpose. He only got as far as the steps up to the College, then he collapsed dead.

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Before that, however, he had favoured me with some good, straightforward advice about how to be successful as a scholar in Canada: “Make sure zat while you are still young you never publish an article in Veenix (Phoenix, the Journal of the Classical Association of Canada). Rashly I ignored this advice and my first published piece was an attack in Phoenix on the by-then influential article of G.E.L. Owen on the dating of Plato’s Timaeus. This did me little good in some quarters and, of course, was largely ignored—except by those who said that no other journal would have printed it. Yet I still treasure very different advice about publication which George Goold gave me: “Write it as carefully and as clearly as you can, then show it to someone who hates your guts and think about his criticisms. Then put it aside for a few weeks, read it again, and then, if it still seems alright, say ‘Fuck it’ and send it in.” A good way, I realized, of avoiding a vice to which I was far from prone temperamentally but which is common among academic animals: a perfectionist fear of error, however minor, may enable you to be an expert without writing anything at all. Which brings me to reviews, often the cause of such fears. I never intend, when reviewing, to establish myself as “un nome che fa paura”—as a young Italian academic characterized (with reason) one of my old College friends. Perhaps that makes my reviews rather dull. What I came to appreciate, however, is that reviews can tell the reader much about the reviewer though little about the book reviewed. The great Henry Chadwick managed to review my Augustine at length on the front of the TLS with virtually no comment on what I had to say though a great deal on what he had! Other faults can be more specific: thus, a scholar for whom I have a high regard gave my first book a reasonably favourable appraisal, except for one passage, which he quoted, observing that I was plainly wrong. I could concede wholeheartedly that what he cited was wrong, but was astonished that I had written it, so I looked up the text. Sure enough, I found the quotation; he had it right more or less, only had overlooked the small word “not.” Clearly a mistake in his card-files. Two other reviews of the same book were more interestingly informative. Referring to my account of a passage in Plato’s Parmenides, a Welshman said (with some justice) that it was “too Neoplatonic;” the other (a Belgian) found the same passage “vitiated by Anglo-Saxon positivism.” I never reply to reviews and shall not miss being unable to reply to any obituary notices I may receive; this I only raise because the University College common room used to subscribe to the Oxford Magazine largely to enjoy the studied comments often to be found in its obituaries. A favourite was that in which after “praising” X as “a great hater,” the obituarist closed with: “He was a hard man to help.” 75

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Nevertheless, death in academia—increasingly in some places by suicide where it may secure, as from a Times obituarist, the accolade of “In the high Roman manner”—has real advantages. Thus: “Is Grube dead?” “No, I don’t think so; I saw him a few days ago.” “Ah, good, I have just reviewed his book and—De mortuis, you know.” Academic perfectionism (as well as other oddities) often arises from vanity and self-importance: widely recognizable characteristics of the academic animal. It may take various forms, from a merely comic lack of self-knowledge to the grossly immoral. Of the first I recall a superb name-dropping effort from a Toronto philosophy professor, as follows: “I remember coming to Wittgenstein’s rooms in Cambridge to find him playing the piano.” So I said to him “Witty, old boy, you play the piano very well indeed; you must have had an excellent teacher.” He agreed that he had, so I asked who it was and he replied: “Well, Jack—as a matter of fact it was Brahms.” Two examples displaying a healthy contempt for students: first from Yale, where one of my colleagues who had previously taught there was walking down the corridor when he met a professor of English, known as charismatic but that day looking remarkably glum. “What’s the matter? Did the class go badly?” “It certainly did; they didn’t even laugh at my jokes.” He walked on a step or two, before turning and adding, “Ah well, that’s show business!” (Nevertheless, at times something approaching show business can be instructive as well as entertaining. One of my acquaintances used to preface his course on the use of statistics in economics by noting “The average Canadian has one breast and one testicle.”) More strikingly, and again in Toronto, after a lecture by Richard Rorty, a woman got up and said “Professor Rorty, I gather from your comments that you don’t like metaphysical propositions.” Rorty shrugged, so she continued: “Look, suppose I were to give you a metaphysical proposition, say that there is a difference between substance and quality. Would you try to refute me?” “Not at all,” came the response. “If you want to believe things like that, it’s up to you.” The audience were not uniformly happy at this, and as I was walking away I heard two graduate students commenting. “This guy is an absolute fool,” said one. The other disagreed: “Not at all; no one would have given you or me a thousand bucks to give a lecture like that!” But things can get much worse, as when my wife Anna and I were dining at a Cambridge college, I sitting next to and she opposite a learned German who taught divinity. After I was introduced as a philosophy academic, he asked my name and when I said “Rist,” he looked happy: “Ah, a good German name, very zuitable for a philosopher.” (The name in fact, though found in Germany and France, seems to originate in Estonia, 76

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where it means Cross). The conversation continued in its desultory way until, I cannot remember why, it turned on the Holocaust. Our divine adopted a magisterial role: “It is absolute nonsense”, he proclaimed, “to say that Hitler killed six million Jews.” We held our breath until he concluded “It was only five and a half million.” Later I was told that the Divinity Faculty possesses in its archives a photograph from 1938 showing another highly rated biblical scholar lecturing in full Nazi regalia, complete with swastika armband. I recalled that when a student, I had listened to a paper at the Trinity College Classics Club given by Denys Page, the then Regius Professor of Greek who, after the Second World War, had been given the job of investigating the activities after 1933 of a number of German academics. I had always thought of Page as a hard man, so I noted with special interest his remark that he was so appalled by what he discovered that he had had nightmares about it for some ten years after. I have since thought it an occupational risk for academics that they learn to see so many points of view that they are unable (or happily unwilling) to make moral judgments at crucial moments. I shall return to some more local variants of this propensity. Sometimes vanity can be covered by panache—as with Gilbert Bagnani. For some reason or other Bagnani was elected only very late to the Royal Society of Canada. He was unhappy about this but always said that election was in any case no honour, just a bunch of second-raters who got elected by their friends or because of “geographical distribution”—the requirement in Canada for all parts of the country to be represented on academic bodies regardless of comparative merit. Eventually Gilbert was elected to the Society, to the great amusement of his colleagues. As Niall Rudd could not resist remarking, “But Gilbert, I thought you considered the Royal Society just a bunch of second-raters.” “Well, yes,” said Gilbert without hesitation, “It used to be like that.” It is hard to decide whether panache was involved in my next quarry, but it is informative in any case. University College used to give a celebratory dinner for distinguished retiring members of the faculty—up until the dinner given for Theophilus J.Meek, Semitic scholar and one of the editors of the Chicago Bible. Invited to reply to the toast, Meek—was his name significant?—began as follows: “Occasions like this enable one to toot one’s horn a bit. Which is what I propose to do”—and which is what he did for a fair stretch of time, giving all and sundry a detailed and personalized account of his career rather as follows: “I was a farm-boy from Northern Ontario before I came to University College to study Hebrew. I did very well and won a scholarship to do graduate work at Bryn Mawr, then a center for Semitics. When I got my Ph. D. they offered me a position, and I stayed 77

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on. Soon afterwards, however, I received an invitation to return to Toronto on the faculty, and I asked myself, ‘Why on earth should I leave a star department to go back to a place which is essentially still in the backwoods?’ But I have always been a Canadian Nationalist and so I felt a call to return. And, do you know, I wouldn’t even have become head of the department had it not been for the fortunate death of Principal Taylor [of Victoria College].” The federation that, in my time, formed the University of Toronto comprised (apart from non-collegiate subjects) my own University College and three Church foundations: Anglican, Catholic and the Protestant “United Church of Canada”. A philosopher who moved to the latter—Victoria— from University College was asked why he had done such a thing and replied: “I like to watch young fogies grow into old fogies.” Once strict and austere, it suffered much (and changed much in a liberal direction) in the sixties. Which brings me back to the “fortunate death of Principal Taylor,” since, the story runs, while Principal he was asked by an undergraduate (later to become an eminent editor of nineteenth-century English prose) if he could put on a performance of Sartre’s Huis Clos in the College. When this “immoral” proposal was turned down with some heat, the student proceeded to hire a hall downtown and stage the production there—that, it is said, led to Taylor’s death from apoplexy. There was a Catholic college too—St Michael’s—where my wife taught for a while in the Classics Department. Her boss was Father James (Jim) Sheridan, an Irishman whose accent (like Heichelheim’s) sounded less “English” the longer he lived away from his home turf. A great lover of the Latin language and a breath of fresh, albeit conservative air and Irish wit, he was great on one-liners of which I can only notice three here. Of the socalled “Sandbox Mass”—held in the trendy seventies in the basement chapel under St Basil’s Church, I heard him exclaim that “If the bishops won’t stop it the police will.” Preaching in his uncle’s suburban parish on the first Sunday of Lent when the Archbishop had specified that the Catholic weekly should be promoted, he began his homily “Lent is a season of almsgiving and penance! For almsgiving you can read the Register— and for penance you can read it.” Finally, one day in the sixties we were at table with him and several more “advanced” clerics, one of them distinguished as a peritus at the recent Vatican Council who were discussing the then novel question as to whether priests should marry. Fr Sheridan said nothing, just got on with his lunch, until the peritus decided to bring him into the discussion. “Father Sheridan” he asked, “Do you think priests should marry?” Without a pause or a blink, Father Sheridan shot back

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“Only if they love each other dearly.” Collapse of stout party, as Punch would have had it—though it might evoke a different reaction today. We have already seen how vanity can lead to implausible comments about the more genuinely famous. Sometimes it expresses itself in a related form, that is, the form of imitating the style of a master: again, Wittgenstein was the catalyst but this time the setting was Aberdeen. One of his epigoni, lecturing there, had adopted his habit of looking perplexed, scratching his head and especially interspersing his lectures with long pauses. This latter was shown to be a false move when a richly Scottish voice from the back bellowed: “There’s another ten pounds down the drain!” More generally, I might add, it matters what you pronounce, especially if you are a grosse legume—a French phrase found to fit a plummy and opinionated English visitor to Toronto who had read it on a blackboard and supposed at first he had uncovered an error in some sad professor’s French. As he put it: “I thought légume was masculine.” His first public lecture began portentously: “I am not a practising Platonist….” This time the voice from the back interrupted with “You’d be in gaol if you were!” (Again: autre temps, autres moeurs.) It is not that all we academics fail to recognize our pretensions or never try to amend them. After all, if you claim to deal in truth, you might seem to be an important person: another occupational hazard can readily be discerned. Self-deprecation, in the form of telling stories against yourself, is a possible, though perilous remedy, for which one of my Toronto colleagues became famed, especially after retailing how he had fallen asleep when nominated to give a response to a lecture, none of which he had heard. Casting desperately for a way-out, he set off by describing the paper as “stimulating”; bad idea: the lecturer turned on him fiercely and said he never intended to give any such sort of pop-academic performance. At a meeting of the Ontario Classical Association this same colleague was due to speak, but earlier papers running late, as happens, at the end of that scheduled as previous to his, most people in the audience rose and stampeded for the exits. Our speaker—so he told the tale—desperate to get inside, found himself confronted with a wave of those determinedly going in the opposite direction and was soon brought sharply to a halt by an umbrella poked into his stomach by an infuriated Amazon. “Get out of the way, for God’s sake,” she yelled, “He’ll start in a minute!” Sometimes problems arise not when you go into a lecture—or try to— but when you face crazed critics at the end itching to lob a Molotov in your direction. As on the occasion when a visiting lecturer from south of the Mason-Dixon Line, with an appropriately broad accent, concluded what seemed a harmless enough paper only to be confronted with a tor79

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rent of abuse from an infuriated feminist. The tongue-lashing lasted for at least five minutes, during which the lecturer sat smiling and still. At last she stopped and rising slowly to his feet he drawled: “Well, Honeybunch! that’s an awful lot of questions you’ve asked me. If you just care to write them down on the back of a postcard I’ll be sure to send you a reply.” On such occasions, zealots normally limit themselves to abuse, though at more political lectures genuine violence is possible. I recall in the seventies a meeting in University College that was broken up by student-thugs with knuckle-dusters. The odd thing is that the abuse may come quite unexpectedly, as when I was accused with some heat of blasphemy at the end of a rather ordinary lecture I had just given about St Basil’s relationship (or better non-relationship) to Neoplatonism. Almost as soon as I sat down a smartly dressed man in a business suit rushed up and began to hurl insults and imprecations; apparently, my iniquity lay in the fact that I had suggested that a minor work sometimes attributed to Basil was by another hand. The Chairman seemed disconcerted by the shouting but, fortunately, some graduate students knew to throw the devotee (who turned out to be a Moonie) out of the hall. * Conferences and visiting lectures are an important part of academic life, the former especially as a device for selling off young academic braceros and for what is now (but was not then) called networking. My first experience of them was at a meeting of the American Philological Association in New York in 1960. There at one point I attended what seemed to me an irritatingly bad lecture on Cicero, and was astonished to find, on joining a group of fairly well known scholars outside the lecture-room, that they were speaking highly of it. So I was challenged to explain my objections, which I tried to do. But then, getting the bit between my teeth on the question of originality, proceeded to invent an article in a German periodical (I think it was Hermes and I named the author) of the 1880s in which, I falsely alleged, all the apparently original points of the lecture had already been made. It was informative that at least three of the fairly eminent scholars claimed to have read it, though I’m not sure the learning-curve outweighed the shameless deception. Conferences may be mixed with politics and I shall return to politics, academic and other, later on, but this seems the place to relate two such public occasions, one in 1968 in Paris, the other in, I think, 1970, in Berkeley, California. I was invited to give a seminar at Berkeley “for graduate students and faculty” on something in Plotinus. Unfortunately, I proposed the 80

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title “Some of my best friends are Gnostics:” a quotation from Plotinus but the word “gnostic” seemingly had taken on a more contemporary and revolutionary character, so that when I arrived, the organizers in some embarrassment said that so many people had turned up that we should have to use an auditorium. Indeed, there were well over two hundred, and it was clear that virtually none of them would know anything about Plotinus, so that my intended paper would be largely unintelligible. It was too late to do much about it, apart from throw in a few jokes, and hope for the best. I gave the paper, and the audience remained quiet and at least seemingly attentive, then we moved on to the question period. I can only remember the first question that was delivered by a huge man sitting at the back in the far left of the auditorium. I can see him now, completely naked except for a pair of underpants and a large chain round his neck, but his question was straightforward enough: “Say, prof.! How can I get hold of some of this stuff?” Surprisingly, I was able to inform him, since that morning I had walked down Telegraph Avenue looking at the bookstands and recognized, beneath covers designed to make each work look like something mystical from the sub-continent, pirated texts of an eighteenth-century translation of Iamblichus’ De mysteriis. Paris was politically more complex; it was 1968, year of les évenements, and as it was the first big international conference I had attended, I suppose I might have thought that what happened was normal. At any rate I turned up, with others, at the Quai d’Orsay, from where we were supposed to be bussed to the one-time Abbey of Royaumont, founded, I believe, by St Louis, seized at the Revolution and now used largely for diplomatic meetings, with a few academic occasions thrown in. (Perhaps it was here that Gilbert Ryle, at a meeting to bring French and Anglo-Saxon philosophers closer together, delivered himself of the hardly diplomatic comment: “In France everyone can talk about philosophy but there aren’t any philosophers.”) At any rate, on this occasion the usual French efficiency had broken down; no one knew what was supposed to be happening and we had been hanging around for well over an hour, when I asked a young Frenchman what the problem was. “Oh,” he said, “the organizer of the Conference has gone home.” I was surprised and asked why on earth he had done that, only to be the more puzzlingly told that it was because he did not realize that the French Government had tried to retain Royaumont in its medieval condition—which meant that the monastic cells, now bedrooms for guests, had no locks on the doors. I still did not get it; why should that make the Director go home? “Evidemment,” was the reply. “He was afraid that if he was sleeping in an unlocked room, his graduate students would break in and beat him up.” Which served to set the scene, since when even81

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tually we reached Royaumont and the conference began I found that it was impossible to get into a conversation with any of the younger people without hearing (I am sure often wholly unjustly) that some of their seniors had collaborated during the Second World War. At the personal level too, Royaumont was informative. I was listening to a boringly mechanical paper in French by a famous scholar. But I thought he had said something interesting at one point; he seemed to be thinking that Plotinus had made some philosophical use of a distinction dear to analytic philosophers of that time between “knowing that” and “knowing how.” So I asked about this in the question period—in English, knowing that the speaker’s English was far superior to my schoolboy French, and expecting (as is normal on such occasions) that he would reply in his own language. But he seemed to shrug off the question as pointless and the thought crossed my mind that he was implying that I should have spoken in French. So I tried that, and got a similar shrug of incomprehension, perhaps designed to indicate that my accent was unintelligible. As I was clearing my throat to rephrase the question, again in French, the man sitting next to me elbowed me quite hard in the ribs and in a loud and brokenly English stage whisper—he turned out to be Pierre Hadot—said, “Do not ask ‘im things like that; he don’t think, he write!” At the end of the Conference, having many hours to wait before my plane left for Toronto I went into a cinema to see something in French—which turned out to be Thérèse et Isabelle, one of the earliest lesbo-chic films of the age. It was set at Royaumont. Perhaps the most unexpected conference in my career took place at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. (When, having just walked down Sorority Row, I commented to one of the faculty that I had never seen students so expensively attired, he assured me that “All of JR’s family came to this campus.”) I had just reviewed a set of Sather Lectures on the concept of the will in classical antiquity and, as a result, I was phoned by one of the conference organizers to come to Dallas to reply to a paper by the book’s author. I accepted the invitation and then, having written my response, I sent it in, knowing that it would be forwarded to the main speaker. I duly turned up at Dallas, but he did not—to the fury of the organizers. But I hit on a solution: the obvious thing was to play both parts myself. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I am Professor Deutsch and this is what I propose.” Then I changed my hat and started with “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I am John Rist and I would like to reply to Professor Deutsch’s stimulating paper.” Whether others enjoyed this as much as I did I never managed to discover—presumably not, or it would have shown!

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Finally, there was Naples 1994: the occasion of a celebration of the fivehundredth anniversary of Marsilio Ficino’s translation of Plotinus into Latin. The idea was that I and others would give papers and then introduce a new Greek-Italian edition of Plotinus. I wrote my paper and turned up in Naples, where we were lodged in perhaps the classiest hotel I have ever stayed in: superb views over the bay, etc. But then I realized that I was supposed to talk about the new book the next day and had not yet seen it, so I found the person who was deputed to look after us and asked why I had not received a copy. He looked a bit sheepish when I asked him to get me one and, when he returned with the text, he said he was “between the hammer and the anvil.” The truth was that the conference organizer had realized very late in the day that the new edition was worthless and must be kept from me as I would realize that as soon as I looked at it. Then came the unhappy fellow’s punch line: “If you down the book tomorrow—as you are certainly entitled to do—I shall never get a job in Italy!” When I assured him that I could fix it (which I did by speaking at length about Italian scholarship on Plotinus without mentioning the offending text), he explained that when I entered the hall the next day I would find it packed with secondary schoolchildren who knew nothing about Plotinus. Rather, they were present to give the impression that there was a Renaissance in Neoplatonic studies in Italy. The whole thing was to be televised on RAI Tre, and in the front row there would be a group of young people, the males in what would seem to be Hell’s Angels motorbike regalia, with Mohican haircuts, the girls in miniskirts (“up to the navel”). “Who are these people”, I asked. “X’s graduate students dressed up to look like the wider public!” Later, when I recounted all this to a Neapolitan scholar-priest who ‘knew where the bodies are,’ he asked me who paid for the whole show, and when I replied “The Istituto Benincasa”, he began to laugh. “Don’t imagine,” he said, “that that has anything to do with Catherine of Siena”—Benincasa being her family name. “Then who has it to do with?” “Don Raffaele Cutolo” (the recently gaoled Camorra boss).1 *

1 In conclusion I should state that the embarrassed doyen—verily a grosse légume, or, as Italian has it, a pesce (or pezzo) grosso—was taking no chances and contrived to leave me extremely little time to speak! But my young friend—now my less young friend—secured his post in an Italian university and has become well known.

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As Aristotle said, we are socio-political animals, and the animal academicum is also engaged in politics: at two levels, that of departmental faction-fighting and— sometimes—of a world in which (as signally in the sixties) the politics of University Government intersect with wider ideological strife. Of the local level much has been written, and the acknowledged masterpiece of advice for the aspiring university politician written by the classicist F.M.Cornford is still relevant. At this local level, the guiding principle, on most occasions, is that the more trivial the issue the more heated the debate, self-importance translating into rancour. One example will suffice; it concerns my initial failure in departmental politics when I tried to amend a proposal for some moderate curriculum change but got nowhere. As we all left the meeting I was accosted by John Grant, a crusty but likeable ancient historian from Victoria College who, I assumed, was one of the few on my side. “You made a real balls-up of that. You adopted completely the wrong tactics. You should never have attacked the proposal so openly; in fact you shouldn’t have attacked it all.” “What should I have done,” I asked in surprise. “You should have praised the proposal highly, emphasizing that this was just what they do at Harvard. That would have killed it right away.” He was right, of course, and his help for the young and naive made me rethink an earlier assessment by Woodbury: “Some people say that John Grant is a misanthrope. That’s not fair. He doesn’t hate the human race; it’s just the people he knows.” In most universities academic politics was radically changed in the sixties. Before that, as I have already mentioned, there was the “God-professor.” He commanded and the rest (except in a few rare institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge) were expected to obey. Power of that sort could be regularly abused, but it afforded one very great advantage: that if decisions were to be taken by one man (very rarely one woman), it left the rest of the department free to get on with teaching and research. But in the egalitarian sixties that was deemed too autocratic, everything—and the system still widely persists—had to be done by committees more or less democratically appointed. The result is that where in the past one person might have to waste his or her time, now seven or eight are privileged to do so. (The mood was summed up at that time by the gag: “How many Californians do you need to change a lamp-bulb? Seven. One to change the bulb and six to share the experience.”) Inevitably the change can be more apparent than real; ways can be found to ensure that (eventually) a few “rule.” “All political history is the history of élites,” and—as we learn from the Romans— there is a difference between apparent power and real auctoritas. Kenneth Quinn was a New Zealander who upset the dominant classical philologists 84

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by urging that literary (as distinct from textual) criticism should be regularly taught to undergraduates. When I was Chairman of the graduate department of Classics in Toronto, I took a visiting lecturer from Oxford—a pezzo grosso—to coffee before he gave his seminar. “Tell me, Rist, is there a man called Quinn in the department?” I allowed that Quinn was a colleague and the flail descended from on high: “Don’t you think that’s really rather disgraceful?” That at least was for private consumption; visitors can be more of a problem when they are more publicly entertained. As when a Cambridge grandee was surrounded at a party by a number of admirers of both sexes (I won’t say “groupies” but you know what I mean) and was apparently narrating how someone had fallen out of the window of his college rooms and been spattered across the street below. My wife, joining the “groupies” late, listened to the dreadful account before realizing that he was talking about the death of a cat. “Oh, a cat,” she misguidedly observed, “At first I feared it was a human being.” I had to be struck dumb by the retort: “I would very much prefer if it had been a human being.” Indeed it was a very special cat with a Latin name to whom a volume of a splendid edition of Cicero’s letters had been dedicated: Dono donum. But enough of anecdotes. In the last fifty years, university politics has not been all departmental and comparatively trivial; on both sides of the Atlantic there have been both losses and gains in University culture. When I first went to Toronto, I was regarded as far to the left of my students; by 1968, though my views had changed little, I was regarded by the more radical students (and by some of their faculty and administrative claqueurs) as a Fascist. A Fascist, in the campus jargon of the time, was a man who wore a white shirt, which had not prevented my good mother’s regularly sending me these twice a year, as birthday and Christmas presents. I was well stocked—and damned if I was going to buy a whole new set to replace them! Many student grievances of the late sixties were justified: as the growing impersonality of universities and tendency of the highest paid professors (especially in the United States) never to want to see an undergraduate. And there was also the new vision—convenient and hence also promoted by enlightened men—of sexual “equality” for women: one of its slogans was “A nymphomaniac is a woman with the sexual desires of the average man.” Or, emblazoned on T-shirts, the charming “Help stamp out virginity.” The age of majority was descending too, so that the older notion that undergraduates were in statu pupillari became irrelevant. Indirectly, that led to universities losing authority, as they were now to be governed to a far greater degree not by their own disciplinary regulations but by the laws 85

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of the land. As one would expect in this kind of revolutionary situation, reasonable demands for reform were soon transformed into unreasonable, for the wholesale reconstruction of universities: searchers after truth were to be replaced by ideological sophists controlled by the Trotskyist demagogues among the student body, as well as among the faculty. Many students, thinking they were important players in the big world, began to confuse reform of the universities with the construction of a Marxist Garden of Eden in society. I particularly detested the rich kids who, posing tastelessly as indigent blacks from Mississippi, would hand out pieces of watermelon! Some positions were more comic—as the demand to “liberate the washrooms”: that is, that males and females should use the same toilets. Others, though, implied the destruction of the old idea of the university as a place where there were masters and apprentices. That meant that whereas in my generation students recognized that, whatever their shortcomings, faculty at least knew more of what was worth knowing (as in my case the Greek language), in the sixties many students learned from the ideologists that what they did not know already was more or less not worth knowing. Indeed to learn it was to “have your mind fucked,” as they again so charmingly expressed it. An apt cartoon of the day pictured a dean and a professor remarking on a student walking past down the corridor: “He doesn’t know anything—but by God he’s articulate!” Of course, students had always been arrogant—as had I in my time. The difference now was that they demanded control of the university, and especially of its curriculum. Professors were to be demoted to “resource persons:” fine when the students were exceptionally able, but it could only lead to a lower level of instruction and rampant grade inflation, as professors—cowardly as is their wont, not least when experiencing a “mid-life crisis”—pandered to the demands of their new masters. You would hear it asked: “What is the difference between a bird-course and a Mickey Mouse course?” “A bird-course is just badly taught and the material infantilized (often by being given an overwhelmingly sexual colouring), while a Mickey Mouse course has no content at all.” Philosophy courses entitled “Psycho-sexual experiences” were not unknown; some envisaged “practicals.” Accompanying such changes, and affected by the lowering of the legal age of majority, was a new student-faculty relationship; at least that is what was often desired and sometimes achieved. Students could now more effectively use sex to manipulate faculty—and vice-versa. Stories from high places began to circulate—some of them true—of professors being fellated in the office on a cold winter’s evening by some graduate student. I myself was never targeted for sex-for-grades; either I was not deemed sexy or my 86

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reputation protected me. But one of my colleagues, flipping through a pile of folders containing essays for his course, noticed an exceptionally thin one, and opening it found no essay but a full-frontal photograph of the student (female) in the nude, with below a telephone number. New social conventions had to be developed too: head-hunters were said to target the just divorced who might want to make a new start far from their earlier home; a colleague, greeting an old friend he had not seen for some time, enquired, “And how is Jill?”—only to discover that Jill was two wives back. In all these circumstances, university administrators and their lords and masters in the various legislatures often behaved despicably. At Toronto, a disillusioned history professor gave his name to “Nelson’s Law,” which says that when a university administrator is faced with a choice between good (often in terms of academic excellence) and bad (usually the good as defined by student radicals) they always seek a middle path. In Toronto, though much damage was done, the threat that the institution would be more or less controlled by a combination of Marxist students, unprincipled administrators and professors whose activities could only be described as a trahison des clercs, was overcome. Those like myself—and doubtless there were similar situations and persons elsewhere—who resisted it were vilified, but it was well worth it. Those interested can consult the Ontario Provincial Hansard for evidence of how defence of academic excellence and support for traditional Western culture were identified as fascism both on and off the campus by those who should have known very much better. * In 1980 I left Toronto to take up the Regius Chair in Classics at the University of Aberdeen—effectively heir to the sixteenth-century Chair of Greek —not knowing that I was destined to be its last incumbent, since, so the then Principal had assured me, I was being appointed to rebuild the Department. But even before I arrived, seeing what was coming, he had tendered his resignation, to be replaced by a former court-physician to Anwar Sadat, whose task appeared to be to help implement a Thatcherite scheme to rid universities of the tenure-system: a system certainly much abused but necessary if universities are to flourish. I had anticipated a quiet life in Aberdeen. But since I had been involved in fighting one battle with anti-intellectualist administrators in Toronto, I was soon recruited to help resist this more in-your-face version in Aberdeen—a first manifestation of which was a letter I and other department heads received inviting us to list members of our departments “in order of expendability.” 87

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That went into the waste-paper basket, and a number of us sought an injunction to prevent the administration from firing hundreds of academic staff without even a semblance of due process. In the battle that ensued, a colleague and myself actually secured a two-thirds majority, in a very conservative University Senate, for a motion of No Confidence in the Principal —who, however, declined to go. In the end, it was I who walked—fortunately or providentially the University of Toronto had insisted on keeping my post open—leaving him to get on with closing down at least thirteen departments. My only consolation seemed to be that he failed to receive the customary knighthood so richly deserved for services against education. However, many years later I was rewarded in another kind when my younger son— he had been ten at the start of this disruption to all our lives but in adult life was appointed to the English Department in Aberdeen—was confronted by a crusty and now retired professor who had known me in the Heroic Age. The professor asked: “Are you by chance related to John Rist?” They happened to be standing beside a new building named for the now deceased Principal. Tom allowed that “I am his son.” Then, unsure what kind of reputation I had left behind and playing for safety, he pointed to the name on the building, adding: “My father was a bit harsh on Principal X.” The reply came, forthrightly Scottish: “Nae harsh enough!” * In my later years I have moved, after a long apprenticeship writing about the history of philosophy, to a more speculative part of the discipline. But although I “do” philosophy, I am by no means clear what it is, or what counts as philosophy, or who counts as a philosopher. Plato was aware long ago of how hardly philosophers can be distinguished from sophists, and Elizabeth Anscombe once said openly on the BBC that the effect of most of her philosophy colleagues at Oxford was to corrupt the youth. And the demand of many University administrators for a staff of spin-doctors and networkers to promote their wares in a competitive market has made things worse. Many years ago someone drew my attention to an article—I think in the American Journal of Sociology—by a woman at Princeton entitled “How to become a famous American Philosopher.” It explained how, if you are an ambitious academic animal, you can start planting out graduate students, organizing conferences and publishing a journal dedicated to your

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favourite fashionable thinker, and soon enough find yourself the proud expositor of a new cult—in this case that of Derrida. I thought the article well done except for what seemed to me some crazy mathematics at the end which I took to be in the mode of portraying sociology—as Comte had wished—as a hard science. So I showed it to a friendly sociologist—a very interesting man who had spent more than fifteen years as a carpenter on a kibbutz before turning into a successful academic animal. “Come on Irv; give me your professional opinion of what seems an intriguing piece.” He took it away, read it, and agreed that it was professionally very competent. “The only problem,” he said, “is that when I read the dodgy mathematics at the end I thought she had got her title wrong.” “What should she have called it?” “How to become a famous American sociologist.” There are many more tales to be told, but space, discretion and my wife preclude my telling them. Yet I can conclude by allowing that in the course of my life as an animal academicum I have at least found people who really do know what philosophy is—and so the last word shall be given to my former colleague, Father Joseph Owens, CSSR, author of a splendid book on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Attending a funeral, he noticed two ladies talking earnestly, one of them evidently in some distress. “Ah well,” said her friend, “you have to be philosophical about these things.” (Father Owens naturally cocked up his ears.) “What do you mean, ‘philosophical’?” “Oh, you know; don’t think about it.”

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Part 2. Ancient Philosophy

To Be and Not To Be in Plato’s Sophist Denis O’Brien, Centre for the Study of the Platonic Tradition, Trinity College Dublin

I. A Problematical Repetition 1. ‘Or’ versus ‘and’ To be or not to be. The familiar words still strike a chill. The stark choice: … or not to be. Hamlet shies away, others don’t. By some strange quirk of history, the same stark choice Is or is not had been heard long before. The words are those of Parmenides (fr. 8.16: ἔστιν ἢ οὐκ ἔστιν), and what is at stake, in Parmenides’ poem, is the world around us. Parmenides—repeating the words of an unnamed goddess living beyond the portals of Night and Day—argues, forcefully and at length, that you can’t meaningfully say is not. By keeping strictly to is, and therefore to what is, Parmenides claims to prove that all the many things we think to see and feel around us, ‘coming into being and passing away, changing place and altering their bright colour,’ are no more than a ‘name’ (fr. 8.38-41). How baffling, how extraordinary. What can he mean? Whatever Parmenides may mean, he is adamant that his argument has to start from Is or is not. ‘And’ is kept for those who fail to follow the argument. If you persist in believing that the things around you are as they seem to be, then you are committed to saying of them both that they are and that they are not, contradicting yourself therefore by saying of them both to be and not to be (fr. 8.40: εἶναί τε καὶ οὐχί). ‘And’ not ‘or’. By uttering those foolish words you have thrown in your lot with the mass of ignorant mortals (cf. fr. 1.30-2), who trust to what they see and feel for their knowledge of what is. Despite Parmenides’ warning, that is just what Plato does, or at least appears to do. Parmenides denies that things can ‘change their place’ (fr. 8.41: τόπον ἀλλάσσειν). The Stranger of Plato᾽s Sophist insists that, on the contrary, movement is non-being and being (256 d 8-9: οὐκ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ὄν). Once again, ‘and’ not ‘or’. Plato’s Non-being and being repeats the ‘and’ of Parmenides’ mortals, To be and not to be.

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2. When is a contradiction not a contradiction? In all three places—Parmenides’ statement of his own conviction, the belief of foolish mortals, Plato’s defence of movement in the Sophist—the words, with one exception, are the same. The verbs are all inflexions of εἰμί, whether indicative, ἔστι (Parmenides), infinitive, εἶναι (the mortals of Parmenides’ poem), or participle, ὄν (the Stranger of Plato’s Sophist). The negative particle is the same (οὐ not μή). The difference, the crucial difference, lies in the conjunction. Join the positive and negative uses of the verb by ‘or’, and you have Parmenides’ anticipation of the ‘question’ posed by Hamlet, Is or is not, To be or not to be. Substituting ‘and’ for ‘or’ leads straight to a contradiction: To be or not to be becomes To be and not to be, the words ascribed to Parmenides’ mortals, seemingly endorsed by Plato’s Non-being and being. But how can that be so? How can Plato, joining Non-being and being, have thought to endorse an obvious contradiction? And yet how can it not be so? The same words must surely have the same meaning. How can the joint affirmation of a verb and its negation express a contradiction, when the mortals of Parmenides’ poem allegedly assert To be and not to be (εἶναί τε καὶ οὐχί), and no longer express a contradiction, when the Stranger of Plato’s dialogue claims that movement is Non-being and being (οὐκ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ὄν)? Surely you can no more say of something that it both is and is not (as do Parmenides’ mortals) than you can say of it that, at one and the same time, it is non-being and being (as does the Stranger of Plato’s Sophist)?

3. Words and their meaning The solution to the puzzle, if there is one, will have to depend on the precise meaning of the words in Greek. Dictionaries and grammars will take you only so far. The ultimate test has to be Plato’s use of the common idiom of his time, modified, when necessary, by the context—by the meaning, however idiosyncratic, that he has given his words in the course of an argument. Those are the two criteria adopted in the course of this article. To steer your way through the Greek text of the Sophist, you will need to recognise a distinction that Plato has taken over from the common parlance of the day, while at the same time adapting it to his own purposes. The distinction lies between two uses of einai, its common-or-garden use as a copula, joining a subject to an attribute, the verb and its attribute 94

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making up the predicate (x ‘is so-and-so’), and a less common, but still well authenticated, use as a predicate complete in itself (x ‘is’), traditionally called, for convenience, an ‘existential’ use of the verb, simply because such a use may easily lend itself, in modern English, to translation by ‘exist’.1

II. Syntax and Innovation 4. A predicate complete in itself It has recently become fashionable, among students of ancient philosophy, to query the distinction, but use of the verb as a complete predicate is a grammatical fact that no-one accustomed to reading Greek texts in the original can fail to acknowledge. When Socrates, in Aristophanes’ Clouds, tells Strepsiades, the country bumpkin (Nubes 367): οὐδ’ ἔστι Ζεύς, and when Strepsiades, later in the same play, bursting to show off his new-found knowledge, tells his wayward son, Pheidippides (v. 827): οὐκ ἔστιν, ὦ Φειδιππίδη, Ζεύς, the words are, in both places, clearly designed to shock—but to shock for what they say, not for the way they say it. To claim that the verb, as used here by Aristophanes’ Socrates, is an ‘incomplete’ predicate, to be understood as ‘… is not x’, is to misunderstand the speaker’s intention. Socrates is not telling Strepsiades that ‘Zeus is not the person you think he is’ or that ‘Zeus is not the King of the Gods’. He is telling him, no doubt in suitably sepulchral tones: ‘There is no Zeus’, ‘Zeus doesn’t exist’. The use of the verb is not essentially different when, in a very different context, we hear the anguished cry: ‘Troy is no longer!’, οὐδ’ ἔτ’ ἔστι Τροία —the Chorus, echoing the grief of Hecuba, bewailing her fate in Euripides’ Troades (v. 1293).2 You might perhaps object that the verb is here not 1 I write of a ‘predicate’ in what the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary (s.v.) call the ‘grammatical’ use: ‘The grammatical predicate is either a simple verb, or a verb of incomplete predication with its complement.’ A ‘logical’ predicate is sometimes defined as words that in an English sentence follow the verb, a definition that, for my purposes, is misleading, since what I am calling an ‘existential’ use of the verb (εἶναι and its parts in ancient Greek, am-was-be in modern English) would become, by definition, anomalous, in leading to a sentence made up from a subject and a verb with no predicate. 2 I write the verb orthotone (ἔτ’ ἔστι). Diggle does the same (Euripidis fabulae, Oxford, Clarendon Press, vol. ii, 1981). Liddell, Scott, Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, (9th edition, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1940), quoting the same text, s.v. εἰμί (sum) A, I, follow a different convention. Not to distract the reader unduly, I have written

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quite a ‘predicate complete in itself’, since it is accompanied by an adverb ‘no longer’ (οὐδέ plus ἔτι), but it passes with flying colours the test for what I have defined as an ‘existential’ use of the verb. Try asking: ‘Is no longer what?’ Your question shows only that you haven’t understood what is being said. And if someone tries to fob you off with ‘… is no longer what it was’, the answer only perpetuates the misunderstanding. The Chorus has just spoken of Troy as once ‘a great city’. But the point isn’t that it has now become a small one. When the Chorus laments ‘Troy is no more!’, it is as meaningless to ask ‘Is no more what?’ as it is to ask ‘Isn’t what?’, when Socrates tells Strepsiades, οὐδ᾽ ἔστι Ζεύς.3

5. Plato’s use of the same The use of the verb, without a negation, is grammatically no different, when the Stranger of Plato’s Sophist asserts that movement ‘is, because of its participation in being’ (256 a 1): ἔστι δέ γε (sc. ἡ κίνησις) διὰ τὸ μετέχειν τοῦ ὄντος, a proposition that meets with Theaetetus’ unhesitating agreement (256 a 2).4 The verb is again being used here as a complete predicate. In such a context, to ask ‘… is what?’, is to have misunderstood the speaker’s meaning, if the question implies, as it may well seem to do, that the sentence would be

the verb the same way in the first of the two verses quoted from Aristophanes (Nubes 367: οὐδ’ ἔστι). Again, opinions differ. 3 Despite these two texts and other no less obvious examples, denial of an ‘existential’ use of einai (use of the verb as a predicate complete in itself) is rapidly on the way to becoming the new Orthodoxy for anyone writing on the history of philosophy. Astonishingly, it is even encroaching on those whose interest in ancient texts is not primarily philosophical, as was brought home to me recently, when the editor of a well-known North American journal allowed herself to be persuaded by a reader she had consulted that any appeal to a supposedly ‘existential’ use of the verb (I repeat: use of the verb as a complete predicate) was to be treated as suspect and had therefore either to be defended at length or abandoned. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? 4 Here as earlier, I quote the lineation of Burnet’s Oxford text of the Sophist (Platonis opera vol. i, the first two tetralogies, Oxford, Clarendon Press, first edition 1900, second edition 1905), not the revised edition of 1995, if only because it is not at all clear whether revisions of the remaining four volumes of Burnet’s five-volume edition will ever see the light of day. A change in the lineation that has held the field for the last hundred years and more could be envisaged only when, if ever, there is available a new complete edition of all the tetralogies.

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incomplete without some specification of the subject being included in the predicate. There is of course nothing to stop you asking ‘… is what?’, providing you realise that, when you do so, you are asking the speaker to tell you something that his chosen form of words has not been designed to convey.5

6. The elliptical use of a transitive verb Although superficially similar, an ‘existential’ use of einai is not the same as the elliptical use of a transitive verb, as in ‘he’s teaching’ or ‘she’s eating’, where the meaning of the verb circumscribes, even though it may leave unspecified, the nature of its object. We at once know that what is being taught is something teachable, that what is being eaten is something edible. The specification of the object (‘mathematics’, ‘grapes’, or whatever), even if unknown to the speaker or his auditor, will have to fall within the limited range of reference implied by the verb (‘teaching’, ‘eating’) for the sentence to have meaning. An existential use of the verb, use of the verb as a complete predicate, has no easily definable limitation to its range of reference. Given an existential use of our composite English verb am-was-be (for a couple of examples, see § 51 below), we know only that the subject of the verb, whatever it may be, is a ‘being’, a duplication therefore, not a specification, of the meaning of the verb. So it is that, in the sentence from the Sophist quoted above (256 a 1), we are told only that movement is because it participates in being. We are told why it is, not what it is.6

5 Plato’s use of the verb at this point (256 a 1: ἔστι) has been frequently misunderstood, but objections to an ‘existential’ value do not stand up to inspection. They have been adopted for ideological reasons, not because they have any support from the syntax or the context. I have been into the origins of the error (‘existence cannot be a predicate’ is not, and was never intended by Kant to be, a rule of grammar) at some length elsewhere. See ‘Forms and Concepts’, in E. Moutsopoulos, M. Protopapas-Marneli (ed.), Plato, Poet and Philosopher, in memory of Ioannis N. Theodoracopoulos, Academy of Athens, 2013, pp. 193-244.—I hope none of my readers will be as benighted as the colleague who rejected out of hand any use by Plato of an ‘existential’ esti. ‘I’m a philosopher’, he said, when I tried to draw his attention to a specific text. ‘I want to know what Plato meant, not what he said.’ I’m not often left speechless. 6 A bit too epigrammatic? My point is that, if we are told of something that ‘it is’, with the verb being used as a predicate complete in itself, we are told no more of what it is than the fact that it is. Imagine that someone asks you to go out and find

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7. ‘Duplication’ of the verb as part of the predicate It follows that for ‘x is’ (an existential use of the verb) to be expressed as ‘x is a being’ does not entail any significant difference of meaning, in so far as the addition of the participle is no more than a repetition or ‘duplication’ of the meaning of the verb. Much the same is true of many verbs used intransitively. Someone who walks, at least for the time when he is walking, is a walker. Someone who fights, at least for so long as he is fighting, is a fighter. So too, whatever is, for so long as it is, is a being. The synonymy, in English, is less obvious than in ancient Greek, only because is and being are taken from different parts of the composite verb am-was-be. French, an almost purely Latinate language, makes the point immediately obvious: Ce qui ‘est’, est un ‘étant’.7

8. Plato’s use of the same I conclude that, in the Sophist, repetition of the verb as a participle, with verb and participle jointly making up the predicate, results in an affirmation no less ‘existential’ in meaning than use of the verb when, in a fully formed sentence, it appears alone, as a predicate complete in itself. So it will be, in the continuation of the passage quoted above (256 a 1), when the Stranger concludes that movement ‘is non-being and being’ (256 d 8-9): οὐκ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ὄν. The verb has to be heard here ἀπὸ κοινοῦ, with οὐκ ὄν and ὄν, ‘non-being’ and ‘being’, as in turn the complement of the verb, and with ἐστι and ὄν therefore making up a composite predicate: ‘… is a being’, with ‘movement’ the subject of the sentence.

him five ‘beings’ (ὄντα). Would you even know where to begin? What could you bring him back that wasn’t a ‘being’? In a post-Aristotelian world, you might think to distinguish a ‘being’ from its ‘accidents’. But I’m not describing a post-Aristotelian world. And if I were, would the point be very different? Could you bring back an ‘accident’ without the ‘being’ (the ‘substance’) it belonged to?—The argument may seem all too simple. But such arguments serve their purpose for anyone trying, as I am here, to reduce the linguistic presuppositions of Plato’s use of language to their barest bones. When we read, in Plato’s Sophist, that movement ‘is, because of its participation in being’ (256 a 1), we are being told that it is, and why it is—not what it is. See the continuation of my main text above. 7 I do realise that, in most day-to-day contexts, ‘x is a walker’ would commonly imply something longer term than the mere fact of someone seen to ‘be walking’, but here again I am dealing with only the bare bones of the language.

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The verb (ἐστι) does now have a complement (ὄν), but the meaning is not essentially different from the meaning of the plain verb in the earlier text (256 a 1). When the Stranger asserts that ‘movement is’ (256 a 1: ἔστι) and when he says that movement ‘is a being’ (256 d 8-9: ἐστι followed by ὄν), the explanation he gives is, in both places, the same: ‘Movement is’, ‘movement is a being’, because in either case, so we are told, it ‘participates in being’ (256 a 1: διὰ τὸ μετέχειν τοῦ ὄντος, 256 d 9: ἐπείπερ τοῦ ὄντος μετέχει). The longer form of words, the addition of a participle (ὄν) as part of the predicate (256 d 8-9: οὐκ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ὄν), serves only to emphasise the existential value of the verb by giving full weight to the causal link: ‘movement is a being because it participates in being.’8

9. From being to non-being Admittedly, in the sentence quoted, that isn’t all the Stranger has said. When he says that ‘movement is a being’ (256 d 8-9: ἐστι followed by ὄν), he is saying, in only a more elaborate and more emphatic form, that ‘movement is’ (256 a 1: ἔστι δέ γε [sc. ἡ κίνησις]), with in both places the explanation that it is because it participates in being. But in the later sentence he claims not only that movement is a being, but that it is a non-being (256 d 8-9: οὐκ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ὄν). Why is that not the contradiction in terms that it would seem to be? Take a moment to go back to my earlier examples. Someone who walks, at least for the time when he is walking, is a walker… Whatever is, for so long as it is, is a being. I said a moment ago (§ 7) that the two constructions were much the same. So they are, but not quite the same. There is the difference that, if you stop walking, you are no longer a walker, but you can perfectly well continue to ‘be’ something else—a swimmer, a runner or perhaps just someone standing still or sitting down. If you stop being, then that’s the end of it. You can go on being, if you stop being a walker. But can you go on ‘being’ something else—if you are not even a ‘being’? It would be pleasing to pursue the difference, in so far as there is one. Can something ‘be’ and not be a ‘being’? Plotinus would not have found

8 The addition of an indefinite article (‘is a being’) is designed only to bring home to the English reader that the participle has here a nominal value. There is no indefinite article in ancient Greek. (Latin gets by without any article, definite or indefinite.)

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the answer to that question a foregone conclusion. But the simplest assumption is that, if you no longer ‘are’ and if you are therefore no longer ‘a being’, then you can’t ‘be’ anything else at all. That is pretty clearly the implication when, in the text already quoted (§ 4), Socrates tells Strepsiades: οὐδ’ ἔστι Ζεύς. ‘Zeus isn’t’, ‘There is no Zeus’. A rebuke that, in English, today, would most simply be expressed as ‘Zeus doesn’t exist’. But that is not the meaning given to the negation of the verb when the Stranger of Plato’s dialogue speaks of ‘movement’ as ‘non-being’ (256 d 8-9: οὐκ ὄν).

10. The Stranger’s innovation The Stranger follows the normal idiom of his time when he uses the positive verb as we would say ‘existentially’: ‘movement is’, ‘movement is a being’. But he adopts a quite different syntax and a quite different meaning, when he passes from a positive to a negative use of the verb. Aristophanes’ Socrates can perfectly well say οὐδ’ ἔστι Ζεύς (‘Zeus isn’t’, ‘There is no Zeus’, ‘Zeus doesn’t exist’), with the negative verb acting as a predicate complete in itself. When the Stranger of Plato’s dialogue speaks of ‘movement’ as ‘non-being’ (256 d 8-9: οὐκ ὄν), he explains the negation as implying ‘is other than’ (256 d 5-10, cf. 257 b 1-257 c 4), with the verb therefore being made to function as a copula. This is a radical change—an innovation. In the Sophist, but only in the Sophist, the negation of what would otherwise be an ‘existential’ use of the verb has to be construed, not as a predicate complete in itself (‘x is not’, a straightforward negation of ‘x is’), but as the first term of an opposition (‘x is other than…’), and as fully meaningful therefore only when the second term of the opposition is known or can be inferred from the context (‘x is other than y’).

11. The Stranger’s paradox: movement and sameness So much may well seem simple enough. ‘Other than…’ as an expression of negation is established for a whole range of negative forms. Whatever is ‘other than x’ is ‘not x’. Whatever is ‘other than the beautiful’ is ‘not beautiful’. Whatever is ‘other than the large’ is ‘not large’. Whatever is ‘other than the just’ is ‘not just’. The three negations are the Stranger’s own examples of a ‘negative form’ (257 d 7-258 c 5).

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The paradox arises when what is ‘other than x’ and therefore ‘not x’ participates in x. So it is for whatever participates in ‘being’ or in ‘sameness’ (256 a 3-b 5). ‘Being’ and ‘sameness’ are both forms that are universally participated. Whatever is, because it participates in being, participates also in sameness, in so far as it is ‘the same as itself’. Movement therefore, the Stranger’s preferred paradigm, participates both in being and in sameness, with the result that it both ‘is’ and is ‘the same as itself’. But participating in sameness, it is not therefore identical to sameness. ‘Other than’ the same, it is therefore ‘not the same’, with the paradoxical result that it is both the same because it participates in sameness and not the same in so far as it is other than the same—‘other than’ the same in which it participates.

12. The Stranger’s paradox: movement and being The Stranger adopts the same reasoning and arrives at the same paradoxical conclusion for his analysis of ‘being’ and ‘non-being’. Whatever participates in being ‘is’, and is therefore a ‘being’. But since it also participates in otherness in relation to being, it is therefore also a ‘non-being’, in so far as it is ‘other than being’. That is why there is no contradiction when the Stranger says, of movement, that it ‘is non-being and being’ (256 d 8-9: οὐκ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ὄν). He isn’t saying here that movement is being (or is a being) because it participates in being, and is non-being (or is a non-being) because it doesn’t participate in being. What I shall call, merely for convenience, a ‘philosophical’ use of the negation, negation as an expression of otherness, is not a denial of participation. It is a denial of identity. Whatever participates in being is a ‘being’, but it is not therefore identical to the being in which it participates. ‘Other than being’, it is therefore a ‘non-being’.

13. Negative and positive uses of the verb An ‘existential’ use of the positive verb, coupled with a ‘philosophical’ use of the negation, gives the Stranger the combination of meanings, ‘is a being’, ‘is a non-being’, that he is looking for. When the Stranger explains that, because it ‘participates in being’, movement ‘is’ (256 a 1) and ‘is a being’ (256 d 8-9: ἐστι followed by ὄν), the

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verb, with or without a matching participle, acts as a predicate complete in itself and is therefore what is commonly called an ‘existential’ use of the verb. When, in the second of the two sentences, he says that movement ‘is non-being’ (256 d 8: οὐκ ὄν ἐστι), it is because, in the sentence preceding (256 d 5-6), movement has been said to be ‘other than being’. ‘Other than being’, movement is therefore ‘non-being’. What I am calling a ‘philosophical’ negation is expressed by a copulative use of the verb, a denial of identity, not a denial of participation. The result is a paradox, but not a contradiction (256 d 5-9). Movement participates in being, and in otherness in relation to being. It is therefore both a ‘being’, since it participates in being, and (with the special meaning that the Stranger has given to the negation) a ‘non-being’, in so far as it is ‘other than being’—other than the being in which it participates.

14. The climax of the argument The conjunction of ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ enables the Stranger to arrive at a definition of ‘the form of non-being’, a definition that will be the high point of his challenge to Parmenides. ‘We have brought to light’, so he tells Theaetetus, to the young boy’s enthusiastic expression of agreement, ‘the form that there turns out to be of what is not’ (258 d 6: τὸ εἶδος ὃ τυγχάνει ὂν τοῦ μὴ ὄντος). The juxtaposition of the two participles, positive and negative (ὄν followed by τοῦ μὴ ὄντος), marks the Stranger’s triumphant conciliation of ‘being’ and ‘non-being’. The ‘form’ of non-being is a form that is, because it participates in being, and a form of what is not, because, although participating in being, it is ‘other than’ the being in which it participates and is, in that sense, a ‘non-being’. In the lines following (259 a 6-b 1), Plato’s Stranger revels in the paradoxical conjunction of ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ that his discovery has led to. Otherness, more strictly the ‘part’ of otherness defined as a form of non-being, ‘by participating in being’ (μετασχὸν τοῦ ὄντος), ‘is, in virtue of that same participation’ (259 a 6-7: ἔστι μὲν διὰ ταύτην τὴν μέθεξιν), while

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at the same time, ‘since it is other than being’ (ἕτερον δὲ τοῦ ὄντος ὄν), it has to be possible for ‘non-being to be’ (εἶναι μὴ ὄν).9

15. An impossible relationship Plato’s ‘and’ has triumphed over Parmenides’ ‘or’. But not in the way it is commonly thought to have done. Non-being, the form of non-being, participates in being and therefore both is and is not—is, because it participates in being, is not, because it is other than the being in which it participates. It does not at all follow from the Stranger’s argument that we can say of being that it both is and is not. We cannot say of ‘being itself’, of the form of being, that it is both being and non-being. The Stranger revels in paradox, but not at the cost of a contradiction. The Stranger’s account of ‘non-being’ as a relationship, and as a relationship of ‘otherness’, has built into it the restriction inherent in any ‘negative’ relationship. The second term of the relationship cannot be a simple repetition of the first. We cannot say, of beauty itself, that it is ‘other than beauty’, nor can we say, of ‘being itself’, that it is ‘other than being’. The term that completes the relationship (by telling us what it is that the item in question is ‘other than’) cannot be the word that has already been used as the subject of the sentence. That restriction does not touch on the relationship of ‘otherness’ that obtains between a form and whatever participates in the form. Whatever participates in being can be—is—‘other than’ the being in which it participates. Conversely, being itself can be—is—‘other than’ whatever participates in being. But it cannot be said, without contradiction, of being itself, that it is ‘other than being’. ‘Being itself’ is not, and cannot be, ‘non-being’, if the negation is defined as otherness in relation to being.10 9 In this brief article, I am leaving aside the whole question of the ‘parts’ of otherness, of which ‘non-being’ is only one. I am also skirting round much of the detail of the syntax of the text running from 259 a 6 to 259 b 1. 10 Commentators commonly miss the distinction and plunge headlong into the contradiction that the Stranger has carefully avoided, asserting therefore that ‘being itself’ is ‘non-being’. The error is endemic in G. E. L. Owen’s study of the Sophist, ‘Plato on Non-Being’ (1971), reprinted in Martha Nussbaum (ed.), G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic, Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, London, Duckworth, 1986, pp. 104-37 (see pp. 111-12 and pp. 126-7). Owen’s error is to be found, writ large, in J. van Eck, ‘Not-Being and Difference: On Plato’s Sophist 256 d 5-258 e 3’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 23, 2002, pp. 63-84 (see

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III. Translation and Meaning: the Positive Verb 16. Cornford’s cumbersome translation There remains the question of translation. An ‘existential’ use of einai in Greek may often be, but does not have to be, translated by ‘exist’ in English. For any native speaker of English, ‘movement is because it participates in being’ is immediately understandable as a statement of Plato’s theory (however much, or however little, one may agree with the theory) and is decidedly preferable to Cornford’s cumbersome: ‘Motion is (exists), by virtue of partaking of Existence.’11 Cumbersome, and also potentially misleading. When Cornford writes ‘is (exists)’ for Plato’s ἔστι (256 a 1), he aims, understandably enough, to show that this is an existential use of the verb, a use of the verb that does not carry with it any specification of being, and is therefore analogous to ‘exist’, a verb that, in modern English, cannot have added to it an attribute.12 But Cornford’s translation of esti by both ‘is’ and ‘exists’ does not leave him free to play fast and loose with the two words, as he does when, in the continuation of the sentence, he writes of ‘partaking of Existence’ for μετέχειν τοῦ ὄντος. The verb at the beginning of the sentence (256 a 1: ἔστι) and the verb at the end of the sentence (ibid.: ὄντος) have to be the same. Movement is because it participates in being. If it exists, it can be only because it partici-

pp. 69-70). For details of the origin and the ramifications of the error, the reader will have to look to the longer text from which these pages have been excerpted (see the note at the end of this article). 11 F. M. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, The ‘Theaetetus’ and the ‘Sophist’ of Plato, translated with a running commentary, London, Kegan Paul, 1935, p. 286, translating 256 a 1: ἔστι δέ γε (sc. ἡ κίνησις) διὰ τὸ μετέχειν τοῦ ὄντος. In parts III and IV of my essay, I have singled out Cornford for criticism because he, of all translators, is the most prolific in his use of ‘exists’ and ‘existence’. It might therefore be thought that, by insisting on the importance of an ‘existential’ use of einai for an understanding of the argument of the Sophist, I am advocating a ‘return to Cornford’. I’m not, as I hope the following pages will make clear. 12 The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘Exist’, do include one example, from 1786, of the use of the verb with a ‘simple complement’: to choose ‘to exist a mastiff or a mule’. This would surely be heard as a solecism in today’s English, in so far as the words quoted would be instinctively corrected to ‘exist as’ (‘to exist as a mastiff or a mule’). The alternative would be to substitute ‘be’ for ‘exist’ (‘to be a mastiff or a mule’).

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pates in existence. Cornford’s hybrid form of words, ‘is’ followed by ‘Existence’, loses the simplicity of Plato’s text and obscures the meaning.

17. ‘Being’ and ‘Existence’ The obscurity is a consequence of Cornford’s toing-and-froing between ‘is’ and ‘exists’ as a translation of the Stranger’s various uses of εἶναι, and therefore between ‘Being’ and ‘Existence’ as a translation of τὸ ὄν, with a marked preference for ‘Existence’ as the dialogue progresses. So it is that, early on in the dialogue, in the examination of ‘the very great kinds’, he uses both words, translating τὸ ὄν as ‘Being’ (254 c 5) and a few lines later τὸ ὂν αὐτό as ‘Existence itself’ (254 d 4-5), whereas several Stephanus pages later, leading up to the definition of negative forms, he translates both expressions in terms of ‘Existence’, τὸ ὂν αὐτό as ‘Existence itself’ (257 a 1), τὸ ὄν as ‘Existence’ (257 a 4).13 The inconsistency would perhaps, in itself, be of little consequence, were it not that it plays havoc with the structure of the Stranger’s argument in so far as it pre-empts the meaning that can be given to a negation of the verb. ‘Exist’ is an all-or-nothing verb. Either something exists or it doesn’t exist. There can be no halfway house. If, as with Cornford’s translation, movement is said to participate in ‘Existence’ (256 a 1), the only negation possible is that it ‘doesn’t exist’. Exactly the conclusion that the Stranger’s theory of a negation of ‘being’ has been designed to avoid.

18. ‘Lost in translation’ The first step towards the disconcerting dénouement entailed by Cornford’s substitution of ‘existence’ for ‘being’ is to be found in the words already quoted (§ 16). The alternative translations of ἔστι (256 a 1) as ‘is’, in italics, and as ‘(exists)’, between round brackets, do not serve only to draw attention to the use of the verb, whether in Greek or in English, as a predicate complete in itself. The verb Cornford has placed between brackets, what one might have thought would be therefore in some way an ancillary verb, serving only to point to the meaning of the verb printed in italics, is on the

13 Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 273 (the two earlier texts: 254 c 5, 254 d 4-5), p. 288 and p. 289 (the two later texts: 257 a 1, 257 a 4).

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contrary, with Cornford’s translation of the sentence, the verb that bears the brunt of the argument. As already noted, the first word of the Greek sentence (ἔστι) looks forward to the last two words of the sentence (τοῦ ὄντος). To mirror the structure of the Greek text, the translation of the first word has therefore to match the translation of the last two words. If, at the end of the sentence, movement participates in a form of ‘Being’ (τοῦ ὄντος), the first word of the sentence (ἔστι) has to be translated as ‘is’. If movement participates in ‘Existence’ (τοῦ ὄντος), as it does in Cornford’s translation, the operative verb at the beginning of the sentence will have to be translated as ‘exists’. Exists looks forward to Existence, Existence looks back to exists.14 To make the point clearer, let me define the reference to form as the antecedent and the conclusion that movement ‘is’ or ‘exists’ as the consequent. The symmetry between the antecedent and the consequent is an essential feature of the Stranger’s thesis. ‘Is’ (the consequent) results from participation in being (the antecedent). ‘Exists’ (the consequent) could result only from participation in existence (the antecedent). The anomaly in Cornford’s translation of the sentence is that he has given priority to ‘is’ as the consequent, but has opted for ‘existence’ as the antecedent. The structure of the sentence, both logical and grammatical, has been, as they say, ‘lost in translation’.

19. A lost simplicity But that is not all that has been lost in Cornford’s translation of the Greek. The simplicity of the sentence has been lost. Why introduce two verbs in the consequent, ‘is’ and ‘exists’, when only one is needed? The Greek text has only one verb for the consequent (ἔστι) and the same one verb, as a participle, for the antecedent (τοῦ ὄντος as the object of μετέχειν), with no need at all therefore, as in Cornford’s translation, for an additional verb (‘exists’) to be added to the consequent in order to match the antecedent.

14 See again Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 286, where μετέχειν τοῦ ὄντος (256 a 1) is translated as ‘partaking of Existence’. ‘Existence’, in so far as it is the object of participation or of ‘partaking’ (μετέχειν), is therefore to be construed as a form of ‘Existence’, which is presumably why it has been printed by Cornford with an initial capital letter (a convention that I follow only for my occasional restatement of Cornford’s interpretation).

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The translation adopted earlier (§ 5 above) exactly matches the economy of the Greek text: ἔστι δέ γε (sc. ἡ κίνησις) διὰ τὸ μετέχειν τοῦ ὄντος (256 a 1), ‘Movement is’ (the consequent), ‘because of its participation in being’ (the antecedent). The same one word, in Greek as in English, that is used to express the consequent appears also, as a noun (a ‘nominalised’ use of the participle), in the antecedent.15

20. A brute fact of the English language Admittedly the same would be true of Cornford’s version, if ‘exists’ were left to stand alone as a translation of the consequent. But the combination of ‘exists’ and ‘existence’, possible in principle, though in practice more than a trifle heavy-handed, as a explanation of the positive use of the verb in the words quoted above (256 a 1), proves to be unmanageable, grammatically, when the Stranger passes, a few lines later, to a second, and only slightly more complex, expression of the positive verb (256 d 8-9). In both sentences (256 a 1 and 256 d 8-9), there is, in the Greek, the same verb for the antecedent, with movement therefore again spoken of as ‘participating in being’, but in the later sentence there is a doubling of the same one verb, as an indicative and a participle, for the consequent. Movement, we are told (256 d 8-9), ‘is a being’ (ἐστι followed by ὄν, the consequent), ‘since it participates in being’ (ἐπείπερ τοῦ ὄντος μετέχει, the antecedent). For his translation of the second sentence, Cornford has been unable to maintain even the partial symmetry that he had created for his translation of the earlier text (256 a 1), in so far as a brute fact of the English language has forced him to abandon the introduction of a second and different verb for his translation of the consequent. ‘Is (exists)’ as a translation of ἔστι (256 a 1) cannot be repeated when, in the later sentence, the verb is followed by a participle (ἐστι followed by ὄν, 256 d 8-9), simply because ‘exist’, in today’s English, can’t have a complement, not even a complement that is no more than a duplication of the verb: ‘is a being’ can’t be matched by ‘exists an existent’.

15 ‘The same one word’: please remember (see n. 1 above) that I am treating am-wasbe, originally three separate verbs, as making up a single verb in modern English. Is now completes the sequence I am, you are, thou art. Be and being supply other parts of what in today’s English is the same verb.

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Cornford therefore opts for ‘is’ (ἐστι) ‘a thing that is’ (ὄν), as a translation of the consequent, while at the same time keeping to τοῦ ὄντος as ‘Existence’ for his translation of the antecedent, writing therefore of movement that ‘it partakes of Existence’ (256 d 9: τοῦ ὄντος μετέχει), here as in his translation of the earlier sentence (256 a 1: διὰ τὸ μετέχειν τοῦ ὄντος, ‘by virtue of partaking of Existence’).16

21. Cornford’s raw asymmetry The result is that, with Cornford’s translation of what is clearly intended to be essentially a re-statement (256 d 8-9) of the principle enunciated earlier (256 a 1), there is no verbal connexion at all between the antecedent and the consequent. ‘Existence’, in Cornford’s translation of the antecedent, is preceded by two uses of ‘is’ in his translation of the consequent: Motion ‘is’ (ἐστι) ‘a thing that is’ (ὄν), ‘since it partakes of Existence’ (ἐπείπερ τοῦ ὄντος μετέχει). Verbally and conceptually, we are left with the raw asymmetry between ‘is a thing that is’ as a translation of the consequent and ‘Existence’ as a translation of the antecedent (256 d 8-9), without even the fig leaf of a pair of round brackets that helped to mask the lack of symmetry in Cornford’s translation of the earlier sentence, where we had been told that ‘Motion is (exists)’ (256 a 1: ἔστι) ‘by virtue of partaking of Existence’ (διὰ τὸ μετέχειν τοῦ ὄντος). The remedy is obvious. For the antecedent and the consequent of both texts, keep to ‘is’ and to ‘being’ as the translation of ἐστι, ὄν and τοῦ ὄντος. There is then no longer a break in the sequence of thought and argument when the Stranger passes from the one sentence to the other, nor is there, in either sentence, any lack of symmetry between the antecedent and the consequent. ‘Movement is, because of its participation in being’ (256 a 1: ἔστι δέ γε [sc. ἡ κίνησις]) διὰ τὸ μετέχειν τοῦ ὄντος), leads on, effortlessly and convincingly, to ‘Movement is a being, since it participates in being’ (256 d 8-9: … ἐστι καὶ ὄν, ἐπείπερ τοῦ ὄντος μετέχει).17

16 Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 288. 17 Literally: movement ‘is also a being’ (256 d 8-9: ἐστι καὶ ὄν) because, in the words preceding, it has been shown that movement ‘is non-being’ (256 d 8: οὐκ ὄν ἐστι…). See the continuation of my main text above. I am grouping the difficulties in Cornford’s translation of the Stranger’s use of the positive verb, at 256 a 1 and at 256 d 8-9 (§ III), before moving on (§ IV) to the even greater difficulty in his translation of the Stranger’s use of the negative verb, at 256 d 5-9.

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IV. Translation and Meaning: the Negative Verb 22. From ‘being’ to ‘non-being’ The intrusive coupling of ‘is’ with ‘exists’ and ‘Existence’, awkward enough in Cornford’s translation of what the Stranger has to say of the positive use of the verb, at the beginning (256 a 1) and at the end of the passage in question (256 d 8-9), leads to disaster when applied to the Stranger’s explanation of ‘non-being’, in the second of the two sentences (256 d 8-9) and in the sentence preceding (256 d 5-6). Let me retain, for the Stranger’s explanation of ‘non-being’, the distinction between antecedent and consequent. A negative particle has to be added to the participle—οὐκ ὄν has to replace ὄν—for the expression of the consequent. ‘Other than being’ replaces ‘participation in being’ in the expression of the antecedent. The Stranger’s claim that movement ‘is really non-being’ (256 d 8: ὄντως οὐκ ὄν ἐστι), the negative version of the consequent, is explained, in the Greek text, by his preceding words, where movement is said ‘to be other than being’ (256 d 5: ἕτερον εἶναι τοῦ ὄντος), the revised version of the antecedent. The new argument is therefore a straightforward statement of what I called earlier (§§ 10-12) a ‘philosophical’ use of the negation, negation as an expression of otherness. Movement is non-being (the consequent) in so far as it is other than being (the antecedent). The addition of the adverb, ‘… is really non-being’ (256 d 8: ὄντως οὐκ ὄν ἐστι), highlights the paradox. Movement is because it participates in being, and is really non-being, because, as well as participating in being, it is ‘other than’ the being in which it participates (256 d 5-9).18

23. An impossible ambiguity A Greekless reader will be hard put to recover that straightforward statement of the Stranger’s thesis from Cornford’s translation of the text. For his translation of the words encapsulating the Stranger’s analysis of the 18 Perhaps translate ‘… is really and truly non-being’. The adverb has been added specifically to bring out the seeming contradiction—the paradoxical association— of a negative use of the participle added to a positive use of the finite verb: ἔστιν ὄντως μὴ ὄν (254 d 1), ἐστιν ὄντως τὸ μὴ ὄν (258 e 3), so here, with a different choice of negative particle and a change in the order of words, ὄντως οὐκ ὄν ἐστι (256 d 8).

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negation of the verb (256 d 5-6 and 256 d 8-9), Cornford again resorts to a coupling of ‘is’ with ‘Existence’. When the Stranger tells us that movement ‘is other than being’ (256 d 5: ἕτερον εἶναι τοῦ ὄντος, the antecedent), Cornford writes that ‘Motion is different from Existence’. When the Stranger concludes that movement ‘is really non-being’ (256 d 8: ὄντως οὐκ ὄν ἐστι, the consequent), Cornford writes that: ‘Motion really is a thing that is not (Existence).’19 Don’t be misled by Cornford’s curious periphrasis. The words ‘… a thing that is not (Existence)’, Cornford’s roundabout translation of the two words οὐκ ὄν in the consequent (256 d 8), has been forced on him by his translation of τοῦ ὄντος as ‘Existence’ in the antecedent (256 d 5). The difference in the Greek text is no more than the difference between ‘being’ (256 d 5: τοῦ ὄντος, the antecedent) and ‘non-being’ (256 d 8: οὐκ ὄν, the consequent). Cornford’s periphrasis, curious enough as a translation of the Greek, is hardly less puzzling simply as a piece of English. What do his words mean? On being told that movement ‘… is not (Existence)’, are we being told that movement ‘is different from Existence’, in which case the consequent is no more than a repetition of the antecedent, or are we being told that movement ‘… is not (Existence)’ and is therefore ‘non-existent’?

24. Cornford’s repeated tactic However we construe his words, the Stranger cannot be taken to mean that movement doesn’t exist. If the consequent is not to be a pointless repetition of the antecedent, we have therefore to be able to distinguish, in Cornford’s translation, ‘… is not (Existence)’, the consequent, from ‘is different from Existence’, the antecedent, without either expression implying ‘is inexistent’. If you find the distinction ‘too subtle for your grasp’ (I adapt the memorable words of Richard Bentley), don’t lose heart. The conundrum is nowhere to be found in the text. It arises solely from Cornford’s coupling of ‘is’ and ‘existence’, in his translation of the text. Here (256 d 5-9), as for the positive use of the verb at the beginning of the passage (256 a 1), Cornford has had recourse to round brackets to establish an artificial symmetry between the antecedent and the consequent.

19 Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 288.

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The tactic in both places is the same. In both places (256 a 1 and 256 d 5-9), Cornford gives preference to ‘Existence’ over ‘Being’ for his translation of the antecedent, and as a result has to add a reference to ‘exists’ or to ‘Existence’ in his translation of the consequent, adding ‘exists’ between round brackets to ‘is’, in his translation of the earlier text (256 a 1: ἔστι), and tacking on ‘Existence’, between round brackets, to ‘is not’, in his translation of the later text, writing that Motion ‘is a thing that is not (Existence)’ for οὐκ ὄν ἐστι (256 d 5-9).

25. A lucid simplicity Do away with the round brackets, remove the intrusive references to ‘exists’ and to ‘Existence’, be content to translate ἔστι and οὐκ ἔστι as ‘is’ and ‘is not’, ὄν and οὐκ ὄν as ‘being’ and ‘non-being’—the words of the text, in all the three places quoted so far, will at once recover their lucid simplicity. Delete Cornford’s ‘Motion is (exists), by virtue of partaking of Existence’. Write instead: ‘Movement is, because of its participation in being’ (256 a 1: ἔστι δέ γε διὰ τὸ μετέχειν τοῦ ὄντος). Delete Cornford’s ‘Motion is a thing that is, since it partakes of Existence’. Write instead: ‘Movement is a being, since it participates in being’ (256 d 8-9: … ἐστι καὶ ὄν, ἐπείπερ τοῦ ὄντος μετέχει). Delete Cornford’s ‘Motion is different from Existence’ and ‘Motion really is a thing that is not (Existence)’. Write instead: ‘Movement is other than being’ (256 d 5: ἕτερον εἶναι τοῦ ὄντος) and ‘Movement is really non-being’ (256 d 8: ὄντως οὐκ ὄν ἐστι).20 In all three places, Cornford’s constant coupling of is with exists or existence obscures the sequence of word and thought that, in the Greek text, is expressed with total clarity by successive uses of einai (as an indicative and as a participle).21 20 For Cornford’s three translations, see Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 286 (the first quotation), p. 288 (the remaining quotations). 21 My second and third texts overlap. The Stranger starts by specifying the antecedent for a negative use of the verb (256 d 5-6: ‘… other than being’). His next question includes the antecedent for a positive use of the verb (256 d 9: ‘… participates in being’), preceded by the statement of a joint consequent for the negative and the positive verb (256 d 8-9: ‘… is really non-being and being’). The overlapping questions illustrate the Stranger’s skill in coaxing Theaetetus—Plato’s skill in coaxing the reader—along the path that will lead to a new understanding of the difference between ‘non-being’ and ‘being’, guiding him therefore to the perception that ‘otherness’, expressing a negative antecedent (256 d 5-6), is inseparable

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V. From Confusion to Contradiction More is at stake than a question of style, a gain in crispness and clarity. Cornford’s translations not only dull the meaning of the Greek and muffle the sequence of word and thought. The confusion inherent in Cornford’s coupling of ‘existence’ and ‘being’ has brought the argument of the dialogue to the brink of contradiction when, in the third of the three texts quoted above, the Stranger aims to tell us, no longer that movement is (256 a 1, 256 d 8-9), but in what way it is not (256 d 5-8).

26. On the brink of an abyss The Stranger’s definition of a ‘philosophical’ negation requires whatever is ‘other than x’ to be therefore ‘not x’. We have already been told (256 a 3-b 5) that movement, in so far as it is ‘other than the same’ (ἕτερον ταὐτοῦ), is therefore ‘not the same’ (μὴ ταὐτόν or οὐ ταὐτόν). When the Stranger turns to his list of negative forms (257 d 7-e 8), we shall be told that whatever is ‘other than’, and opposed to, ‘the beautiful’ (τῷ καλῷ) is therefore ‘what is not beautiful’ (τὸ μὴ καλόν). So too, in the words quoted above, when movement is said ‘to be other than being’ (256 d 5: ἕτερον εἶναι τοῦ ὄντος), it has therefore to be ‘not being’ (256 d 8: οὐκ ὄν). Change the verb of the antecedent, substituting ‘existence’ for ‘being’, as Cornford has done, and you have to change the verb of the consequent. By writing of ‘existence’ in his translation of the antecedent (256 d 5: ἕτερον εἶναι τοῦ ὄντος), writing therefore of movement as ‘different from Existence’, and not as ‘different from being’, Cornford is led, inexorably, to the conclusion that… Not surprisingly, Cornford shrinks back from the abyss that opens before him. ‘Other than being’, movement has to be ‘non-being’. Other than ‘Existence’, as in Cornford’s translation of the antecedent, movement would have to be ‘non-existent’. As already noted (§§ 23-4), it obviously can’t be. Cornford’s persistent preference for ‘existence’ over ‘being’ has brought him face to face with a contradiction. The Stranger’s thesis is that ‘non-being’, in so far as it is other than being, is therefore a negation of being. The Stranger does not for

from ‘participation’, expressing a positive antecedent (256 d 8-9)—the positive antecedent that the young boy had taken in his stride only a moment or two before (256 a 1).

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one moment intend to conclude that movement is non-existent—the sheer nothingness that would be a total lack of participation in being. How could that be the meaning of a sentence (256 d 8-9) where movement is said to be both ‘being’, because it participates in being, and ‘nonbeing’, because it is other than the being in which it participates? How could movement possibly be described, in one and the same sentence, both as a ‘being’ and as ‘non-existent’?

27. A change of syntax That unhappy concatenation is not only, as my remarks so far (§§ 23-5) may have seemed to suggest, the result of a passing aberration on the part of a diligent scholar—no more than an unfortunate choice of words, a lapse from translation into paraphrase. Cornford’s persistent substitution of ‘existence’ for ‘being’ betrays a deep misunderstanding of the substance of the Stranger’s argument. Once he has translated the antecedent in terms of existence, as he has done when he writes that ‘Motion is different from Existence’ (256 d 5), Cornford can’t give the argument the conclusion that, with his translation of the text, it obviously calls for, replacing ‘different from’ or ‘other than existence’ by a negation, and therefore expressing the consequent as ‘movement is non-existent’. The trouble is that, in skirting around the impossible conclusion, he leaves intact the misleading formulation of the argument that has led to it. The reason for the glaring discontinuity between argument and conclusion is that Cornford has no understanding of the need for a radical change of syntax, and therefore a radical change of meaning, when the Stranger passes from an assertion that movement is (256 a 1, 256 d 8-9) to a statement of what it is not (256 d 5-8). The assertion that movement is, or is a being, as a result of its participation in being, expressed by an existential use of the verb, cannot be followed by a straightforward negation of the same existential use of the verb, since the meaning would then be that movement ‘is not’, in having no participation in being. The opposition between is and is not, if both words are construed as having an ‘existential’ meaning, would be no different from the opposition, in English, between exists and does not exist. The Stranger’s thesis has been designed to avoid any such implication by a change of syntax, by his adopting a ‘philosophical’ form of negation, negation as an expression of ‘otherness’ and therefore as a lack of identity —but not a lack of identity that would exclude participation. 113

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28. Cornford’s confession of failure To express the Stranger’s innovation, an English translator has therefore to keep to an opposition of ‘being’ and ‘non-being’. We can say, well enough in English, as the Stranger has said in Greek (256 a 3-b 5), that movement is both the same, and not the same, the same in so far as it is the same as itself, not the same, in so far as it is not the same as the sameness in which it participates. We can also say, well enough in English, as the Stranger has said in Greek (256 c 11-d 12), that movement both is and is not, is because it participates in being, is not because it is other than the being in which it participates. Given the explanation, we at once recognise, for ‘sameness’ as for ‘being’, that the verb and its negation is not the contradiction that, without the explanation, it might seem to be. Try to express the same distinction, in English, in terms of an opposition between ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence’ and your words become virtually meaningless. Movement exists and does not exist… The words are immediately heard as a contradiction. We are unwilling to entertain the possibility that what does not exist can nonetheless, at the same time, be said to exist. Yes, Cornford does shy away from that conclusion. He does not make the Stranger say that movement, in being ‘other than Existence’, is non-existent. But that is the conclusion that his translation of the Stranger’s argument would inevitably lead to. If the antecedent is an expression of otherness in relation to existence, as it is in Cornford’s translation, then the consequent, given the Stranger’s definition of otherness as an expression of negation, could be only that movement doesn’t exist. Cornford has avoided stating that contradiction. But he has not avoided the contradiction that leads up to it. When, having asserted that movement is ‘other than’, or ‘different from’, ‘Existence’, he completes the Stranger’s argument with the words: ‘Motion really is a thing that is not (Existence)’ (cf. 256 d 8), his words are a confession of failure.22 Cornford’s statement of the consequent, if it is not a covert assertion of non-existence, can be no more than a repetition of the antecedent, a silent acknowledgment that his translation of the antecedent in terms of ‘Existence’ cannot be followed by a meaningful statement of the consequent.

22 Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 288.

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29. A linguistic naïveté Cornford has been too naïve, conceptually and linguistically, in thinking that, for an adequate expression, in English, of the Stranger’s theory, you can replace ‘being’ and ‘not being’, as a translation of ὄν and οὐκ ὄν, by ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence’. You can’t. You can perfectly well say, in English, that something ‘is not in so far as…’, and you can therefore perfectly well say, in our text, that movement ‘is not’ in so far as it is ‘other than being’, but you can’t say at all meaningfully, in English, that ‘movement is non-existent in so far as…’ As soon as you have said ‘is non-existent’, you have closed the door behind you. ‘Existent’ and ‘non-existent’, ‘exists’ and ‘doesn’t exist’, do not allow—easily, if at all—for any qualification of their meaning. If something exists, it exists, if it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist. If you try to say ‘it doesn’t exist in so far as…’ you are already more than halfway to a contradiction. You can perfectly well say of something that it no longer exists that it will one day exist, or even, meaningfully, whether or not truthfully, that it exists of itself or that it does not exist of itself. But to say that something does not exist in so far as…, however you complete the sentence, will be to call into question the assertion that it does not exist.23

30. An impossible confusion That is why Cornford is stopped in his tracks, when he writes that ‘Motion is different from Existence’. He can’t give the argument the conclusion that, with his translation of the text, it would obviously call for, replacing ‘different from’ or ‘other than’ by a negation, and therefore expressing the consequent as ‘movement is non-existent’. To avoid that impossible conclusion, Cornford has had to content himself with ‘Motion is a thing that is not (Existence)’, a form of words that, if it has meaning at all, would, in the context of the dialogue, be tantamount to a restatement of the antecedent. Cornford’s weak paraphrase of the consequent as a negation of ‘Existence’, muffled by the use of round brackets, has been forced upon him by

23 There is of course always room for whimsy and innuendo. ‘In so far as I haven’t seen the document, it doesn’t exist, and I have no reason therefore to denounce you.’ Such words are no more than a whimsical reformulation of what, in common speech, is meant by exist.

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his translation of the antecedent in terms of ‘Existence’ and by the desperate need, here (256 d 8-9) as earlier (256 a 1), to hack out a place for the same word in his translation of the consequent. Remove the reference to ‘Existence’ in the antecedent, removing therefore the impossible implication—the impossible entailment—that, in being ‘other than Existence’, movement is therefore ‘non-existent’. Replace ‘Existence’ by ‘being’ in both the antecedent and the consequent. The Stranger’s paradox, inaudible in Cornford’s translation of the text, rings out loud and clear (256 d 5-9). Movement is a being, because it participates in being, is a non-being, in so far as it is other than being.

VI. Negation and Contrariety 31. Cornford’s summary Cornford’s unhappy conjunction of ‘is’ and ‘exists’, and of ‘being’ and ‘existence’, spills over into his commentary, when he attempts to summarise the Stranger’s distinction between negation and contrariety, a distinction essential to any understanding of the Sophist as a whole. The two expressions, ‘Non-Existence’ and ‘the non-existent’, so Cornford tells us, have to be understood as ‘covered by the phrase “the contrary of what exists (or of Existence)” τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος’. Both expressions, he explains, are therefore to be distinguished from ‘“that which is not” (τὸ μὴ ὄν)’, an expression that Cornford claims is a generic term, embracing ‘the not-tall’ and ‘the not-beautiful’, leading examples of what I called earlier (§ 11) the Stranger’s negative forms.24 If those words seem to you, as presumably they have to many readers, a statement of the obvious, then I would beg you to read them again with a more critical eye. However innocuous they may seem on a first reading, the words I have quoted perpetuate the error, a confusion of ‘being’ and ‘existence’, running through Cornford’s translation and interpretation of the dialogue.25

24 Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 289: ‘“That which is not” (τὸ μὴ ὄν)’, explained as ‘“the different”, i.e. any existent defined as different from some other existent’, ‘for example, “the not-tall”, “the not-beautiful”’, ‘is distinct from “Non-existence” and from “the non-existent”, both of which are covered by the phrase “the contrary of what exists (or of Existence)”, τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος’. 25 In writing, as I have done, of the ‘the not-tall’ and ‘the not-beautiful’ as belonging to a range of ‘negative forms’, I have added to the words taken from Cornford’s

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32. A repeated participle When, in the words quoted, Cornford translates τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος (cf. 258 e 6) as ‘the contrary of what exists (or of Existence)’, and when he translates τὸ μὴ ὄν (cf. 258 e 7) as ‘that which is not’, his choice of two different verbs for his translation of one and the same Greek verb obscures the point that the repetition of the participle, in the same sentence (258 e 6-7), as a simple negation (τὸ μὴ ὄν) and as an expression of contrariety (τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος), is intended to establish. The Stranger’s thesis is that a negation of being does not have to be a contrary of being. The form of non-being (258 e 7: τὸ μὴ ὄν), participating in being, but ‘other than’ and therefore ‘opposed to’ being, is a negation of being. There is not, and cannot be, a contrary of being (258 e 6: τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος). The explanation is simple enough. Earlier in the dialogue, lack of participation has been recognised as a necessary condition of contrariety. So it is that movement and rest, ‘most opposite to each another’ (250 a 8-9: ἐναντιώτατα ἀλλήλοις), cannot therefore participate, either one in the other, without ceasing to be itself (255 a 11-b 1). Try to establish lack of participation as the ‘necessary condition’ of a contrary of being—you can’t. In trying to do so, you end up literally with nothing. Were there to be a contrary of being, it would have to participate in being. But were the supposed contrary of being to participate in being, it could no longer be a contrary of being.

33. The Stranger’s dismissal of a ‘contrary of being’ That is why, when he has established his definition of a form of non-being, the Stranger is able to dismiss any suggestion that what he claims to have discovered is a contrary of being (258 e 6-259 a 1). There is no contrary of

commentary, relying on the Stranger’s undoubted use of the word εἶδος (258 c 3) when he lists τὸ μὴ ὄν with τὸ μὴ μέγα and with τὸ μὴ καλόν as all of a kind (258 b 8-c 3). Cornford’s conception of the relation of ‘non-being’ to other negative forms, ‘not beautiful’ and ‘not large’, I think is wholly misconceived, but that is again (see n. 10 above) a question that I have to leave for consideration in the longer essay from which this article has been excerpted. My point here is concerned with Cornford’s drawing on a difference between ‘being’ and ‘existence’ in his attempted explanation of the Stranger’s distinction between negation and contrariety. See the continuation of my main text above.

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being. Being has a negation. It doesn’t have a contrary, because the very claim to be a contrary of being would be self-defeating. Delete Cornford’s references to ‘exists’ or to ‘existence’. Keep to a literal translation of the Stranger’s own words in terms of ‘being’ or of ‘non-being’ (258 e 6-7), restoring therefore the translation of τὸ μὴ ὄν as ‘non-being’ and of τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος as ‘the contrary of being’. So translated, the distinction between negation and contrariety, a distinction essential to the Stranger’s triumphant definition of a form of nonbeing, rings out loud and clear. Non-being, defined as a negation and therefore as a ‘form of non-being’ (258 e 6-7: τὸ μὴ ὄν), is not the impossible non-being, the sheer nothingness, that would be a contrary of being (258 e 6: τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος).26

34. An unreal distinction The reader may be allowed a weary sigh. Cornford’s error, his substitution of ‘existence’ for ‘being’, is, on the face of it, a mere repetition of the error to be found in his translations of the texts catalogued earlier (§§ III-V). But in the words I have quoted from Cornford’s commentary, the error is a good deal more insidious. For by writing of ‘existence’, and not of ‘being’, in his summary of the Stranger’s definition of contrariety, Cornford has neglected the radical difference between the Stranger’s negation of ‘being’ and what we might well speak of, but only in English, as a negation of ‘existence’. The distinction between a negation of being and a contrary of being is the very foundation of the Stranger’s definition of a form of non-being, identified as a negation of being that is a not a contrary of being. Can there be an analogous distinction between a negation of existence and a contrary of existence? I am not at all sure that there can be. How could a negation of existence (‘Non-Existence’, ‘the non-existent’) imply anything other than the total

26 In the preceding paragraphs, I have not though it necessary to take account of minor differences in Cornford’s translations of the key terms. Cornford translates τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος (258 e 6) as ‘the contrary of what exists (or of Existence)’, in his commentary (Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 289), and as ‘the contrary of the existent’, in the body of his translation (p. 295). He translates τὸ μὴ ὄν, in the same context (258 b 6, 258 e 7 and 259 a 2), as ‘“that which is not”’, in his commentary (Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 289), and as ‘“what-is-not’”, with hyphens (p. 292) and without hyphens (p. 295), in the body of his translation.

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lack of existence expressed by Cornford’s translation of τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος (258 e 6) as ‘the contrary of what exists (or of Existence)’?

35. ‘Non-existence’ and ‘non-being’ Cornford himself clearly excludes any difference when he writes, as he does in the words already quoted, that the two expressions, ‘Non-Existence’ and ‘the non-existent’, are ‘covered by the phrase “the contrary of what exists”, τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος’.27 ‘Covered by’ is perhaps a little limp as the denial of a difference. But the obvious inference to be drawn from Cornford’s words is that any expression of a negation of existence may be construed as the expression of a contrariety. That same axiom cannot be applied to the Stranger’s distinction between a negation of being and a contrary of being. The Stranger does not believe that any expression of the negation of being is a contrary of being. Negation and contrariety do not relate in the same way to being and to what we would speak of, in English, as existence. The Stranger’s distinction between negation and contrariety, when he talks of ‘being’ and of ‘non-being’, is no longer possible when talk of ‘being’ and of ‘non-being’ has been replaced, as it has been in Cornford’s translation of the Sophist, and in his commentary, by talk of ‘existence’ and of ‘non-existence’. The Stranger’s point, following his second quotation of Parmenides’ two verses (259 e 6-259 a 1), is that a negation of being, defined as a form of non-being, construed as a ‘form that is of what is not’ (258 d 6), is not to be taken as a contrary of being. Try to express that same distinction in terms of a difference between a negation of existence and a contrary of existence. I don’t believe you can.

VII. Cornford’s Web of Error As often when there is some radical misunderstanding, the surrounding words are also no more than a web of error. So it is here. Return to Cornford’s claim that the two expressions, ‘Non-Existence’ and ‘the non-existent’, have to be understood as ‘covered by the phrase “the contrary of what exists (or of Existence)” τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος’.28

27 See again Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 289 (quoted above n. 24). 28 See again Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 289 (quoted above n. 24).

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36. The fiction of a ‘ form of non-existence’ Cornford’s choice, in the words quoted, of upper-case and lower-case letters would seem to indicate a difference between a form, ‘Non-Existence’, and the instantiation of a form, ‘the non-existent’. But the seeming difference beggars belief. What meaning, if any, could be given to a ‘form of non-existence’—a form condemning to ‘non-existence’ whatever participates in it? The strange notion of a form whose function would be to destroy whatever participates in the form, puzzling enough in itself, is made even more puzzling by Cornford’s putting the two expressions, ‘Non-Existence’ and ‘the non-existent’, between inverted commas, for all the world as though they were a translation of words to be found in the text that Cornford is here referring to. They aren’t. Neither of the two expressions, ‘Non-Existence’ and ‘the non-existent’, is to be found in Cornford’s translation of the stretch of text that he refers to at this point.29

37. A disturbing silence Admittedly, the expression τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος is not to be found until a good half page after the stretch of text Cornford claims to be referring to.30 But extending the search area does not help. The two expressions supposedly exemplifying the reference to contrariety, ‘Non-Existence’ and ‘the non-existent’, are nowhere to be found in the vicinity of the Stranger’s supposed reference to a ‘contrary’ of existence (258 e 6-259 a 1), nor anywhere in the stretch of argument leading up to the words τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος (257 b 1-258 e 5). 29 The words I have quoted (from Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 289) are presented as introducing and explaining the long stretch of argument that runs from the Stranger’s distinction between negation and contrariety, followed by his account of negative forms up to and including the first definition of a form of non-being, no less than six pages (pp. 289-94) of translation (p. 290 and pp. 290-2) and comment (p. 290 and pp. 292-4), covering ‘257 b-258 c’ (with Burnet’s lineation 257 b 1-258 c 5). 30 The expression τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος is to be found at 258 e 6, part of a sentence running from 258 e 6-7, nearly twenty lines (with Burnet’s lineation) after the stretch of text Cornford claims to be referring to (257 b 1-258 c 5). The expression is repeated, in a different case, at 258 e 8, in the sentence following, running from 258 e 7 to 259 a 1.

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The only candidate, in the lines so far quoted (257 b 1-259 a 1), for the two expressions ‘Non-Existence’ and ‘the non-existent’ would be the Stranger’s repeated allusions to ‘non-being’ (τὸ μὴ ὄν), translated by Cornford as ‘that which is not’ or ‘what is not’, but specifically stated, in the words I have quoted from his commentary, to be ‘distinct from’ the two references to ‘non-existence’.31

38. An elusive prey But now the mystery thickens. For the expression ‘the non-existent’ does appear in Cornford’s translation, and is given as a translation of τὸ μὴ ὄν, much earlier on in the dialogue. However, to track down the passage that Cornford seems to have in mind calls for no little perseverance on the part of the scrupulous reader (myself), who has to work his way back through no less than twenty pages of Stephanus’ Greek text and through the better part of a hundred pages of English translation and commentary, before at last tracking down his prey in one of the long string of arguments following the Stranger’s first quotation of the pair of verses taken from Parmenides’ poem (237 a 8-9, fr. 7.1-2). In these few lines (238 d 4-e 7), τὸ μὴ ὄν occurs no less than three times and is repeatedly translated by Cornford as ‘the non-existent’.32

31 See again Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 289 (quoted above n. 24). The expression τὸ μὴ ὄν (or τοῦ μὴ ὄντος) appears three times (257 b 3, 258 b 6, 258 b 9-10) in the stretch of text Cornford refers to in his commentary (257 b 1-258 c 5) and four times (258 d 6, 258 e 3, 258 e 7, 259 a 2) in the continuation of the text (258 c 6-259 a 2). It is translated variously (Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 290, p. 292, p. 295), as ‘that which is not’ or as ‘what-is-not’ (with and without italics), never, in the stretch of text Cornford is here specifically commenting on (257 b 1-258 c 5) or in the continuation of the text (258 c 6-259 a 2), as ‘Non-Existence’ or ‘the non-existent’. 32 For Cornford’s translation, in the earlier text (238 d 4-e 7), of τὸ μὴ ὄν (238 d 5, 238 e 1, 238 e 2) as ‘the non-existent’, see Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, pp. 206-7. Twenty Stephanus pages separate the two texts (238 d-e and 258 e-259 a). The better part of a hundred pages separates Cornford’s translation of the two texts (pp. 206-7 and pp. 290-2).

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39. Cornford’s seeming inconsistency Even when, at long last, the reader has tracked down his prey, a first reaction can be only one of puzzlement. How is it that the same words (τὸ μὴ ὄν) have been given a different, and seemingly inconsistent, translation in the two places? How can the words τὸ μὴ ὄν be translated as ‘the non-existent’, in the earlier text (238 d 4-e 7), and as ‘that which is not’ or ‘what is not’, in the later passage (258 e 6-259 a 2), where ‘what is not’ is said to be the form of non-being, and therefore distinct, so Cornford tells us in his commentary, from the ‘non-being’ that we find translated as ‘the non-existent’, in the earlier text? There is an explanation of that seeming inconsistency, in so far as there is a difference in the meaning given to τὸ μὴ ὄν in the two texts (238 d 4e 7 and 258 e 6-259 a 2). But it will take me just a moment to explain what the difference is, why it is essential to the Stranger’s expression of his thesis and why it does not lend itself to the seeming inconsistency to be found in Cornford’s translation and in his commentary.

VIII. Plato and Parmenides We need to start from Parmenides’ poem, from the opening words of the goddess, when she presents her young disciple with a straightforward contradiction between is and is not, presented as two ‘Ways of Enquiry’, ‘the only ones that can be thought of’ (fr. 2).

40. Parmenides’ non-being The first Way says not only is, but that ‘it is impossible not to be’. The second Way says both is not and ‘it is necessary not to be’. The modal opposition (‘impossible not to…’, ‘necessary not to…’) ensures that adoption of either one Way excludes the other. By following the first and only ‘true’ Way, ‘not possible not to be’, you could never ‘come to know what is not’ (fr. 2.7: τό γε μὴ ἐόν), construed as ‘necessary not to be’, nor even ‘speak of it’, meaningfully, to others (vv. 7-8).33

33 For even for so brief a summary of fr. 2, the reader will need to have to hand that rara avis, a reliable translation of the fragments (Études sur Parménide, tome i, Le

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The condemnation of the second Way (fr. 2) lies behind the pair of verses that Plato’s Stranger has quoted from later in the Poem (fr. 7.1-2, 237 a 8-9). When Parmenides, in the verses the Stranger has quoted, condemns the claim that ‘things that are not, are’ (v. 1: εἶναι μὴ ἐόντα), words supposedly encapsulating the ‘opinions of mortals’ (see § 1 above), he is condemning, at one and the same time, a contradiction and the folly of attempting to speak, albeit in the plural, of the ‘non-being’ of the second Way, a ‘non-being’ that cannot be thought of and that cannot meaningfully be spoken of.34 That is why, following his initial quotation of the two verses, the Stranger begins his interrogation of Theaetetus by asking the young boy, l’air de rien (237 b 7-8): ‘We do, I suppose, dare utter the expression what is not in any way at all (τὸ μηδαμῶς ὄν)’? Theaetetus replies: ‘Why on earth not?’ (237 b 9: πῶς γὰρ οὔ;)—hardly surprisingly, since that is exactly what the Stranger has just done. He is nonetheless quickly brought to see that the answer is not as simple as he had assumed it would be. Following his all too innocent reply, the Stranger drags the young boy pitilessly through a series of puzzles designed to demonstrate how impossible it is to speak or think of ‘what is not’ construed as ‘what is not in any way at all’. The Stranger’s successive references to τὸ μὴ ὄν, ‘what is not’, in the stretch of argument that follows, look back therefore to the expression τὸ μηδαμῶς ὄν, ‘what is not in any way at all’, in his initial question to Theaetetus (237 b 7-8), following the first quotation of Parmenides’ two verses. ‘What is not in any way at all’ is designed, in its turn, to recall the condemnation of ‘non-being’ in the second Way of Parmenides’ poem (fr. 2.7: τό γε μὴ ἐόν).

Poème de Parménide, Texte, traduction, essai critique, Paris, Vrin, 1987). I am not suggesting that the modal expressions of the two Ways are in themselves ‘contradictory’. ‘Impossible not to be’ and ‘necessary not to be’ could both of them be false, leaving open the possibility of a third ‘Way’: ‘possible to be and not to be’. But that is clearly not Parmenides’ intention when he describes the first Way as a ‘true’ Way (v. 4: ‘a path of persuasion, for persuasion accompanies truth’). In following the first, ‘true’ Way, you have to abandon the second Way, a ‘contradiction’ of the first. 34 The transition from a singular (fr. 2.7: τό γε μὴ ἐόν) to a plural (fr. 7.1: μὴ ἐόντα) is explained, in the context of the Poem, by Parmenides’ condemnation of ‘the opinions of mortals’ (fr. 1.30-2). When we speak as we do, in the plural, of all the many things that we see ‘coming into being’ and ‘passing away’ (fr. 8.40), emerging therefore from non-being into being and disappearing from being into nonbeing, we do so in defiance of the modal opposition between the two Ways of being and non-being established at the beginning of the argument (fr. 2).

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The three occurrences of τὸ μὴ ὄν noted earlier (§ 38: 238 d 5, 238 e 1, 238 e 2) are therefore, in the context of the dialogue, a repetition of the ‘non-being’ that is a contradiction of ‘being’, the ‘non-being’ that Parmenides had insisted cannot be thought of and cannot meaningfully be spoken of.35

41. Plato’s non-being That is not the meaning that those same words will have later in the dialogue. When the Stranger turns from puzzles concerning ‘non-being’ to the exposition of his own theory, he is not out to contradict Parmenides by claiming that you can know and that you can speak of the ‘non-being’ that Parmenides had presented as an unknowable and unspeakable contradiction of being. The Stranger’s claim will be that you can know ‘non-being’ (τὸ μὴ ὄν), and that you can speak of it meaningfully, provided the expression is given the meaning that he has argued for in his analysis of non-being as otherness. The Stranger’s argument is therefore designed to distinguish two quite different meanings attaching to the expression τὸ μὴ ὄν. Parmenides’ ‘nonbeing’ (τό γε μὴ ἐόν), defined as ‘what is not in any way at all’ (237 b 6-7: τὸ μηδαμῶς ὄν), the expression introduced following the Stranger’s first quotation of Parmenides’ two verses (237 a 8-9), will be alluded to, in the continuation of the argument, as a simple τὸ μὴ ὄν (notably at 238 d 4-e 7). Later in the dialogue (notably at 257 b 1-259 a 2), the same three words (τὸ μὴ ὄν) will be given the meaning they have in the Stranger’s own theory, and will be explained therefore as ‘other than being’, but not a total lack of

35 When the Stranger asks Theaetetus (237 b 7-c 4) whether we can seriously think or speak of ‘what is not in any way at all’, he has not quoted the verses of fr. 2, nor therefore Parmenides’ reference to τό γε μὴ ἐόν (v. 7). My point is that, for anyone familiar with the Poem, including therefore the readers Plato was writing for, the reference would have been obvious. I do fully realise that the backward reference (from the ‘non-beings’, of fr. 7.1-2, to the ‘non-being’ of fr. 2.7) is not obvious to those modern readers of the Sophist who have not taken the trouble to familiarise themselves with the extant fragments of Parmenides’ poem. So it is, with painful clarity, in a full-length study of Plato’s dialogue by N. Notomi, The Unity of Plato’s ‘Sophist’, between the Sophist and the Philosopher (Cambridge University Press, 1999). Anyone in the same sorry state should hasten to familiarise himself with the volume noted earlier (n. 33), where he will find, despite the title in French, an English translation of the fragments and a generous summary, also in English, of my interpretation of the Poem.

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being—the same expression therefore as in the earlier passage, but now repeated with a new and different meaning. The new and different meaning is the climax to the Stranger’s critique of Parmenides, and has been made possible by the newly-fledged ‘form’ of non-being that the Stranger claims to have ‘brought to light’, following his second quotation of Parmenides’ two verses (258 d 5-e 3).

42. The Stranger’s distinction The change in meaning is essential to an understanding of the dialogue as a whole. The new and different meaning the Stranger will give to the words τὸ μὴ ὄν in the summary of his own thesis of a form of non-being (258 e 6-259 a 2) is a meaning as yet unknown and unthought of when, earlier in the dialogue (238 d 4-e 7), the same words serve to deepen the perplexity attaching to the non-being of Parmenides’ second Way. But it is not only the difference of meaning that matters. However disconcerting for a reader not attuned to the drama of the text, the difference of meaning does not entail a difference of wording. The whole point of the Stranger’s argument is that the words may be the same, but that the meaning is different. Non-being had been defined by Parmenides, in his statement of the second Way, as a contradiction of being. The Stranger agrees that, so defined, non-being cannot be known and cannot be spoken of. His innovation has been to make of the same words a negation of being, but not a contrary of being, to make of them therefore a non-being that can be known and can be spoken of. The Stranger is not therefore saying that what Parmenides had said was unintelligible is intelligible. The burden of his innovation is to draw a distinction where Parmenides had seen none.

IX. Plato’s Repetition of Parmenides’ Verses The Stranger’s purpose is made clear by his repetition of Parmenides’ two verses (fr. 7.1-2) at the beginning (237 a 8-9) and the end of his argument (258 d 2-3).

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43. The repeated quotation When the words εἶναι μὴ ἐόντα (fr. 7.1) first appear, they are quoted as having the meaning that Parmenides had given them (237 a 8-9). ‘Being’ and ‘non-being’ are as defined in the two Ways, and their conjunction is therefore a contradiction. It is said—but only by foolish mortals—of ‘things that are not’ (μὴ ἐόντα) and that ‘must not be’ (fr. 2.5), that they ‘are’ (εἶναι), and therefore ‘cannot not be’ (fr. 2.3). When those same verses are quoted as the climax to the Stranger’s argument (258 d 2-3), the meaning they are given is that ‘things that are not’ (μὴ ἐόντα), because they are ‘other than being’, ‘are’ (εἶναι), because they participate in being. Plato has designed the dialogue as a dramatic presentation of the Stranger’s skill in introducing a distinction that undermines Parmenides’ opposition between ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ in his statement of the two Ways (fr. 2.3-5) and that also undermines the contradiction Parmenides had claimed was inherent in the refusal of the two Ways by mortals, when they speak of ‘things that are not’, and say of them that they ‘are’ (fr. 7.1-2). Parmenides, in stating the two Ways and in criticising the ‘opinions of mortals’, had made allowance for only one meaning of ‘what is not’—‘what is not’ as an outright denial of being, as sheer nothingness. The Stranger does not set out to contradict him by claiming that ‘what is not in any way at all’ can be known and can be thought of. He does something both more subtle and more radical. He achieves his purpose by introducing a distinction, between non-being as a contrary of being and non-being as a negation of being, a distinction that will enable him to quote, with approval (258 d 2-3), the very words that Parmenides, in his Poem, had condemned.

44. Cornford’s misleading translation of the same If I labour the point, it is because Cornford has ruined both the drama and the argument of the Sophist by changing the translation of τὸ μὴ ὄν in the course of the dialogue, introducing ‘the non-existent’ in his translation of the Stranger’s arguments, following the first quotation of Parmenides’ two verses (237 a 8-9), but translating those same words as ‘that which is not’ or ‘what is not’ in the course of the argument leading up to and following on from his second quotation of Parmenides’ verses (258 d 2-3). Yes, it is easy enough to say, with hindsight, that the Stranger has distinguished his own ‘non-being’ from what, in English, we may choose to call Parmenides’ ‘non-existent’. But Plato doesn’t have different expressions for Parmenides’ ‘non-existent’ and for his own ‘non-being’. The undoubted 126

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difference of meaning, in the Greek text, is expressed by a difference of syntax, of context and of argument, not by a different choice of wording. The difference that we, Plato’s English-speaking readers, so easily express by a difference of wording, the difference between a negation of existence and a negation of being, will not be made apparent, to young Theaetetus or to the reader of the dialogue, until the Stranger has established a distinction between the impossible non-being that would be a contrary of being and non-being as a form of non-being—the distinction that will be introduced triumphantly and as a novelty following the Stranger’s second quotation of Parmenides’ two verses (258 d 2-3). Anticipate the Stranger’s conclusion by translating his earlier uses of τὸ μὴ ὄν (238 d 4-e 7) as ‘the non-existent’ and you have given the solution to the puzzle before the puzzle itself has been fully stated. You are assuming, by your choice of verb, by writing of ‘the non-existent’, that the difference between ‘non-existent’ and ‘non-being’ is already available, from the start, to the first-time reader of the dialogue. But it isn’t. There are no two verbs, in ancient Greek, to match the difference between ‘is’ and ‘exists’. The Stranger will draw a clear distinction between his own use of ‘is not…’, where the negation is to be understood as ‘other than…’, and ‘is not’ as the expression of an impossible ‘contrary of being’—‘non-being’ as ‘nothing’. But if, like Cornford, you anticipate that conclusion by introducing ‘the non-existent’ as a translation of the ‘is not’ that is an expression of Parmenides’ second Way, then you have short-circuited both the drama and the argument. Intervene, as Cornford does, with talk of ‘non-existence’ before the distinction has been drawn and it is as though you had done the Stranger’s work for him. Translate the Stranger’s earlier uses of τὸ μὴ ὄν (238 d 4-e 7) as ‘the non-existent’ and the result of the distinction the Stranger will draw is already staring at you in the text—in Cornford’s English, not in Plato’s Greek.

45. Shifting sands It is because Cornford has read the dialogue through the prism of his own translation of the text that he has failed to get to the heart of the Stranger’s critique of Parmenides. By translating the Stranger’s references to τὸ μὴ ὄν in terms both of ‘non-existence’ and of ‘non-being’, Cornford has deprived the dialogue of its movement and its meaning. Cornford is not wrong in saying, as he does at one point, that the Stranger’s expression of contrariety (258 e 6: τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος) looks 127

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back to the expression following the Stranger’s first quotation of the two verses of Parmenides (237 b 7-8: τὸ μηδαμῶς ὄν).36 But he is on shifting sands when he translates τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος as ‘the contrary of existence’ and when he refers, in his commentary, to τὸ μηδαμῶς ὄν as ‘the totally non-existent’.37 The Stranger nowhere draws a distinction, as Cornford’s words would seem to imply he does, between a negation of existence and a ‘contrary’ of existence or between what is non-existent and what is ‘totally’ non-existent. The Stranger’s argument is couched in terms of a difference between ‘being’ and ‘non-being’, with a distinction between a non-being that would be an impossible contrary of being and therefore a total lack of being and a non-being that is a negation of being, but not a total lack of being, a nonbeing that the Stranger defines as a ‘form’ of non-being. The distinction between a negation of being and an impossible contrary of being is the apogee of Plato’s analysis of ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ and of his long critique of Parmenides. The distinction will hardly come to you as the illumination Plato intended it to be unless you abandon Cornford’s persistent references to ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence’, and stick to Plato’s Greek.

X. Cornford’s ‘Totally Non-Existent’ 46. Owen has a point I may be thought to have let pass too easily, in the preceding paragraphs, the anomaly of Cornford’s paraphrasing τὸ μηδαμῶς ὄν (237 b 7-8) as ‘the totally non-existent’. Owen pounces on the error: ‘the totally non-existent’, he remarks acidly, ‘seems unintelligible’.38 Owen has a point. If the adverb

36 Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 295 n. 1. 37 For Cornford’s translation of τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος (258 e 6) as ‘the contrary of what exists (or of Existence)’, see Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 289 (quoted above n. 24). For his writing of τὸ μηδαμῶς ὄν (237 b 7-8) as ‘the totally non-existent’, see Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 205 (cf. p. 294). See also the continuation of my main text above (§ X). 38 Owen, ‘Plato on Non-Being’, p. 113. Owen is not quoting, as one might think he is, Cornford’s translation of Plato’s words (Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 203: ‘that which has no sort of being’). It is presumably the substitution of ‘existent’ for ‘being’, in Cornford’s paraphrase, and the addition of the adverb (Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 205, p. 294), that rouses Owen’s dismissive comment.

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(Cornford’s ‘totally’) is intended to mark a difference of meaning, then the expression not only ‘seems’, but is meaningless. There can be no difference of meaning, in English, between ‘non-existent’ and ‘totally non-existent’. Later Greek philosophers, Proclus and the author of The Divine Names, distinguish various degrees of ‘non-being’, writing of ‘absolute’ evil that it is ‘not in any way, not in any manner—nothing’.39 But whatever we may make of different degrees of ‘non-being’ in the later theory, there can be no difference, in English, between ‘non-existent’ simpliciter and a non-existent that is somehow even further from—even more non-existent than—what is already non-existent. The Stranger’s ‘what is not in any way at all’ cannot be usefully or convincingly paraphrased in English as ‘the totally non-existent’. Cornford’s ‘totally non-existent’ is nonetheless virtually inevitable. Cornford has persistently translated τὸ ὄν as ‘Existence’. The easy and unthinking transition from the simple negation ‘Non-Existence’ to ‘totally non-existent’, when writing of τὸ μηδαμῶς ὄν (237 b 7-8), is one more sign that Cornford sees no real difference between ‘Being’ and ‘Existence’, and has therefore no firm understanding of the difference between what, for the convenience of an English reader, we may term a negation of existence (the sheer nothingness of Parmenides’ Second Way) and a negation of being (the Stranger’s definition of a form that is of what is not). Without a clear grasp of that distinction, whatever use we may or may not make of ‘existence’ in formulating the distinction, the Stranger’s theory of ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ cannot be understood in the Greek text and can have no hope of being given a consistent translation in English.

47. Cornford’s shadow world Why has Cornford not seen that point? Why has Cornford spattered his translation and his commentary with references to what ‘exists’, to ‘Existence’ and to ‘Non-Existence’, creating as it were a shadow world, where ‘is’ (ἔστι) is paralleled as ‘exists’, where ‘being’ (τὸ ὄν) is paralleled as ‘existence’, where ‘the contrary of being’ (τοὐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος) is made to appear as

39 Pseudo-Denys, De divinis nominibus iv 32 (177.14-15 ed. Suchla): μηδαμῶς μηδαμῆ μηδὲν ὄν. I have explored elsewhere the origin of the expression and its Proclean background. See ‘Plotinus on Evil: Proclus and the Author of The Divine Names’, in J. F. Finamore, Sarah Klitenic Wear (ed.), Defining Platonism, Essays in Honor of the 75 th Birthday of John M. Dillon, Steubenville, Franciscan University Press, 2017, pp. 130-61.

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‘the contrary of existence’, and where ‘what is not in any way at all’ (τὸ μηδαμῶς ὄν (237 b 6-7) is made to appear as ‘the totally non-existent’? Return, for a brief moment, to Strepsiades (§ 4), scandalised by Socrates’ assertion οὐδ᾽ ἔστι Ζεύς. Those words are a straightforward negation of ἔστι Ζεύς. Whether positive or negative, the verb is a predicate complete itself, lending itself equally well to translation by ‘is’ and by ‘exist’, literally: ‘Zeus is’, ‘Zeus isn’t’, more idiomatically: ‘Zeus exists’, ‘Zeus doesn’t exist’. That is the model Cornford has taken over for his interpretation of the Sophist when, in his commentary, he tells us that a negation of existence (‘Non-Existence’ and ‘the non-existent’) has to be understood as the ‘contrary’ of existence. So it is, if you like, in English, in so far as ‘… exists’ and ‘… doesn’t exist’ are not only ‘contrary’ (both assertions can’t be true at the same time) but contradictory (both assertions can’t be false at the same time). So it also is, in Greek, in so far as use of einai as a predicate complete in itself cannot at the same time be both asserted and denied—Zeus is or he isn’t, he can’t be both, he can’t be half one and half the other. But that is not the meaning the Stranger has given to the negation. The Stranger does not think that a negation of being is also a contrary of being. He does think that movement can be ‘other than being’, and in that sense ‘not-being’, without therefore being the impossible ‘contrary’ of being that would be a complete absence of being. With his ‘philosophical’ use of the negation (see §§ 10-12 above), the Stranger aims to show that, by its participation in being, and in otherness in relation to being, movement is non-being, but that it is not therefore a complete absence of being—that it is not non-existent.

48. The syntactical foundation of Plato’s distinction between ‘being’ and ‘nonbeing’ With the form of words he has chosen for his translation, Cornford adopts, all unwittingly, the negation corresponding to the negation of an ‘existential’ use of the verb in the common idiom of Plato’s day (§ 10 above): ‘Zeus is not’, ‘Zeus doesn’t exist’. But that is exactly the meaning that Plato has sought to avoid by his ‘philosophical’ use of the negation, a negation of being that is not a denial of participation in being (§ 12 above) and that is not therefore to be taken as a denial of existence. An understanding of Plato’s adaptation of the idiom of his day, his balancing an existential use of the verb by use of the verb as a copula, in order to arrive at a negation of being that is not a contrary of being, is essential

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for any understanding of the distinction between ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ that lies at the heart of Plato’s Sophist. The whole purpose of the Stranger’s analysis is to adopt a use of the verb as a predicate complete in itself for the positive use of the verb, and to replace the negative use by what I have called a ‘philosophical’ negation, ‘is not…’ as an expression of ‘other than…’, a copulative use of the verb that does not exclude participation in being and that does not therefore lead to a negation of the verb that will be heard as an assertion of non-existence. Cornford has clearly no grasp of that distinction. His translation of the text, constantly couched in terms of ‘Existence’, gives to a negation of being exactly the meaning that the Stranger’s argument has been designed to avoid.40

XI. English Idioms 49. Cornford’s ‘unintelligible’ English Errors in understanding the Greek are one thing. Misuse of English is quite another. Can Cornford’s English properly be described as ‘unintelligible’? Is Owen right to dismiss Cornford’s paraphrase of Plato’s τὸ μηδαμῶς ὄν (237 b 6-7) as ‘the totally non-existent’ with the disparaging comment that it ‘seems unintelligible’?41 Owen’s comment is oddly ambivalent. If the adverb (Cornford’s ‘totally’) is intended to mark a difference of meaning, then the expression ‘totally non-existent’ not only ‘seems’, but is meaningless. There can be no difference of meaning, in English, between ‘non-existent’ and ‘totally non-existent’. But Cornford’s ‘totally non-existent’ is not therefore ‘unintelligible’ as a piece of spoken English, provided the adverb is heard, not as claiming a 40 A sad conclusion? The honorand of this volume will be one of the few to understand why I have spent to long on a criticism of Cornford. John and I must be among the few survivors of a generation encouraged to see in Cornford an example of the best that Cambridge had to offer the student of ancient philosophy. Sixty years ago I dutifully worked my way through Cornford’s translation and commentary on the Sophist, wondering why I found them so much more difficult to understand than the text of the dialogue. I now know why. But let me hasten to add that Cornford is not at his best on the Sophist. His parallel studies on the Theaetetus, the Parmenides and the Timaeus still have much to offer someone setting his sights on a serious study of the text. 41 Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 205, p. 294. Owen, ‘Plato on Non-Being’, p. 113. See again n. 38 above.

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difference of meaning, but as what is sometimes called an ‘attention seeking device’—the speaker thumping on the table or wagging an admonitory finger, with a transcription of his words commonly printed in italics. ‘Climate change? No, sir. Our President is dead right. He always is.’ For some reason I hear the words spoken with a pleasing Louisiana drawl. ‘Climate change? It’s non-existent. Yessir, believe you me, totally non-existent.’ When the timid philosopher (usually myself) ventures to interject, desperately trying to tone down what his interlocutor will hear as ‘posh’ (it isn’t, it’s the only way I ever heard English spoken as a child or an adolescent): ‘Do you distinguish non-existent from totally non-existent?’, he will be met with a pitying gaze, and a change of tone. ‘That’s just what I’m telling you, mate, totally non-existent.’ The incomprehension is perfect proof, if proof were needed, that ‘exist’ and ‘non-exist’, are used ‘absolutely’ in modern English. In my imaginary sentence, the adverb has been tacked on only for emphasis, not as implying any difference of meaning. The same is true of a similar adverbial expression used later in the dialogue, when the Stranger, taking up the cudgels on behalf of the Sophist, speaks of what ‘has no existence at all’, Cornford’s translation of παντάπασιν οὐκ ἔστιν (260 e 1).42 No one, I think, would look askance at Cornford’s words in an ordinary conversation. ‘Intelligible’ or not to a pernickety Oxbridge don, that is how people speak. By adding ‘at all’ or ‘totally’ to a declaration of non-existence, the native English speaker is not therefore imagining, nor is he asking his interlocutor to imagine, a state where the item in question ‘has no existence’, without yet having ‘no existence at all’, or a state where it is ‘non-existent’, but not yet ‘totally non-existent’. Conversely, if we say of something that it is ‘nearly non-existent’ or ‘almost non-existent’, we are saying no more than that it is on the brink of non-existence, as in D. H. Lawrence’s wonderful poem, The ship of death. Once over the brink, there is no turning back. But there is no weakening of the opposition between existence and its negation. Before you don’t exist, you still exist. Once you don’t exist, you exist no longer.

42 Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 302.

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50. ‘There is…’ ‘There isn’t…’ Cornford’s use of English is not therefore ‘unintelligible’, even if his loose talk of ‘Existence’ and of ‘Non-existence’ obscures and falsifies the meaning of the Stranger’s argument. The obscurity can easily be avoided. ‘Movement exists’ is not the only alternative, in English, to ‘movement is’. More common than either expression, and long established in the history of the language, is the use of an introductory adverb: ‘There is…’, ‘There isn’t…’ Today’s ‘fool’, if he is a native English speaker, will undoubtedly be inclined to say in his heart: ‘There is no God.’ Similarly, from a lexicographical point of view: ‘There are tame tigers’, ‘there are no tame tigers’.43 To be meaningful, the idiom has to be heard with a distinctive intonation, a lack of emphasis on the adverb and an increased emphasis on the verb, together with an inversion of verb and subject (‘There is no God’, ‘There are tame tigers’). Spoken in this way, the use of the verb is undoubtedly ‘existential’. When the Stranger asserts (256 d 11-12): ἔστιν ἄρα ἐξ ἀνάγκης τὸ μὴ ὂν εἶναι, his words can be translated, perfectly correctly, as ‘It has to be possible for what is not to be’. But those same words can be translated equally well, if not better, as ‘It has to be possible for there to be what is not’. With either form of words what is being stated of ‘what is not’ is no more than that it is.44

51. An English ‘is’ The longer form of expression, ‘There is…’, ‘There isn’t…’, is part of the stock-in-trade of an Englishman’s English. Even so, use of the simple verb

43 I am warned that readers may not recognise my ‘fool’ as the Psalmist’s ‘fool’ (Dixit stultus in corde suo Non est Deus), challenged by Anselm in the preliminaries to his Proslogion. My ‘tame tigers’ are an allusion to a well-known article by G. E. Moore, ‘Is Existence a Predicate?’, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 15, 1936, pp. 154-88. 44 Anyone who is not a native speaker of English may need to have it pointed out that an unaccented ‘there’ is quite different from: ‘There she is’ (meeting someone off a train), with emphasis transferred from the verb to the adverb and no inversion of subject and verb. Both expressions differ from: ‘There’s a winner’ (my neighbour casting an expert eye on the line-up of thoroughbreds, before rushing off to place a last-minute bet before the race begins), an inversion of subject and verb, but with such heavy emphasis on the adverb that the vowel of the verb has been elided.

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as a predicate complete in itself is still indubitably part of the living language, in so far as it is still immediately recognisable, for example in the opening verse of Clare’s famous sonnet: ‘I am, but who I am none knows or cares.’ ‘I am’, an existential use of the verb, is followed by ‘who I am’, a copulative use of the verb (delicately echoing Lear’s ‘Who is it that can tell me who I am?’). Clare may have been living in the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum when he wrote the verse, but his command of English, here as elsewhere, is perfect, and the play on the two uses of the verb, as a complete predicate (‘I am’) and as a copula (‘who I am’), is as immediately understandable, to a native speaker of English, as is use of the verb as a complete predicate, with and without a negation, in the still more famous words, ‘to be, or not to be’. ‘Exist’, a frequent replacement today for an ‘existential use’ of am-was-be, is a Latinate newcomer to the language, unknown to writers of Middle English (for example the anonymous author of the fourteenth-century best-seller The Cloud of Unknowing) and only beginning to stake out a place for itself in Shakespeare’s plays. Even today, for a native English speaker, the Latinate exist and the various parts of what has become a composite verb am-was-be, when used as a complete predicate, are not at all, as one might say, emotionally synonymous. Try replacing Clare’s am or Hamlet’s be by exist. You may think that you keep the sense. You certainly kill the poetry.45

45 You kill the poetry, because you are cutting the words off from their history. Clare’s two uses of the verb, as a complete predicate and as a copula, are exactly matched by the author of The Book of Privy Counselling, a sequel to the The Cloud of Unknowing, when he tells his chosen disciple that, by way of expressing total dependence on his creator, he must learn to acknowledge God’s gift with the words: ‘… not only I am, bot so I am’ (p. 141.17). ‘Not only I am’, use of the verb as a predicate complete in itself. ‘So I am’, a specification of the verb. There is the same balancing of the two uses in the Cloud: ‘Alle men han mater of sorow, bot most specyaly he feliþ mater of sorow þat wote and feliþ þat he is’, followed in the next sentence but one by: ‘For he may make sorow ernestly þat wote & feliþ not onli what he is, bot þat he is’ (cap. 44, p. 83.20-p. 84.1). For both texts I quote the edition by Phyllis Hodgson, ‘published for the Early English Text Society’, Oxford University Press, 1944 (reprinted ‘with corrections’, 1958).

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XII. The Golden Rule of Common Usage 52. Quine’s qualms But please do not think that I am therefore questioning, still less condemning, as some ‘philosophers’ think they have the right to do, the meaning given by common usage to the vocabulary of today’s native English speaker. I am not even doing as Quine has done, when he decides, reluctantly, to forego any use of ‘the good old word “exist”’.46 The sacrifice Quine makes is perhaps not quite the sacrifice he thinks it is. The word may well have reached America in the Mayflower (1620), and in America may therefore count as ‘old’, but it is unlikely to have been much older. Be that as it may, ‘exist’ is now part of the living language and I see no reason why it should be jettisoned, provided only that we are chary, as Quine is, of adopting distinctions (‘existence’ and ‘subsistence’ is Quine’s bugbear) that require the word, whether as a noun or a verb, to be invested with a technical meaning that it may possibly one day acquire, but that it certainly does not have in the living language of today.

53. The golden rule of the lexicographer and the grammarian At this point some bright spark will very likely think to trip me up by objecting that, in writing as I have done, I have ignored Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty. A good try—but, yes, I do know that when expressed, as it sometimes is, in terms of ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence’, Heisenberg’s Principle may seem to imperil the ‘absolute’ use of ‘exists’ and ‘doesn’t exist’ in today’s English. If, or in so far as, it does so, it can be heard, linguistically, only as an anomaly. By saying that, I am not for one moment claiming to have any competence in judging of the truth or falsity of Heisenberg’s theories. I have, throughout the preceding pages, been adopting usage as the golden rule of the lexicographer and the grammarian. Usage may change. But unless, or

46 W. V. Quine, ‘On What There Is’, initially published in The Review of Metaphysics 2, 1948/1949, pp. 21-38 (see p. 23).

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until, it does, it is not for me to innovate, unless I have very good reason for doing so, and clearly announce the fact.47 As it is, I don’t think there is need for any innovation relating to the ‘absolute’ opposition between ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence’, nor do I think that any attempted change of usage is likely to come to pass, at least in my lifetime. Language is more resilient than one may think. Common speech forms often take a long time, sometimes a very long time, to adapt to scientific ‘facts’ and to scientific theories. Most of us now recognise, whenever —if ever—we stop to think about it, that the earth goes round the sun. But at the close of the day, the sun still ‘sinks down in the West’, and very likely always will. I am most grateful to Luc Brisson, Charles Ramond and my brother Patrick O’Brien for a critical reading of these pages. They have been in part abstracted from a much longer piece that I had originally intended as my contribution to this volume, but that in the course of time vastly outgrew its original purpose. As it is, I am very honoured that this more modest version of what will probably have to be my swan song on the Sophist has been found a place in a collection of essays dedicated to one of my best and oldest friends. John and I were undergraduates together at Trinity, Cambridge, in those faroff post-war years, so vastly different from the world we know today. Since then I have followed with admiration the many publications that have made John one of the leading scholars of the English-speaking world, moving with ease from Plato, to Aristotle, to Plotinus and beyond. Publications that have combined the clarity and the learning of the great figures of our youth—Sandbach, Guthrie, Page—with a breadth of vision that sets a new goal and a new ideal.

47 The two Fowlers have some sensible remarks on possible change in usage. See H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler, The King’s English, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 67-8. I quote for preference the third edition, 1931. Their gloomy predictions on ‘rather unique’ have not yet come to pass. But it may well be only a question of time.

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Aristotle's Handling of endoxa in Nicomachean Ethics 9.4 and Eudemian Ethics 7.6 Arthur Madigan, S.J., Boston College

The author of this paper spent a number of years working on Metaphysics (Met) Beta, the book of metaphysical problems or aporiae, perhaps the most manifestly dialectical of Aristotle's treatises. He found that the critics were virtually unanimous on the proposition that Met Beta is a dialectical book, but that behind this virtual unanimity there was considerable difference of opinion about what dialectic is, about what it means for an Aristotelian treatise to be dialectical, and about what kind of philosophical yield a dialectical procedure may be expected to produce. Typically and with good reason, the interpretation of Aristotelian dialectic has taken off from Topics (Top) 1.1–2 and first of all from the basic definition of dialectical reasoning in Top 1.1, 100a29–30. There, after explaining what a syllogism in general is, and what a demonstrative syllogism is, Aristotle says, simply, dialektikos de sullogismos ho ex endoxôn sullogizomenos, "a dialectical syllogism is one that reasons from endoxa."1 And then at 100b21–3 he explains that endoxa are views that seem true to everyone, or to most people, or to wise people or experts (sophoi), and of these, to most of them, or to the most knowledgeable and reputable or esteemed (tois malista gnôrimois kai endoxois). Aristotle goes on to say in Top 1.2, 101a26–8 that dialectic is useful in three different respects: for practice (gumnasia), for encounters or conversations (enteuxeis) and for the philosophical sciences. Aristotle then explains this third claim, saying that dialectic helps us to discern the truth inasmuch as it enables us to go through difficulties (diaporêsai) on both sides of a disputed question (101a34–6), and inasmuch as dialectic enables us to reach the first principles (prôta) or starting points (arkhai) of the various sciences (101a36–101b4).2

1 Translations are my own unless otherwise credited. 2 R. Smith has challenged the common interpretation of this passage. Cf. his "Aristotle on the Uses of Dialectic," Synthèse 96 (1993), 335–58; also his Aristotle, Topics, Books I and VIII (Clarendon Press, 1997), 54–5: "[W]hy should a capacity to examine entail a power of getting to all starting-points? Instead, I take Aristotle to be

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Accounts of Aristotelian dialectic commonly supplement these basic data about dialectic by citing a passage from Nicomachean Ethics (NE) 7.1. At 1145b2–6, Aristotle says: We must, as in other cases, posit the phainomena and first go through aporiae, and thus prove, if possible, all the endoxa about these affections [moral weakness and similar conditions] or, if not, most of them and the most authoritative; for if the difficulties are solved and the endoxa are left, the matter would be sufficiently proven. This text sets forth a three-stage procedure: positing the phainomena, going through aporiae about them, and thus proving or confirming the endoxa, either the whole set of them or the majority, including the most important. This three-stage method has come to be known as the "method of phainomena," or the "method of endoxa" (Jonathan Barnes) or "the method of appearances" (Martha Nussbaum).

Received Opinions about Dialectic It is commonly assumed in the literature that the method of appearances set forth in NE 7.1 is more or less the same thing as the dialectical reasoning defined in Top 1.1. It is also commonly assumed that the method of appearances, or dialectic understood as the method of appearances, is Aristotle's primary or even sole philosophical (as opposed to empirical scientific) method. This position was championed by G.E.L. Owen in his famous paper "Tithenai ta phainomena." There Owen made the point, against what might be called a Baconian or empiricist reading of Aristotle, that Aristotelian phainomena include not only observed facts but also endoxa, reputable opinions, which are legomena, things said. Here is Owen commenting on the passage from NE 7.1: Here Sir David Ross translates phainomena by 'observed facts', a translation evidently designed to bring Aristotle's programme into conformity with such passages as those already cited [passages from Aristotle's De partibus animalium and Meteorology]. But this can hardly be its sense here. For, in the first place, what Aristotle proceeds to set out are not the observed facts but the endoxa, the common conceptions on the

making the more modest claim that since dialectical methods of examination can be applied to anything, including the starting-points of sciences, they provide us with a way of discussing them."

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subject (as the collocation of phainomena and endoxa in his preface would lead us to expect).3 In The Fragility of Goodness, Martha Nussbaum radicalized Owen's understanding of phainomena and of the three-stage method. She writes: By showing us the prominence of conceptual and linguistic considerations in the scientific works, Owen went a long way towards correcting a previously prevalent view, according to which Aristotle makes a sharp distinction between 'science' and 'metaphysics' or Weltanschauung — a view in which the Physics had always figured as a problematic, or even a confused work. But Owen did not, I think, go far enough in his criticism of the Baconian picture. He still held on to the view that in certain scientific contexts the Baconian translations are appropriate, and that Aristotle's defense of a method concerned with phainomena is, in these cases, a defense of what Owen explicitly calls a 'Baconian picture'.... Owen's article is a major contribution to the study of Aristotle. But its uncharacteristically conservative stopping-place does Aristotle an injustice. First, Owen forces us to charge Aristotle with equivocation concerning his method and several of its central terms... For the entire problem arises only because of a second more serious difficulty in Owen's account, one whose removal will remove this one with it. Owen finds ambiguity because he believes that in biology Aristotle is committed to 'Baconian' empiricism. There is, in fact, no case for crediting Aristotle with anything like the Baconian picture of science based on theory-neutral observation.4 For Nussbaum, the dialectical sorting out of appearances is not a preliminary to some other strictly scientific method; it is the method of inquiry. We never get beyond appearances to some rock-solid non-dialectical foundation.5

3 G. Owen, "Tithenai ta phainomena," in G. Owen, Logic, Science, and Dialectic: Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, (ed.) M. Nussbaum (Cornell University Press, 1986), 240. 4 M. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, revised edn. (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 244. 5 W. Wians has challenged this claim, pointing out the frequency with which Aristotle distinguishes between ‘what is more knowable relative to us’ and ‘what is more knowable in itself.’ Wians argues that even if Aristotle starts with phainomena or with endoxa, i.e. with things that are either thought or said about reality, he never-

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In a study of NE 7.1, Jonathan Barnes explains the three-stage method as follows: Put schematically, Aristotle's method amounts to this: first, garner a set of endoxa on the subject in question, call it the set {a1, a2, …, an}. Secondly, survey the a's for infelicities. Thirdly, remove those infelicities: purify the ai's to produce a new set, {b1, b2, …, bn}; select the 'most important bi's; and construct a maximal consistent subset of the bi's containing those 'most important' members. Let us call the final set, the end product of the puzzling and proving, {g1, g2, …, gm}; note that m is ≤ n; and that each gi is 'adequately proved'. The investigation is at an end: assembling the ai's sets up the problems; puzzling and proving, which turn the ai's into bi's and then pick out the gi's, solve the problems.6 So understood, the three-stage method would seem to be inherently conservative and philosophically limited. Barnes puts the difficulty as follows: Aristotle's Method of Endoxa seems to be pernicious and philosophically enervating; for it assumes, depressingly, that the answers to our ethical questions are already to hand, enshrined in ta endoxa; and it restricts our intellectual grazing to pastures the common herd has already cropped. Is that really so?7 Barnes ultimately concludes that "Rightly understood, the Method of Endoxa does not commit Aristotle to the conservative parochialism of Common Sense."8 This is for two reasons. First, while the method does impose some restrictions on the range of endoxa that can be included in the initial set, these restrictions are minimal. Second, as Barnes puts it, "Aristotle's actual philosophizing was not greatly affected by his reflexion on how philosophy ought to be conducted."9

6 7 8 9

theless intends and hopes to attain knowledge about things in themselves. Cf. his "Saving Aristotle from Nussbaum's Phainomena," in Essays in Greek Philosophy V: Aristotle's Ontology, (ed.) A. Preus and J. Anton (State University of New York Press, 1992), 133–49. J. Barnes, "Aristotle and the Methods of Ethics," Revue Internationale de Philosophie 34 (1980), 493. In Barnes' claim that m is ≤ n, n is the number of endoxa in the original set and m is the number of endoxa in the final set. Barnes, "Aristotle and the Methods of Ethics," op. cit., 497. Op. cit., 510. Ibid.

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In Aristotle's First Principles, Terence Irwin faces a similar problem about dialectic. If dialectic is reasoning from endoxa, and if there is no restriction on the set of endoxa, then there is no prospect of dialectic's yielding science in anything like the sense in which Aristotle clearly envisions and desires science. Irwin writes, "Aristotle claims that dialectic has a road to first principles, but seems to imply that, because it depends on common beliefs, it cannot reach first principles."10 Irwin's remedy for the situation lies in a distinction between what he calls "pure" dialectic and what he calls "strong" dialectic. The difference is that pure dialectic works with an unrestricted set of endoxic premisses, while strong dialectic works with a restricted set of endoxic premisses. The restriction that Aristotle uses to limit the set of endoxa is that the endoxa include only those properties that something must have to be an object of experience. This restriction, and the resultant set of endoxa, Irwin derives from the arguments in Aristotle's dialectical defense of the principle of non-contradiction in Met Gamma. Given this restricted set of endoxa, strong dialectic yields conclusions that have all sorts of ramifications for psychology, ethics and politics.11

Dialectic in NE 9.4 and EE 7.6 Some of the most interesting and insightful literature on Aristotelian dialectic relies, then, on one or more of the following three assumptions. The first assumption is that the method of appearances or phainomena outlined in NE 7.1 and the dialectical reasoning outlined in Top 1.1 are essentially one and the same procedure. The second assumption is an assumption about how this method works: that once Aristotle has collected a set of endoxa or phainomena, these endoxa or phainomena dictate his conclusions (making allowances, of course, for the possibility of inconsistencies in the set of endoxa, and for the elimination of these inconsistencies). The third assumption is that the method of phainomena or appearances that Aristotle outlines in NE 7.1 is his principal method, or even his only method, for handling philosophical questions. In the remainder of this pa-

10 T. Irwin, Aristotle's First Principles (Clarendon Press, 1988), 10. 11 Ibid., 18–25.

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per I propose to use NE 9.4 and Eudemian Ethics (EE) 7.6 as cases to test these assumptions.12 For all the differences between these two chapters—and we will see that there are many—it is clear that they are about the same general topic or subject matter: philia or friendship for oneself. In each chapter Aristotle presents a set of common opinions about friendship and then he argues that they apply to a person's friendship for himself. If the two sets of endoxa largely correspond to one another, we have the opportunity to compare the ways in which Aristotle uses them to address his topic. The first step in the test, then, must be to establish that the two sets of endoxa are, despite differences of wording, for the most part the same. I will do that by placing the parallel endoxa side by side. (NE 113) titheasi gar philon ton boulomenon kai prattonta t'agatha ê ta phainomena ekeinou heneka (1166a2–4). “For people posit as a friend the one who wishes and does good things, or things that appear good, for the sake of the other party.” (EE 1) dokei gar philos einai ho boulomenos tini t'agatha ê hoia oietai t'agatha, mê di' hauton, all' ekeinou heneka (1240a23–5). “For the one who wishes for someone good things, or things that he thinks are good, not for his own sake but for the sake of the other party, seems to be a friend.” Despite differences of wording, these are making the same basic point. (NE 2) ê ton boulomenon einai kai zên ton philon autou kharin (1166a4– 5). “... or the one who wishes the friend to exist and live for his [the friend's] sake."

12 The texts I consult are Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea, (ed.) I. Bywater (Clarendon Press, 1890), and Aristotelis Ethica Eudemia, (ed.) R. Walzer and J.Mingay (Clarendon Press, 1991). 13 "NE 1" here denotes the first endoxon in NE 9.4; "EE 1" represents the first endoxon in EE 7.6, and so on.

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(EE 2) allon de tropon hôi to einai bouletai di' ekeinon kai mê di' hauton, k'an ei mê dianemôn t'agatha, mê toi to einai toutôi, an doxeie malista philein (1240a25–8). “in another respect, one who wishes [the other party] to be/exist, on account of the other party, not on his own account, even if he is not conferring goods on him, much less existence, would seem most of all to befriend." Again, despite differences of wording, these are making the same basic point. (NE 3) hoi de ton sundiagonta (1166a7). “some posit the one who spends time together [to be a friend].”(EE 3) allon de tropon hôi suzên haireitai di' autên tên homilian kai mê di' heteron ti (1240a28–9). “in another respect, [one is a friend to] the one with whom he chooses to live, on account of the company itself, not on account of something else." Again, these are making the same basic point. (NE 4) kai t'auta hairoumenon (1166a7). “and [they posit] one who chooses the same things [as a friend].” There is no parallel to NE 4 in the Eudemian list of endoxa. (NE 5) ê ton sunalgounta kai sunkhaironta tôi philôi (1166a7–8). “or the one who feels pain and joy together with his friend." (EE 4) eti to algounti sunalgein mê di' heteron ti agapan thêsomen (1240a33–4)… ho d’ autos logos kai epi tou khairein (1240a39). “further, to feel pain together with one in pain, not on account of something else, we will posit as cherishing... the same account applies in the case of joy." Despite differences of wording, these are making the same basic point.

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(EE 5) eti ta toiade legetai peri tês philias, hôs isotês philotês (1240b1–2). “further, such things are said of friendship as that friendliness is equality.” There is no parallel to EE 5 in the Nicomachean list of endoxa. (EE 6) kai mian psukhên einai tous alêthôs philous (1240b2–3). “and that those who are truly friends are one soul.” There is no parallel to EE 6 in the Nicomachean list of endoxa. The two sets have four endoxa in common. The Nicomachean set lacks two of the endoxa in the Eudemian set, and the Eudemian set lacks one of the endoxa in the Nicomachean set. But nothing in the Nicomachean set is inconsistent with the two endoxa that are found only in the Eudemian set, and nothing in the Eudemian set is inconsistent with the endoxon that is found only in the Nicomachean set. The four endoxa that are common to the two sets show numerous differences of wording. In general, the formulation of the endoxa in the Nicomachean version is briefer, while the formulation of the endoxa in the Eudemian version is longer and more elaborate. On balance, however, the two sets of endoxa are sufficiently similar that we can now propose a problem or difficulty. On the assumption that the set of endoxa with which a discussion starts dictates the conclusion or conclusions at which the discussion arrives, we would expect similar sets of endoxa to yield similar conclusions. But the conclusions that Aristotle reaches in these chapters are significantly different. And indeed the whole movement of thought in the two discussions is strikingly different. This point deserves to be brought out in some detail. Aristotle begins NE 9.4 by asserting a thesis: the characteristics of friendship appear to come from the characteristics of one's relationship to oneself. He then introduces the five endoxa about the characteristics of friendship. He matches these with various aspects of a person's relationship to himself. He then restates his thesis, but with an amendment: the characteristics of friendship apply to a good person's relationship to himself. At this point Aristotle introduces a question that, if answered in the negative, would undermine his original thesis: is there such a thing as friendship for oneself? He then dismisses the question with the brief answer that there would seem to be friendship for oneself insofar as someone is two or more elements (doxeie d'an... duo ê pleiô, 1166a34–5). This I will call the duality

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or plurality requirement. It is asserted but not further explained or developed. Instead, Aristotle introduces a second aporia or objection: whether the characteristics of friendship belong just as much to mediocre or bad people. This objection targets not the original thesis but the amended version of the thesis. He addresses it at length, with arguments that the five characteristics of friendship do not apply to bad people in their relation to themselves. After this defense of the amended version of the thesis, the chapter concludes with a practical corollary: we should strive to be friends with ourselves, which involves shunning wickedness. The movement of thought in EE 7.6 is quite different. Aristotle begins not with a thesis but with a question or problem that, he says, requires much inquiry: whether someone is a friend to himself, i.e., whether friendship for oneself, in a literal sense, is possible. He begins with an argument against the literal possibility of friendship for oneself, based on the duality requirement. In his words, "For to befriend and to be befriended involve two different parties (en dusi... diêirêmenois)" (1240a14, 19–20). But instead of following up with an argument on the other side of the issue, i.e., in favor of the possibility of friendship for oneself, as aporetic procedure would suggest, Aristotle changes the subject and argues for a different thesis: that friendship for oneself is the primary form of friendship. This was his original thesis in NE 9.4. Here he introduces three endoxa about characteristics of friendship, and then remarks that the three endoxa are in conflict.14 Leaving the conflict unresolved, Aristotle then introduces three more endoxa about the characteristics of friendship, and uses them to support the thesis that friendship for oneself is the primary form of friendship. Having established this thesis on the basis of the endoxa, Aristotle then addresses three further points. The first is whether his thesis applies to bad people. This leads to the same amendment that we saw in NE 9.4: the primary kind of friendship is the friendship of the good person for himself. The second point is a further clarification of the sense in which the good person is a friend to himself: "because he has in himself two elements that wish to be friendly and that it is impossible to pull apart" (1240b29–30). The third point returns to the original question about whether friendship for oneself is possible. Aristotle answers that it is, on the basis of the duali-

14 Conflict in what sense? It is difficult to see the conflict as one of logical consistency, as though EE 1, EE 2, and EE 3 were logically inconsistent with one another. More likely, the conflict is about which of the three comes closest to expressing the core or essence of friendship. Whatever the nature of the conflict, Aristotle does not take time to try to resolve it. He certainly does not sort out the conflict in the way that NE 7.1 might have led us to expect.

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ty requirement, which he now takes as applying not to distinct persons but to parts within the person. He then explains and illustrates the implications of the duality requirement at some length, showing how the duality requisite for friendship with oneself is present in some cases (human beings after they have developed the power of choice) but not in other cases (animals and children before they have the power of choice). Our two chapters treat of four or five distinct theses. The original or simple primacy thesis is that friendship for oneself is the primary kind of friendship from which other kinds of friendship are derived. The refined or amended primacy thesis is that the friendship of the good person for himself is the primary kind of friendship. What I will call the incompatibility thesis is that bad people are not, or cannot be, friends to themselves. What I will call the possibility thesis is that friendship for oneself is possible, insofar as one is two or more elements. There is, finally, the practical thesis that we should shun wickedness and try to be friends with ourselves. In NE 9.4 the focus is first on the original primacy thesis, then on the amended primacy thesis, then on the incompatibility thesis, and finally on the practical thesis or corollary. In EE 7.6 the focus is first on the issue about the possibility of friendship for oneself (which NE 9.4 treated quickly in passing), then on the simple primacy thesis, and finally on an explanatory section that both expands on the possibility thesis and introduces something like the amended primacy thesis. In NE 9.4 the question about the very possibility of friendship, about whether a person can literally be a friend to himself is raised only to be dismissed with the brief remark that there would seem to be friendship between a person and himself insofar as the person consists of two or more elements (1166a34–5). In EE 7.6, by contrast, the question about whether a person can literally be a friend to himself is the question with which Aristotle begins the chapter, and to which he returns at the end of the chapter. How are these differences between NE 9.4 and EE 7.6 to be explained? They cannot be explained by reference to the two sets of endoxa. Four of the endoxa in each set are essentially the same, while the one or two endoxa that are different in the two sets do not explain the differences. The Nicomachean endoxon that a friend chooses the same things as a friend, and the Eudemian endoxa that friendship is equality and that friends have one soul, say nothing that would explain the differences between the two chapters. So, contrary to what the three-stage method might suggest, the endoxa are not the driving force in these passages. Sets of endoxa that are virtually the same can be deployed in discussions that go in very different directions. But if the endoxa are not the driving force, what are the driving forces in these two chapters? 146

Aristotle's Handling of endoxa in Nicomachean Ethics 9.4 and Eudemian Ethics 7.6

The most obvious answer is Aristotle's choice of a guiding question or concern that shapes the discussion. Contrary to what NE 7.1 might suggest, Aristotle does not simply line up the phainomena or endoxa and then sort them out. Instead, he comes to the endoxa with a guiding question or concern and uses them to address it. In NE 9.4 the guiding question is: is it true that other kinds of friendship derive from friendship for oneself? And the answer is Yes, but with the amendment or proviso that we are talking about the friendship of a good person for himself. In EE 7.6 the guiding question is different: can there really be such a thing as friendship for oneself? Aristotle begins to answer this question, but then switches to a different question, very close to the main question of NE 9.4: are the other forms of friendship derived from a person's friendship towards himself? He uses the endoxa to answer this question in the affirmative, in ways that are partly the same as and partly different from the ways he uses the endoxa in NE 9.4. At the end he returns to his original question. The endoxa do not dictate or originate the guiding question in either case; they are used to answer it. In NE 9.4 and in EE 7.6 Aristotle uses the distinction between good people and bad people to argue for the primacy of the good person's friendship for himself. But the distinction between good and bad people does not emerge from the endoxa themselves. Further, in EE 7.6, once Aristotle has answered the question about whether other forms of friendship derive from a person's friendship towards himself, he then returns to his initial question about the very possibility of friendship for oneself, and explains how this is possible in a way that he never explains in NE 9.4. His decision to return to his original question and address it in detail, rather than simply dismissing it as he did in NE 9.4, is not driven by the set of endoxa. The lesson of these chapters is that dialectical procedure is not simply a matter of starting with a set of endoxa or phainomena, eliminating inconsistencies, and accepting what is left. Dialectical procedure can also be a matter of using endoxa to answer questions that do not arise out of the endoxa themselves. Two overlapping sets of endoxa can be used to address different questions: is friendship for oneself the primary kind of friendship? is friendship for oneself, in a literal sense, even possible? NE 9.4 and EE 7.6 have a second lesson to teach us about dialectic. The secondary literature about dialectic and the method of appearances raised the question about the place, or perhaps the lack of a place, for observational data in dialectic. While both chapters reason from endoxa, both are

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also rich in observational data that illustrate and confirm the endoxa. Here are some examples from NE 9.4:15 “This [endoxa NE 1 and 2] is just what mothers feel toward their children, as do even those who have quarreled with their friends” (1166a5– 6). “This [endoxa NE 3, 4, and 5] too happens especially in the case of mothers” (1166a8–9). “... this decent person is of like mind with himself and longs for the same things with his whole soul. Indeed, he both wishes for the good things for himself... and he does them... and he does them for his own sake, since he acts for the sake of the thinking part of himself...” (1166a13–17). “... no one chooses to possess every good by becoming another... but rather by being whatever sort he is” (1166a20–1). “Such a person also wishes to go through life with himself, since he does so pleasantly: the memories of what he has done are delightful, his hopes for the future are good, and such things are pleasant. His thought is also well supplied with objects of contemplation” (1166a23–7). “He shares pains as well as pleasures with himself above all, since what is painful as well as pleasant is always the same for him and not different at different times. Hence he is without regret, so to speak” (1166a27–9). “... these [the marks of friendship] certainly do not belong to any who are thoroughly base or act impiously; nor do they even appear to. They scarcely belong even to base people, for they differ with themselves and desire some things but wish for others—as do those who lack selfrestraint, for instead of what seems to be good to them, those lacking self-restraint choose harmful pleasures. Others, in turn, through cowardice and idleness, avoid doing what they otherwise suppose to be best for themselves. And those who have done many terrible things 15 The translations are taken from R. Bartlett and S. Collins, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: A New Translation (University of Chicago Press, 2011), 193–5.

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and who hate themselves on account of their corruption, even flee living and do away with themselves. Corrupt people seek to pass their days with others, but they flee themselves because, when by themselves, they are reminded of many odious things and anticipate still others. When they are with others, however, they forget. And since they possess nothing lovable, they feel in no way friendly toward themselves. Such people certainly do not share in either joys or sufferings with themselves, since their soul is torn by faction: one part, on account of its corruption, feels pain when abstaining from certain things, while another part feels pleasure; one part drags them here and the other drags them there, as if tearing them asunder” (1166b5–22). “... base people teem with regret” (1166b24–5). “The base person, therefore, does not appear to be disposed in a friendly way even toward himself, because he possesses nothing lovable” (1166b25–6). EE 7.6 is also rich in observations:16 “Some people think that they are not loved if the other party doesn't wish good things for them, others if the other party does not wish that they should exist, others if the other party does not wish to live with them” (1240a31–3). “A friend is especially eager not just to share in his friend's pain, but to share the very same pain as well, if possible (for example, sharing thirst when he is thirsty); or if not, to get very close to it. The same thing applies to being pleased” (1240a36–9). “... no one benefits himself for an extrinsic reason, or to earn gratitude; nor qua individual does he even claim that he did anything” (1240b5– 6). “... in the wicked person, as in the uncontrolled person, there is disharmony” (1240b12–13).

16 The translations are taken from B. Inwood and R. Woolf, Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 136–8.

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“... the wicked person is not one person but many, and over the course of the same day he is different and capricious” (1240b16–17). “... the good person does not rebuke himself in the moment, the way the uncontrolled person does; nor does his later self rebuke his former self, the way a repentant person does; nor does his prior self rebuke his later self, as someone who breaks a promise does” (1240b21–4). “... everyone believes that he himself is good” (1240b27–8). “... a horse does not seem good to itself, and so is not a friend. But this is also not the case for children, until they become capable of decision, since only then is their insight at odds with their appetite” (1240b32– 4). “... friendship with oneself resembles friendship among kin” (1240b34– 5). In these chapters, then, Aristotle's exposition moves back and forth between endoxa and observational data. They seem to be two complementary sources of evidence. NE 9.4 and EE 7.6 have a third lesson to teach us. Both of these discussions are shaped, though in somewhat different ways, by what I would call a background assumption or framework assumption, the requirement of duality or plurality in friendship. NE 9.4 mentions this requirement briefly and in passing: friendship for oneself would seem to be possible insofar as a person has two or more different elements or components. In EE 7.6 the matter is more complicated. As initially stated at 1240a14–15, the claim is that friendship requires a plurality of persons; but at 1240a15–21 the requirement is modified in the direction of NE 9.4: for friendship for oneself to be possible, what is required is a plurality of parts (merê) within the soul. This is the understanding of the requirement in the latter part of the chapter (1240b28–34). Yet, however the duality requirement is read, the important point is that it constrains the conclusions that can be drawn from the endoxa. The endoxa in NE 9.4 are consistent with someone's being a friend to himself, but whether there actually is friendship for oneself depends on whether there is a sufficient duality or plurality in the person. The endoxa in EE 7.6 are also consistent with someone's being a friend to himself, but the explanation of how friendship for oneself is possible and even actual comes not from the endoxa but from the duality requirement.

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Aristotle's Handling of endoxa in Nicomachean Ethics 9.4 and Eudemian Ethics 7.6

Once again, the endoxa are not simply accepted and allowed to speak for themselves. Is the duality requirement itself an endoxon? It is not introduced as a member of the series of views about friendship that figure in the two chapters, but that does not settle the question. It seems to be a philosophical view rather than a deliverance of common sense. Of course Top 1.1 allows not only for endoxa that seem true to everyone but also for endoxa that are believed by the wise. The duality requirement would seem to have this latter status. If so, the lesson would be that different types of endoxa can figure in one and the same dialectical discussion, and that at least in our two chapters an endoxon that states a philosophical principle can constrain or limit the conclusions to be drawn from the endoxa of common sense.

Received Opinions Reconsidered The data of NE 9.4 and EE 7.6 thus suggest the reconsideration of certain received opinions about Aristotelian dialectic. As Top 1.1 clearly states, dialectical reasoning is reasoning from endoxa, and one might well think that is all there is to it. But in fact more can usefully be said. In the kind of dialectical reasoning illustrated by NE 9.4 and EE 7.6, the reasoning from endoxa takes place under the influence of guiding questions or concerns, with illustration and confirmation from observational data, and under the constraint of a background or framework assumption, in this case the duality requirement. The view of dialectic as the purification of an initial set of phainomena or endoxa suggests that in a dialectical passage it is the original set of phainomena or endoxa that determine any further conclusions to be drawn from them. But what we have seen in NE 9.4 and EE 7.6 is that the same set of endoxa can yield different (albeit compatible) conclusions, under the influence of different guiding questions or concerns, in the light of observational data, and under the constraint of background or framework assumptions.17 It is commonly assumed that Aristotelian dialectic is essentially the same as the three-stage method outlined in NE 7.1. Yet the dialectical reasoning that we find in NE 9.4 and EE 7.6 does not conform to the three-

17 While the observational data in NE 9.4 and EE 7.6 are consistent with the endoxa in those chapters, that does not rule out the possibility that in other dialectical discussions the two might clash.

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stage method. To do so, these passages would have to work through problems or aporiae that arise from the initial set of endoxa or phainomena. They do no such thing. NE 9.4 does not even raise the issue of consistency among its endoxa. EE 7.6, 1240a30–3 asserts that there is a conflict among the first three endoxa, but then does nothing to resolve it.18 We can take this point a step further. Dialectical reasoning is often aporetic reasoning: reasoning that works through aporiae, puzzles or difficulties, in the manner recommended by NE 7.1, and in particular argues both sides of a question, in the manner recommended by Top 1.2 and practiced in Met Beta. But dialectical reasoning does not have to be aporetic reasoning. There is no aporetic reasoning in NE 9.4. In EE 7.6 Aristotle begins what might look like reasoning on both sides of a question, but he drops the question after arguing on just one side of it. The dialectical reasoning that we have seen in NE 9.4 and EE 7.6 is not aporetic.19 Someone who identifies Aristotelian dialectic with the three-stage method outlined in NE 7.1 might well think that the way to tell whether an Aristotelian passage is dialectical is by seeing whether it illustrates the three-stage method. Yet illustrating the three-stage method is not a necessary condition for a passage to be dialectical. There is also good reason to consider a passage dialectical if important claims in the passage are introduced with verbs such as dokein ("seem," as at 1166a34, 1240a9, 23–4, 27), tithenai ("posit," as at 1166a2–3), eoikenai ("be likely," as at 1166a2), legesthai ("be said," as at 1240b2), or similar vocabulary.20 The three-stage method is but one form or species of dialectical reasoning in the broad sense of Top 1.1: reasoning from endoxa.21

18 In note 14 above I suggested that the first three endoxa are not logically inconsistent with one another, and that the conflict is about which of them should be taken as stating the core or essence of friendship. 19 I would go on to suggest that when aporetic vocabulary (such as the noun aporia, the verb aporein, and the like) appears in a discussion, it does not necessarily indicate working through puzzles or reasoning on both sides of an argument. It may simply indicate the raising of an objection. But I do not claim to have shown that in this paper. 20 I would suggest that there is also good reason to consider a passage dialectical if important elements in the passage are traceable to Aristotle's philosophical predecessors, or if it contains important elements that Aristotle discusses seriously but ultimately modifies or rejects. I do not claim to have shown that in this paper. 21 It should be said, for the record, that the three-stage method is not at all similar to dialectical reasoning as practiced in Top 2–7 and the Sophistical Refutations, with its adversarial debate form, its requirement of Yes or No answers, and the like.

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Since G.E.L. Owen's famous paper, it has often been thought that the three-stage method of NE 7.1 is Aristotle's principal philosophical (as opposed to empirical scientific) method. Martha Nussbaum has presented a stronger form of this view, that the three-stage method of appearances is Aristotle's exclusive philosophical and scientific method. Yet examination of NE 9.4 and EE 7.6 suggests that this stronger claim is not justified. The second stage in the method, the working through of puzzles about inconsistencies in the phainomena or endoxa, is not to be found in these texts.22 As we saw at the outset, Terence Irwin has proposed a distinction between a pure dialectic that starts from an unrestricted set of endoxa and a strong dialectic that starts from a restricted set of endoxa. It would be of interest to know whether Irwin would classify these chapters as instances of pure dialectic or as instances of strong dialectic. Nothing in these chapters suggests that Aristotle is working from a deliberately restricted set of endoxa, such as Irwin's strong dialectic would require. But there is no indication that Aristotle regards his conclusions as anything less than wellfounded, as he should regard them if he is engaging in Irwin's pure dialectic. Irwin's case for the distinction rests on a broad variety of texts from many different parts of Aristotle's corpus; and nothing that we have seen in NE 9.4 and EE 7.6 counts against it. Yet the prominence of guiding questions or concerns, observational data, and background assumptions in these chapters would suggest that Aristotle has other ways of dealing with or processing endoxa besides restricting the initial set of them. I do not know how Professor Rist will rate the above exposition or whether he will agree with its conclusions. The insight that, while Aristotle believes that common opinion is very often right about what is true and false, good and bad, right and wrong, we often have good reason to reexamine common views about the mind of Aristotle, is one of the many debts, personal and professional, that I owe to John Rist. Would that I could adequately repay them all!23 22 I would go on to suggest that the three-stage method is not Aristotle's principal philosophical method, but one philosophical method among others. If the phrase hôsper epi tôn allôn at NE 7.1, 1145b3 is really to be read as "in all other cases," then it is an overstatement on Aristotle's part. I suspect that Aristotle reserves the three-stage method for certain special cases (like the case of moral weakness and allied phenomena) in which there are a great number of reputable views and they seem to clash with one another—cases where it is not enough to appeal to the reputable views, because the reputable views need to be sorted out. But this is a hypothesis for further research. I do not pretend to have argued for it here. 23 A primitive version of this paper was delivered to an audience at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, in March 2004.

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What kind of Stoic are you? The case of Marcus Aurelius Brad Inwood, Yale University

John Rist has given me a great deal over the years, including the title for this paper, which I have adapted from his characteristically bold article, “Are you a Stoic? The Case of Marcus Aurelius.”1 John’s article began as a conference paper delivered while I was still writing my dissertation under his supervision and was published shortly after I took up my first teaching post—like his, in the Classics Department at the University of Toronto. As so often, in that paper John asked just the right question and then forced his readers to confront hard evidence in answering it. His deep learning, careful scholarship and relentless rigor in argument were a model for me as I learned my trade; more important still was his courageous iconoclasm at every turn; most important of all, to me at least, was his extraordinary intellectual generosity and his respect for his students’ independence of mind. So I am confident that he won’t at all mind my disagreement with him about Marcus’ Stoicism. For me, it is a great pleasure to come back to a theme that reminds me so vividly of the wonderful years I spent as his student and then as his colleague, and an even greater honor to be able to offer this discussion to him in gratitude and friendship. **** Perhaps no Stoic philosopher is better known in popular culture than Marcus Aurelius.2 And few Roman emperors can rival his Nachleben and posthumous approval ratings. But philosophically he has always been a hard case to get a handle on,3 and still is despite significant recent publica-

1 J. Rist, “Are you a Stoic? The Case of Marcus Aurelius,” in Jewish and Christian SelfDefinition, (edd.) B. Meyer and E. Sanders (Fortress Press, 1982), 23–45. The conference was held at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, in June of 1980. 2 I am grateful to audiences at the University of Indiana, Yale University, Queen’s University, the University of California at Irvine and Mt. Allison University for discussion and criticism. I would also like to thank John Magee and Monte Johnson for advice (not always followed, alas) and encouragement (always welcome). 3 Rist’s discussion (1982) is just one, though an important, contribution to ongoing efforts to understand the emperor’s philosophical character and commitments.

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tions by Marcel van Ackeren and Christopher Gill.4 Their work provides a modest counterweight to the dominant view of Marcus, shaped largely by Pierre Hadot and embraced recently by John Cooper, as a propagator of spiritual exercises,5 and by Rist’s conclusion that Marcus’ Stoicism was a philosophical religion rather than a real philosophy.6 I want to challenge that picture of Marcus’ philosophical character by setting his curious philosophical writings in a fuller context. Consequently, I will start by laying out a bit of background on Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism before coming to the philosophical issues that are my focus. So bear with me; Marcus is an interesting man, a peculiar kind of philosopher. In fact, one of the more important issues to raise is just that—what kind of philosopher is he? What is Marcus’ relationship to his Stoic tradition? There were all kinds of Stoics in the course of the school’s long history (a bit over 500 years). We no longer possess books written by the most philosophically creative Stoics, though much of what we do have (mostly from later in the tradition) is more interesting than we have given it credit for. But none of the Stoic books that do survive is more intriguing than the extensive philosophical diary of Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome in the third quarter of the second century AD.7 Marcus was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but was not in any obvious way destined to rule. He showed an early enthusiasm for philosophy alongside the rhetorical studies that were typical of his social class; his family connections put him on a fast track to the seat of imperial power. This may not have been fore-destined, but it went with a lifestyle typical of his class. His years in office are best understood in the context of the political and military events of the second century. Though his predecessor (and adoptive father) had a peaceful reign, for Marcus the times were not easy—invasions, plague and rebellion on the borders of the empire. Marcus did not get to loll around the

4 M. van Ackeren (ed.), A companion to Marcus Aurelius (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), and Die Philosophie Marc Aurels 2 vol. (De Gruyter, 2011); C. Gill, “Marcus Aurelius” in Greek and Roman Philosophy 100 BC—200 AD, (edd.) R. Sorabji and R. Sharples (London, 2007), and Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, books 1–6 (Oxford, 2013). There is an important survey by E. Asmis, “The Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius,” published in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.36.2 (1989), 2228–52. 5 P. Hadot The Inner Citadel: the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (Harvard University Press, 1998); and J. Cooper, “Moral Theory and Moral Improvement: Marcus Aurelius,” in his Knowledge, Nature and the Good: Essays on Ancient Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2004), 335–68. 6 Rist, 43. 7 For basic biographical and historical facts, see A. Birley, Marcus Aurelius: A Biography (Yale UP, 1966, 1987).

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Capitoline reading good books; he spent much of his time on campaign near the frontier in central Europe. A general on campaign sees a lot of death, but it was also a feature of his home life. Marcus’ wife bore at least 14 children, of whom only five survived; then she predeceased him.8 Militarily and politically successful in his own life, he botched the single most important decision he had to make, picking a successor. Despite the example set by some of his predecessors, Marcus did not adopt as son and heir the best man for the job; he left the throne to his biological son, Commodus, who promptly ended the long string of ‘good emperors’ that we still associate with the Roman empire at its best.9 Marcus did not have a lot of time for reading philosophy once his serious political career began, when he was around 25 years of age; but we know that early in life he aspired to a philosophical life-style. He read and was deeply affected by some works by the early Stoic Ariston of Chios,10 who held a particularly rigorous, ethically centered version of Stoic doctrine and who caught the interest of Seneca (reflected in letters 94 and 95). Marcus had clearly absorbed into his bones Epictetus’ version of Stoicism; the famous politician Quintus Junius Rusticus lent the young Marcus (1.7.8) a personal copy of notes on Epictetus’ lectures (perhaps it was even a copy of the Discourses compiled by Arrian) and the influence of Epictetus is palpable in every part of Marcus’ book. There were, of course, other influences, especially from Stoic philosophers like Sextus of Chaeronea, nephew of the famous Platonist Plutarch, and the Platonist Alexander of Seleucia, whom Marcus summoned to be his secretary for correspondence in Greek (ab epistulis Graecis). Another important source of influence on Marcus’ philosophical development was Claudius Severus, a Peripatetic and Roman aristocrat,11 and we must not forget the emperor’s personal acquaintance12 with the philosophical (and Platonically inclined) doctor

8 Four daughters and a son as of 170 A.D.; see Birley (1966, 1987), 162. Another daughter may have been born subsequently. Faustina died in 175 A.D. at the age of 45 (Birley, 191). Hadot ([1998], 1) counts 13 children with six surviving. The evidence is somewhat unclear. 9 Birley, 224–5, 232. 10 Letter to Fronto, ad M. Caesarem 4.13; see (ed.) C. Haines, Fronto: Correspondence (Harvard University Press, 1928) vol. 1, 217. 11 Birley, 96. Another Peripatetic Roman aristocrat of the early empire was, perhaps, the Verginius Rufus whose views were reported by Alexander of Aphrodisias (De Anima Libri Mantissa, in Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, Suppl. 2, (ed.) I. Bruns [Berlin, 1887], 151.30); see my Ethics After Aristotle (Harvard University Press, 2014), 106. 12 Birley, 196–7. See Galen, On Prognosis, chs. 11–12, 658–65 Kuhn.

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Galen of Pergamum. Marcus’ book makes it clear that he had read and absorbed a good deal more as well. He had, then, a rich and varied philosophical education, deep roots in Stoicism, but like many busy political leaders he also had “no time, no time.” We do not know how Marcus came to write his remarkable philosophical diary;13 we have even less notion about how it survived. It does seem likely that the first book, which he devotes to thanking various people whom he regards as key influences in his life, was written separately from the other eleven books, perhaps later.14 But we cannot be confident that he meant the book to be a book, preserved and circulated. Still, we do have it, and it is an astonishing document. However, what sort of document is it? I ask because that is the only way we have to understand what kind of philosopher its author was. John Rist was not alone in asking whether the author was a ‘real’ Stoic, but in the end there cannot be any question but that Stoicism is the dominant element in the ‘diary’—if that is what the book really is.15 But if that is so, then it is clear that we have several puzzles on our hands. One of them is why Marcus so often says, about cosmology, that it is ‘either atoms or providence’—as though it were a genuinely open question.16 This is not a very Stoic stance. Another anomaly is a little less outré; when outlining what we humans are, how we are put together, Marcus does not always take the standard Stoic line that we are body plus soul, both components being material. Rather, we are body, soul or ‘spirit’ (material pneuma), and a third factor, mind (hēgemonikon, nous, daimōn) (see 2.2, 2.17, 3.16, 11.20.4, 12.3, 12.14, 12.26).17 Pierre Hadot has given a plausible account of the former oddity, one that frees us from having to think that Marcus was seriously open-minded about Epicurean atomism and that he therefore doubted providence.18 (He holds that it is a false choice, aired as a dialectical gambit: even if you go for atomism he can show you that Sto-

13 The term ‘diary’ is a convenience and I do not have strong views about the genre of the work, if it even falls into a recognizable genre. Everyone has his or her own view about the nature of the work. See Hadot (1998), ch. 2. That the work is often self-addressed and frequently delivers what seem to be morally uplifting admonitions to himself is all that needs to be recognized for the purposes of this paper. 14 P. Hadot (with C. Luna) ed., Marc-Aurèle: écrits pour lui-même livre I (Les Belles Lettres, 2002), liii-liv. Hadot also stresses the distinctive character of book 1. 15 Gill (2013) argues this effectively. 16 See Gill (2013), lxix-lxxiv. 17 See ibid., 89. 18 Hadot (1998), 147–51.

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icism is true.19) And the apparent distinctness of mind from soul can arguably (at least, Christopher Gill has made the argument in his recent commentary, lx-lxiii) be regarded as a minor wrinkle in Stoic doctrine or an understandable compromise with his Platonist influences. But whatever Marcus understood the nous or daimōn to be,20 there is no immediately obvious reason to think that he abandoned the materialism which decisively distinguished Stoics from Platonists. But we will have to come back to this issue. The third anomaly is different in character, more subtle, and not quite such an obvious departure from other versions of Stoicism. Rather, it is a superficially small difference in the way Marcus talks about a basic feature of Stoic physical or metaphysical theory—an aspect of Stoicism that people often forget he dealt with. However, this difference does not invite doubts about Marcus’ Stoicism. Instead, it invites questions about the way Marcus uses Stoic physical theory, i.e. concerning what kind of intellectual relationship he has with the more technical aspects of the philosophy that he identifies with. In short, it is a difference that might give us some insight into what kind of philosopher Marcus was. We will see, I think, that he could be more philosophically engaged and critical than he is often given credit for being. His largely practical orientation to the school’s theories remains clear, but contrary to what Pierre Hadot and John Cooper have suggested the key to understanding Marcus is not extrinsic to serious philosophical enquiry. He is no mere devotee of ‘spiritual exercises’ nor is he merely a faithful, let alone a slavish follower of Epictetus. His own intellectual agenda led him to do some serious philosophical work on the best way to think through Stoic physical theory and to use it. That is an achievement worth noting. So what is this revealing anomaly? On numerous occasions, Marcus appears to describe the world as a whole in the most general terms as a combination of two factors, the material (hulōdes) and the causal (aitiōdes). He does this once each in book 4 (4.21) and book 5 (5.13), twice each in books 7, 8 and 9 (7.10, 7.29, 8.3, 8.11, 9.25, 9.37) and three times in close succession in book 12 (12.10, 12.18, 12.29). Though materialists, Stoics analyzed the world into two aspects at the most fundamental level—and at higher levels of complexity as well. The two basic principles, archai, of Sto19 See also Gill (2013), 171–2, 189–90. 20 And he certainly recognized the mind’s special affinity with the divine, as did many earlier Stoics; perhaps most immediately relevant is what Seneca says towards the end of letter 65 and also in letter 41; compare D.L. 7.88, which shows how the ‘divinity’ of human mind is integrated with divinity at the cosmic level.

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ic physics are most often labelled ‘the active’ and ‘the passive’ (to poioun, to paschon). The active principle is also called ‘god’ or ‘reason’ and it is often thought of and spoken of as a craftsman (somewhat along the lines of Plato’s Demiurge) at work on raw material in its attempt to produce an optimal outcome. Another standard Stoic label for this craftsman-like force is ‘nature.’ So if we think of the most general features of Stoic physics we get a polarity between a material, passive, changeable element and a creative and active principle, also described as god, nature and reason. What we do not see, as far as I know, in any of our Greek sources for Stoicism is this active principle labelled ‘the causal factor’ and set in polar opposition to ‘the material.’ This binary structure runs through Stoic (meta)physics at different levels.21 At the most abstract level we have the active and passive principles. At the next level, where the four basic material stuffs have emerged, we have fire and air grouped as active with water and earth grouped as passive. At the level of discrete objects, whether inert, plantlike, or animal, we have an opposition between the feature that gives each its fundamental characteristics and the raw material shaped by it. For inert objects this shaping ‘force’ (though it is material, of course) is labelled hexis, for plants it is phusis, and for animals it is soul (psuchē). In rational animals the soul is rational and can also be labelled ‘reason’ (logos). And when they turn to ethics and consider human beings in this context Stoics tend to analyze us into a similar binary opposition, body and soul (both, of course, being physical). The binary structure that is fundamental to Stoic physics is neatly mirrored at every level of analysis. In all of this there are many questions of detail that sometimes reflect differences of opinion within the school and sometimes merely reveal that we do not yet have a fully adequate grasp of the whole Stoic theory. But that is not my question right now. I want instead to ask about the significance of Marcus’ striking way of thinking and talking about this basic binary structure. For he is virtually alone in referring to it in this way, the causal vs the material. Why, and what do we make of it? I am not the first to raise this question. David Sedley (2012) has given this peculiarity a brief consideration (398–9).22 He suggests that the ‘causal’ is merely synonymous with the hēgemonikon (the mind or leading element in the soul or the world) and the noēron (the intelligent factor), and says

21 See D. Sedley, “Marcus Aurelius on Physics,” in van Ackeren (2012), 396–7. 22 The comments of R. Rutherford, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: A Study (Oxford, 1989), 144, on this theme in 3.11 and elsewhere are very limited.

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that in so doing he is “showing himself fully in tune with imperial Stoicism.” More recently, Christopher Gill (2013) says simply, in his new commentary on books 1–6, that this is just Marcus’ ‘version’ of the standard Stoic contrast.23 Gill’s assessment is just slightly disappointing. Surely, we want to ask about the motivation for this alternate version. Alternatively, are we to assume that the change is merely verbal? Consider too Sedley’s suggestion (to which Gill refers), that this is just ‘imperial Stoicism’ as reflected in Marcus’ diary. But this suggestion too seems somewhat hasty, even dismissive. Sedley’s basis for claiming that Marcus is here just following along with ‘imperial Stoicism’ is nothing more than the simple fact that Seneca in letter 65, section 2 and at the end, presents the basic polarity of Stoic physics in terms of cause and matter (causa and materia). Surely one other instance does not constitute a case for the existence of something worth labelling as ‘imperial Stoicism.’ What explanatory traction can we get from this kind of reification, when in fact all we have are two authors who, uncharacteristically for Stoics, choose the contrast of cause and matter to express the basic polarity at the heart of Stoic metaphysics. We need to look a little closer not just at Marcus’ approach to this metaphysical polarity, but also at Seneca’s. In letter 65 Seneca is defending the Stoic approach to explaining the physical world against the Platonist and Aristotelian theories; he criticizes the other schools for offering far too many causes although, he claims, on a proper analysis there is really only one cause acting on its correlative raw material. Now, in arguing that Stoicism is distinguished for only recognizing a single cause Seneca is hardly being conservative. The great Chrysippus, the so-called second founder of the school, was notorious for the complexity of his causal theory. His ‘swarm of causes’ came to be regarded in some quarters as an inelegance, a baroque philosophical complication that was out of line with the clean lines of analysis represented by the basic Stoic metaphysical contrast between the active and the passive principles.24 Michael Frede once explored Stoic ideas about causation in “The Original Notion of Cause,” noting25

23 See his commentary on 4.21 and 5.13. 24 The preference for a single, focused conception of cause as what makes something happen (to poioun) may also have Platonic roots; see Hippias Major 297a. 25 M. Frede, “The Original Notion of Cause,” in Doubt and Dogmatism, (edd.) M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat, and J. Barnes (Oxford, 1980), 234.

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the tension between Seneca’s rejection of the turba causarum and Chrysippus’ vulnerability to the same criticism.26 So there is something a bit out of place when Sedley presents this unusual feature of Marcus’ physical theory as simple conformity with something called ‘imperial Stoicism,’ and it would be worth revisiting the historiographical aspects of the issue on another occasion. For now, though, it seems more as though Marcus, the Roman emperor and a native Latin speaker after all, may have learned something important directly from Seneca’s extensive analysis of causation in letter 65—assuming, that is, that he read it. Now it is a peculiarity of modern discussions of Stoicism that there is a tendency to leave Seneca off to one side in accounts of how the school developed in its later phase. But whatever the general merits of that tendency, it should not be allowed to affect our understanding of Marcus Aurelius. That Seneca wrote in Latin would not have been a deterrent to Marcus, and if we were inclined to resist the idea that Marcus read and learned from Seneca we would in effect be supposing that Marcus shared an alleged general prejudice against philosophy written in Latin. But although that might fit with the fact that he wrote his philosophical diary in Greek, it would surely be question-begging. It is far more economical to suppose that the emperor-philosopher was quite open to influence from the philosopher who advised an earlier emperor. Marcus and Seneca lived in different centuries and wrote their philosophy in different languages, but they share the distinction of being philosophers in Roman political life. They also shared somewhat similar social and class backgrounds,27 and therefore roughly similar educational experiences. If Marcus picked up his inclination to treat cause and matter as polar opposites from Seneca, which would seem to be the obvious first hypothesis to try out under the circumstances, then one important result follows. Pierre Hadot’s thesis28 that Marcus’ philosophical approach was shaped primarily by his reading of Epictetus, indeed, that he built his philosophical outlook in the diaries on Epictetus’ system of topoi in a systematic and exclusive way—this theory has to be wrong, at least in its stronger form.

26 See my commentary on the letter in Seneca: Selected Philosophical Letters (Oxford, 2007), 145–6; similarly, Seneca’s criticism of his own school on similar grounds in letter 113. 27 Though things turned out rather better for Marcus’ family than for Seneca’s a century earlier, thanks largely to the changes in political practice at Rome. 28 See especially Hadot (1998), ch. 5, and idem, “Un clé des pensées de Marc Aurèle: les trois topoi philosophiques selon Épictète,” Les Études Philosophiques (1978), 65– 83.

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Moreover, once we free Marcus from the constraints of Hadot’s thesis that Epictetus dominated Marcus’ philosophical agenda we are in a position to ask further probing questions about his methods and motivations, about what kind of a Stoic he in fact was. That is what I propose to do now. Let us go back to Seneca’s letter for a moment. His basic polarity is between cause and matter, and the framework relevant to his criticism of the Platonists and Aristotelians is that of craft production. From the Aristotelian tradition, he picks out the example of a bronze statue produced by a sculptor. Platonists find in this scenario five distinct causes, Aristotelians only four. Bronze (the matter), the sculptor, the form imposed on the bronze, and the purpose or final cause are shared by both schools, but Platonists add a fifth cause, the ‘paradigm’ or separate ‘idea’ to which the craftsman looked when imposing the form on the bronze. The cosmological craftsmanship of the Timaeus (Ti.) is obviously influential here (Seneca makes it explicitly relevant at 65.9); Seneca even delves into the delicate issue, about which Platonists over the centuries disagreed with each other, of whether these paradigmatic models are in god’s mind or external to it. Stoic cosmology had certainly been influenced by Ti.; Aristotle and his followers had made an issue of how best to analyze and enumerate causes, so none of this is too surprising.29 For present purposes it is perhaps sufficient to note that at the end of the letter (65.23–4) Seneca explicitly identifies his single cause with god and the active element (quod facit = to poioun) and matter with the passive element (patiens = to paschon), and analogizes god in the cosmos to mind in us, matter in the cosmos to body in us. That is, he lays out pretty much the full range of binary oppositions that structure Stoic physical theory, as I outlined earlier. But it is important not to separate the content of this bit of metaphysical doctrine from the use to which Seneca puts it. He uses this comparison of cause and matter to mind and body in his reflections about the attitude we should take towards death (one of Marcus’ own favorite themes): “So let the inferior [body] serve the better [mind]. Let us be brave in the face of chance circumstances; let us not tremble at wrongs nor at wounds, neither at chains nor at want. What is death? Either an end or a transition. I am not afraid to come to an end – that is the same as not having started – nor to move on

29 Seneca’s letter has a complicated structure (and he responds to the Phaedo [Phd.] as much as to Ti., in fact), about which I have already said my piece. Commentary in Inwood (2007) and “Seneca, Plato and Platonism,” in Platonic Stoicism and Stoic Platonism, (edd.) M. Bonazzi and C. Helmig (Leuven, 2007), 149–67.

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[to something else] – because I will not be so confined anywhere else.” (65.24). I assume that Seneca had his own reasons for framing the basic questions about Stoic physics and metaphysics in terms of causes; this led him to describe the world as a duality of cause and matter, though he recognizes that this is just another way of referring to god and the active principle. I assume as well, at least provisionally, that Marcus is following Seneca in adopting the cause/matter pair as his basic framework. What could Marcus’ motivation have been? It is not plausible, I have suggested, to simply dismiss it as some allegedly basic imperial Stoic doctrine, since there is no other evidence I know of that this is how such Stoics generally framed the issues. And it does not seem to be something he learned from Epictetus. Reflection on the way Marcus deploys his basic principles will suggest, I think, an answer, one that shows Marcus was in fact a more actively reflective philosophical writer than we sometimes give him credit for. So let us turn to the passages where Marcus uses the basic pairing of cause and matter. In 4.21 Marcus asks a surprisingly theoretical question about the implications of death:30 If souls continue to exist [after death] how does the air have room for them all from eternity? One would do as well to ask how the earth has room for the bodies of those who have been buried in it for countless ages. The fact is, that just as here below bodies change and decompose after a certain period of time to make room for other dead bodies, so likewise, the souls which pass into the air endure for a certain time, and then change and are diffused, and are burned up when they are taken back into the generative principle of the universe; and in that way they make room for the souls that take their place. Such would be our reply, assuming that souls continue to exist. But we should consider not only the multitude of bodies that are buried in this way, but also the quantities of animals which are eaten each day by ourselves and other creatures. How large a number are consumed and thus, in a way, buried in the bodies of those who feed on them! And yet there is space for them because they are turned into blood, or transformed into air or fire. How are we to find the truth of the matter? By analyzing [things] into their material and into their causal [factors].

30 For consistency I use R. Hard’s translation in the series Wordsworth Classics of World Literature (Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, with introduction and notes by C. Gill [Ware, 1997]) throughout, modified for additional precision where necessary.

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For a basic problem in physics the solution must be found in analysis (diairesis) of all things into cause and matter. Just how this will provide a decisive answer to the storage and recycling problem addressed here is not immediately clear, but Marcus’ recommendation is to make this pair of concepts the key to progress. And the problem, significantly, is one that touches on issues of life and death, as Seneca too seems to have thought when he tackled the issue in letter 65. In 5.13 a similar theme is broached, though this time the analytical knife cuts a little closer to the bone: I am composed of the causal and the material, and neither of these will perish into nothingness, just as neither arose from nothingness. Thus every part of me will be appointed by change to a new station as some part of the universe, and that again will be changed to form another part of the universe and so on to infinity. It was through a similar process of change that I too came to exist, and my parents before me, and so again to infinity in the other direction (for nothing prevents us from using such language, even if the administration of the universe is organized into a succession of finite periods). Marcus himself, he recognizes, is exhaustively composed of the causal and the material.31 And so he plays his role in the eternal (and eternally recurring) cycle of composition and breakdown, coming to be and passing away, that just is cosmic history. Are these terms meant to refer to body and soul or mind? Or is the causal analysis meant to work at a more basic metaphysical level? Or is Marcus thinking of both, as Seneca was at the end of his letter? There is no explicit moral conclusion drawn here, but the implicit lesson is clear: even a human, even from a first-person perspective (this is what I am), is just part of the vast physical cycle of causes having their effect on matter. We are born, live, die, all as a part of the natural process of causal and material interaction, and there is nothing else to us. As he says in this passage: “I am composed of the causal and the material.” Even if the world seems to treat us unjustly, it is nothing personal. The same message emerges from the two passages of book 7 where Marcus deploys this mode of analysis. In 7.10 he says, “Everything material disappears quickly into the substance of the universe and swiftly too every cause is reabsorbed into the logos of the universe, and very swiftly the

31 Compare the point made at 2.2.1: Marcus himself is body, breath and mind—the threefold analysis alluded to above.

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memory of everything is buried in eternity.” And in 7.29 he turns this into some harsh-sounding advice: Wipe out your impression. Put an end to being pulled like a puppet. Demarcate the present moment in time. Learn to recognize what is happening to yourself and other people. Analyze and partition the object before you into its causal and material [factors]. Think about the final hour. Leave the wrong committed by another right where it originated. Where Epictetus urges his students to make good use of their impressions, to examine them before granting them approval,32 Marcus instead wipes them out—another notable difference from Epictetus.33 Impressions from the outside lead to being dragged around passively like a puppet driven by a string mechanism34 as we react to perceptual and emotional stimuli. Impressions and our reactions to them are components of a determined chain of stimulus and response and acquiescing in this process deprives us of an important kind of autonomy. Merely challenging those impressions, as Epictetus urges, is not enough. They must be wiped out. Instead of such merely reactive behavior, he tells himself, we must analyze and demarcate. What is now is real.35 Focus on actual events and occurrences, putting yourself and other people on the same footing. Break down everything you deal with into its two components, cause and matter—and here we are not doing cosmology or metaphysics, but rather dealing with everyday life.36 What causes what? Who does what? Where does the agency lie for a mistake made? Figure this out and act accordingly. Marcus urges that we apply the analytical dualism that governs Stoic metaphysics at its highest and

32 Passim, but see for example Enchiridion (Ench.) 2. 33 See, for example, 5.2.1, 8.47.2, 9.7. Gill (2013) 146, notes the comparison with Epictetus but does not focus on the differences between him and Marcus. In 8.29 Marcus indicates how one might go about wiping out one’s impressions. 34 See S. Berryman, “The puppet and the sage: images of the self in Marcus Aurelius,” OSAP 38 (2010), 187–209. Berryman’s analysis of how Marcus uses the puppet analogy rests on the persuasive argument that the puppetry in question is not like what is found in Plato’s Laws but rather refers to automatically moving puppets as developed in the Hellenistic era. She argues convincingly that this metaphor is part of Marcus’ rhetorical strategy of moral protreptic. I develop this idea further near the end of this paper. 35 See V. Goldschmidt, Le système stoïcien et l’idée du temps, edn. 3 (Paris, 1977). 36 Passages where Marcus applies such analytical methods abound, but a few can be especially noted: 2.1, 6.1, 6.36, 6.37, but particularly 3.11.

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most abstract level directly to our daily lives. And in his view this kind of dispassionate analysis is the key to … to what? Perhaps the texts in book 8 will tell us. In 8.3 we learn that philosophical use of such analytical techniques leads to autonomy. What are Alexander, Caesar and Pompey when compared to Diogenes, Heraclitus and Socrates? For these latter viewed all things and their causes and their material components and their minds [hēgemonika] were self-sufficient.37 As to the others, consider how many cares they had and how much they were enslaved to.38 Causal analysis makes the mind self-sufficient, rather than slavish. How that can be, that is, how we would become self-sufficient (or autonomous, if that is in fact the right reading) in virtue of having made a proper analysis of things into cause and matter – that is not immediately clear. And it is also not immediately clear what relationship Marcus is assuming between the minds of these great philosophers and their causal and material components. Previously it looked as though a human being was made up of nothing but the causal and material components, that is, that the mind is either the causal or some compound of the causal and material. Here it is suggested that the philosopher has a distinct standpoint from which to consider the analysis of things into the causal and the material.39

37 Accepting autarkē for the mss’ auta or tauta. If we retain auta from A we might translate: “and their minds were just what they were” sc. and nothing more (auta being an intensive pronoun in the predicate, a bit of clumsiness in Greek that Marcus might be suspected of). If retain tauta from T we would translate “their minds were the same” i.e., as cause plus matter. The latter seems particularly difficult, since cause should be associated with mind and matter with body. But the former is just possible linguistically, though its meaning would not be far off autarkē (Schenkel) or autonoma (Trannoy). Hoffmann’s aēttēta and Mazzantini’s auta autokratora seem less plausible. 38 Retaining ekei and pronoia with the mss. and reading hosōn with T. 39 T. Bénatouïl (“Theōria and scholē in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius,” in Plato and the Stoics, [ed.] A. Long [Cambridge, 2013], 171) notes that it is odd that such non-scientific philosophers are here associated with the search for causes—why not Thales, Democritus, Aristotle, Chrysippus….? On my reading, the answer is clear. Diogenes, Heraclitus and Socrates have a special grasp on what it means to be an agent, a causal centre in one’s own life. No doubt, some philosophers agreed with Vergil (Georgics 2.490) that felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, but Marcus has a different kind of causal analysis in mind. See also my “Moral Causes,” in Thinking About Causes: from Greek philosophy to modern physics, (edd.) P. Machamer and G. Wolters (Pittsburgh, 2007), ch. 2.

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Marcus expands on the nature of this analysis in 8.11: “What is this in itself, in its own makeup? What is its substance and its material component? What is its causal factor? What does it do in the cosmos? And how long does it subsist?” If you know what each thing is, especially yourself perhaps, then you will be liberated. But you have to ask the right questions: which aspect is matter, which is cause? Where is agency—the bit that does (to poioun)—and what does it act on? Knowing what agency is, what counts as our own action and what is the material on which we act and which constrains us—this would enable us to see where we fit into the natural order of things. The added question, concerning the natural duration of each thing, would, when applied to oneself, help us to see the naturalness of our coming-to-be and passing-away and presumably help us to accept the rational order of the universe with the appropriate attitude, that is, an attitude governed by calm, detached analysis of ourselves and our experience. The same analysis is called for in 9.25. “Demarcate it on its own, looking towards the character of its cause and away from its material component. And then delimit its time as well, how long at most this peculiarly qualified thing is capable of subsisting.” Concentration on the cause rather than the matter helps to identify and demarcate the object, whatever it might be. This requires that you be aware of what is merely material and set it in contrast with the causal. Each individual thing has a ‘peculiar quality’, an idiōs poion—this is technical Stoic metaphysics framed in language that goes back to the earliest days of the school—and a natural span of life. The advice here is wholly general; no doubt, moral improvement is the intended application, but first the analysis, both causal and essential, must be got right. In 9.37 the moral is applied explicitly. Enough of all this pitiful way of life, this whining and apishness! Why are you troubled? What is new in all this? What is it that disorients you? The causal aspect of things? So consider that. The material? So consider that. Apart from these factors there just isn’t anything. But it is now high time, by the gods – become simpler and more useful. It makes no difference whether you look into these matters for a hundred years or three. The basic—and exhaustive, we see again here—analysis of the world, of each thing and situation, into the causal and the material—this suffices for real moral improvement, if you just get on with it. And again, Marcus asks that this analysis into two factors be looked at from an independent perspective. The time required to apply this analysis isn’t trivial (three years is 168

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a long time, even in the life of an emperor) but it doesn’t take forever. Evidently getting the right framework for one’s investigation of the world is the key. The same point is made clearly in 12.10: “see what things are like in their own right by analyzing them into matter, cause and reference [anaphora].” Similarly in 12.18: Always see what in its own right the thing is which creates the impression and unroll it by analyzing it into its cause, its material [factor], its reference, and the time within which it will have to come to its end. The natural time span of each thing, its cause and its material, these are all factors of analysis that Marcus has drawn on in earlier books. Anaphora— reference—is new in this context, but the way Marcus uses it elsewhere helps us to understand it here. Elsewhere he makes it clear that, whenever we deal with the world, one of the things we need to consider, a key component of the analysis, is what each thing, or the thing in question, relates to. What is it for? Does it relate to our social function?40 To the gods?41 To the common good?42 What is the point (skopos) of what you or someone else is saying or doing?43 In similar cases, Marcus invokes the notion of anaphora to suggest or impose an analytical pause for enquiry or challenge. In a world structured by rational purpose an agent should not just act, or rather, react without due reflection. Just as Epictetus sometimes recommends that we suspend our impressions and interrogate them, so Marcus asks that we stop and ask about the relation, aim or point, of something. For without understanding that we will not see the meaning of our action, our fellow human being’s action, or the events of the cosmos. So, naturally, it can be added to the list of factors to analyze. The fruits of this style of analysis are made especially clear in the last invocation of it in the diary. In 12.29 we read: Our salvation in life is thoroughly to see what each thing is in itself: what is its material [factor], what is its causal [factor]? To act justly and speak the truth with all one’s heart. What remains except to enjoy one’s life connecting one good to the next, so that not even the smallest space is ever left between them?

40 41 42 43

9.23. 8.23. 3.4.1. 7.4.

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The purpose of this kind of analysis of the physical world and our place in it, an analysis that is spread out across the diary in Marcus’ characteristically oblique way, becomes clear. On Marcus’ view we are to use our analytical powers on the world in order to save our lives, render them secure and successful.44 This way of expressing the use of practical reason to achieve our eudaimonistic goals goes back at least to Plato’s Gorgias and Protagoras where various technai are said to have as their purpose to save our lives in one sense or another. What navigation and medicine do for our physical salvation philosophical analysis does for our life as a whole. Stoics had long ago adopted the idea of the ‘craft of life’ from this Platonic precedent and here we still see it in Marcus’ work. So the aim, essentially, of Marcus’ technique of analysis into cause, matter, and (sometimes) ‘reference’ is salvation of the familiar philosophical kind, rendering one’s life secure and happy. This analysis, then, is a version of the ‘craft of living,’ it is phronēsis, philosophical reasoning itself. If we set aside the occasional use of the term anaphora in such an analysis (and recall, anaphora is invoked often enough on its own) we should recognize here a unique way of understanding philosophy, one that Marcus, unlike any other Stoic philosopher, regards as depending on a particular metaphysical analysis of all things. In each situation, with each object, with each action, we are to apply an analytical tool derived from technical metaphysics; we are to find the causal factor (in a rational, determinate universe there will always be one to find), discover the material factor, its correlate; sometimes too you will want to focus on the temporal boundaries of things. I think it is time to step back and reflect on what this theme tells us about Marcus’ philosophical character. First, contrary to what we might have thought, there is nothing here which establishes decisively that Marcus is employing non-Stoic ideas. Inspired, I suggest, by Seneca’s treatment of causation he goes back to the most basic analytical duality of Stoic metaphysics and brings it to bear directly on the core task of practical reasoning. That task had been, since Socrates, the saving of human life for happiness through hard, clear thinking about things. Stoics since Zeno had made a grasp of nature and the world the essential reference point for this kind of thinking, and Marcus is doing this in his own way, through a uniquely direct analysis of how causation works in nature and in human

44 At 12.25 he makes the point that we are saved by eliminating (the wrong kind of) beliefs.

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life. He is advocating a life according to nature but in order to do so, gives himself a fresh way to use philosophical analysis. The closest we come to non-Stoic ideas in all of this seems to be in 8.3, where it may be that Marcus is thinking of the human mind as in some way metaphysically autonomous, outside the otherwise exhaustive nexus of cause and matter. If that is the right way to interpret this text, it would seem to align with those passages where Marcus’ wording suggests that he thinks of the mind as somehow a third factor in human nature, above and beyond body and soul, and it would give us reason to interpret them in a novel, perhaps even non-Stoic way.45 If we did think that Marcus is tempted by a tripartite analysis human nature, we might see this in one of two lights. First, given the presence of a substantial Platonic element his philosophical environment we could think of this as a Platonizing move. Our nous or daimōn is somehow a special factor in our makeup. He would not be the first Stoic to test these waters; Posidonius certainly thought of our rational capacities as a daimōn, though there is no indication that in so doing he was breaking with earlier Stoic doctrine on the makeup of the human mind.46 Our daimōn is just a part of our soul, the dominant aspect, thought of as divine but in no way outside the nexus of cause and matter. Seneca, though, in letter 41 does talk about a divine aspect of our nature that descends from above and is, presumably, outside our ordinary being;47 and in that one letter Seneca is often thought of as reflecting contemporary Platonist thinking. Marcus would, be perhaps like Seneca in this too. Again, both Seneca and Marcus are otherwise quite firmly committed to the more traditional metaphysics of the human being; on this very issue we have seen that in the other relevant texts Marcus takes the view that cause and matter exhaust our nature. We are the causal factor, our rational, active principle made up of the causally efficacious elements in the soul, air and fire, that is, pneuma. Taking Seneca and Marcus together on this point, we might be tempted to treat them as eclectics, for whatever reason blending bits of Platonism with their Stoic theory. Alternatively, we might regard

45 Gill (2013), on lix, lists 2.2, 3.16, 5.26, 5.33, 7.16, 8.56, 12.3, 12.14.4–5; see also van Ackeren (2011), 479–502. 46 F 187 Edelstein-Kidd. Cf. D.L. 7.88 for the same term used in presumably Chrysippean Stoicism. 47 He refers to a sacer intra nos spiritus… malorum bonorumque nostrorum observator et custos; it seems to be a god: prope est a te deus, tecum est, intus est (ep. 41.1–2.). See also Epictetus 1.14.13–14. Marcus often refers to a daimōn or god within, but he does not treat it as something that enters from the outside.

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these isolated nods to Platonist ideas as just that, essentially meaningless deviations reflecting façons de parler common in their environment. But there is another possibility. We might instead see this move as an exploration designed to uncover a solution to a real philosophical problem. And there is in fact a problem for which this flirtation with an independent bit of our nature, one that is outside the cause-matter nexus, might be a promising move. Reconciliation of human autonomy with strict causal determinism was a long-standing challenge for Stoics. In the Hellenistic era, Chrysippus developed an ingenious, even brilliant version of the position we now call compatibilism.48 We are accountable for the events that are our actions and that accountability is determined by consideration of whether or not the causal chain, itself fully determinate, flows through our rational mind. We receive impressions and on that basis, either rashly or advisedly, we assent to doing something, so it is our action and we are accountable for it. The assent is itself causally determined by the conjunction of our antecedent character and the external context we find ourselves in, especially the impressions to which we are subject. But it is our antecedent character and our action, so blaming or praising us for it is only fair. Chrysippus used a striking analogy to illustrate the key aspects of his compatibilist strategy. He compared the importance of our character to the determination of our actions to the shapes of two blocks of stone, one a cone and one a cylinder.49 Set at the top of a slope and given a nudge (which corresponds to the stimulus of an impression received from our surroundings), one rolls straight and one rolls in a wobbly and crooked manner. The difference in ‘behavior’ is attributable to the shape of the object, as both respond to the same stimulus. Hence, accountability is clear–it lies with character. And what the character determines, in this analogy, is how we assent, our morally significant and fully accountable action.50 Chrysippus’ compatibilist strategy was perhaps enough to reconcile the practical imperatives of moral judgement with causal determinism, but was it enough to account for the phenomenology of our actions, for the feeling of free decision that we all have, at least until philosophers get ahold of us? Anyone who, not unreasonably, got cold feet about that issue might be tempted to look for or postulate a feature of our mental life that was some-

48 See S. Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford, 1998), ch. 6. 49 See Cicero, De Fato (Fat.), 42–4. 50 Marcus shows himself aware of this strategy for claiming one’s own freedom; see 8.16 where he notes that changing one’s mind under someone else’s influence is nevertheless free because it is an action undertaken in accordance with one’s own hormē, krisis and nous.

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how outside the nexus of causation determined by character and circumstances. It is sometimes thought that the Hymn to Zeus suggests that Cleanthes (writing before Chrysippus came up with his compatibilist theory) was so tempted.51 And the famous image of the dog and the cart preserved by the bishop Hippolytus suggests the same—the dog tied behind the cart will necessarily follow it down the road, but gets to choose whether it is dragged or trots cheerfully.52 We are exhorted to look at fate in the same way, as though it is up to us to decide from the outside how we confront the eternal web of cause and effect to which we are subject. And if we have to decide what attitude to take to our own character and actions, then there really has to be something that at least feels “up to us” (as Epictetus would describe it). My choice to embrace the predetermined events of my life in a philosophical spirit may itself be determined, but if I experience it that way and if I think about my choice as being determined already, then the point of exhortation is lost. I have to experience it as a choice of my own, now, in this moment of decision. A determined compatibilist might well bite the bullet here, but it would be a job of work to assuage the concerns of someone worried about the adequacy of cone-and-cylinder compatibilism. Two further thoughts are worth mentioning here. Someone who embraces Chrysippus’ theory but thinks something is left out might suppose that what we can reflect on and deliberate about is not what we are going to do—that, we know, is fixed— but whether we approve of the outcome headed our way. But that won’t do for any convinced Stoic; he or she knows that the world is not just determined but providentially determined—the rational and integrated whole of which our actions and circumstances are a part are not just determined, but set up for the best, not just for the cosmos but for each individual in the cosmos. Even Marcus knows that whatever comes our way is justified.53 A perhaps more serious worry emerges from reflection not just on the fated quality of events in the world (including my decisions) but on their inscrutability. Maybe, the compatibilist thinks, it is acceptable after all if I

51 At lines 15–17 Cleanthes says, “Nor does any deed occur on earth without you, god, neither in the aithereal divine heaven nor on the sea, except for the deeds of the wicked in their folly.” Compare the quotations from another hymn cited by Epictetus at Ench. 53.1, and by Seneca at ep. 107.10. 52 Hippolytus, Adversis Haereticos, 1.21.2. These texts are discussed at length in Bobzien (1998), 345–57. 53 For Marcus’ explicit engagement with the challenge of justifying the attitude of submission to fate, see 5.8.12, where he says there are two logoi according to which one ought to or must (chrē) embrace (stergein) what happens to oneself.

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am causally determined to decide and act as I do; I feel free after all, since I don’t know just how I am fated to act. I do not know my character with the deep insight that allows me to say how I will respond to events presented to me, and I do not know what stimuli, circumstances and impressions are coming my way. So the feeling of freedom is all I need. Here, I think, is a worry that Chrysippus himself had, and it was noted by Epictetus so prominently that we might fairly assume that Marcus was aware of the worry. In the second book of his discourses (2.6.8–10) Epictetus says: Always remember what is yours and what is another’s and you will not be upset. This is why Chrysippus said, as long as what is to come [ta hexēs] is unclear to me I always cling to what is more likely to help in acquiring natural advantages. For god made me such as to choose them. But if I knew that it was now fated for me to be sick, I would even direct my action at that. For one’s foot, if it had intelligence, would direct its actions at being muddied. Here we see two things that might disturb any reflective and sensible reader. The subordination of one’s own natural preferences to the will of the universe is not something that Marcus objects to, though we might. But anyone, even Marcus I suggest, would be struck by the vivid counterfactual. If I knew what was fated I would inevitably choose to subordinate myself. But I don’t. So I pursue some things which I know may be at odds with fate. If I knew what was coming my way because of providence I would no longer be able to deliberate and choose in the same way. I could not, if fully informed of what I am fated to do, think in the same way about my life and my choices. This is a concern that Chrysippus was not bothered by. And neither, apparently, was Epictetus. For Marcus, I think, things were rather different. I think that he, quite naturally, worried about the subjectivity of choosing in a fated universe—the dilemma of choosing when you know that what you are going to choose is determined. What can that thought possibly be like? If this phenomenology of decision is merely epiphenomenal and our assents and judgements are in fact fully determined anyway, then the exhortation to look at things in a certain way is unstable. If I respond to the exhortation as though I could now choose on my own, as though what I am now thinking about makes things different from what they might other-

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wise be and that my choice makes a difference,54 then I will not be able at the same time to think of the firm and all-inclusive lines of cause and effect. I can only do so by closing my mind to those facts and adopting a stance of open choice, not thinking about what I believe my current character to be and how it will determine the choice I am now making. If I focus on the full causal determination of my decisions and actions, I will not be able to respond in the moment to an exhortation with an appropriately open attitude. If our physical or metaphysical analysis of the human mind in the world is such that we are fully determined, we cannot both be transparently self-aware and take the appropriate stance towards our choices. If we want to do both we need to adopt a new or expanded analysis of the mind. We need to provide for at least a small component or event that escapes the rigid causal nexus. Arguably, Epictetus was at least tempted by this move, and Gill55 notes Marcus’ similarity to Epictetus on this issue; for Epictetus often writes as though we have this kind of choice about our attitude to our own futures. (That is perhaps why Michael Frede56 wanted to credit Epictetus with the first genuine theory of a free will.) But there is no sign that Epictetus followed through and embraced a new account of the nature of the mind to accompany and support the phenomenology of decision to which he is so obviously attracted. Marcus, perhaps, went further even than Epictetus, by whom he was so strongly influenced; though not consistently, he does seem to see the need for some third factor beyond the fully determined mind, bound up in the causal cycle. And if that is the case, then quite pos-

54 The worry that if all things are fated one’s actions will not make a difference was well known to earlier Stoics, as they faced the so-called Lazy Argument. (See, for example, Cicero, Fat. 28–30.) If, for example, I am fated to recover from an illness or not to do so, then I need not bother calling the doctor; clearly, doing so cannot make a difference since my recovering or not is fully determined ab ante. The standard Stoic response to this is to invoke a doctrine of ‘co-fated events’ (confatalia, sunheimarmena). According to this doctrine, one is of course fated to recover, but also fated to call the doctor. Nature does not allow unconnected and irrational strings of events, so whatever is fated brings with it the connected, fated events that are causally connected to it, including the agent’s relevant decisions. This may do as a response to some rather shallow worries about determinism, but it will not reassure anyone whose intuitions demand that our choice makes a real difference to outcomes. For all the doctrine of co-fated events does is to focus attention on the very facet of Chrysippean compatibilism that is at issue, one’s awareness that even our thoughts and decisions are fully determined. And focussing on that fact is the source of the present worry. 55 Gill (2013), 89. 56 M. Frede, A Free Will, ed. A. Long (University of California Press, 2011), 44–7.

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sibly Gill is wrong to assimilate Marcus’ position so thoroughly to that of Epictetus. Moreover, here we may see the reason why Marcus, unlike Epictetus, wants to erase impressions and not just to suspend them for further examination before ‘using’ them. The parts of mental life that enmesh us in this causal chain and so create the paradoxical situation in which a full appreciation for how our minds work would paralyze our ability to use it properly. Marcus wants to distance the choosing agent, at least subjectively, from the laws of cause and effect.57 If this is right, then something like the following story is worth considering. Marcus is committed to the basic Stoic determinism of his predecessors. He follows Seneca in focusing on cause/matter alongside god/matter and active/passive as the way to think of this. But unlike Seneca, unlike Chrysippus and even unlike Epictetus, Marcus is writing a diary, literally writing to himself. Seneca’s artificial correspondence cannot create the genuinely reflexive situation that diary-writing produces, and neither can Epictetus’ exhortations to his audience. And so Marcus is prepared as none of his predecessors had been to see the paradoxical instability of the standard theory. If you tell yourself, as Marcus did repeatedly, that you (not someone else whom you are advising or exhorting) must take a certain attitude to the nexus of cause and effect, and if you are sensitive to the state of mind you are in as recipient of this advice, then you are quite likely to notice the paradox I have outlined. And if you do and if you wish, despite that, to adopt a theory of the makeup of human nature that is adequate to the phenomenology of your mental life, then you will have to be open, at least, to a new component in the mind. The latter is a free daimōn of some sort, something that can ground the indeterminism that the phenomenology of choice suggests.58 A generation later Alexander of Aphrodisias, criticizing Chrysippean compatibilism, worked himself into a form of indeter-

57 Berryman, op. cit., suggests that the puppet metaphor plays an important role in an externally directed protreptic strategy, a rhetorical move designed to facilitate persuading others to convert to Stoic values. In effect, everything about our normal mental life runs like a causally determined automaton and we have to alienate ourselves from it in order to take the autonomous stand involved in moral conversion. 58 This need for a position from which to address oneself is perhaps also suggested by the striking bit of self-address alluded to at 9.39: “So why are you disturbed? You say to your hēgemonikon ‘you are dead, you are destroyed, you’ve turned into a beast, you are an actor, a member of the herd, a grazing beast.’” Who is the speaker who addresses the hēgemonikon? Cf. 10.24.

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minism,59 but Marcus was at least intermittently getting himself to the same point. I think we might be seeing this sort of move by Marcus in an early entry, 2.2. Here it is in Hard’s translation (again, slightly modified for accuracy): This60 thing, whatever it is that I am, is mere flesh and some breath and the governing faculty. Despise the flesh – mere blood and bones, and a mesh of interwoven nerves and veins and arteries. Consider too what kind of a thing your breath is: a stream of air, and not even forever the same, but belched out at each moment and then sucked in again. So that leaves our third part, the governing faculty. Away with your books! Distract yourself no longer; that is no longer permissible. But rather, as if your death were already upon you, think these thoughts: you are an old man, no longer allow this part of you to play the role of a slave, or to be drawn this way and that like a puppet by every uncooperative impulse, or to be discontented any longer with what is allotted to it in the present or to feel apprehension at what will be allotted in the future. Marcus analyses himself into three components, exhaustively.61 Under that analysis two parts are rejected as candidates for being what he really is. The flesh and bones and grosser material components of the body are dismissed out of hand, presumably as being on the passive, material side of the great divide. Breath, pneumation (a contemptuous diminutive of pneuma, the stuff of the soul, normally the active side of the duality) is unstable, passive and stigmatized by the crude terms used to describe its movement in and out of the body. The hēgemonikon is, by process of elimination,62 what he really is, something at arm’s length from the mere soul.63 The ana-

59 See Frede (2011), 97–101. Frede does not suggest, though, that Alexander developed a theory of the mind that corresponded to this indeterminism. 60 With Gill and Hard (1997) and Gill (2013), I decline to delete touto, as Dalfen does. 61 Cf. 12.3.1: we are sōmation, pneumation, nous. 62 I do not think that Marcus is consistent in his identification of this third factor. At 9.39 the hēgemonikon is the addressee rather than the part of himself that does the urging and advising. Marcus’s terminology does not have the consistency one might expect from a professional philosopher. The key point I wish to emphasize is the introduction of a third factor representing a standpoint from which the agent attempts to bring about reform in the rest of himself, the part that is fully enmeshed in the network of cause and effect. 63 This suggestion is perhaps supported by Marcus’ talk of how one is to ‘use’ one’s soul in 5.11.

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lysis, then, guides his search for self-knowledge.64 Once he finds out who he is, what does he do with this result? Interestingly, he demands active agency.65 Do not distract yourself with books; as we all know, obsession with books can be an excuse for not doing the hard thinking we owe ourselves. Think certain thoughts—actively think them. And those thoughts themselves are all about the avoidance of passivity: do not be a slave, do not be a puppet, do not grumble at and worry about the world. As he says in 2.4, stop procrastinating; and in 2.5 he again demands of himself active and focused agency in ‘fulfilling the task in hand.’ As the puppet metaphor suggests, it is easy to see oneself as caused, as pushed around, as a passive bit of matter driven this way and that (inhaled and exhaled) by the world.66 Knowing that you are physically enmeshed in the world, a part of the causal nexus, a mere part of the determined cosmic whole, knowing all of that—it can be hard to make yourself do something. Hence his frequent concern in his diary with getting on with the job, whatever it is, with not stalling. If Marcus did postulate a third factor in order to escape the paradox of exhortation, then an orthodox Stoic would see that it would have to be a part of our person that is non-material. Otherwise, it would be enmeshed in causal determinations just like every other bodily entity (hence, at 12.3 he was prepared to entertain the thought that our mental powers are exempt from the web of fate). But if it were non-material it would, again on standard Stoic principles, be unable to cause the bodily parts of our nature

64 Perhaps the most deeply seated value in ancient philosophical culture, certainly one that recurs over and over again in Marcus’ book. It would be odd indeed if, as may be the case for Stoics, the attainment of full self-knowledge impeded one’s ability to make moral progress. Yet if knowing that your decisions and attitudes are fully determined by prior states and events in the world and in yourself somehow impedes our ability to make a genuine choice for moral improvement, then this oddity (the paradox I refer to in the main text) is unavoidable. My suggestion is that Marcus may have been the first Stoic to become properly aware of the problem, not necessarily that he had a good solution for it. 65 Compare 7.58 where Marcus considers difficult circumstances as the hulē for our rational agency to ‘use’; also 9.16: the good and bad for a rational, social animal lie in activity rather than passivity. Cf. 12.8, where he urges that we consider the causal factors (ta aitiōdē) all on their own, ‘naked’ and without coverings. Only activity seems to matter here. 66 This independence from the push and pull of cause and effect is elevated at 12.3 into an exemption from the entanglements of co-fated events (hōste tōn sunheimarmenōn exēirēmenēn)—a perhaps exaggerated promise of what it would be like for our power of intellect to live a liberated life (apoluton) all by itself (eph’ heautēs). Cf. also 12.14.5: ton gar noun ou paroisei.

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to do anything. Hence the worry that if Marcus went down this road he would be embracing, whether he realized it or not, a form of Platonism about the mind-body relationship. Would he have realized this? Would he have cared? I do not yet see how to answer these questions.67 Marcus, I think, was a very special kind of Stoic. He was not a professional philosopher; and perhaps not even a professed Stoic;68 despite his acceptance of Stoic ideas, he was not locked into school-based positions. In writing a reflective diary he inevitably focused on the state of mind he was in while making decisions based on an analysis (on Stoic principles, of course) of man’s place in the world. The world he found himself in was pretty much the world as outlined by Chrysippus: fully determined by a rational god, a Nature that causes all things in a coordinated way that is interconnected and for the best, a unified and integrated Nature of which he is a cooperative part. Chrysippus, we are told, said that the key to living virtuously in such a world was to “live according to the experience (empeiria) of what happens by nature.”69 But there is no sign in the remains of his work (or even in the works of Posidonius, who strengthened the conception of the causally determined world by his doctrine of sumpatheia) of an interest in the subjective experience of living such a life. The advice given by those Stoics was from the outside, from the philosopher to the audience. Therefore, for all his brilliance Chrysippus missed the paradox of exhortation. Marcus was not advising from the outside, precisely because he is not a professional philosopher nor even a philosophical writer as such. He embraced the notion that close causal analysis is the key to ‘salvation,’ that is, happiness. Hence his repeated focus on the causal and material factors in nature. Maybe he even accepted Chrysippus’ advice to live according to an experience of nature; but what makes him special, able to notice the paradox, is that he also lived according to an experience of himself. That is the outcome of being a diarist, a reflective, even self-absorbed philosophical writer. This opened his eyes to his own experience in a fresh and unique

67 I am fairly confident that Epictetus’ views about the prohairesis, which I think is substantially identical to the hēgemonikon, did not lead him to abandon full materialism (and hence determinism) about the mind. So too, no doubt, for Seneca, whose views about the mind are sometimes thought to be eclectically tinged with Platonism. 68 His one reference (5.10.1) to Stoics is in the third person. 69 See Stobaeus, Eclogarum Physicarum et Ethicarum, 2.76.6–8; and Diogenes Laërtius, 7.87; cf. Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum 2.34, 3.31, 4.14. For discussion see Inwood, Seneca: Selected Philosophical Letters, 14–36.

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way, unlike any earlier Stoic. This may make him seem un-Stoic at times, but this (I would argue) is misleading. Rather, he has merely augmented his Stoicism with an awareness of the first-person perspective perhaps anticipated only by Heraclitus—not, coincidentally, a philosopher quoted and alluded to by Marcus with striking frequency.

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Plutarch, Plotinus and the Zoroastrian Concept of the Fravashi John Dillon, Trinity College Dublin

I As is well enough known, among Platonists at least, both Plutarch in Chaeroneia, in the first and second centuries CE, and Plotinus in Rome, in the third century CE, employ, in somewhat different ways, the concept of an aspect of the individual person that is ‘above,’ and in some degree separable, from the ‘normal’ human soul. In Plutarch, what we find is a ‘separable’ intellect, vividly presented, for instance, in the myth of the De Genio Socratis (Gen. Soc.), but alluded to also in the De Facie in Orbe Lunae (Fac.) 943A ff. and in De Virtute Morali (Virt. Mor.) 441D ff. In Plotinus, we have his doctrine of the ‘undescended’ status of the highest part of the soul, which he conceives of as remaining ‘above’, in the intelligible realm. Such passages as Ennead IV.8 [6], 8, V.1 [10], 10 or III.4 [15], 3 come to mind— though in the last passage the doctrine gets mixed up with that of the ‘guardian daemon’ (if that is indeed a mix-up!). Various possible sources for such a development within Platonism have been proposed, notably an adaptation of Aristotle’s doctrine of the Active Intellect and its relation to the ‘passive’ intellect within the individual, and a development of Plato’s suggestion, at the end of the Timaeus (Ti.) (90a ff,) of the highest part of the human soul as a sort of guardian daimon. Such suggestions are certainly not to be dismissed out of hand, but I would like to throw into the mix another possible source, this time from an Eastern direction. We have ample evidence, particularly from his treatise De Iside et Osiride (De Is.), but also from De animae procreatione in Timaeo (Proc. An.) that Plutarch was acquainted with the broad outlines, at least, of Zoroastrianism,1 and Plotinus, we know, was anxious, in his youth, to make the acquaintance of the Magi.2 The question that I would like to raise on this occasion is whether either or both of them could have acquired some intima-

1 See in particular De Is. 369E-70C, and Proc. An. 1026B. 2 As we learn from Porphyry, Vita Plotini (V. Plot.) ch. 3. His choice of joining the staff of the Emperor Gordian on a military expedition against Persia was not a for-

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tion of the distinctive Zoroastrian doctrine of the fravashi, or separable higher soul, also to be regarded as a kind of guardian daemon. For a definition of this, I borrow shamelessly from Encyclopedia Britannica—a respectable enough source, I hope:3 --fravashi, in Zoroastrianism, the pre-existing external higher soul or essence of a person (according to some sources, also of gods and angels). Associated with Ahura Mazdā, the supreme divinity, since the first creation, they participate in his nature of pure light and inexhaustible bounty. By free choice they descend into the world to suffer and combat the forces of evil, knowing their inevitable resurrection at the final glory. Each individual’s fravashi, distinct from his incarnate soul, subtly guides him in life toward the realization of his higher nature. The saved soul is united after death with its fravashi. Cosmically, the fravashis are divided into three groups—the living, the dead, and the yet unborn. They are the force upon which Ahura Mazdā depends to maintain the cosmos against the demon host. Protecting the empyrean (sacred fire), they keep darkness imprisoned in the world.4 Certainly, aspects of the concept of fravashi go beyond that of a ‘separable’ or undescended soul/intellect, and abut on that of the guardian daemon— also a concept beloved of both Plutarch and Plotinus. But that does not, I think, disqualify it as being a partial stimulus to the development of the former cluster of concepts in the above two thinkers. If we ask ourselves, after all, what is behind such a doctrine, whether in the Persian or in the Greek thought-world, it is surely the idea that there is some element in the

tunate one, admittedly, but the fact that his effort was not successful does not detract from the seriousness of his desire to do so, a desire doubtless based on a certain amount of information. 3 See: https://www.brittanica.com. I have also had the pleasure of discussing this issue with M.J. Kellens, a major authority on Zoroastrianism, when we were both taking part in an Entretien of the Fondation Hardt in Vandoeuvres in August 2006, on Rites et croyances dans les religions du monde romain ([ed.] J. Scheidt [Fondation Hardt, 2007]). He remains somewhat skeptical, pointing out various differences. But we must, I think, take into account the possibility of a certain amount being ‘lost in translation.’ I am also indebted for various details to R. Zaehner’s little book, The Teaching of the Magi (George Allen and Unwin, 1956), and J. Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism (Williams and Norgate, 1913). 4 In the Bundahishn, ch. 3, their creation by Ahura Mazda is presented as quite separate from his creation of the First Man, Gayomart, and his seed (in ch. 1). Ahura Mazda then presents them with the task of descending into human bodies to confront Ahriman and his devilish host, and they assent to that.

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human being that rises above, or—looked at from another angle—escapes descent into, the contingencies and imperfections of bodily existence. This entity can be regarded either as the highest element of the human personality, representing the best that we can be; or alternatively, a superior being explicitly assigned to each of us to exercise guidance throughout our lives. These may seem alternatives, but they turn out, I think, not to be exclusive alternatives. In Platonist theory, the ambiguity may be seen as going back to a notable passage at the end of the Ti. (90A), where Plato says: We should think of the most dominant element of our soul in the following way, as a guardian spirit given to each individual by God, that which we very properly say dwells at the summit of the body, and raises us from the earth towards our proper place in heaven; for we are a growth not of earth but of heaven… (my translation). In this utterance, Plato seems uncannily to parallel the Zoroastrian concept of the fravashi—if indeed he had not acquired some intimation of such a doctrine himself.5

II However that may be, this passage of Ti. comes to serve as an important proof-text for later Platonists who are inspired, for whatever reason, to make a strong distinction between soul and intellect within the human individual, or alternatively to postulate an aspect of the soul which remains ‘above’ that part which descends fully into the complex entity which is the animated body. Plutarch is one thinker who does wish to make a strong distinction between soul and intellect, in such a way as actually to substitute for the more traditional Platonist dualism of soul and body a three-way distinction of elements within the individual. In such a passage as this from his dialogue De Fac. (943A ff.) he makes quite a point of this, as follows:6

5 He almost certainly knew something of Zoroaster (Alcibiades I 122a—even if not genuine, at least Old Academic), and there are tales (to which not much credence is usually given) of the Academy being visited by a magus (Philodemus, Index Academicorum Heraculaneum 3.34 – 43). See now on this topic the stimulating article by P. Horky, “Persian Cosmos and Greek Philosophy: Plato’s Associates and the Zoroastrian Magoi,” OSAP XXXVII (2009), 47–103. 6 Admittedly, these words are not spoken by Plutarch himself, but by one of his interlocutors, Sextius Sulla. There is no reason to doubt, however, that he stands over

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Most people rightly hold a man to be composite, but wrongly hold him to be composed of only two parts. The reason is that they suppose mind to be somehow part of soul, thus erring no less than those who believe soul to be part of body, for in the same degree as soul is superior to body, so is mind better and more divine than soul. The result of soul and body commingled is the irrational or the affective factor, whereas of mind and soul the conjunction produces reason; and of these the former is the source of pleasure and pain, the latter of virtue and vice (translated by Cherniss/Helmbold). Here we find a tripartite structure of the human being presented as a superior explanation of the distinction between rational and irrational soul. We do not here, however, have a mind that is radically distinguished from both soul and body. In the myth expounded in the course of the dialogue Gen. Soc., however, we find this concept developed in an interesting way, albeit in a mythological context.7 What happens is that Socrates’ Pythagorean associate Simmias tells the story of a certain Timarchus, who underwent an incubation in the Cave of Trophonius, in order to learn the truth about the nature of Socrates’ daimonion, and got rather more than he bargained for. In the course of a spectacular Himmelfahrt (590C ff.), conducted by an invisible Spirit Guide, he is treated to a scenario designed to illustrate what relation the nous-daimon bears to the rest of the human being. What he sees is a great sea of light, with a great many star-like entities floating in it, some calmly, some in a more agitated fashion, bobbing up and down, and vanishing periodically below the surface, ‘like the corks we observe riding on the sea to mark nets’ (592A). The Spirit tells him that what he is seeing is the actual daemons the nature of which he was in search of8, and he continues (591D ff.):

them. We find a rather less developed version of the theory expounded in the treatise Virt. Mor. 441D ff., where either Plutarch has not yet quite arrived at his concept of tripartition, or (more probably) he sees no reason to lay emphasis on it. 7 It is reasonable to suggest, I think, that Plutarch uses mythical narratives to air ideas that he finds interesting, but is not quite prepared to stand over philosophically. The Zoroastrian doctrine of the fravashi would be one of these. 8 We may note that, at least in the later Avestan period, there was a tendency to connect the fravashi with the stars, cf. Yasht 13 (where, however, the fravashi are connected, but not identified, with the stars), and outside the Avesta itself, the later text Minokhired (49: 22), where they are so identified. I owe this information to J. Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, op. cit., 279–81.

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I will explain. Every soul partakes of mind; none is irrational or unintelligent (anous), but the portion of the soul that mingles with flesh and passions suffers alteration and becomes in the pleasures and pains it undergoes irrational. Not every soul mingles to the same extent: some sink entirely into the body, and becoming disordered throughout are during their whole life distracted by passions; others mingle in part, but leave outside what is purest in them. This is not dragged in with the rest, but is like a buoy attached to the top, floating on the surface in contact with the man’s head, while he is as it were submerged in the depths; and it supports as much of the soul, which is held upright about it, as is obedient and not overpowered by the passions.Now the part carried submerged in the body is called the soul, whereas the part left free from corruption is called by the multitude the mind, who take it to be within themselves, as they take reflected objects to be in the mirrors that reflect them; but those who conceive this matter rightly call it a daemon, as being external (translated by De Lacy/Einarson). This presents a somewhat different picture from that presented in the De Facie passage. The mind is seen here as ‘external’ (ektos) to the body, presiding over it as its daemon, and in some sense remaining ‘above’ when the rest of the soul-body combination is ‘below.’ When discussing this in The Middle Platonists,9 I quite reasonably called attention to Ti. 90a, mentioned above, and to Aristotle’s concept of the Active Intellect, as presented in De Anima 3.5, but even then, those suggestions did not quite satisfy me. I also adduced the doctrine of the distinctness of nous and psyche presented in certain tractates of the Corpus Hermeticum (CH), which seemed to me to betoken a rather more exotic provenance, though I did not venture to suggest what that might be. Nous appears in CH I and X, after all, not simply as the intellectual faculty in man, but as a daemon sent by God to reward or chastise man according to his deserts, and this seemed to me to go rather beyond anything that could be derived from Ti. 90a. In stanza 22 of the first treatise, the Poemandres, the disciple asks Poemandres, “Do not then all men possess nous?” to which Poemandres replies: Restrain your tongue! I, as Nous, am present only to the holy and good and pure and charitable—to the pious, in a word—and my presence brings support to them, and they worship the Father with love, and

9 J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists (Duckworth, 1987).

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give thanks to him with benedictions and hymns in due order with affection (my translation). He goes on to say that as Nous he frees them from all bodily desires and affections, guarding them from the things of this world. To the wicked, on the other hand, he comes as an avenging spirit (timôros daimôn), “applying to them the sharpness of fire,” and stirring up their material desires and the tortures of the soul consequent upon them. The same doctrine is found also in Tractate X, called ‘The Key’, in stanzas 19–21. Here the distinction is made between the pious soul, which acquires knowledge of God and thus becomes ‘wholly nous,’ and the impious soul, which remains at the level of its own nature, and to which the nous becomes, again, an avenging daemon. Nous is in each of these passages an at least partly transcendent entity, helping the good and tormenting the evil, working in each case through the individual soul, of which it is also a part. Since it is highly unlikely that either Plutarch or the Hermetic authors are influenced by each other, it seems that we must look for some other source that might have influenced both, and I would suggest that that source is Persian.10

III Plotinus also, as we know, has advanced what he himself recognizes to be the distinctive doctrine, not explicitly of a separable nous, but what comes, after all, to very much the same thing, an aspect or level of soul which does not ‘descend’ from the intelligible realm, when the rest of the soul becomes involved in incarnation. This doctrine receives its first unveiling in the early tractate IV.8 [6] (On the Descent of the Soul into Bodies)—an unusually personal document, which begins with the famous words: Often, after waking up to myself from the body, and abstracting myself from all other things, while entering into myself, beholding a beauty of wondrous quality, and believing then that I am most to be identified with my higher part, enjoying the best quality of life, and having become united with the divine and established within in it, actualizing

10 I have discussed this question at rather greater length in “Plutarch and the Separable Intellect” in Estudios sobre Plutarco. Misticismo y religions mistéricas en la obra de Plutarco, (edd.) A P. Jiménez and F. Casadésus (Ediciones Clásicas & Charta Antiqua, 2001) 25–44 (= Essay XI in J. Dillon, The Platonic Heritage [Ashgate, 2012]).

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myself at that level, and situating myself above all the rest of the intelligible world—following on this resting within the divine, and descending from intellection into discursive reasoning, I ask myself in bewilderment, how on earth did I ever come down here, and how ever did my soul come to be enclosed in a body, being such as it has revealed itself to be, even while in a body?” (1.1–11, my translation.). After such a beginning, it is remarkable that Plotinus overall develops the argument that Plato, despite apparently contradictory utterances, presents the soul’s descent as a good, or at least a necessary, development. There are many things that the soul must learn that it can only learn by experiencing life in the body (cf. especially chapters 5–7). Even in this tractate, however, lest we should get too carried away with enthusiasm for the physical world and the role of the soul in it, Plotinus reminds us otherwise. He says in the last chapter (8), not only that we are not properly of this world, but that there is a portion or aspect of our soul that never descends into this realm: And if, against the general run of opinion, one is to venture to express more clearly one’s own view, the fact is that even our own soul does not descend in its entirety, but there is something of it always in the intelligible realm. However, if that part which is in the sensible realm becomes dominant, or rather if it is dominated and subjected to disturbance, [5] it does not permit there to be perception in us of that of which the upper part of the soul is in contemplation. For that which is the object of intellection only impinges on our consciousness when, in its descent, it arrives at sense-perception; it is not the case, after all, that we take cognisance of everything which happens in every part of the soul, before it comes to the whole soul; as, for instance, a desire that remains in the desiring part of the soul [10] does not come to our consciousness, but only when we come to grasp it with the internal power of our sense-perception, or with that of our discursive reason, or both… For every soul has something which is below, in the direction of the body, and of what is above, in the direction of intellect” (8. 1– 13, my translation). All of us, Plotinus makes clear, have a higher consciousness, but in most of us it remains potential, being above our focus of awareness, even as many humbler processes involving the lower soul, such as processes of growth or digestion, remain below it. For the achieved Sage such as Plotinus, however, this ‘undescended’ level of the soul is where his consciousness rests by preference, when he is not distracted by worldly concerns.

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We learn somewhat more of this aspect of our souls in chapter 10 of V.1 [10], another early tractate, but an importantly programmatic one. Here, Plotinus actually seems to wish to assert (as later Platonists, from Iamblichus on, did explicitly) that we have within us not only an element corresponding to Intellect at the universal level, but even to the One: It has already been shown that it is necessary to believe that things are this way: that there is the One beyond Being, which is such as the argument strove to show (to the extent that it is possible to demonstrate anything about these matters); that next in line is Being and Intellect; and that third is the nature that is Soul. And just as in nature these aforementioned three are found, so it is necessary to believe as well that these are in us. I do not mean that they are in the sensible realm—for these three are separate from sensibles— but that they are in things that transcend the sensible order, using the term ‘transcend’ in the same manner in which it is used to refer to those things that transcend the whole universe. In the same way, in saying that they belong to a human being, I mean what Plato means by ‘the inner human being.’11 Our soul is, then, something divine and of another nature, like the nature of all soul. But the soul that has intellect is perfect, and one part of intellect is that which reasons and one part is that which makes reasoning possible. The reasoning part of soul is in need of no bodily organ for its reasoning, having its own activity in purity in order that it also be possible for it to reason purely. Someone who supposed it to be separate and not mixed with body and in the primary intelligible world would not be mistaken (10. 1–18, my translation). Here the doctrine is not quite so clearly stated as in IV.8 [6], being presented as part of a wider theory of microcosmic-macrocosmic correspondence, but it is there, particularly in the last line quoted. Lastly, we may take a look at tractate III.4 [15] (On our Allotted Guardian Spirit) since it serves, in an interesting way, to link up the concept of the undescended element of soul with that of the guardian daemon, and so both to the concept of the fravashi. This is how he presents the situation in chapter 3:

11 A reference to Republic (Rep.) 9.589a7: ho entos anthrôpos.

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Who, then, becomes a daemon?12 He who was one here too. And who a god?13 Certainly he who was one here. For the element that actualized itself (to energêsan) in a man leads him (sc. after death), since it was his ruler and guide here too. Is this, then, ‘the daemon to whom he was allotted while he lived’?14 No, but that which is before the active principle; for this presides inactive over a man, while that which comes after it acts. If the active principle (to energoun) is that by which we enjoy sense-perception, the daemon is the rational principle (to logikon); but if we live by the rational principle, the daemon is that which is above this, presiding inactive (argos) and giving its consent to the principle which is active. So it is rightly said that ‘we shall choose’ (sc. our daemon, Rep. 9.617e1). For we choose the principle that stands above us according to our choice of life (3.10, translated by Armstrong, slightly emended.) Here we can see set out the complex relationship between our daemon and the highest part of our soul, according to which there is an entity superior to us, or more exactly, to the level of our normal consciousness, which is nonetheless in some way ‘ours.’ Plotinus actually wishes here to distinguish between an entity which is ‘inactive’ (argos), in the sense of being superior to active intervention in our lives, but which presides over a secondary entity which emanates from it, and which is more properly our guardian daemon.15

12 He has just been making the point that we become, after death, a class of being that reflects the dominant focus of interest in our soul while alive, even to the extent of taking on animal form. 13 Plotinus himself, we must remember, was rather pleased, as Porphyry tells us in V. Plot., ch. 10, to have it revealed by a visiting Egyptian priest who did conjurations of one’s personal daemon, that his daemon was actually a god. Porphyry claims that this essay takes its origin from that experience. 14 Phaedo, 107d6–7, the phrase from which the essay takes its title. 15 A further twist, it seems to me, is added in the following passage from his treatise On the Presence of Being, One and the Same, Everywhere as a Whole (I) (VI 4 [22]): “But we ourselves, who are we? Are we that higher, or the participant newcomer, the thing of beginnings in time? Even before coming to be on this plane we were there, men who were different, and some of us even gods, pure souls and intellect united with the whole of reality; we were parts of the intelligible, not marked off or cut off but belonging to the whole; and we are not cut off even now.” (ch. 14. 18 ff., translated by Armstrong, slightly emended.) Comparison with the fravashi seems to me to cast a new light on such a passage as this.

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But how, one might ask, does this relate to our undescended soul? That is not made clear here, but if one puts together all the relevant passages, one might conclude that the daemon is just the undescended soul looked at from another angle. The statement that we in some way ‘choose our daemon’ is perhaps, if duly de-mythologized, a way of recognizing that our daemon is, after all, ‘us,’ or at least something like our ‘super-ego.’ At any rate, this combination of superior soul and presiding daemon does seem to answer rather well to the characteristics of the Avestan or Zoroastrian fravashi. What the mechanisms of the transference of influence may have been we can only guess, but we may reflect that a good idea travels far, if it answers to a felt need.

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Virtue With and Without Philosophy in Plato and Plotinus Lloyd P. Gerson, University of Toronto

1. At the conclusion of Plato’s Republic (Rep.), the Myth of Er contains an extraordinary account of a man who, residing in heaven, is given the choice of a new life for his next reincarnation. He chooses the life of a tyrant.1 Plato accounts for this choice by saying that he “shared in virtue by habit without philosophy (ἔθει ἄνευ φιλοσοφίας ἀρετῆς μετειληφότα).” What is most striking about this story is the contrast between the evident decency of the man who, after all has been living in heaven, and the horrific choice he makes. How could such a man choose such a life? And how is the absence of philosophy supposed to be that which makes it possible that he should do this? A few lines later, the only clue we get is that one who here below practices philosophy “in a healthy manner” (ὑγιῶς) will not make such a tragic blunder. So, we get a distinction between two ways of “doing” philosophy, but no account of why one of these serves as a prophylactic against misery or, indeed, why virtue—even the virtue that is habituated— is not sufficient for happiness. The phrase “without philosophy” does turn up in one other place where its relationship to virtue is further explained. In Phaedo (Phd.) Socrates characterizes those who, owing to the way they lived their embodied lives, long for embodiment once again. The best among them are “those who practiced popular and political virtue, which they call temperance and justice, arising from habit and training without philosophy or thought (οἱ τὴν δημοτικὴν καὶ πολιτικὴν ἀρετὴν ἐπιτετηδευκότες, ἣν δὴ καλοῦσι σωφροσύνην τε καὶ δικαιοσύνην, ἐξ ἔθους τε καὶ μελέτης γεγονυῖαν ἄνευ φιλοσοφίας τε καὶ νοῦ).”2 Here we get the important piece of information that without philosophy, the virtue practiced is itself somehow inferior. Indeed, earlier on in the dialogue it is called an “illusory facade (σκιαγραφία) of virtue, fit only for slaves.”3 Still, we have no idea how exactly philosophy (or “healthy” phi-

1 Rep. 619B7-D1. 2 Phd. 87A11-B3. 3 Phd. 69B6–7.

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losophy) is supposed to transform the inferior type of virtue into the real thing. Three more parallel passages may help. In Theaetetus (Tht.), we have the portentous exhortation to “assimilation to god” (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ), which is done by “becoming just and pious with wisdom” (φρόνησις).4 Here, wisdom evidently adds something to justice and piety, indicating that it is something theoretical and not merely practical. At the conclusion to the ascent to the Good in the higher mysteries of Symposium (Smp.) we are told that one who completes the ascent to the Form of Beauty will produce “true virtue,” not an image of it.5 We are not told in this passage what an image of virtue is compared with the real thing, but it is not unreasonable to surmise that it will be something like the popular or political virtue described in Phd. And here, true virtue is explicitly connected to an intellectual achievement, that of the philosopher. Finally, there is an exhortation at the end of the Timaeus (Ti.) similar to that of Tht., where one who is zealous for “true wisdom” turns away from bodily appetites and thereby “immortalizes” himself to the extent possible for a human being.6 This last passage gives us the further hint that true wisdom is somehow associated with a turning away or renunciation of bodily concerns. In a way, this only deepens the puzzle. For even if we grant that the zeal for knowledge is a zeal for knowledge of Forms, it is far from clear why this is the obverse of bodily concerns. In fact, one would like to understand why even a successful philosopher—one about to “be graduated” from decades long education in the Rep.’s school of philosophy—should be thought to be impervious to the lure of bodily appetites. This is another way of raising the question about why the man in the Myth of Er would not have made the choice he did if he had been a philosopher. That this problem is Plato’s concern, too, is evident from the fact that it provides a central structural element in Rep. The definition of the virtues in the soul and in the state are defined by the end of book 4. But philosophy as a distinct human activity is not introduced until the following book, via the issue of how philosophers can be found to rule the state. The discussion of the nature of the philosopher and his counterfeits, intro-

4 Tht.176B1–2. That φρόνησις, though sometimes used for a practical virtue, is at least in Phd. and Rep. also used for the wisdom that the philosopher seeks is evident from many passages in which φρόνησις is characterized as a knowledge of Forms. See, for example, Phd. 66A6, 69C2, 76C12, 79D6; Rep. 505B9, 517C4–5. 5 Smp. 212A5–6. Cf. Phaedrus 254B5–7 on the association of a vision of Forms with virtue. 6 Ti. 90B1-D7.

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duced in book 5, governs or motivates the entire treatment of metaphysics and education in the central books. Indeed, this continues right up to the comparison of the aristocratic man and his polar opposite, the tyrannical man, in books 8 and 9 and through the answer to the question why the consequences of the just life are superior to those of the unjust life. And as we have seen in the last two pages of Rep., the radical distinction between someone who is merely virtuous and someone who is also a philosopher is set in a dramatic myth. It is seldom noticed that the answer to the question “does justice pay?” given at the end of book 4 assumes a just person quite different from the just person in book 9 whose life shows that justice pays for its consequences. True, being a good person is intrinsically desirable, but being a good person does not save one from a disastrous choice of a tyrannical life. The aristocratic man in book 9 is not the virtuous man in book 4. The above passages from Phd. tell us that the virtue of the non-philosophical man is only an image of the virtue of the philosopher. How exactly does philosophy transform the one into the other? In Phd., we are told that philosophy is a sort of “purificatory process” (καθάρσις).7 No doubt, this is supposed to be edifying, but it is hardly perspicuous. We naturally suppose that the purification is related to attachment to the body, but this surely amounts to more than a recommendation to absent-mindedness. But then philosophy, as understood by Plato, must amount to more than devoting most of one’s waking hours to theoretical pursuits. Book 4 itself helps us focus more sharply on the problem. In the deduction of the virtues in the soul, Socrates distinguishes between virtuous behavior and “internal” virtue.8 The latter requires the harmonization of the “parts” of the soul, with reason ruling. This harmony means that the virtuous person has “become one out of many.” But there is no hint that such a person is supposed to be taken as identical with the aristocratic man of book 9, that is, the philosopher. Actually, there is good evidence that he is not. When Plato introduces the philosopher as the putative ideal ruler in book 5, he characterizes him as one who will inculcate “popular virtue” into the masses.9 Presumably, this popular virtue includes both the behavioral and the “internal” virtue of book 4, which are obviously distinct from that which the philosopher has. So, we have apparently three “grades” of

7 Phd. 67C5; cf. 69B8-C3. 8 Rep. 443C10-D1. Plotinus paraphrases this passage at VI.8, 9.20–1. 9 Rep. 500D5–9. Cf. the contrast between the virtues of the philosopher and the “socalled virtues of the soul” (αἱ ἀρεταὶ καλούμεναι ψυχῆς) at 518D9–519A5.

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virtue: (a) the behavioral, (b) the internal non-philosophical, and (c) the philosophical. But this does not reveal to us how (b) is transformed into (c) or even why this is desirable and necessary. We should not suppose that the Myth of Er could simply go unchallenged. Let me try to expand the problem a bit before suggesting what I think is Plato’s solution. One of the so-called Socratic paradoxes, the attribution of which not only to the character Socrates but to the historical figure is supported by Aristotle’s testimony, is that virtue is knowledge.10 What this means, minimally, is that one who has knowledge of some sort and of some sort of knowable objects, will thereby be virtuous. Given the above distinctions, there are two very different ways of taking this claim. Will this knowledge result in (a) in (b) or perhaps in both—or will it result in (c)? The answer to this question depends entirely on what the knowledge is supposed to be and what are the things known. Those, like Gregory Vlastos,11 who want at all costs to construct a prophylactic against the pollution of Socrates by metaphysics, will be inclined to say that the knowledge Socrates seeks is not the knowledge of separate Forms. Accordingly, the knowledge is taken by him to be something like true belief in certain uplifting moral maxims like “a worse man can never harm a better man” or “it is always wrong to return evil for evil,” or “the worst thing for a bad man is not to be punished,” or “one must never do an unjust deed.” The main problem with this prudentialism is that it would no doubt fail to convince the tyrant. Indeed, according to Plato, it manifestly fails to convince the would-be tyrant who is already virtuous, even “internally” so.12 I take it that the point of the introduction of the story of the Ring of Gyges in Rep. is precisely to short-circuit the pathway from the posing of the problem of the good life to prudentialism as a conclusion. For if you possess that ring, then prudentialism can have no purchase on you. It may indeed be bad for you to be unjust, but not according to any line of reasoning that excludes “metaphysical” considerations.

10 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (NE) Ζ, 1144b28–30. 11 See e.g., G. Vlastos, Socrates. Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Cornell University Press, 1991), ch.2. 12 I will not here pause to consider the response to this objection by proponents of a Socratic philosophy—different from Plato’s philosophy—present in a distinct group of dialogues dubbed “early” or “Socratic.” On this view, prudentialism, innocent of metaphysics, is the right way to look at Socratic ethics. See my “The Myth of Plato’s Socratic Period,” Achiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 96 (2014), 403– 30.

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To sum up this section, we have a clear division of grades of virtue in the dialogues and a strong indication that philosophy is the vehicle for the achievement of the highest grade. What we do not have is a clear idea of how exactly it does this. In the next section, I am going to argue that Plato does in fact have an account of how this is done, an account that is, not surprisingly, given what I have said above, metaphysical. In the third and final section, I turn to Plotinus both to elicit his support for my exegesis of Plato’s account and also to show how he enriches it.

2. My starting-point is the remarkable pronouncement that Socrates makes in Rep. 6: Isn’t it also clear that many people would choose things that are believed to be just or beautiful, even if they are not, and would act, acquire things, and form beliefs accordingly? Yet no one thinks it sufficient to acquire things that are believed to be good. On the contrary, everyone seeks the things that are really good. In these matters, everyone immediately disdains belief.13 This passage is a notable preface to the introduction of the Idea of the Good, a few pages later. We should focus on the claim’s unqualified universality. This is especially since the super ordination of the Idea of the Good is the foundation for this universality. It is practically a commonplace in the dialogues that everyone desires good things for themselves. For this reason, then, no one willingly goes after bad things.14 But, of course, the difference between the virtuous and everyone else is that the former desire things that are in fact really good whereas the latter desire only things that they think are really good, but in fact are not so. The difference between the two is not, then, psychological. Everyone pursues what they think is going to be good for themselves. The difference is with regard to what is really the case, that which is “external” to the psyches of both or, put differently, objective. To suppose, though, that the principal distinction here is between the subjective and the objective is to miss Plato’s point. This is because what is objectively good for A,

13 Rep. 505D5–9. 14 See Meno 77C1–2; Apology (Ap.) 37A5; Gorgias (Grg.) 488A3; Protagoras 345D8, 358C7; Rep. 589C6; Ti. 86D7-C1; Laws 731C-D.

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though it may differ from what A thinks is objectively good for him (even if he identifies the objective with the subjective), may well be something different from what is objectively good for B.15 Indeed, for all we know, what is objectively good for A may be objectively bad for B. And in that case, the so-called Socratic paradox that a bad man cannot harm a good man is simply false. For the bad man’s good may be achieved precisely by harming the good man. I take it that the introduction of the superordinate Idea of the Good is intended to exclude this possibility, among other things. It is the universality of the Idea of the Good that actually guarantees that the good of A is never acquired at the expense of B, just as the universality of truth guarantees that nothing that is “true for me” is not also true for someone else. But it will no doubt be said that the universality of the Good is exactly like the universality of all the other Forms, in which case we can discount or ignore the salient feature of the Good, namely, that it is the first principle of all.16 Such a discounting is not only exegetically preposterous, flying in the face of all the available evidence, but it is philosophically inept. For the Good needs to have a superordinate status, specifically as the first principle of all, if Plato’s ethics—indeed, his entire philosophy—is to make any sense at all. Perhaps a reductio proof of the claim that the Idea of the Good must have a superordinate status will suffice. Let the Idea of the Good be taken on a par with all the other Ideas or Forms. Like all the other Forms, Good will have a distinct οὐσία or essence. Then, things will be good by participating in this essence in exactly the way that, say, they will be just by participating in the essence that is Form of Justice. To insure the necessary connectedness of Just and Good we can say that just as Three brings Oddness along with it and Snow brings Coldness along with it, so Justice brings Goodness with it, too. But things can be good for us even if there is present no justice, indeed, even if there is present no virtue generally. For example, health. We would then have to say that Good is related to Justice and Health much as Oddness is related to Numbers, since something can be odd without being either three or five or seven, etc. But in order to be odd, something must be a number, that is, a member of a single genus. It seems, however, that the genera of goods are diverse.17 If so, there can be

15 Cf. Grg. 497E, 506E; Rep. 507B; Hippias Major 287C-D. 16 See Rep. 511B7; 511D1. 17 Aristotle makes this point against the universality of Good in NE Α 6. But I will not pursue this criticism here. At Men. 73C ff., it is clear that human goods are tied to human virtue. But then it would follow that the good for other living things would be tied to their virtue, so that there would be no generic goodness.

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no οὐσία that is just Good. And, in fact, that is precisely why Plato says that “the Good is not essence, but rather beyond essence (οὐκ οὐσίας ὄντος τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, ἀλλ᾽ ἔτι ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσιάς).”18 This proof, however, is obviously inadequate for my purposes. It is one thing to agree that if there is a universal Good, then it must have a superordinate status. It is quite another to agree that there is a universal Good such that conflicts of goods are impossible. Surely, there is no one more dedicated to the proposition that there can be conflicts of good than is the would-be tyrant. So, the road from popular or political virtue to philosophical virtue seems to require at least an awareness of the university of Good, assuming that the universality will reside in a superordinate Idea. I am not sure it is more or less helpful to point out that the superordinate Good is not merely the explanation for the goodness of anything, but it is also the explanation for the being of all Forms, for their truth, and for their knowability.19 So, we can at least get some idea of what it means for philosophy to be the vehicle on the road from ordinary virtue to true virtue. For the question of the ultimate explanations for the being and knowability of anything is most definitely of a philosophical nature.20 Is it then enough to be led or to lead oneself to see the extraordinary role of the Idea of the Good? Would that be enough to make one into what Plato calls the aristocratic man? On the one hand, I think we must acknowledge that the answer to this question is yes. But we must immediately add that, on Plato’s account, the vision of the Good is the result of some fifty years of education, a number the magnitude of which at least indicates that there is no short-cut to true virtue.21 Let us consider the Platonic philosopher-in-training and his contemporary analogue, the undergraduate philosophy major. Let us suppose that early on he is convinced by an argument that there must indeed be a superordinate Idea of the Good, just as he might have been convinced early on, say, of the soundness of the ontological argument for the existence of God. Clearly, in Plato’s eyes such a conviction would not be enough to warrant

18 Rep. 509B7–8. From 534B8-C1 we should not infer that the Good has or is an οὐσία because there can be a λόγος of it. That there can be a λόγος does not imply that there is a definition of it by species and genus or univocity. What is said about it in the Divided Line constitutes a λόγος of it. 19 See Rep. 508E1–4 with 508A9-B7, 509B6. 20 I note here in passing that the truth provided by the Good to the Forms is not a semantic property of propositions, but a so-called ontological truth, the property of being that makes being available to an intellect. 21 See Rep. 540A-B.

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early graduation from philosophy school. What is missing? Perhaps a superficial answer to this question is that the conviction of the existence of X is substantially different from a vision of X, although in the present case one may legitimately ask in what exactly a vision of the Idea of the Good consists. I put off to the next section a discussion of the contents, so to speak, of a vision of the Good. Here I am more concerned to focus on the content of the proposition supposedly affirmed by the neophyte philosopher, the proposition that a universal Good exists. Let us return to the claim or, more properly, the axiom that everything and everyone desires the good. Despite our neophyte’s protestations to an unshakeable conviction that the Good is universal and even superordinate, the majority of his desires will be for goods that are, unlike the truths of mathematics, part of a zero-sum game. It is not possible to satisfy the desire to eat without eating something that someone else could have eaten but now can no longer do so. So, what in this case supports one’s claim really to believe in the universality of the Good? Generally, the desire for most goods belies in practice the claim that one’s good is identical with everyone else’s. Let me emphasize that I am not speaking here about the vices that are by definition excluded from the characterization of the man of popular virtue and even from the one who is merely virtuous in behavior. My point is not about gluttony or intemperance. Someone who can accommodate his bodily appetites within a smooth-running Platonically just community is exactly the sort of person whom Plato thinks is capable of choosing the life of a tyrant when given the chance. There are numerous hints in Rep. and elsewhere that what Plato thinks the practice of philosophy is supposed to do is effect a transformation in the practitioner. We might suppose, just taking the Allegory of the Cave, that this transformation is nothing but a recalibration of one’s belief about what is real and what is not. The earlier contrast between the lovers of sights and sounds and the philosophers is, after all, a contrast between two radically different sets of beliefs about what is real and what is not. This sort of account of what philosophy does is not false but it is inadequate, for such a transformation has nothing necessarily to do with a universal Good that, we recall, is only seen at the end of the ridiculously long educational process. Still, the idea of a transformation or conversion is central to Plato’s account, except it is primarily a transformation of personal identity and not a transformation in the contents of one’s set of beliefs. The easiest way to see this is to consider the troubled soul of an acratic, like the hapless Leontius of Rep. 4. He wants to do what he regards as immoral. When he “gives in” to his lurid appetite, he is disgusted with himself. In the last two sentences, I have used a personal pronoun six times to 198

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refer to this event. It is evident that if the phenomenon of ἀκρασία is genuine, these cannot all refer to the identical subject. If Leontius desires to look at the naked corpses and at the same time desires not to satisfy that desire, we can conclude that Leontius is truly a divided self, which only means that the self or subject that desires to gaze is not identical with the self or subject that desires not to have the desire to gaze. An important point here is that the subject of the “second-order” desire cannot be different from the subject of the “first-order” desire to look. I mean that Leontius is obviously not reproving someone else when he reproves himself both for desiring to look and for looking. But the question we need to focus on is why in this little drama we should suppose—as we almost certainly do—that the “real” Leontius is the subject of the second-order desire, not the first? The usual answer to this question is the banal one that the real Leontius is the subject of the second-order desire because that desire is rational whereas the first-order desire is irrational and Leontius is a rational animal. More than banal, this answer is exegetically false. The term used throughout the passage, ἀλόγιστον, though almost universally translated as “irrational” or “unreasoning” does not mean that; rather, it is better translated as “unreasonable” or even “unreflective.”22 So, Leontius’ conflict is not one in which the man is supposed to struggle against something entirely alien to his nature as a rational animal, but rather a struggle between two subjects employing rationality in two different ways. The first, the subject of the appetite, conceptualizes the πάθος in his soul as a particular sort of desire. He thinks that satisfying this desire will achieve the good at which this desire is aimed. The second, thinks or has come to believe that following a certain behavioral norm—in this case having to do with propriety or dignity—the appetite will actually achieve his own good. Now our question becomes more pointed: why does Leontius or we think that Leontius’ good is achieved by following this behavioral norm rather than pursuing the satisfaction of his not irrational appetite? One answer to this question can be given at the level of popular or political virtue. Following such norms contributes to civic order and harmony. But there is also a deeper answer, one which begins to take us to the heart of our original problem. Leontius ought to recognize the authority over him of such norms because he ought to recognize his identity as the subject who grasps them and not as the subject of the appetite. This is something that, almost by definition, the acratic does not or cannot do. Once he recognizes this identity, he is in a pos-

22 See Rep. 439D7. Cf. Ap. 37C7; Phd. 62E2, Grg. 522E2; Philebus 63E8, etc.

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ition to see that the norm expressing what is good is no more or less than the norm expressing his own good, that is, he is in a position to see the universality of the norm. He is in a position to see the universality of Good. We must not suppose that the transformation is mechanical or easy. The acratic is much more likely to be transformed, if at all, into an encratic, rather than a Platonically virtuous person. He is most likely apt only for behavior modification, not for character transformation. And an encratic is, after all, not really different from one who is politically virtuous.23 As I said, there are numerous hints in Rep. and elsewhere that Plato looks upon the practice of philosophy as effecting a transformation of identity from the empirical self to an ideal self, the subject of normative reasoning. But it is in Plotinus that this transformation is thematized and the super ordination of the universal Good is made the explicit basis of ethics. It is to his Enneads that I now turn.

3. Plotinus’ treatise number 19 (I.2), given the title “On Virtues” by Porphyry, is an extended discussion of the gradation of virtues found in Rep. and elsewhere: But since Plato reveals the other type of assimilation as belonging to a greater virtue,24 we should speak about that. In this account, the essence of civic virtue will also be made even clearer, as well as the essence of the greater virtue, and, generally, the fact that there is a type of virtue different from the civic. Given that Plato is saying that assimilation to god is a flight from here, and does not name the virtues of civic life unqualifiedly ‘virtue’ but adds the qualification ‘civic’, and given that elsewhere he says that all the virtues are purifications,25 it is clear that he maintains that that there are two sorts of virtue, and does not think that assimilation is according to civic virtue. In what sense, then, should we say that virtues are purifications, and, once we are purified, in what sense are we especially assimilated?26

23 See Rep. 43E7, 431A6 where the virtue of σωφροσύνη is characterized as a sort of ἐγκράτεια. 24 See Plato, Tht. 176B-C. Plotinus is referring here to the sense discussed in the previous section in which political virtue is a sort of assimilation to the divine. 25 See Plato, Phd. 82A11; 69C1. 26 I.2, 3.1–11. Plotinus here ignores the merely behavioral virtue.

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Here, in addition to the distinction between grades of virtue, we have an explicit connection between the higher grade and the exhortation to an “assimilation to divinity” in Tht., an assimilation that is identified with the purificatory process of Phd. The central feature of political virtue and the reason for separating it sharply from the merely behavioral is that political virtue consists in the elimination of “false beliefs” (ψευδεῖς δόξας).27 These false beliefs are not specified here, but they presumably include the contradictories of the true beliefs that the virtuous person in Rep. 4 has about what is beneficial to each of the parts of the soul and to the whole soul.28 Plotinus is right to focus on the elimination of false belief as being essential to virtue. It is not, I think, too much of an exaggeration to say that Plato viewed as the principal problem of embodied human life the ubiquity of false belief and the principal role of philosophy in its elimination. But the elimination of one tranche of false beliefs, those afflicting the man who is the opposite of prudent, leaves completely untouched a false belief regarding personal identity. Without a change in this belief, the belief in the universality of the Good is unattainable. In the later treatise 46, I.4, “On Happiness,” Plotinus explicitly identifies the happy person with the philosophically virtuous person, and asks how the embodied person is related to the activity of this life: What I mean is this: It is clear also from other considerations that the fact that a human being has a perfect life does not mean that he only has a perceptual life, but rather than he has a calculative capacity or a genuine intellect as well. But is it, therefore, the case that he is one thing and what he has is another? In fact, he is not a human being at all if he has this neither in potency nor in actuality, where we locate happiness. But will we say that he has this perfect form of life in himself as a part of himself? In fact, one who has it in potency has it as a part, whereas the one who has achieved happiness is this actually and has transformed himself in the direction of being identical with this. Everything else is something he is carrying around at the same time, which no one would suppose to be a part of him, since he does not want to carry these things around. They would be parts of him if they were connected to him according to his will.

27 I.2, 2.16–17. 28 Rep. 442C5–8. The term used here is ἐπιστήμη, not δόξα, but it seems clear that Plotinus is correct to take this “knowledge” as being equivalent to a true belief about the well-being of the embodied soul.

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What, then, is the good for this human being? In fact, it is, for him, what he possesses. And the transcendent cause of goodness in him [the Good], which is good in one way, is present to him in another. Evidence for the fact that this is so is that one who is like this does not seek anything else. What else would he seek? It would, of course, not be something worse; but the best is already with him. The life of one living in this way, then, is self-sufficient. And if he is virtuous, he has what he needs in order to be happy and to possess the good, for there is no good that he does not have.29 Here it is evident that the truly virtuous person has identified himself with his intellect. And as a result of this, the Good is present to him. Since everyone desires the real good for himself, this man has what everyone seeks.30 But the only way he can have it is by identifying himself with his intellect (μεταβέβηκε πρὸς τὸ αὐτό, εἶναι τοῦτο). Having thus identified himself, his will (βούλησις) follows his intellect. By contrast, all others who do not so identify themselves have a will disconnected from intellect, so to speak. This disconnection means that the deliverances of intellect do not immediately orient the will. Such a person, though he wants the really good, does not think that what his intellect has determined is really good for him is derived from the universal Good. The gap between his intellect and his will prevents his normative use of reason from rising to the level of the universality of the Good. The precise problem he is facing is: how to close this gap? In a rhetorically heighted passage in the famous treatise 1, “On Beauty” (I.6), Plotinus asks the methodological question of how we ascend to the Good, answering in effect by urging the conversion of the soul exactly as that is characterized in the Allegory of the Cave.31 This conversion would consist in seeing images of reality for what they are, not themselves the real. But how is this to be accomplished? By a process of philosophical purification the result of which is that you become “wholly yourself” (ὅλος αὐτός).32 In a way, it is obvious why philosophy is essential to the purificatory process. For if the true self is an intellect, what is it besides intellectual

29 I.4, 4.6–25. 30 Cf. VI.8, 13.11–13, where Plotinus makes the very strong claim that everything in its desire for the Good wants to be the Good more than he wants to be himself and thinks that he attains the highest state of being when he participates in the Good. 31 See I.6, 7–8. 32 I.6, 9.18.

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activity that is going to enable one to recognize this? Much intellectual activity, however, or, simply, “thinking” (τὸ νοειῖν) is not philosophical, including all practical thinking. What is the sort of thinking that begins to dislodge one from the embrace of a false identity? In general, Plotinus not surprisingly recommends the sort of philosophical education Plato sets forth in Rep. 7. In particular, he sees the importance of mathematical studies to accustom one to the existence of the immaterial.33 But, of course, it is a long way from recognizing the existence of immaterial entities to recognizing that one is oneself an immaterial entity, in particular, an intellect. Part of the relevant background to Plotinus’ thinking about this matter is no doubt the Recollection Argument in Plato’s Phd. that aims to show that certain of our higher-level embodied cognitive capacities would not be possible if we did not exist prior to embodiment.34 One would think that accepting the conclusion of this argument would be a strong inducement to accepting one’s identity with the intellect capable of disembodied intellection. Plotinus does not, so far as I can tell, make direct use of this argument. However, he does argue independently of the Platonic texts that we possess undescended intellects, that is, disembodied intellects eternally contemplating all intelligibles.35 These intellects are our true selves. In them, intellection is inseparable from will.36 Our intellects see the Good in the only way an intellect can see it, that is, by contemplating all that is intelligible, all that the Good is virtually, by being the generative and sustaining cause of all things. This intellect is also, most importantly, beyond virtue.37 Why should we accept not only that our intellects are undescended, but that they are the real version of ourselves, that which we are “especially” (μάλιστα) as Aristotle puts it?38 The arguments that Plotinus advances on behalf of this position have an unmistakeably transcendental cast. That is, Plotinus wants to show that (1) certain undeniable embodied cognitive activities could not take place unless we have immaterial intellects. But (2) we cannot have immaterial intellects unless we are really identical with these immaterial intellects. That is we cannot possess them as, as opposed

33 See I.3, 3. 34 See Phd. 72E3–78B3. 35 See VI.4, 14.16–22; IV.8, 4.31–5; IV.8, 8; IV.7, 13 for Plotinus’ claim that our intellects are “undescended,” a claim that most later Platonists rejected. Apparently, Damascius is the exception. 36 VI.8, 6.41–3. 37 See I.2, 3.31. 38 See NE Κ 7, 1178A7.

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to being them. Then, (3) unless the intellects that we are are undescended, they could not serve to make possible those embodied acts of cognition with which we started as a premise. (1) and (2) are Platonic-Aristotelian positions, although Aristotle is more explicit on these two points than is Plato.39 (3) is apparently Plotinus’ innovation. The reasoning on behalf of (1) relies on Aristotle’s argument in De Anima (An) book 3, chapter four, that thinking is not possible if the intellect is “blended” with the body.40 Thinking, both for Aristotle and for Plotinus, requires λόγος, the ability to make and understand universal statements. If an intellect were a body or an attribute of a body (“blended” in some way with it), then the thinking would be just like any other bodily activity, say, like running or breathing. But running and breathing are, because they are activities of bodies, particularized by space and time. By contrast, thinking requires the cognition of universals or, more exactly, natures cognized universally, which are as such unlimited by space and time. Of course, the act of cognizing universally can be represented by particular bodies and their properties. Indeed, that is what computers do so spectacularly, but which any much humbler symbolic system does, too. But the representation of the universal is not the universal or, stated differently, the cognition of the universal is not a representation of it. The reason for this is that no symbolic representation can stand in a one-to-one relation with any universal; each must be, owing to its particularity infinitely correlatable with all other universals. What joins a symbol and a universal in the representational relation is a thinker who can understand and stipulate that this will stand for this. The reasoning on behalf of (2) relies on a distinction that first turns up in Plato and then is used to powerful effect by Aristotle. This is the distinction, found in Tht., between “possessing” (κεκτήσθαι) knowledge and “having” (ἔχειν) knowledge.41 This is the distinction between (a) the presence of the knowable or intelligible object in the intellect and (b) the awareness of this presence. As Plato explains, (a) is only definable in terms of (b), that is, we can infer (a) from (b), but not vice versa. This distinction is adumbrated by Aristotle in his An as the distinction between (c) the acquisition of an intelligible object and (d) a further actualization.42 The language of act and potency is simply a formalization of Plato’s more colloquial lan39 This is in part because Plato, unlike Aristotle, does not make a sharp lexical distinction between ψυχή and νοῦς. 40 See An III 4, 429a22–9. 41 See Tht. 197B-D. 42 See An III.4, 429b5–9. Cf. II.5, 417a27–8; b4.

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guage. From this distinction, Aristotle immediately infers that when (d) occurs, the thinker can “think himself.” This is, as Aristotle repeatedly insists, the identification of the intellect and the intelligible.43 So, since the intelligible object is, by definition, immaterial, our identity with that, when thinking, is our identity with the immaterial object. To have an immaterial form without being that form is the non-cognitional state of anything that is characterized in any way. If, when thinking, we had immaterial forms instead of being them, there would be only two possibilities: the first, absurd possibility, is that in thinking of, say, felinity, we become cats; the second possibility is that in thinking of felinity we are representing felinity symbolically. But symbolic representation of forms is not cognition, as is evident from the fact that a picture book of cats is not thinking about cats. As I suggested above, Plotinus adopts the Aristotelian argument in (2) in its entirety.44 Regarding (3), although Plotinus could have evoked the agent intellect as evidence of the separability of intellect from the embodied composite, he thinks separability is not sufficient; our intellects must be in fact separate.45 If that is the case, there must be some way that we can “access” our own intellects if thinking is to occur. And let us keep in mind that we are thereby accessing our real selves. The Plotinian argument for the undescended intellect of each human being with which each of us is identified is perhaps best approached by an analogy. Consider a robot programmed by someone to mimic some type of human behavior, say speech. Actually, there is a much more mundane example readily at hand, our programming of a telephone answering machine that repeats a message for any caller. Is my answering machine that “says” “Hi, I am not available now, but leave a number and I’ll get back to you later” me or not me? Without making unnecessarily heavy weather over this, I think it is perfectly commonsensical to say that it both is and is not me speaking on the machine. Furthermore, it is easy to express the senses in which each answer is correct. Analogously, the undescended intellect is to my embodied intel-

43 See An III 4, 430a4–5; 5, 430a19–20; 6, 430b25–6; 7, 431a1; 8, 431a22–3. Cf. Metaphysics Λ 9, 1074b38–1075a5. 44 See V.2, 1.9–13; V.3, 5.21–5; V.3, 13.13–15; V.5, 2.4–18; V.5, 3.1–2; V.6, 1; V.9, 5.30– 1; V.9, 8.8–18; VI.6, 6.19–26. 45 See V.1, 9.7–8. At V.9, 3.6–8 Plotinus is perhaps referring to An III 5, 430a22, where Aristotle uses the word χωρισθείς in reference to intellect, the aorist passive of the verb χωρίζειν, which is usually translated as “having been separated,” suggesting that the intellect can be in a state when it is not separated. This is why Plotinus says the separateness of intellect is disputed.

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lect as I am to my technological avatars.46 I do not want to press this analogy too far, principally because in no sense is the machine manifesting cognition, whereas my embodied intellect certainly is. But the crucial point of the analogy is that the sense in which the machine’s voice is me is correct only if I actually made the voice recording. In no sense would it be true to say that it is my voice on the answering machine if a voice imitator made the recording. The argument for the undescended intellect starts with the result of (2), namely, that thinking in the primary sense is the identity of the thinker and the thinkable. Plotinus’ line of reasoning depends on the analysis of this identity and an argument to the effect that identity is a relative concept, with only the One or the Good, the first principle of all, being unqualifiedly self-identical. Everything else is a composite in some way. The relevant composition in thinking is in thinker and object of thinking. This means, following Aristotle, that there must be some mediation in the act of thinking, specifically, some image. So, when, for example, I think Euclid’s parallel postulate, I do so with words or signs. From this, the conclusion that Plotinus wants to get to is that this could not occur unless there were unmediated thinking occurring right now in my undescended intellect. Another, perhaps more illuminating way to make the same point is to say that the only unmediated thinking there is is the thinking of an undescended intellect. The reason for this is that if there were mediation at this level, the undescended intellect would possess only images of the truth, not the truth itself. But it would not know that these are images, having ex hypothesi nothing to compare them with. In fact, knowledge, which like Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus understands as a sort of mental seeing, would not be possible if the ‘seeable’ object of knowledge were permanently occluded. I think it is possible for one to take the position that knowledge, thus understood, is impossible. Such is the view of a Pyrrhonian sceptic and of a contemporary naturalist. But it is a view which has the very expensive consequence that we cannot see that, say, if A is greater than B, and B is greater than C, then A must be greater than C. Plotinus actually agrees that embodied cognition is mediated by images, but his point is that we do see or know truths, which we could not do unless we each had access to an intellect that is eternally engaging in unmediated cognition of all that is cognizable. So, our intellects must be undescended for us to have access to truth, something which it is assumed we do have.

46 See VI.3, 15.31–8 where an image of Socrates is said to stand to the man as the man does to the real Socrates, the undescended intellect.

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Since our undescended intellects are cognitively identical with all that is intelligible, access to intelligibles is access to our intellects. Just as thinking could not be possible unless the samenesses and differences we discern here below were not instances of intelligibles, so thinking would not be possible unless we had access to the intellect eternally identical with these intelligibles. Plotinus variously characterizes this access as our looking to our “king,” our separated intellects,47 or as intellect being a “lawgiver” (νομοθέτης).48 Intellect’s “writings” are in us just like “laws” (νόμοι).49 And Plotinus adds, most importantly for the theme of personal identity, Is it the case that the discursive thinking part does not know that it is the discursive thinking part, and that it acquires comprehension of externals, and that it discerns what it discerns, and that it does so by internal rules (κανόνες), rules which it derives from Intellect, and that there is something better than it that seeks nothing but rather, in fact, has everything? But after all, does it not know what it itself is just when it understands what sort of thing it is and what its functions are? If, then, it were to say that it comes from Intellect and is second after Intellect and an image of Intellect, having in itself in a way all its writings, since the one who writes and has written is in the intelligible world, will one who knows himself in this way halt at these?50 The invitation at the end of this passage is to go “beyond” Intellect to the One. But going beyond Intellect to the One can only mean the recognition that the One or the Good is the cause of the being of everything, not only Intellect, but everything else as well. The “forgetting” of our true identity for Plotinus, which is the source of human waywardness is remedied by philosophy wherein one comes to realize that the discursive thinking we engage in, whether we are doing philosophy or anything else, would not be possible unless we were really undescended intellects. Since the undescended intellect achieves its own good eternally by being eternally oriented to the Good in thinking all that the Good is virtually, we do not see our own good as other than the Good insofar as we recognize our true identities. As embodied creatures, we cannot help but recognize at least a residual gap between what we think is the

47 48 49 50

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Good and the goods we seek. To close the gap completely would not only be to leave the body but also to transcend virtue. Virtue itself is precisely the state of one living within that gap for whom it is basically a technicality. Such a person could no more choose the life of a tyrant than he could choose the life of a non-human animal. I think it is legitimate to ask if the doctrine of the undescended intellect, of which there is no trace in Plato, can play such a central role in the correct interpretation of Plato’s understanding of the relation between philosophy and virtue. In reply, note first that the question of the separateness of the intellect is distinct from the question of our real identity with it. On the second question, Plato is in agreement with Aristotle and Plotinus that the answer is yes. On the first question, Plotinus’s inference to the separateness of our intellects is a conclusion drawn from the application of Aristotelian insights to the systematic expression of Platonism. I suspect that Plotinus would be no more disturbed by the absence of explicit textual support in the dialogues for some particular doctrines than would Thomas Aquinas have been disturbed by the absence of explicit textual support in scripture for some of his doctrines. But just as later scholastics challenged Aquinas on his systematic results, so did later Platonists challenge Plotinus. Let me conclude by returning to the original problem framed at the beginning of this paper: how does philosophy enrich virtue? In a way, it should not be surprising that self-discovery is thought by Plato to be a fundamental philosophical goal. What might surprise and what will no doubt appear controversial, at least in some circles, is how this answer shows the inconceivability for Plato of separating the philosophical account of ethics from metaphysics. More specifically—and is this really surprising?—the introduction of the superordinate Idea of the Good does the main work of showing what philosophy adds to virtue popularly conceived.51

51 It is for me an honor and a great pleasure to offer this essay to John Rist who, over more than forty years, has been my teacher, thesis advisor, mentor, colleague and friend. I should add that John and I have discussed the matters raised in this paper on many occasions and that, in fact, it was he who introduced me to Plotinus in a graduate seminar at the University of Toronto. I am confident that John, if he disagrees with anything I have said here, will as always be glad to set me straight in no uncertain terms.

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Part 3. Patristics And Biblical Criticism

Gregory of Nyssa and Platonism Enrico Peroli, Università "G. D'Annunzio" di Chieti-Pescara

I. PLATO CHRISTIANUS? 1.1. “Plato is dangerous precisely because he begins by not being so. One is enraptured by his beautiful ideas about God, intelligence, and the order of the world. One follows him and arrives by degrees, without knowing how, in the night of error.”1 Thus Cardinal Robert Bellarmine expressed himself in the early 1600’s, inverting the ancient Augustinian refrain, taken up and reintroduced in the second half of the 1400’s by Marsilio Ficino, that saw Platonism as the philosophy closest to Christianity: “nulli nobis quam … [Platonici]… propius accesserunt,” as Augustine wrote in De civitate Dei (civ. Dei) 8.5. Bellarmine’s ‘anti-Platonism’ was not an isolated position. In those same years it was supported and promoted by the entire Jesuit order, in the context of the Tridentine Counter-Reformation campaign in support of scholastic Aristotelianism. Moreover, for purposes that were often quite varied, it was progressively affirmed and spread in the course of the first modern era, and not only in the sphere of religious literature.2 The ‘antiPlatonism’ of the seventeenth century found its apex in a broad intellectual debate that, in the context of European culture, had long been conducted on the theme of the ‘Platonism of the Fathers.’ This debate, as Martin Muslow clearly demonstrated, also played a significant role in the genesis of some central ideas of modern philosophy3 and its principal objective as early as the sixteenth century was to conduct a radical critique of the great tradition of ‘Christian Platonism’ and of its renewal in Renaissance cul-

1 Cf. D. Bartoli, Della vita di Roberto cardinal Bellarmino (Nicolo Angelo Tinasso, 1778), 400–1. 2 As to a reconstruction of the history of modern ‘anti-Platonism,’ cf. E. Peroli, La trasparenza dell’io e l’abisso dell’anima. Sul rapporto tra Platonismo e Cristianesimo (Morcelliana, 2013), 11–51. 3 Cf. M. Muslow, Moderne aus dem Hintergrund. Radikale Früaufklärung in Deutschland 1680–1720 (Felix Meiner Verlag, 2002), 261–307 (“Die Destruktion des christlichen Platonismus”).

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ture.4 In the following decades, also because of changes in philosophical interests and the new importance Platonism was assuming in the panorama of Romanticism and German idealism, the modern ‘controversies’ on the ‘Platonism of the Fathers’ lost a great part of the contentious impetus that had characterized the discussion in the preceding centuries. However, the latter was rekindled in a new form toward the end of the 1800’s when, following the publication of Adolph von Hanrnack’s monumental Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte,5 the modern history of dogmas developed in the heart of Protestant theology. This made the ‘Hellenization of Christianity’ the general interpretative principle of the entire development of Christian doctrine, thus assigning to the debate of the early 1900’s a theme that has long remained at the center of theological reflection and has in many ways also characterized scholarship in patristics through the entire 1900’s.6 1.2. The centuries-old controversies on the phenomenon of ‘Christian Platonism’ and the debate on the ‘Hellenization of Christianity’ that developed within the modern history of dogmas also constituted the implicit and explicit background of the most significant studies that, starting in the first half of the last century, have been dedicated to the figure and work of Gregory of Nyssa. As Heinrich Dörrie rightly noted, Gregory, a fourth-century Greek theologian deeply engaged in studying Greek philosophy, was the only one of his generation “who was in the position of developing a productive synthesis between that which had been handed down from antiquity and the Christian patrimony.”7 In developing this synthesis, Gregory explores the tradition of contemporary Neoplatonism, of Plotinus and,

4 Cf. S. Matton, “Quelques figures del l’antiplatonisme de la Renaissance a l’Age Classique,” in Le Platonisme Dévoilé, 2 vols., (ed.) M. Dixsaut (Vrin, 1993), I, 357– 413; W. Schmidt-Biggemann, “Die philologische Zersetzung des christlichen Platonismus am Beispiel der Trinitätstheologie,” in Philologie und Erkenntnis. Beiträge zu Begriff und Problem frühneuzeitlicher Philologie, (ed.) R. Häfner (Mohr, 2001), 265–301. 5 J. Mohr published the first edition, in three volumes, between 1886 and 1890. 6 On this, see M. Simonetti, “La teologia dei Padri,” in La teologia del XX secolo. Un bilancio, (edd.) G. Canobbio and P. Coda (Città Nuova, 2003), 359–89 (cf. 367 ff. about the patristc studies and the question of the ‘Hellenization of Christianity’); cf., in the same book, A. Di Berardino, “Lo sviluppo degli studi patristici,” 327–57. See also E. Peroli, “La trasparenza dell’io,” 105–21 (Appendix II: Sulla scala di Giacobbe. La teologia e la riscoperta dei Padri). 7 H. Dörrie, “Gregors Theologie auf dem Hintergrunde der Neuplatonischen Metaphysik,” in: Gregor von Nyssa und die Philosophie, (edd.) M. Altenburger and U. Schramm (Brill, 1976), 23.

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concerning the Latin West, of Porphyry: for Gregory, this tradition, which was the confluence of many elements of the preceding philosophy, constitutes the hellenikè sophía, the philosophy of the Greeks. He has broad knowledge of this philosophy and of the scientific culture of his time, as has been ascertained in many aspects by inquiries into the philosophical sources he used.8 Certainly, in this case as well, exploration of the relationship between Christian theology and Greek philosophy cannot amount to simply noting concurrences. For, as Herman Langerbeck rightly observed at the end of the 1950’s, “to explain the problem of Christianity or philosophy (or also Christianity and philosophy), a simple registration of the ‘influences’ that first emerge offers merely the observation that here we are in the presence of a problem of primary importance. To move beyond, one must seriously face the objective problem.”9 In the scholarship surrounding Gregory of Nyssa, this ‘objective problem,’ defined as the evaluation of the role that the philosophy of his time effectively played in Gregory’s elaboration of his thought, has been the object of a broad debate in which, once

8 Cf., for example, P. Courcelle, “Grégoire de Nysse lecteur de Porphyre,” Revue des Études Grecques, 80 (1967), 402–6; J. Daniélou, “Grégoire de Nysse et le Néoplatonisme de l'école d'Athènes,” Revue des Études Grecques, 80 (1967), 395–401; idem, “Grégoire de Nysse et Plotin,” in Association Budé. Actes du Congrés de Tours et Poitiers 1953 (Les Belles Lettres, 1958), 259–62; idem, “Grégoire de Nysse et la philosophie,” in: Gregor von Nysse und die Philosophie, op. cit., 3–18; idem, “Plotin et Grégoire de Nysse sur le mal,” in Plotino e il Neoplatonismo in Oriente e in Occidente (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1974), 485–94; A. Meredith, “Gregory of Nyssa and Plotinus,” Studia Patristica, 17 (1982), 1120–26; J. Pépin, “Image d'image,” “Miroir de miroir” (Grégoire de Nysse, De hominis opificio [De hom.op.], 161 C—164 B) in Platonism in Late Antiquity, (ed.) S. Gersh and Ch. Kannengiesser (University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 217–29. E. Peroli, Il Platonismo e l’antropologia filosofica di Gregorio di Nissa, introduzione di C. Moreschini (Vita e Pensiero, 1993); idem, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Neoplatonic Doctrine of the Soul,” Vigiliae Christianae, 51 (1997), 117–39; M. Heath, “Echoes of Longinus in Gregory of Nyssa,” Vigiliae Christianae, 53 (1999), 395–400; J. Rist, “On the Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa,” Hermathena, 169 (2000), 129–51; C. Moreschini, Storia della filosofia patristica (Morcelliana, 2004), 571 ff.; S. Lilla, Neuplatonisches Gedankengut in den “Homelien über Seligpreisungen” Gregors von Nyssa (Brill, 2004). See also T. Böhm, Theoria, Unendlichkeit, Aufstieg. Philosophische Implikationen zu De Vita Moysis von Gregor von Nyssa (Brill, 1996), esp. 150 ff.; H. Drobner, “Gregory of Nyssa as philosopher,” Dionysius, 18 (2000), 69–102; D. Iozzia, Filosofia emendata. Elementi connessi al Neoplatonismo nell’esegesi esamerale di Gregorio di Nissa, (Bonanno, 2006); I. Ramelli, “Il Platonismo nella patristica, nel De anima e nelle altre opere del Nisseno,” in Gregorio di Nissa, Sull’anima e la resurrezione, (ed.) I. Ramelli (Bompiani, 2007), 959–1151. 9 H. Langerbeck, “Zur Interpretation Grgor von Nyssa,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, 82 (1957), 81–90, 84.

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again, the ancient ‘controversies’ on the ‘Platonism of the Fathers’ are often re-proposed in new forms. Perhaps the most significant example of this is The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa, published in 1930 by the great American scholar of ancient philosophy, Harold Cherniss.10 According to Cherniss, Gregory was an author who, more than any other, saw in Platonism “the instrument through which a Christian philosophy could be built” (64). To his mind, this Platonism was found, first, in the dialogues of Plato which, according to an opinion of the time, Gregory knew directly. However, Cherniss rightly draws attention to the bonds Gregory had with the philosophical tradition of his time, with middle Platonism (33 ff.), above all through Philo of Alexandria and Origen, and with the Neoplatonism of Plotinus (49 ff.). Cherniss also sees in this tradition the source of the Stoic elements that recur frequently in the work of Gregory (38 ff.). In disagreement with Karl Gronau, who a few decades before had supposed an influence of Posidonius on Gregory,11 Cherniss maintains that Gregory’s broad knowledge of Platonism and his wide use of it to build “foundational lines for his philosophy” made of him the “most learned and cultivated thinker of the Church” (63), a thinker who was actually more Platonic than Christian. In Cherniss’ words: “So at the end it seems that, but for some few orthodox dogmas he could not circumvent, Gregory has merely applied Christian names to Plato’s doctrine and called it Christian theology” (62). Precisely these few Christian dogmas, to which Gregory adhered with his personal faith, constituted for Cherniss the limit of his thought, inasmuch as Gregory sacrificed his intellectual coherence for them, driven by the “fear of heterodoxy” and by an attitude of political opportunism that Cherniss attributed to the unresolved character of his personality (63). Beyond these psychological references to the ‘character of the man, Gregory, based on a partial reading of his correspondence as rightly pointed out by Walther Völker,12 it is important to note that the assumption grounding Cherniss’ interpretation is not actually different from that of Harnack a few decades before. Nor is that assumption different from the one Heinrich Dörrie would espouse later—even though the conclusions of

10 H. Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa (University of California Press, 1930) (repr. by B. Franklin, 1971). From now on I refer to the pages of the 1930 edition. 11 K. Gronau, De Basilio, Gregorio Nazianzeno Nyssenoque Platonis imitatoribus (Westermann, 1908); idem, Poseidonios und die jüdisch-christliche Genesisexegese (Teubner, 1914), 244 ff. 12 Cf. W. Völker, Gregor von Nyssa als Mystiker (Franz Steiner Verlag, 1955), 14, n. 3.

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the American scholar would be diametrically opposed to those of his German colleagues since, according to him, it was the coherence of Gregory’s Platonism which was ‘corrupted’ by his Christianity. In fact, Cherniss also starts from the assumption, explained systematically in the opening of his book, that adherence to the Christian faith and the exercise of philosophical reason constitute two radically “incompatible” positions that are each other’s “natural enemy” (1). The limit of Gregory in this sense was that he “tried to walk with both in opposite directions” (63). For this reason, he was at once “the most acute thinker of the Church” because of his Platonic philosophical culture, and “so perverse a thinker in drawing his conclusions,” that is, in trying to place his Platonism at the service of Christian theology (64). In the context of later research, Cherniss’ position remained almost entirely isolated; at the end of the 1980s it was taken up again only by Charalambos Apostoloupolos, in an ample volume dedicated to De anima et resurrectione. According to Apostoloupolos, Gregory used the formulas of Christian theology only as a “mask” to evade accusations of heresy circulating in the ecclesiastical sphere after the Origenist crisis, or as an exterior sheathing “so that the audacity of his thought would not seem too scandalous to some listeners of his time.”13 This exception aside, the ‘GregorRenaissance’ that began in the middle of the last century moved along an entirely different line of interpretation. Although Gregory continued to be seen as the creator of a magnificent synthesis between Hellenism and Christianity, able to bring to life in a new form of the Greek ideal of paideia and to transmit it to the tradition of European humanism (Werner Jaeger),14 the principle intent of the research was to cast light on “a completely different Gregory.”15 In this sense, he was viewed as a great theologian who elaborated an entirely autonomous Christian reflection (Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jacques Daniélou)16 and as the mystic of the spiritual life whose essential core was his religious sentiment rather than his specu13 C. Apostoloupolos, Phaedo Christianus. Studien zur Verbindung und Abwägung des Verhältnisses zwischen dem platonischen “Phaidon” und dem Dialog Gregor von Nyssa “Über die Seele und die Auferstehung” (Peter Lang, 1986), 10, 125–40. 14 Cf. W. Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961), 105 ff. 15 Cf. G. May, “Gregor von Nyssa,” in Klassiker der Theologie, (edd.) H. Fries and G. Kretschmar (Beck, 1981) vol. 1, 91 ff. 16 H. von Balthasar, Présence et Pensée. Essai sur la philosophie religieuse de Grégoire de Nysse (Beauchesne, 1942); J. Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie mystique. Essai sur la doctrine spirituelle de S. Grégoire de Nysse (Aubier, 1944); nouvelle édition revue et augmentée (Aubier, 1954).

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lative statements, which represented only the surface of his thought (Walther Völker).17 In this context, there was often an effort to prevent possible accusations of ‘Hellenization’ by reducing the meeting of Gregory’s thought and the philosophy of his time to a merely “formal” and “exterior” reception of images, concepts, and metaphors, as if beyond this “color platonicus” no original philosophical content played a significant role in his theology.18 This interpretation has not been without its critics. In the 1970s, questioning the classic works of Völker and Daniélou on this point, Hermann Langerbeck and Ekkehard Mühlenberg rightly pointed out that this type of approach risked falling into an excessive “polemical simplification”19 that actually sought to “too easily dispose of the complex problem of the relationship of Christianity and Greek philosophy.”20 In effect, this relationship constitutes a fundamental component of the thought of Gregory of Nyssa; in this sense, I have sought in other writings to show in detail how his work of comparison with the philosophy of his time influenced

17 Cf. W. Völker, Gregor von Nyssa als Mystiker, 20 ff. The same thesis was supported by Völker in his book on Clement of Alexandria: Der wahre Gnostiker nach Clemens Alexandrinus (Akademie Verlag, 1952), 8 ff., 14 ff., 352 ff. For criticism of this interpretation, cf. S. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria. A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism (Oxford University Press, 1971), 2 ff. 18 Cf. J. Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie mystique, 9 ff., 164: “La coloration la plus extérieure en est platonicienne, plus profondement le rêvetement en est biblique, mais sous ces vêtements symboliques, c’est la figure de l’apôtre chrétien.”; and H. Dörrie, Gregors Theologie, 37: “the often abused formula “Christian Platonism” can be applied only on non-essential elements of his thought.” Similarly, according to M. von Stritzky, Zum Problem der Erkenntnis bei Gregor von Nyssa (Aschendorff, 1973), 25 ff., the philosophical terms used by Gregory are only an exterior “skeleton,” exploited as a mean of communication, whereas the content expressed through such a language is totally different. The same thesis is found in C. Stead, “Ontologie und Terminologie bei Gregor von Nyssa,” in Gregor von Nyssa und die Philosophie, 107–27, esp. 107–8. Cf. also M. Harl, “Réferences philosophiques et réferences bibliques du langage de Grégoire de Nysse dan ses Orationes in Canticum canticorum,” in EPMHNEYMATA. Festschrift für Hadwig Hörner, (ed.) H. Eisenberger (C. Winter, 1990), 117–31: what we are used to regarding as philosophical terms and concepts coming from the Neoplatonic tradition in Gregory, are only “des symboles du mystère chrétien” (131); and the same interpretation is supported by H. Meissner, Rhetorik und Theologie. Der Dialog Gregor von Nyssa De Anima et Resurrectione (Peter Lang: 1991), 15 ff. 19 H. Langerbeck, Zur Interpretation Gregor von Nyssa, 82. 20 E. Mühlenberg, Die Unendlichkeit Gottes bei Gregor von Nyssa. Gregors Kritik am Gottesbegriff der klassischen Metaphysik, (ed.) E. Mühlenberg (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), 25.

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the conceptual elaboration and argumentative clarification of certain central themes and contents of his reflection. I have also described how he was able to profoundly transform some of the structural concepts of Greek metaphysics and insert them into a new and different context.21 However, in this transformation, Gregory did not reduce the philosophical thought he examined into a mere ‘accidental superstructure,’ much less into an ‘apologist sham,’ according to the main thesis of Heinrich Dörrie. Rather, it remained an essential element of Gregory’s theology that, in many ways, was made possible precisely through this complex dialectic of reception and transformation. The task that I take in hand in the following pages is to address anew the ‘vexata quaestio’ of ‘Christian Platonism,’ seeking to show in what sense this dialectical relationship represents a fundamental element within the thought of Gregory of Nyssa. To do so, among the many spheres of inquiry that could be taken into consideration, I will examine some aspects of his spiritual theology.

II. PHILOSOPHY The theoria, the contemplation that leads to happiness, does not consist in an accumulation of reasoning, nor in a mass of knowledge learned, as one could believe. It is not built piece by piece. The quantity of reasonings does not make it progress … If happiness were obtained by receiving discourses, in fact it would be possible to attain it without worrying about choosing one’s food or doing certain actions. But since it is necessary to change our current life with another life, purifying ourselves at the same time with discourses and with actions, let us examine which discourses and which actions predispose us to this life.22

21 I have sought to show this with regard to Gregory of Nyssa’s anthropology and several issues related to it. Concerning his doctrine of soul, see E. Peroli, Il Platonismo e l’antropologia filosofica di Gregorio di Nissa, op. cit., and idem, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Neoplatonic Doctrine of the Soul,” Vigiliae Christianae, 51, 1997, 117–39. For specific study of Gregory’s trinitarian doctrine, cf. E. Peroli, “L'essere e il tempo. Filosofia e teologia in Gregorio di Nissa,” in Identità cristiana e filosofia, (ed.) G. Ferretti (Rosenberg & Sellier, 2002), 77–96; and idem, “Filosofia della Trinità. Sulla «ellenizzazione» del cristianesimo,” in Filosofia e religione, (edd.) V. Cesarone, F. P. Ciglia and O. Tolone (Edizioni ETS, 2012), 163–76. 22 Porphyry, De abstinentia (De abst.), vol. 1, 29, 1–6.

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In this text (De abst.) by Porphyry one can grasp an essential aspect of ancient philosophy: the idea that the activity of philosophical reflection must always be inseparable from a certain form of existence. Philosophical discourse must be animated by life and transformed into a way of life; otherwise ‘philosophy’ degrades into ‘philology,’ from the love of wisdom to a love of words.23 When, starting in the second century, Christian authors began presenting the Christian religion as a philosophy or as the philosophy—the “vera et germana philosophia”24—there was certainly the idea that Christianity, possessing that complete revelation of the Logos of which the Greeks only possessed fragments, brought to fulfilment the efforts Greek philosophers had made in the search for truth.25 But this is only one aspect of the question. For if Christianity could present itself as philosophy, to the extent that authors like Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa described the monastic life as philosophia,26 it was because this term not only indicated a complex of doctrines or a certain vision of reality but also a way of being and a form of existence.27 As Porphyry had observed, this was a way of life according to the most elevated part of ourselves—according to the spirit and logos.28 However, living according to logos is also the meaning of Christian “philosophy,”29 to the point that according to Justin “those who before Christ led a life guided by the logos are Christians, even though they are considered atheists like Socrates, Heraclitus and their kind.”30 Using the term philosophia to indicate the ideal of Christian life, Christian authors were led to view this ideal according to the universe of values,

23 Cf. Seneca, “Epistula ad Lucilium,” 128.3; on this, see J. Pépin, “Philologos/ Philosophos,” in Porphyre. La vie de Plotin, (ed.) L. Brisson (Vrin, 1992), vol. 2, 477 ff. 24 Augustine, Contra Acadmicos, 3.9, 19, 42; cf. also De ordine, 2.5, 16; De Trinitate, 13.9, 24. 25 Cf. Justin, Apologia (Apol.), 2.8, 1; 2.13, 3. In this sense, cf. the image used by Gregory of Nyssa in De Vita Moysis (De Vita Moys.), VII/ 1, 36, 10 ff., where philosophy is compared with a pregnant woman who, however, is not able to give birth. 26 Cf., for example, Gregory of Nyssa, De instituto Christiano, Gregorii Nysseni Opera (GNO) (Brill, 1952), VIII/1, 62, 5; 64, 8, and W. Jaeger’s note, app. crit. 41; De Virginitate (Virg.) GNO VIII/1, 284, 20; 333, 30. 27 Cf. J. Leclerq, “Pour l'histoire de l'expression philosophie chrétienne,” Mélanges de Science Religieuse, IX (1952), 221 ff.; see also J-L. Solère, “La philosophie des théologiens,” in La servante et la consolatrice. La philosophie dans ses rapports avec la théologie au Moyen Âge, (edd.) J.-L. Solère et Z. Kaluza (Vrin 2002), 1–44, esp. 7 ff. 28 Porphyry, De abst., 1.29, 4. 29 Cf. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 12.52, 3. 30 Justin, Apol., 1.46, 3.

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categories, attitudes and “spiritual exercises” that characterized Greek philosophy. At the time of Gregory, this complex of motifs, drawn for the most part from Aristotelian and Stoic ethics, and from the ancient Academy, had for some time been taken up again and systematized in middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. Moreover, it had been inserted into the context of a vision of the world and of man that, in conformity with the metaphysical conception of the Platonic tradition, was characterized by a clear orientation toward transcendence,31 which promoted its broad reception by Christian authors. But in this case as well, adhering to this vision of reality was not the simple option for a theoretical perspective; on the other hand, the idea of an indissoluble union between knowledge and virtue was always one of the essential characteristics of Platonism: there is no knowledge except in the existential orientation toward the Good. For this reason, in the Platonic tradition, the movement of philosophical reflection was never conceived abstractly in and of itself, but was always seen also as a means of interior transformation, in other words, as a means for ‘conversion.’ For example, one of the basic concepts of Plotinus was that philosophical inquiry into the divine foundations of reality entails a particular form of existence, the final goal of which was, according to the image of Ulysses, man’s return to his true “homeland,” to the “place” that conforms to his essence, that is, to the Intellect and to the One.32 This return is realized through the journey of philosophy, which, together with the strictly connected practice of the virtues, leads the soul to exercise fully that spiritual activity (logos, nous) in conformity to its essence that draws it closer and assimilates it to the divine, enabling it to live its own life. But that which is similar to God cannot fade: for this reason, since philosophy makes it possible to reach homoiosis theoi, it is the authentic fulfilment and salvation (soteria) of the true substance of man, of his intellectual substance33—which has always conferred on Platonic philosophy the pro-

31 On this, cf. H. Dörrie, “Der Platonismus in der Kultur und Geistesgeschichte der frühen Kaiserzeit,” in his Platonica minora (Beck, 1974), 174 ff. 32 Cf. Plotinus, I.6 [1], 8, 16 ff.; V.9 [5], 1, 20–2. Concerning the metaphor of ‘Ulysses,’ cf. J. Pépin, “The Platonic and Christian Ulysses,” in Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, (ed.) D. O'Meara (International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 1982), 234 ff.; E. Gritti, “Salvezza dell’anima e “ritorno in patria”: Plotino e le metafore della soteria,” in Pagani e cristiani alla ricerca della salvezza (secoli I-III) (Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2006), 429–47. 33 As to the soteriological elements present in the Platonism of the imperial age, cf. H. Dörrie, “Was ist spätantiker Platonismus?” in his Platonica minora, op. cit., 515 ff.

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found eschatological motivation for Christian authors to draw close to Platonism. This ideal of philosophical knowledge, the unity of thought and life founded in it and required by it, represents one of the reasons why this form of metaphysics has prevailed in different historical and spiritual contexts. Indeed, the aforementioned ideal has been conserved and identified as an essential aspect of the Platonic heritage. Accordingly, the conception of philosophy as a way that leads man to homoiosis theoi was originally formulated by Plato in the Theaetetus (Tht.) (176 A-B), in one of those texts that has always constituted the stable “fundus” upon which later philosophical tradition, both pagan and Christian, have drawn.34 Gregory himself often referred to it and usually, as in De oratione dominica, quoting the Platonic passage in the re-elaboration Plotinus had given it in the third treatise of the first Ennead.35 In this text within Tht., which represents the locus classicus of the Platonic telos of man, Gregory could find the formulation of the ideal of Christian life itself, the perfection toward which spiritual and ascetic life must tend through the practice of the evangelical councils and the imitation of Christ. In fact, the purpose of “true philosophy” consists in leading man to re-acquire that original similarity to God he was endowed with through creation and then lost through sin.36 For this reason, in describing the spiritual itinerary that must lead to this telos of the Christian life, Gregory is led to use the complex of categories characteristic of Platonic philosophy and in particular, to take up, often literally, a series of motifs of thought and of images present in Plotinus’ Enneads.37 Yet precisely in this sphere, in the context of his spiritual theology, we can observe how Gregory profoundly transformed, in a Christian sense, the conceptual universe he received.

34 As to the wide diffusion of the homoiosis theoi doctrine within the Platonic tradition, cf. H. Dörrie, “Der Platoniker Eudoros von Alexandreia,” in his Platonica minora, op. cit., 297–309; with regard to the Christian tradition, cf. H. Merki, OMOIOSIS THEOI. Von der platonischen Angleichung an Gott zur Gottähnlichkeit bei Gregor von Nyssa (Paulisdruckerei, 1952), 92–165. 35 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Or. dom., 1145 A, and Plotinus, I.2 [20], 1, 1–6. 36 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, De Professione Christiana (Prof.), GNO VIII/1, 132, 10 ff. 37 On this, cf. E. Peroli, Il Platonismo e l’antropologia filosofica di Gregorio di Nissa, op. cit., 254 ff., 274 ff.

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III. THE ONTOLOGY OF FINITENESS 3.1. In the first of his Homilies on the Song of Songs, Gregory divides the books of Solomon according to the different ages of the spiritual life, that is, the different stages the soul must travel to reach homoiosis theoi and the contemplation of the invisible beauty of God.38 This division of the books of Solomon had already been elaborated by Origen, who had distinguished three moments in the soul’s ascent to God—ethiké, physiké and theoriké—and related to these three roads the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiasticus and The Song of Songs, respectively.39 In this way, Origen proposed a “spiritual reading” of the books of the Old Testament, for which he could certainly find a model in the exegetic praxis used by contemporary philosophical schools such as the Platonists.40 In fact, for some time the latter had been used towards ordering Plato’s dialogues according to a sequence of reading that corresponded to the steps of spiritual ascent. Similarly, the three moments of this ascent distinguished by Origen corresponded to the three parts of the philosophy that enjoyed great favor in the Platonic school, at least from the time of Plutarch.41 Gregory returns again to this articulation of the different moments of spiritual ascent in De Vita Moys., where he says that one reaches the “superior life,” or “true philosophy”42 that leads to contemplation of intelligible realities (tòn noetòn theoría)43 through moral philosophy and the philosophy of nature (ethikè kaì physikè philosophía).44 The task of the latter is to lead the soul from the knowledge of perceptible phenomena to the knowledge of intelligible realities.45 In fact, it “habituates the soul to look at what is hidden,”46 inasmuch as it teaches that all perceptible realities are born, die, and become and therefore do not exist except in virtue of the true being of God who created them. The goal of the ethical life, therefore, consists in a progressive purification (katharsis) from the bonds of the

38 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum canticorum (Cant.), GNO VI, 17, 5 ff. 39 Cf. Origen, Commenatius in Canticum, prol. 3, 1–23. 40 On this, cf. P. Hadot, “Théologie, exégese, révélation, écriture dans la philosophie grecque,” in Les régles de l’interpretation, (ed.) M. Tardieu (Vrin, 1987), 13–34. 41 On this, cf. P. Hadot, “Les divisions des parties de la philosophie dans l’Antiquité,” Museum Helveticum, 36 (1978), 201–23, esp. 218 ff.; repr. in idem, Études de philosophie ancienne (Les Belles Lettres, 1998), 125–58, esp. 145 ff. 42 Cf. De Vita Moys., 138, 15 ff. 43 De Vita Moys., 83, 5 ff. 44 Ibid., 43, 20 ff.; cf. 103, 1 ff. 45 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, In Ecclesiasten homiliae (Eccl.), GNO V, 248, 12 ff. 46 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Cant., 322, 18.

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body. Citing Gn 3.21, Gregory calls the latter the “tunics of skin,”47 or heavy animal corporeality and the pathe related to it that clothed man after the fall and, by contrast, purification leads to the “light and airy tunics” which will clothe the spiritual body at the resurrection. In this sense, in line with a traditional idea of pagan culture, philosophy must be understood as a “therapeutics of the passions.”48 It must direct man to an authentic knowledge of himself,49 to what is proper and specific to his nature, so that, freeing himself progressively from that complex of appetites and desires that are extraneous to his true essence, he may orient himself toward the most elevated part of himself, viz. the intellectual and spiritual nature (logos, nous) of his soul.50 According to the classical framework of the different degrees of virtue, re-employed and systemized in Neoplatonism, this “care of the soul” (tès psychès iatriké: Virg., 335, 28) is achieved first of all through metriopatheia, viz. by reason’s domination of the passions.51 Moreover, the apex of this consists in the complete eradication of the passions, that apatheia whose goal, according to Gregory, as well as Plotinus and Porphyry, is homoiosis theoi.52

47 On the “tunics of skin,” cf. J. Daniélou, Platonisme, op. cit., 48–60. 48 Gregory of Nyssa, Virg., 335, 27–9. 49 Cf. Cant., 63, 18–64, 8. The same idea (gnóthi seautón) is found in De mortuis oratio (Mort.), GNO IX, 40, 1 ff. 50 In fact, according to Gregory, the different irrational powers of the soul (epithymetikón, thymoeidés=álogon), which pathe are connected with, are extraneous to its true nature (cf. De anima et resurrectione [De an.], Patrologiae cursus completus, accurantae J.P. Migne, series graeca [PG] 46, 49 B—56 C; De hominis opificio [De hom. op.], PG 44, 189 C ff.). For what is proper to the true essence of the soul is nous (De hom. op., 176 B; cf. De an., 57 B-C), since on nous its original resemblance to God is grounded: De an., 90 C; Antirrhecticus adverus Apolinarium (Adv. Apol.), GNO III/1, 146, 25 ff. 51 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, De beatitudinis (Beat.), PG 44, 1216 A-B; Or. dom., 1168 D; De Vita. Moys., 62, 25–63, 5; De an., 61 B; Virg., 332, 10–16. 52 Cf. Plotinus, I.2 [19], 3, 1 ff.; Porphyry, Sententiae, 32, 25, 8–9. For Gregory apatheia is the distinctive characteristic of the perfect life (bios makarios): Cant., 30, 5 ff.; 90, 20 ff.; 135, 1 ff.; Eccl., 372, 15 ff. It will be achieved by man only when he will return to the angelic life lost because of sin; however, it is partly achievable by the “perfects” in this life, and virginity is the most adequate anticipation of it: cf. J. Daniélou, Platonisme, op. cit., 92–103; W. Völker, Gregor von Nyssa als Mystiker, 224 ff.; R. Williams, “Macrina’s Deathbed Revisited: Gregory of Nyssa on Mind and Passion,” in Christian faith and Greek Philosophy in Late Antiquity. Essays in Tribute to G.C. Stead, (edd.) L. Wickham and C. Bammel (Brill, 1993), 227–46; and R. Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind. From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Clarendon Press, 2000), 391 ff.

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Therefore, for Gregory, as for Neoplatonism, the spiritual journey that must lead man to find his original resemblance to God consists above all in the soul’s return to itself. “The divine Good,” in fact, “is not separate from our nature, nor is it far from those who intend to find it, but is always in each of us: hidden and unknown when it is suffocated by the worries and pleasures of life, but recognized when our thought turns to it.”53 At the same time, this turning means a turning toward the interiority of our soul through purification from all that is extraneous to its essence, superimposed on it because of sin, obscuring its original beauty.54 In the context of this conception, Gregory can draw upon a series of Neoplatonic images. Hence, the soul must travel inversely the steps that led her away from her resemblance to God and therefore, through katharsis, strip off the “tunics” worn in the descent55—exterior and interior tunics, that indicate, as Gregory asserts, the thoughts of the flesh, that is, the passions.56 Likewise, (i) the sculptor, who forms a statue to resemble the model, gradually scraping away all that is superfluous in the stone,57 and (ii) the mire (bórboros) and mud (pelós), in which the soul has fallen and that obscures its original beauty so that it must now wash and purify itself from all extraneousness (allótrion) added to its true nature.58 As in Plotinus, this katharsis was conceived as a process of radical simplification and unification, in virtue of which the soul rediscovers its original condition of resemblance to God. In Gregory’s words: “The soul, when it becomes simple (haplé) and unique in form (monoeidés) and exactly similar to God (theoeíkelos), finds the good that is truly simple and immaterial, the good that is truly worthy of being loved.”59 The purified eye (ofthalmòs katharós) of the soul is therefore, as it says in Cant., the perfectly unified eye, through which the soul, since only the similar knows the similar, is able to contemplate true reality, the being

53 54 55 56 57

Gregory of Nyssa, Virg., 300, 10 ff. Cf. Virg., 302, 5–35. Cf. Plotinus, I.6 [1], 7, 1–11. Cf. Porphyry, De abst., 1. 30, 5; 1. 31, 3 ff. Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, In incscriptiones Psalmorum (Inscr. Ps.), GNO V, 116, 14–25, and Plotinus, I.6 [1], 9, 6–11. 58 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Virg., 300, 5 ff., and Plotinus, I.6 [1], 5, 40–5. On these two texts, cf. J. Daniélou, Grégoire de Nysse et Plotin, op. cit., 259–62; and M. Aubineau, “Le théme du bourbier dans la littérature grecque profane et chrétienne,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 47 (1959), 185–214. 59 Gregory of Nyssa, De an., 93 C.

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that is unique (tò hén): δι'οὗ μόνου θεωρεῖ τὸν μόνον,60 analogous to the Plotinian φυγὴ μόνου πρὸς μόνον.61 However, precisely here in reference to the metaphysical foundation of the Neoplatonic conception of homoiosis theoi, the effective epanorthosis intervenes, the profound correction and transformation in the Christian sense that Gregory of Nyssa introduces in an entirely deliberate way. In fact, for Gregory this unification of our self, to which the spiritual life tends, is a task that causes man to experience his radical powerlessness. In the ultimate analysis, this powerlessness derives from the unavoidably temporal character of the created spirit that Gregory expressed in the concept of diástema.62 This notion of diástema, however, is originally Plotinian. As Gregory had interpreted it, it indicated for Plotinus the inner division of the soul (diástasis zoés) that sets up the conditions for temporality.63 However, for Plotinus this diástasis, that coincides with the proceeding of the soul outside Nous, is already mediated, and thus reconciled and overcome; in fact, the soul is an “unextended extension” (diástema adiástaton) of the divine Intellect64 which, notwithstanding its transcendence, is always actively present in it, operating as the unitary and unifying foundation of its being and action. According to Plotinus, however, we are not normally aware of this presence, so that the divine Intellect can be paradoxically defined as “ours and not ours at the same time.”65 For this reason, the preliminary and central task of philosophy is to lead man to become aware of Nous as actively

60 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Cant., 257, 11 ff. 61 Plotinus, VI.9 [9], 11, 51. 62 The notion of diastema is one of the basic themes of Gregorian thought; it is used by Gregory to denote the infinite distance that divides the whole creation, sensible and intelligible, from the infinite God. For only in relation to God is any diastasis excluded (cf., for example, Contra Eunomium libri, I et II; III [Eun.], GNO II, 226, 23–9; GNO I, 129, 1–28; 246, 23–247, 4). In such a way, the diastema does not express only the the space-time dimension of the things; it is an ontological concept which indicates the “finitudo” of every being qua created (cf. Eccl., 411, 6: τὸ διάστημα οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἤ κτίσις ἐστίν). On the Gregorian notion of diastema, cf. P. Zemp, Die Grundlagen heilsgeschichtlichen Denkens bei Gregor von Nyssa (Ueber, 1970), 63 ff.; P. Verghese, “Diastema and Diastasis in Gregor of Nyssa,” in Gregor von Nyssa und die Philosophie, (edd.) H. Dörrie, M. Altenburgher, U. Schramm (Brill, 1997), 243–60. 63 Cf. Plotinus, III.7 [45], 11, 5 ff. 64 Plotinus, IV.4 [28], 16, 22. 65 Cf. Plotinus, I.1 [53], 13.5 ff.; V.3 [49], 5, 26. See H.-R. Schwyzer, “Bewusst” und “Unbewusst” bei Plotin,” in Les Sources de Plotin, “Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique,” Tome V (Fondation Hardt, 1960), 343–78.

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present in him, so that he can realize that the Intellect is his true Self,66 is the ‘inner man,’ according to the Platonic locution. This Neoplatonic ‘itinerarium mentis in deum’ starts from analysis of the various powers of the soul, in order to point out their knowing capacities and their conditions of possibility. The starting point for such an analysis is aisthesis, the power characteristic of our empirical Self, connected with the body and the world. For aisthesis is that form of knowledge by which we are turned to the outside, “to external things.”67 The first step of philosophical investigation is to show that this our looking outward is actually possible only by an act arising from the inside of our soul. In this sense, Plotinus explains that sense-perceptions cannot be reduced to a mere passive receiving affections coming from external things: “we say”—Plotinus writes—“that senseperceptions are not affections (pathe), but activities (energheiai) and judgments concerned with affections.”68 Such an active feature of sense-perceptions comes out from two points of view: firstly, in sense-organs a dynamis diakritiké is present, in virtue of which they are able to make a discrimination of the external-data, and each of them can perceive its respective quality and distinguish its differences.69 Moreover, single sense-data are then synthesized in the unitary image of the thing, so that this latter can be identified by the judgment of perception. This unifying activity of the soul is performed by our dia-noia, by our discursive reason, which is actively present in sense-perceptions. According to the Neoplatonic view, however, what makes such a unifying activity of reason possible are the intelligible Forms of things it receives from the divine Intellect.70 They are, as Plotinus says, “the letters written in us by Intellect like laws of our thought,” like kanónes or ‘a priori’ rules of our judgment, by means of which we unify our sense-data.71 It is only this activity of our dianoia, mediating between aisthesis and Nous, that makes the external objects visible, makes them appear

66 Cf. G. O'Daly, Plotinus’ Philosophy of the Self (Irish University Press, 1973), esp. 20 ff.; P. Remes, Plotinus on Self. The Philosophy of “We” (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 23 ff. 67 Cf., for example, Plotinus, I.1 [53], 7, 12; IV.6 [41], 1, 18; 2, 21; V.3 [49], 2, 2–5. 68 Plotinus, III.6 [26], 1, 1–4; cf. also IV.3 [27], 26, 1–7; IV.4 [28], 19, 4–5; 22, 30–2; 23, 20 ff.; VI.1 [42], 20, 26–32; VI.4 [42], 6, 9–11. See also E. Emilsson, Plotinus on Sense-Perception (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 126 ff. 69 Cf. Plotinus, II.4 [12], 12, 29–32; II.8 [35], 1, 12–23; IV.6 [41], 2, 3–6; VI.3 [44], 17, 16 ff., 20–4. 70 On this and the Plotinian doctrine of knowledge, cf. E. Peroli, Dio, uomo e mondo. La tradizione etico-metafisica del Platonismo (Vita e Pensiero, 2003), 251–96. 71 Plotinus, V.3 [49], 4, 2–3; 4, 14; 3, 8. Cf. also I.6 [1], 3, 5 ff.; IV.6 [41], 3, 15 ff.; IV.9 [8], 3, 26 ff.; V.1 [10], 7, 37 ff.; 10, 10 ff.; VI.7 [38], 6, 3 ff.

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in the sphere of our experience as something distinct from the perceiving subject.72 On the other hand, however, we connect single things in unities which follow one another and which are related to each other in a causal way. This activity of discursive reason, closely associated with kinesis and diastasis, does not presuppose only the single ideal Forms. Rather, it presupposes, as a condition of unity and continuity of its temporal movement, the original unity in which all ideal Forms are included in the absolute thought of the divine Intellect.73 This is why in our rational activity we are always connected with the “partless completion” (télos amerés) of divine Nous, as Plotinus says,74 although we are not normally aware of this connection, as we have seen. By this first step of philosophical analysis a turning of the soul toward itself takes place; through it, our empirical Self finds out that it lives the life of Intellect; it understands that it is properly “dia-noetic,” namely that it thinks “through the Nous and from the Nous,” according to Plotinus’ words.75 This kind of knowledge, however, is only the starting-point of the spiritual ascent of the soul: in order to know ourselves, we must rise to that divine and transcendent Principle which is actively present in us, surpassing the activity of the rational soul and becoming, therefore, “an other man”, as Plotinus says.76 For our reason, as a power of judgment, in order to think, must always separate a “subject” and an “object,” so that, if the divine Intellect is described as nous amerés,77 the rational soul can be distinguished as nous merízon.78 In fact, even when we think ourselves, we can do it only by distinguishing between a subjective side and an objective side: as Plotinus writes, “even when our soul sees itself, it see itself as two and as another.”79 By means of our reason, we cannot therefore achieve that unity between “thinker” and “thought” which is the last end we aim at in every knowledge, that unity by virtue of which the subject can be “itself and in

72 Cf. Plotinus, IV.6 [41], 3, 16–18: it is the rational soul which “makes the objects of sense shine out by its power and brings them before its eyes.” 73 Cf., for example, Plotinus, IV.3 [27], 30, 12 ff.; V.1 [10], 11, 1–7.; V.3 [49], 4, 18–19; V.9 [5], 2, 20–2. 74 Plotinus, III.7 [45], 3, 19. 75 V.3 [49], 6, 20–2. 76 Cf. R. Bodëus, “L’Autre Homme de Plotin,” Phronesis, 3 (1983), 256–64. 77 Cf. Plotinus, II.9 [33], 17, 8; III.2 [47], 1, 26 ff.; 14, 15; III.7 [45], 3, 16–23; III.8 [30], 8, 30 ff.; V.3 [49] 3, 5, 7 ff.; 6, 7–8. 78 Cf. ibid., V.9 [5], 8, 21–2; see also VI.9 [8], 5, 8–10; 16–17. 79 Plotinus, IV.6 [41], 2, 22–4 (ἡ ψυχὴ δύο καὶ ὥς ἕτερον ὁρᾷ, νοῦς δέ ἕν καὶ ἄμφω τὰ δύο ἓν); cf. also V.3 [49], 5, 1.

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itself” (autò heautó).80 Therefore, in order to be fully in ourselves, we must overcome the division of Self which characterizes our reason and ascend to the divine Intellect. This means (V.3 [49], 4, 9 ff.) that with “the better part of the soul” (4, 13), that is with the intellect which is present in us (cf. 2, 14), we have to contemplate the Intellect itself, the divine Intellect, so that “it belongs to us and we belong to it” (4, 26). In this way, bringing back the intellect which is present in us to Intellect from which it derives, we “become altogether other” (4, 13), we become Intellect, and so we “we look ourselves with ourselves” (4, 30). As Plotinus says, we achieve that unity or identity with ourselves that is the aim of the spiritual ascent, coming back to the “peace” or to the “quiet” (hesychía) which is proper to the divine Intellect.81 3.2. As we have seen in the preceding pages, many Plotinian elements are present in the works of Gregory. For Gregory, too, the spiritual itinerary of ‘true philosophy’ consists in a transformation of our self in which, through interior conversion, we must gain knowledge of ourselves, see our true essence, and strip away all that is extraneous. However, for Gregory this return of man to himself does not lead to that safe sphere of interiority where he can be in possession of his self. Rather, it leads to the abyss of a subjectivity that is experienced as radically insufficient. The image of the abyss is often repeated in Gregory to describe the soul’s experience in the spiritual itinerary that must lead it to itself. This experience is compared to the bewilderment of a person on a mountain peak, on a smooth and steep crag, one side rising toward the infinite and the other suspended over a profound abyss.82 In the same way, the soul feels dizzy and lost because it finds nothing to grasp onto to transcend its finiteness and reach the Foundation of its being, that Infinite that rises above it, but is inaccessible. In fact, as he says in Beat., commenting on the words “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8), God “is like a slippery, steep rock that affords no basis for our thoughts. Moses, in his teachings, declared it is so inaccessible that our mind can nowhere approach it. For all possibility of apprehension is taken away by this explicit denial: “No man can see the Lord and live” (Es 33, 20). Yet, to see the Lord is eternal Life. On the other hand, those pillars of the faith, John and Paul and Moses, declare it to be impossible.”83 For this reason, the soul remains

80 81 82 83

Ibid.,V.3 [49], 4, 28. Cf., for example, III.7 [45], 12, 7 ff. Gregory of Nyssa, Beat., 1264 A ff. Ibid., 1264 A-B.

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suspended over the abyss: “Do you realize the vertigo of the soul that is drawn to the abyss contemplated in these words?” The experience of the abyss is the desperation that grips the soul “at not being able to contemplate He who she seeks,”84 that God whose contemplation is the very life of the soul, the truth of its being: “If God is life, those who do not see Him, do not possess life.”85 Gregory describes this desperation of the soul in Cant. where, interpreting the verse “The watchmen of the city came upon me as they made their rounds of the city. They struck me and wounded me,”86 he says that the soul which has come out by way of God’s word spoken to her, seeks the one it cannot find and calls the one who is unnameable with any name. In his words: I sought him, that is, through the strengths of the soul that are able to seek him … yet he always remained beyond everything, because he managed to flee every time the mind drew close to him ... For this reason, the soul excogitates all kind of names, in the effort to indicate that inexpressible good, but all discursive capacity of reasoning always remains overcome and declared inferior to the object that it seeks. Therefore, the soul experiences the profound fracture between its own desire of the Infinite and the finite opportunities it has at its disposal: it calls the Spouse “as it is able, but is not able as it wants. In fact, it wants more than it is able.”87 This dialectic suspended between desire and inability, through which the soul experiences its powerlessness, refers to that inner division of the creature that constitutes its inextricable being-in-time. Here we see a fundamental idea for Gregory, and one of the central motifs of his discussion with the philosophical tradition. In fact, according to the Neoplatonic view, beyond the perceptible world there is an intelligible sphere not subject to temporality, to which the soul originally belongs. For Gregory, instead, the diástema of time is the ontological character that determines the finiteness of the being qua created, and therefore encompasses the whole creation, both perceptible and intelligible.88 For this reason, Plotinus could conceive of the interior conversion and ascent of the soul toward the Intellect as a process of “de-temporalization” of thought in

84 Ibid., 1264 B. 85 Ibid., 1265 A. The same idea, connected with the temporal structure of the soul, and the same image is found in Gregory of Nyssa, Ecc., 414, 14–415, 10. 86 Cant., 5, 7. 87 Cant., 358, 17–18. 88 Cf. above, n. 62.

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which, arriving at identity with herself, the soul returns to the stability or tranquillity (hesychía) of the intelligible being.89 For Gregory, on the contrary, not even the kósmos noetós, the “pleroma of intelligibile creatures,” the hypercosmic sphere (hyperkósmios) of angelic natures, is alien to temporality. However, this is the sphere to which man originally belonged, in virtue of his spiritual nature (nous) or, put differently, in virtue of that element constituting his original resemblance to God. Moreover, it is the sphere to which he will return entirely when, in the final resurrection, all the spheres of spiritual creation separated by sin will be reunited—the human and the angelic—and in this way, according to the Plotinian image, the one “choir” of spiritual natures will be re-established.90 This return and ascent, however, given the inextricable temporal character that distinguishes the kósmos noetós, never means having statically reached a final point at which the spirit would attain a full identity with itself. In fact, in Gregory’s view, even the condition of beatitude does not consist in a stable and sure possession of the good. It does not consist, to put it in the terms of a Heideggerian interpretation of Augustine, in that visio of the bonum that, inasmuch as it is summum, would completely satisfy the desire of the soul, thus filling that restlessness that still characterizes her in her earthly existence, in her temporal condition.91 Even in beatitude the destiny of man remains a perpetual history; even the supreme condition of the created spirit’s perfection; and even the highest apex of its ascent to God, remains for Gregory always an eternal movement that never knows “stasis,” a striving without end, a finding that is a further search, an immobility that is a “kinesis.”92 In fact, for the created spirit, “the true enjoyment of the object desired means continual progress in the search and ascent without ceasing.”93

89 Cf. Plotinus, III.7 [45], 12, 10 ff.; on the “de-temporalization” of thought, see W. Beierwaltes, Plotin. Über Ewigkeit und Zeit, Enneade III 7 (Klostermann, 1995), 98 ff. 90 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Inscr. Ps., 166, 14–22; 86, 14–17, 21–2; and Plotinus, VI.9 [9], 8, 37–41. 91 On this, cf. M. Heidegger, “Augustin und der Neuplatonismus,” in his Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, Gesamtausgabe, 60, (herausg. von) C. Strube (Klostermann, 1995); and O. Pöggler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers (Günter Neske Verlag, 1990), 43–65. A similar interpretation is found in H. Jonas, Augustin und das paulinische Freiheitsproblem (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1930), 63 ff.: cf. E. Peroli, “Dialectic of Freedom. Hans Jonas and Augustine,” Dionysius, XXXI (2013), 141–60. 92 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, De vita Moys., 118, 1 ff. 93 Gregory of Nyssa, Cant., 370, 3.

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The purpose of the soul’s experience of the abyss is to enable it to become aware of this condition of eternal movement. As we have seen in Cant., the soul has this experience of the abyss when it is “called” by God’s voice and sets out to seek He “who is unnameable with any name.” In this search, it learns from the city guards (Cant. 5:7) that it aspires to an unattainable being and desires He who is incomprehensible. For this reason, the soul is in a certain sense struck and wounded, “because it thinks that its desire for the beautiful will remain unsated and imperfect, and it despairs of reaching He whom it desires,”94 the God in whose contemplation its very life consists, the truth of its being. However, precisely in this experience, the soul comprehends how its turning toward the truth of its own being, that constitutes its “life,” that is, the most original possibility set before its existence by the “call” of God, is for it an infinite task, and thus a possibility it can never fully manage. For this reason, it is a possibility always entrusted to the initiative of God Himself. The juxtaposition of the created spirit’s inextricable temporality with God’s infinite eternity indicates the fact that the spirit always remains open and, with this, entrusted and delivered to the future of its fulfilment. Therefore, it refers to that diastasis, to that inextricable “distance” of the creature from itself, such that the latter is never fully in itself, but is always and only on the road that leads to itself. The homoisis theoi, the spiritual ascent and return of the soul to its original condition does not mean an overcoming of this radical insufficiency of the creature in terms of itself; rather, it means an opening to the future of God. In this openness, temporality, becoming, change, that is, the characters constituting the spirit inasmuch as it is created, are not eliminated, but, although sullied by sin, they now recover their positive meaning and thus their ability to freely participate in God and to realize a perpetual growth in the good. In this way, the finiteness of the created spirit acquires an entirely new meaning. As Gregory writes: …that which seems fearsome to us (I am speaking of the changeableness of our nature) is actually a wing suited for flight toward the greatest things: therefore it would be harmful for us not to be able to transform into better beings …. True perfection consists precisely in this, in never ceasing one’s growth and not limiting it inside a boundary.95

94 Cant., 369, 19 ff. 95 Gregory of Nyssa, Perf., 213, 14–214, 6.

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Thus the change inscribed in the nature of the created spirit becomes “a help in rising toward the heights,”96 a means for actuating an increasingly greater participation in the infinite good of God, an infinite ascent toward the infinite God. In this ascent, the good reached is the point of departure for a greater good, because the desire of the soul is satisfied each time, but each time it is made capable of a greater good. In fact, the more the soul tends toward higher goals, the greater it becomes: the good in which it participates contemporaneously broadens the receptive capacity of the soul, thus rendering it able to strive further ahead, like a vase that becomes “increasingly larger, as bit by bit more is added.”97 In this process …both factors grow together: on the one hand, the strength that receives nourishment increases through the abundance of goods and, on the other hand, the provision of nourishment becomes more abundant through the progress of those who grow.98 In this way, the soul that had despaired of being able to transcend its finitude to reach the object of its love experiences, through the creative action of God, that the limits of its finitude are continually expanded. By this process, “the greatness of the one who receives increases to a point in which no limit can interrupt the progress of its growth.”99 For this reason, Beat.’s homily 6 asserts that the soul who despairs of being able to contemplate God is told: “Do not let yourself be seized by despair. He who dwells within you becomes the measure of your knowledge of God.”100 The degree and the measure of the participation in the infinite being of God now is no longer the diástema, that is, the finite capacity of the creature, but is the presence of the grace of God in the soul. Participation in God, which is the purpose of the created being, is always limited by the finiteness of the creature. However, it is always unlimited in virtue of God’s creative action that continually broadens the capacity of the creature, enabling it to participate more and more in the divine goodness. Thus, through an entirely deliberate comparison that was perhaps unique to his generation, Gregory was able to engage with the philosophy of his time and its metaphysical premises. Moreover, through Gregory’s profound transformation of the conceptual universe he received, he was able to center his reflection on the authentic Christian question of man’s 96 97 98 99 100

Gregory of Nyssa, Cant., 252, 5. Gregory of Nyssa, De an., 105 A. Ibid., 105 C. Ibid. Gregory of Nyssa, Beat., 1268 D.

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insufficiency before himself. But, most importantly, Gregory was able to do so with a radicalism and intensity largely unknown to preceding Christian authors, thus giving his spiritual theology a power and attractiveness that it has continued to exercise in the course of subsequent centuries.101

101 Concerning the influences exercised by the spiritual theology of Gregory of Nyssa on Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, Scotus Eriugena, William of Saint-Thierry, and Bernard of Clairveaux, cf. M. Canévet, “Saint Grégoire de Nysse,” Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, VI (Beauchesne, 1967), 1107–8.

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Evaluating Augustine’s ‘proof for God’ in De Civitate Dei 8.6 Barry David, Ave Maria University

I.) Introduction. Some recent studies of philosophical attempts to prove there exists a selfsufficient and creator God either ignore1 or refrain from analyzing closely2 Augustine’s efforts in the matter. Although I suggest three reasons for this, I believe each is based on a broadly shared assumption that, in his entire corpus, Augustine only offers one full-fledged account explaining what he means by ‘God exists;’3 his other presentations on the topic are closely patterned after the aforesaid account; and the latter’s philosophical value is questionable. According to a widespread interpretation, Augustine’s most complete teaching is found in De libero arbitrio voluntatis (lib. arb.) 2.3.20–

1 J. Koterski, An Introduction to Medieval Philosophy: Basic Concepts (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 37–49, 56–8; and E. Feser, Five Proofs Of The Existence of God (Ignatius Press, 2017), 11–13, 87–116. 2 M. Levering, Proofs of God: Classical Arguments From Tertullian to Barth (Baker Academic, 2016), 39–48; and Feser, op. cit. Feser is included in both groups since he claims that his book’s “Augustinian proof … [is] … not an exegesis of anything Augustine himself actually wrote …” (11). 3 As J. Rist writes (Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized [A] [Cambridge University Press, 1994], 68), Augustine is less concerned to show there exists a God than to distinguish “the nature and attributes of God,” and especially, in lib. arb. 2, that He is “non-material.” I think Augustine emphasizes ‘non-materiality’ in lib. arb. 2 because he judges that focusing on spiritual substance opens the way to (i) knowing God and (ii) understanding the nature of spiritual union between divine and human being.

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15.156 (~391–5 A.D.4);5 and additional attempts in his corpus to show that God is immutable creator rely on this passage since they summarize or abbreviate, in some form, what was explicitly claimed in lib. arb. 2.6 Moreover, the general attitude towards the formal character of that passage is

4 Based on Augustine through the Ages; An Encyclopedia, (gen. ed.), A.D. Fitzgerald (W. B. Eerdmans, 1999), xlvi, Augustine seems to have written lib. arb. 2 in the early 390’s. See also R. Teske, “Libero arbitrio, De,” op. cit., 494–5. This essay dates Augustine’s texts according to the table provided in Augustine through the Ages, op. cit., xliii-il. Augustine offers an earlier or contemporaneous proof for divine immutability in De Vera Religione (vera rel.) 29.52–31.57 (~ 390–1 A.D.) but, as F. Cayré (“Saint Augustin précurseur de saint Thomas dans la prevue de l’existence de Dieu,” Doctor Communis I [1951], Supplementum Ad Act III Congr. Thom. Internationalis, 95–100, 98) remarks, it is similar in emphasis yet not as elaborate as lib. arb. 2.3–15’s presentation. Recent commentary with bibliography on vera rel. is provided by F. Van Fleteren, “Vera religione, De,” Augustine through the Ages, op. cit., 864–5, and G. Boersma, Augustine’s Early Theology of Image (Oxford University Press, 2016), 224–53. 5 For recent analysis of lib. arb. 2.3–15 see inter aliis: S. Menn, Descartes and Augustine (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 148–64; Rist, op. cit., 67–73; R. Teske, “The Aim Of Augustine’s Proof That God Truly Is,” To Know God And The Soul (The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 26–48 (repr. from International Philosophical Quarterly 26 [1986], 253–68); L. Gerson, “Saint Augustine’s Neoplatonic Argument for the Existence of God,” The Thomist (1981), 571–84; and Cayré, “Saint Augustin précurseur de saint Thomas dans la prevue de l’existence de Dieu,” op. cit., 98–100, and Dieu présent dans la vie de l’esprit (Desclée De Brouwer, 1951), 37–57, 112–72. 6 Many commentators concentrate on Augustine’s presentation in lib. arb. 2. While Rist (A, 68) describes lib. arb. 2.3–15 as “the most famous Augustinian argument for God’s existence,” others think it exemplifies either Augustine’s proofs for God throughout his corpus or the pathway towards and insights into God Augustine speaks of in Confessiones (conf.) 7.10 and/or conf. 7.17. The former party includes: Koterski, op. cit.; Levering, op. cit.; Teske, op. cit.; and Cayré, Dieu présent dans la vie de l’esprit, op. cit., 37–57, and “Saint Augustin précurseur de saint Thomas dans la prevue de l’existence de Dieu,” op. cit., 98. For their recent predecessors, see Gerson, op. cit., 571, n. 2. Moreover, Feser’s view that the Augustinian proof is principally epistemological (op. cit., 109–10) shares the above characterization of Augustine’s presentation in lib. arb. 2. The second party numbers: Menn (op. cit., 148–64) who interprets conf. 7.10 and 7.17 through the lens of lib. arb. 2; S. MacDonald, “The divine nature: being and goodness” (in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, second edition, [edd.] D. Meconi and E. Stump [Cambridge University Press, 2014], 17–36), who analyzes conf. 7.10 through the lens of lib. arb. 2; and Gerson, op. cit., 571–2 and 579–84, insofar as he implies that lib. arb. 2’s argument is typical of the early Augustine.

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split; while one party maintains it is a philosophical proof or argument,7 another claims it is essentially a manuductio, i.e. a leading by the hand “toward the conception of God as a spiritual substance that is immutable and eternal.”8 On this basis, the commentators referenced at the outset might have in mind that, throughout his corpus, Augustine either (i) furnishes manuductios with persuasive elements9 rather than proofs, or (ii) offers proofs that do not work10 or (iii) presents proofs that are difficult to analyze for veracity.11 In what follows, I intend to help the final group, respond to the second group, and challenge aspects of the conventional wisdom by analyzing Augustine’s argument for divine immutability in De civitate Dei (civ. Dei) 8.6 (~415–7 A.D.).12 Taking my cue from the above and John Rist’s insightful claim that Augustine ‘is less interested to show there is a God than the nature and attributes He possesses,’13 I have selected this passage for three reasons. First, it is a logical proof for divine immutability. After asserting that 7 Gerson (op. cit., 572–3) and Rist (op. cit., 68–9) share the view that Augustine anchors his account of God in a logical proof. 8 Teske, “The Aim Of Augustine’s Proof That God Truly Is,” op. cit., 45. Teske is apparently following in the same tradition (see Gerson, op. cit., 572 n. 4) as (i) P. Landsberg, “Du concept de véritaté chez saint Augustin,” Deuclaion 3 (1950), 61, and (ii) A. Solignac, Les Confessions: Livres I–VII, Bibliothèque Augustinienne, texte de L‘édition de M. Skutella, introduction et notes par A. Solignac, traduction de E. Tréhorel et G. Boissou, vol. 13 (BA 13) (Desclée De Brouwer; Études Augustiniennes, 1962, 1998), 105–6. 9 This characterizes the approaches of Rist, op. cit., 67–73; MacDonald, op. cit., 17– 36; and Menn, op. cit., 148–64. 10 C. Kirwan, Augustine (Routledge; 1989, 1991), 152–5 (analyzing conf. 11.4.6–5.7); and Koterski (op. cit., 43–4) who implies that Augustine’s argument is compelling but does not analyze it. 11 Hence Levering, op. cit., 39–44; and Feser (op. cit.) who, for his part, explains that the Augustinian proof (109–10) he has constructed (see n. 2 above) is persuasive (13). It is also possible that MacDonald belongs to this group since, while patiently explaining Augustine’s argument in conf. 7.10 in conjunction with the earlier lib. arb. 2.3–15, he is satisfied to conclude that he has articulated what Augustine thought in the matter. According to MacDonald, Augustine had attained in his initial ‘vision’ of God a “complete and perfect knowledge of the infinite and ineffable God” which was “sufficient … for grounding a unified, coherent, and philosophically rich account of the divine nature, its place in reality, and its relation to his soul” (35). On the one hand, an obviously sympathetic MacDonald evinces that Augustine thought he had offered a coherent account of God. On the other hand, however, MacDonald does not say if he thinks that some or all of Augustine’s philosophical theology is coherent. 12 Augustine through the Ages, op. cit., xliii. 13 Rist, A, 67–8. See also n. 3 above.

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the Platonists “realized that God is the creator from whom all other beings derive,” Augustine explains step by step (as this essay analyzes) how these philosophers arrived at their insight and concludes that they discovered what Rom 1.19–20 says can be known about God from the study of His creation.14 In this regard, Augustine’s decisive emphasis on divine immutability makes his argument sound and, relative to some of his earlier arguments, suggests a notable development in his philosophical theology concerning the relationship between immutability and incorporeality. On the one hand, Augustine’s concentration on immutability makes clear his view that divine reality is supreme reality; on the other hand, that concentration sets the order of human insight over the order of discovery.15 Second, Augustine’s argument in civ. Dei 8.6 has hardly been analyzed. While recognizing that civ. Dei 8.6 is somewhat unique, Bardy compares its account of Platonism, primarily, to what Augustine had reported in conf. 7.9.13 and, secondarily, to passages in Soliloquies (sol.) and De Trinitate

14 St. Augustine; City of God, translated by H. Bettenson, introduction by J. O’Meara (Penguin Books, 1972, 1984), 307–8, 308. 15 Augustine focuses on the importance of incorporeal substance in civ. Dei 8.5, but his account of God in 8.6 concentrates on immutability either as the pre-eminent or as a relatively more eminent divine attribute (cf. civ. Dei 11.10 and 12.2). By juxtaposing civ. Dei 8.5–6, Augustine shows that mind’s cognizing incorporeal substance is part of its pathway to knowing divine immutability, i.e. that mind’s knowing itself as incorporeal and mutable allows it to recognize there is an immutable God. In this respect, Augustine commonly holds that divine immutability is known through or from knowing divine incorporeality (e.g. conf. 7.1.1, 7.10.16 and 7.17.23) but that knowing God is immutable entails knowing He is incorporeal. Therefore, while the order of discovery, i.e. coming to know the nature of divine immutability, brings one emphasis, the order of insight, i.e. reasoning about things in light of knowing divine immutability, brings another. (In n. 74, I suggest a proximate cause for civ. Dei 8.6’s emphasis on insight.).

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(Trin.)16 For their part (i) Russell17 (ii) O’Daly,18and (iii) Rist19 barely mention this text at all and, where cited,20 only state Augustine’s principal claims. To my mind, this treatment of civ. Dei 8.6 is likely caused by the shared opinion, mentioned before, that lib. arb. 2 contains Augustine’s standard argument for divine immutability. The third reason I focus on civ. Dei 8.6 is that its pronounced concentration on ontology both highlights and contains the wherewithal to overcome a couple of minor flaws, implied in 8.6 but discernable elsewhere, regarding Augustine’s account of the relationship between divine immutability and impressed ideas. Most important, this essay will show that civ. Dei 8.6 contains a philosophically justifiable and illuminating proof for divine immutability by studying it in conjunction with two related matters. First, and primarily, Augustine’s argument is analyzed in light of his cardinal claim about embracing an Aristotelian doctrine of substance21 when he was twenty years

16 G. Bardy, La Cité De Dieu, Livres VI – X, Bibliothèque Augustinienne, texte de la 4e édition de B. Dombart et A. Kalb, introduction générale et notes par G. Bardy, traduction française de G. Combès, Vol. 34 (BA 34) (Desclée De Brouwer; Études Augustiniennes, 1959), 591–3. 17 R. Russell, “The Role of Neoplatonism in St. Augustine’s De Civitate Dei,” in Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought, (edd.) H. Blumenthal and R. Markus (Variorium, 1981), 160–70, repr. in The City of God; A Collection Of Critical Essays, edited and introduced by D. Donnelly (Peter Lang, 1995), 403–13. 18 G. O’Daly, Augustine’s City Of God: A Reader’s Guide (Oxford University Press, 1999), 113. 19 J. Rist, “On the nature and worth of Christian philosophy: evidence from the City of God,” in Augustine’s City of God; A Critical Guide, (ed.) J. Wetzel (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 205–24, 216–7. 20 O’Daly, op. cit., 113. 21 This doctrine is named ‘Aristotelian’ rather than ‘Aristotle’s’ since Augustine ultimately transforms both of (i) his limited understanding of Aristotle’s teachings on human and divine substance (his access to Aristotle’s work is severely diminished and he thinks Aristotle is materialist—see ahead n. 22) and (ii) Aristotle’s own account of substance. In the latter regard, Aristotle holds (i) that human substance is a mortal composite of incorporeal intellectual soul and corporeal body and (ii) that ‘God’ (to the extent He is considered in Metaphysics (Met) 12.7–10) is incorporeal, immutable, eternal and some kind of final cause. By contrast, Augustine claims that human substance is capable, by God’s grace, of enjoying permanent union with God—understood as incorporeal, immutable, eternal, creator and redeemer—in this life and eternal union with Him in the afterlife. So even if Augustine had studied Aristotle’s Physics (Phys), On the Soul (An), and Met, he would not have found there, in totality, the aforementioned teachings on human and divine substance—just as he did not find them, in totality, within the Neoplatonist books (conf. 7.9.13–15). Hence, Augustine transforms Aristotle’s doctrine of sub-

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old (conf. 4.16.28)22—approximately twelve-thirteen years before imbibing Neoplatonist philosophy and neoplatonizing Christian Wisdom. That will disclose Augustine’s long-held loyalty to the primacy of ontology and underscores that emphasis in civ. Dei 8.6. In the second place, select portions of 8.6 are considered in league with related teachings found in some of Augustine’s earlier arguments—from lib. arb. 2, De diversis quaestionibus octagina tribus (div. qu.), q. 46, and conf. 7.17.23—concerning divine immutability, divine ideas, and impressed ideas. This will manifest the intrinsic and relative philosophical advantages of Augustine’s ontological focus. All told, civ. Dei 8.6 contains a proof for divine immutability that is sound and worthy of analysis.

II.) Analyzing Augustine’s Argument in civ. Dei 8.6. To begin with, civ. Dei 8.6 is studied in conjunction with Augustine’s claim that, at the age of twenty, he assimilated a significant portion of Aristotle’s teaching on substance. In conf. 4.16.28 Augustine reports that he procured a copy of Aristotle’s much revered Ten Categories23 and, by his own power, stance both explicitly and implicitly, in part, by setting it into relationship with Neoplatonist teachings on God and man, just as he transforms key aspects of Neoplatonist philosophical anthropology and theology both explicitly and implicitly, in part, by setting them into relationship with his Aristotelian doctrine of substance. In both instances, Augustine’s formal cause consists in his philosophical understanding of Christian wisdom. 22 Conf. 4.16.28. According to H. Chadwick (Saint Augustine; Confessions, translated with an introduction and notes by H. Chadwick [Oxford University Press, 1992]), Augustine’s text was translated from Porphyry’s Greek text into Latin by M. Victorinus (69, n. 33). Moreover Porphyry, unlike Plotinus and Alexander of Aphrodisias, viewed the Categories (Cat) to be concerned with “purely logical questions” and therefore intended for “beginners in the study of philosophy” (ibid., 69–70, n. 34). See also Augustine’s account of and appropriation of Aristotle’s Cat in Trin. 5. For helpful commentary see also R. Teske, “Properties Of God And The Predicaments in De Trinitate 5,” op. cit., 93–111; and “Augustine’s Use of Substantia in Speaking about God,” op. cit., 112–30. S. Byers provides insightful discussion of aspects of Augustine’s ‘Aristotelianism’ in “Augustine and the Philosophers,” from A Companion To Augustine, (ed.) M. Vessey (John Wiley & Sons, 2012), 175–87, 176–84 and 186–7. Cf. M. Tkacz, “Aristotle, Augustine’s Knowledge of,” Augustine through the Ages, op. cit., 58–9. 23 In his words: “… at about the age of twenty there came into my hands a work of Aristotle (aristotelica quaedam) which they call the Ten Categories (decem categorias) … My teacher in rhetoric at Carthage, and others too who were reputed to be learned men, used to speak of this work with their cheeks puffed out with con-

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was able to master its difficult doctrine.24 He recounts that the book contained …an extremely clear statement about substances (de substantiis), such as man, and what are in them, such as a man’s shape … and the innumerable things which are classified by these nine genera (novem generibus) of which I have given some instances, or by the genus of substance itself (in ipso substantiae genere).25 Although it is hard to know the entirety of what Augustine comprehended, it is clear that viewing corporeal reality, especially the heavenly bodies and man, according to the doctrine of substance aided him in at least three key respects. First, although Augustine was then committed to a materialist view of reality, Aristotle’s teaching helped him to overcome Manichean cosmological dualism, i.e. the notion that everything (with the exception of the ostensible principles of light/goodness and of darkness/evil) is composed of good and of evil matter,26 and thereby embrace, to some extent, the approach to physical reality found in the sciences of Nature.27 Second, adhering to the doctrine of substance aided Augustine’s eventual understanding of a Neoplatonic account of the cosmos. In particular, he learned that (i) divine being is immutable, incorruptible and incorporeal (and therefore self-sufficient and creator)28—in which respect God is accessible to human mind,29 (ii) God created all things (incorporeal and corporeal substances) ‘good’30 so that evil is not a substance but a privation,31 and (iii) humans sin by abusing their free choice of will.32 In the third place, Augustine’s loyalty to the doctrine of substance ultimately aided his com-

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

ceit, and at the very name I gasped with suspense as if about to read something great (magnum) and divine (divinum)” (Confessions, op. cit., 4.16.28, 69; Latin is from J.J. O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, Volume 1, Introduction and Text [Clarendon Press, 1992], 3–205: Aureli Augustini, Confessionum: Libri Tredecim, 4.16.28, 43). Augustine writes: “Yet I read it without any expositor and understood it” (Confessions, op. cit., 69). Ibid., O’Donnell, op. cit., 4.16.28, 43–4. Conf. 5.10.20. Ibid., 5.3.3–8.14. Ibid., 7.10.16–17.23. Ibid. Ibid., 7.12.18. Ibid., 7.12.18–13.19. Ibid., 7.16.22. In this respect Augustine means that moral evil, as privation, has a kind of accidental presence in the evil-doer insofar as the latter’s vice, i.e. subtracting from his proper operation, ‘adds’ to himself dispositions and/or habits contra-

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prehension not only of the neoplatonizing Christian accounts of the cosmos’ ontological dependence on God but also, and more importantly for him at that time, of Christianity's teaching on divine mediation.33 It is clear, therefore, that from before his conversion to Catholic Christianity Augustine thinks that real being—whether it is corporeal or incorporeal— is substance since each thing is either a naturally or artificially organized unit that includes permanent and/or impermanent characteristics pertaining either to the subject’s essence (in which respect he means properties) or are accidental thereto. For example, that a dog has weight designates what belongs to the nature of dog (a property) whereas predicating overweight, in the sense of having too much weight, of a dog designates what is accidental. In a closely related vein, Augustine holds in div. qu., q. 46, De Ideis (~388–96 A.D.)34 that all non-divine substance is created by God according to immutable exemplar causes or ideas within Himself35 and that mind, by

dicting the right-working of his created but vitiated nature. These ‘additions’ can be viewed as accidents of some kind—not in the sense that they are created by God or are positive realities augmenting human right behavior. Rather, these are named accidents with respect to what the evildoer places into himself that is contrary to his telos. Such things are humanly made, and could not be ‘present’ apart from man’s abusing the created reality he is. These humanly made accidents, which Augustine (following generally in the tradition of Plato—e.g. Phaedo 80c-82b) commonly describes in terms of ‘mind’s adding to itself what is essentially external to itself’ and thereby smothering its proper orientation (e.g. Trin. 10.3.11–14), might be viewed as the phenomenological aspect of the privation constituting moral evil. Cf. conf. 7.16.22; 8.5.10–11; 8.8.19–9.21; 13.9.10; civ. Dei 14.12–26; and Trin. 10.3.11–14. For recent discussion see B. David, “Augustine’s Analysis of his Theft of Pears–the Medium Represents the Message,” Humanities Bulletin, 1 (2) (2018), 8–32, 22–4. 33 Conf., 7.9.13–15; 17.23–8.1.2. 34 Augustine through the Ages, op. cit., xliv. 35 In q. 46 Augustine describes divine ideas using the terms ideae, formae, species and rationes. He prefers the word rationes since judging that it helps to make clear the thing itself, viz. that the ideas, being uncreated, belong to divine substance and are that whereby God creates whatever is created. In Augustine’s words: “Yet … if anyone wants to use “reason” (ratio), he will not stray from the thing in question, for in fact the ideas (ideae) are certain original and principal forms of things, i.e. reasons (rationes), fixed and unchangeable, which are not themselves formed and, being thus eternal and existing always in the same state are contained in the Divine Intelligence (in divina intelligentia continentur). And though they themselves neither come into being nor pass away, nevertheless, everything which can come into being and pass away (omne quod oriri et interire potest) and everything which

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participating in these ideas, comes to know what exists.36 Augustine asdoes come into being and pass away is said to be formed in accord with these ideas” (trans. D. Mosher, Saint Augustine, Eighty-Three Different Questions [The Catholic University of America Press, 1982], 79–81, 79–80; Latin is from Quaestiones 83 in Mélanges Doctrinaux, Bibliothèque Augustinienne, texte de l‘édition Bénédictine, introductions, traduction et notes par G. Bardy, I-A Beckaert, J. Boutet, vol. 10 [BA 10] [Desclée De Brouwer et Cie; Études Augustiniennes, 1952], 122–9, 124.) Since Augustine upholds a crucial distinction between divine being and human substance, his doctrine of divine illumination is neither pantheistic nor ‘ontologistic’; he does not mean that mind is consubstantial with supreme divinity. This is shown by the study of lib. arb. 2.9.26.103, div. qu. q. 46, conf. 7.9.13 and 7.10.16, and Trin. 14.15.21 in conjunction with the helpful comments of R. Nash, “Divine Illumination,” in Augustine through the Ages, op. cit., 438–40. In lib. arb. 2.9.26.103, Augustine states that ‘just as the idea of happiness (notio beatitatis) is impressed on the mind (mentibus … nostris inpressa est), so also is impressed on the mind (in mente habemus inpressam) the idea of wisdom (sapientiae notionem) (On Free Choice of the Will, Saint Augustine, translated by A. Benjamin and L. Hackstaff, introduction by L. Hackstaff [Macmillan/Library of Liberal Arts, 1964]; Latin: De libero arbitrio, Libri Tres, (ed.) W. Green, in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, vol. 29 [CCSL 29] [Brepols, 1970], 205–321, 254). In div. qu. q. 46, Augustine remarks that by the media of human love and divine light, human intelligence is able to discern the divine ideas. In his words: “And in the measure that it [i.e. the rational soul] has clung to him in love (in charitate) … imbued in some way and illumined by him with light (in tantum ab eo lumine illo perfusa quodam modo), … the soul discerns (cernit) … those reasons whose vision brings it to blessedness (quarum visione fit beatisssima)” (Eighty-Three Different Questions, op. cit., 81; BA 10, 126–8). In conf. 7.9.13, Augustine claims he learned from studying Neoplatonist philosophy that all men are illuminated by the divine Word (eo vita est, et vita erat lux hominum [O.Donnell, op. cit., 7.9.13, 80]); and in conf. 7.10.16, he describes seeing, with the eye of his mind (oculo animae meae), an immutable light (lucem incommutabilem [O’Donnell, op. cit., 7.10.16, 81]) whereby he came to know God. Augustine seems to hold to this view throughout his career, though it is clarified by the time he composes Trin. 14.15.21, 451. Writing ~ 420–2 A.D., he states that ‘minds, which know themselves to be mutable (eorumque mentes constet esse mutabiles), cognize immutably true and unchanging standards (has vero regulas immutabiles)—e.g. eternity and justice) by virtue of participating in or, in a certain way, being touched by (quodam modo tangebatur) divine light (in libro lucis illius quae veritas dicitur) so that, in the latter regard, minds can strive to be conformed to God (veritas) through that same divine light by which there is impressed (tamquam imprimendo transfertur) on them the aforementioned standards/ideas (The Trinity, op. cit., 14.4.21, 387; Latin: De Trinitate, Libri XV, [edd.] W. Mountain and Fr. Glorie, in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, vols. 50–50A [CCSL 50–50A] [Brepols, 1968] at CCSL [50A] 14.15.21, 451). As Nash writes (ibid., op. cit., 440): “Augustine believed that God has endowed humans with a structure of rationality patterned after the divine ideas in his own mind” and provides mind “with a light from without” so it can actually understand.

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serts, therefore, that two things depend on divine ideas, viz. (i) all non-divine being and, therefore, the ontological forms structuring things,37 and (ii) each of the cognitive forms, including specific notions of divine ideas, mind knows or whereby it knows things.38 In the latter regard, Augustine claims that thinking ultimately depends on immutable and incorporeal divine ideas which mind discerns through the media of (i) a pure heart, (ii) impressed notions of those ideas, and (iii) divine light. Therefore, just as the ontological forms structuring things only resemble the divine ideas, so also mind’s notions of things—including of God Himself and His ideas, rely on cognizing created realities resembling those ideas. While God is first cause, created realities are proximate causes. Hence, through the media of resemblances to the divine ideas impressed on itself and of divine light, the virtuous mind has notions of (i) mutable substance (including of

Nevertheless, Augustine’s mode of presentation and various scholars’ interpretations can make his teaching on divine illumination difficult to understand. To begin with, some of Augustine’s comments are ambiguous. For example, div. qu., q. 46 remarks that ‘only the holy and pure rational soul is capable of seeing the divine ideas’ (Et ea quidem ipsa rationalis anima non omnis et qualibet, sed quae sancta et pura fuerit, haec asseritur illi visioni esse idonea, [BA 10, op. cit., 124]). Does this mean that these persons, whether in this life or beyond, can have an unmediated vision both of and into divine ideas? Or does it only refer to holy persons in this life, meaning that they alone can know of divine ideas? Likewise, contemporary commentary is divided on whether Augustine means and/or implies ‘ontologism.’ While some (e.g. W. Hankey, “Ratio, Reason, Rationalism,” Augustine through the Ages, op. cit., 696–702) maintain that Augustine’s doctrine implies direct union between mind and divine substance, others, as the evidence seems to show, (e.g. R. Nash, ibid., op. cit., 438–40) claim it entails mediation. In civ Dei 8.6, Augustine attributes divine exemplar forms to God’s substance, viewing them as blueprints according to which He both (i) makes creatures to be via ontological forms and (ii) causes mind to know the natures of whatever exists, i.e. of God and His creatures. Hence, our study will show that Augustine’s argument strongly implies that the impressed ideas are created and therefore mediated realities. 36 E.g. div. qu. q. 46, lib. arb. 2.8–15, and conf. 7.17.23. 37 E.g. vera rel. 29.52–36.67, div. qu. q. 46, lib. arb. 2.16.161–17.177. Ontological forms are the substantial and/or non-substantial forms structuring, in the sense of causing to be, existing substances. These are substantial and/or non-substantial forms. 38 E.g. lib. arb. 2.3.20–5.50 and conf. 7.17.23. Cognitive forms are those forms whereby mind knows things, including (i) sensations, (ii) images, (iii) the ontological forms structuring beings, and (iv) (what Augustine sometimes maintains are) notions of divine ideas, e.g. of beauty etc., according to which mind develops its notions of participated realities, divine ideas, and God.

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itself), (ii) impressed ideas, (iii) immutable ideas in God and (iv) the immutable God. How, then, is Augustine arguing that God is immutable creator in civ. Dei 8.6? In the broad context of explaining to his Christian and pagan audience the harmony of portions of Platonist ‘natural theology’ with aspects of Christian wisdom,39 and after considering the importance of mind’s recognizing its incorporeal nature and that God is incorporeal,40 Augustine expresses general agreement with what is above. Why is his agreement general rather than universal? Since Augustine is explaining the Platonists’ notion of natural philosophy,41 8.6’s concentration is principally ontological and, partly for this reason, makes no mention of the pure heart, divine light or impressed ideas. Hence, at the outset, Augustine prefaces his presentation with the claim that Platonist philosophers,42 through their study of the cosmos, have attained knowledge that there is an immutable creator and explains this by considering their method of discovery and (ii) principal doctrines of non-divine and divine realities.

39 Augustine describes civ. Dei 8’s principal object in 8.1. For discussion of civ. Dei’s audience and background see inter aliis: Wetzel, “Introduction,” Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide, op. cit., 1–13; O’Daly, op. cit., 27–39; J. van Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon: A Study into Augustine’s City of God and the Sources of his Doctrine of the two Cities (Brill, 1991), 57–62, 86–7; and C. Starnes, “On Reading the City of God: Augustine contra Vergil,” Augustinus 39 (1994), 519–31. O’Daly, op. cit., 109– 18, provides some discussion of civ. Dei 8’s major claims. 40 Civ. Dei 8.5. 41 Augustine considers the Platonists’ natural philosophy in civ. Dei 8.6, rational philosophy or logic in 8.7 and moral philosophy in 8.8. 42 Augustine’s account of Platonism is somewhat eclectic—and included therein is his view that Platonism is, in a way, comprehensive since, as civ. Dei 8.9 shows, he classifies all of the best philosophers as Platonists. What Augustine means by Platonism is an amalgam of the teachings of Plotinus, Porphyry and Cicero—and, for that matter, of anyone (like Varro—see civ. Dei 6, 7, 19) drawing together insights of Plato, Aristotle and their later interpreters. For helpful commentary see inter aliis: Byers, op. cit.; P. King, “Augustine’s Encounter With Neoplatonism,” The Modern Schoolman 82.3 (2005), 213–26; R. Crouse, “Paucis Mutatis Verbis: St. Augustine’s Platonism,” Augustine And His Critics, (edd.) R. Dodaro and G. Lawless (Routledge, 2000), 37–50; Rist, A, 3, 8 (n. 11); O’Donnell, op. cit. xlv-xlvi; vol. 2, 421–4; C. Starnes, Augustine’s Conversion (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1990), 182–3, 202–3; P. Beatrice, “Quosdam Platonicorum Libros: The Platonic Readings of Augustine in Milan,” Vigiliae Christianae 43 (1989), 248–81; and Russell, op. cit. Again, as L. Ayres remarks, it should be kept in mind that the Neoplatonism Augustine becomes acquainted with at that time is highly eclectic: "The Fundamental Grammar of Augustine's Trinitarian Theology," Augustine And His Critics, op. cit., 51–76, 53–5.

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Augustine begins by describing the Platonists’ philosophical method. How have they achieved insight? According to Augustine, it is rooted in their recognizing (i) the primacy of incorporeal to corporeal reality and of immutable to mutable reality and (ii) that mutable being is structured by ontological form. Most importantly, they came thereby to understand that mutable forms structuring mutable things—whether the latter are strictly material or have souls or are spirits—must ultimately depend on the God “who truly is, because he exists immutably.”43 They saw, in other words, that since the exemplar form upon which mutable things depend is found in the immutable God, the ontological forms structuring things and the cognitive forms by which these can be known must also depend on God. So the Platonists’ philosophical method moves from the study of bodies (exteriora) to mind (interiora) and, finally, to God (superiora).44 Augustine writes: It follows that the whole material universe (universi mundi corpus), its shapes, qualities, its ordered motions, its elements (elementa) disposed throughout its whole extent, stretching from heaven to earth, together with all the bodies (quaecumque corpora) contained within them; and all life (omnem vitam), whether that which merely nourishes and maintains existence as in the trees (in arboribus), or that which has sensibility as well, as in the animals (in pecoribus); or that which has all this, and intelligence besides, as in human beings (in hominibus); or that life which needs no support in the way of nourishment, but maintains existence, and has feeling and intelligence, as in the case of the angels (in angelis)—all these alike could come into being only through him who simply is (qui simpliciter est).45

43 Augustine, City of God, op. cit., 8.6, 307; “qui vere est, quia incommutabiliter est” (De civitate Dei, Libri XI-XXII, [edd.] B. Dombart and A. Kalb, in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina [CCSL], vol. 47 [Brepols, 1955], 223). Cf. conf. 11.4.6. 44 In Augustine’s words (City of God, op. cit., 307): “[The Platonists] … recognized that no material object (nullum corpus) can be God; for that reason they raised their eyes above all material objects (cuncta corpora) in their search for God. They realized that nothing changeable (quidquid mutabile est) can be the supreme (summum Deum); and therefore in their search for the supreme, they raised their eyes above all mutable souls (animam) and spirits (spiritus). They also saw that in every mutable being (in re), the form (speciem) which determines its being (qua est), its mode of being and its nature, can only come (non esse posse nisi) from him who truly is (qui vere est), because he exists immutably (quia incommutabiliter est)”; “Viderunt ergo isti … quia incommutabiliter est” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 222–3). 45 City of God, op. cit., 307; “ac per hoc … qui simpliciter est,” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223).

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Moreover, the philosophers can know from this that God supremely exists since He transcends any ontological and/or mental distinction between being, being alive, being happy and understanding. To be God is, in a way, to be each of these at once.46 Hence, Augustine implies that the division mind (i) notices among certain kinds of creatures because of their diverse attributes and (ii) can posit between these attributes, fails to represent the divine simplicity. According to Augustine, a reasonable notion of God must negate the aforementioned mental and ontological distinctions while attributing to Him—according to His mode of being—the previously mentioned ontological characteristics. But is Augustine’s claim credible that there is a hierarchy of being created by an immutable God? Can this be substantiated? To validate his assertion, Augustine appeals to the twin authorities of philosophical reasoning and scripture (Rom 1.20). Augustine commences with a philosophical proof. What is it? Materially speaking, it consists in ten premises and a two-proposition conclusion. Its formal character, which is oriented towards ontological learning and presupposes a doctrine of substance, moves back and forth from ontological to epistemological considerations. 47 Its content, made in view of 8.6’s earlier portions—especially the claim that mutable being depends on immutable divine being—is presented as follows. (i)

‘There are two kinds of substance, viz. matter (corpus), i.e. non-living substance, and life (vitam), i.e. living substance.’48

In this instance, Augustine grounds his argument in a previously implied ontological distinction between two kinds of substance, viz. (i) what only exists (designated earlier by the phrase ‘the whole material universe’) and

46 Augustine writes (City of God, op. cit.., 307–8): “For him existence (esse) is not different from life, (vivere) as if he could exist without living; nor is life (vivere) something other than intelligence (intellegere), as if he could live without understanding; nor understanding (intellegere) something other happiness (beatum esse), as if he could understand without being happy. For him, to exist (esse) is the same as to live (vivere), to understand (intellegere), to be happy (beatum esse)”; “quia non aliud … est illi esse” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223). 47 Lib. arb. 2.3–15 also begins with ontology (2.5.42–5), transitions to epistemology (2.7.58–14.152) and finishes with ontology (2.15.153). However, in civ. Dei 8.6 the steps are much shorter and the epistemology, as we will see, is unequivocally grounded in a governing ontology. 48 In his words (City of God, op. cit., 308): “They [i.e. the Platonist philosophers] have reflected that whatever is, is either bodily matter (corpus) or life (vitam)”; “Consideraverunt enim, quidquid … esse vel vitam” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223).

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(ii) what lives (earlier named ‘life’). This division is capable of spanning the entire spectrum of what Augustine includes in the created order, i.e. everything from a speck of sand to the angels. How so? The difference between non-living and living substance can encompass both (i) inanimate corporeal being, i.e. what Augustine earlier named ‘the whole material universe,’ and (ii) incorporeal being—previously specified as plant-life, animals, human beings, and angels. While ‘body’ signifies inanimate corporeal reality, ‘life’ denotes animate corporeal and incorporeal being.49 Man, of course, stands in a middle portion of ‘life’ since, being composed of a material body and immaterial soul, he is corporeal and incorporeal. (ii)

‘Life is better (melius) than (quam) body.’50

In other words living substance, what Augustine earlier designated as life, is nobler than bodily substance. Why is living substance superior? Augustine begins to answer this question in his ensuing claim. (iii)

‘While the form (speciem) of bodily matter (corporis) is perceivable by the senses (sensibili), the form of life is perceived by the power of intelligence (intelligibilem).’51

So while the forms constituting or belonging to bodies, being corporeal, are perceivable by the senses, those constituting living beings (designated by the term ‘life’), as incorporeal, are only perceivable by the power of intelligence (found in living intelligent beings). Augustine implies, therefore, that intelligent living substance is superior to bodily substance since it is capable of cognition. He makes this explicit in what follows. (iv)

‘Intelligible form is superior to corporeal form.’52

Simply put, the Platonist philosophers judge that incorporeal (i.e. intelligent) beings are superior to corporeal beings. Presumably, this is because

49 This is a more succinct distinction than Augustine had offered in lib. arb. 2.3.21–4 where he enumerated three kinds of beings, viz. (i) those that merely exist, (ii) those that exist and are alive, and (iii) those that exist, live, and understand. 50 He writes (City of God, op. cit., 308): “life (vitam) is something (aliquid) better (melius) than bodily matter (quam corpus)”; “meliusque aliquid vitam esse quam corpus” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223). 51 In his words (City of God, op. cit., 308): “the form of bodily matter is apparent to the senses (speciem … corporis esse sensibili) while that of life (vitae) is to be grasped by the intelligence (intelligibilem)”; “speciemque corporis esse sensibilem, intelligibilem vitae” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223). 52 Augustine writes (City of God, op. cit., 308): “So they have proceeded (Proinde) to give a higher place to (praetulerunt) the form (speciem) which is intelligible (intelli-

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what Augustine means by ‘life’ substance, unlike ‘body’ substance, has the power of intelligence whereby knowledge can be achieved. Since knowing, Augustine implies, is a higher mode of perception than sensing, it follows that intelligent substance is nobler than any substance incapable of knowledge, whether the latter is corporeal or incorporeal. In this regard, Augustine keeps his original distinction between ‘body’ and ‘life’ while distinguishing among kinds of life, viz. between those having the power of intelligence and those without it. But, the above implication aside, Augustine needs to show why intelligent is superior to non-intelligent being. Hence, he appears to both clarify and give proof for premise iv in what immediately follows. (v, a) Clarification: ‘While corporeal reality (sensibilia) is perceivable by the senses, intelligible reality (intelligibilia) is perceived by mental sight.’53 This makes evident Augustine’s new distinction between substances designated by ‘body’ and by ‘life.’ How so? He separates living substances capable of thought from living substances incapable of thought. Augustine is not explaining why ‘life’ is preferred to ‘body’ (that comes next) but his division is certainly rich with implication. To begin with, it is easily inferred that rational is superior to bodily substance because its form, being immaterial, cannot be perceived by sensation, but only by mind and, therefore, solely by rational substances. Of course, man, as mentioned before, is a special case since his principal form is an immaterial soul capable of knowing what is sensed. Therefore, while some living substances, viz. animals, are limited to sense perception, man is capable of sense and of intellectual perception. He, in other words, can know the sensible and intelligible forms of things because of his ability for intellectual perception. All told, Augustine’s qualification implies that rational are superior to non-rational beings (i.e. to some living and to all non-living beings) since they are capable of perceiving more of reality. This is because while the power perceiving intelligible reality, viz. mind, and intelligible reality is in-

gibilem) than to that which is sensible (sensibili)”; “Proinde intelligibilem speciam sensibili praetulerunt” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223). 53 In Augustine’s words (City of God, op. cit., 308): “By ‘sensible’ ([s]ensibilia) we mean that which can be apprehended by bodily sight (visu … corporis) and touch (tactuque corporis), by ‘intelligible’ (intelligibilia) that which can be recognized by the mind’s eye (quae conspectus mentis intellegi)”; “Sensibilia dicimus, quae … conspectus mentis intellegi” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223).

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corporeal,54 the power perceiving corporeal reality, viz. the senses, and the reality they perceive is corporeal. So rational is preferred to sub-rational substance since it is, at least in some measure, incorporeal. In agreement with 8.6’s introduction, Augustine implies there is a hierarchy of being wherein mutable beings capable of understanding are superior to mutable corporeal beings. (v, b) Justification: ‘To say that something corporeal is beautiful (pulchritudo corporalis) is a judgement of the mind (de qua … animus iudicet), which has a notion of beauty, rather than a sensible perception of things.’55 Augustine claims, therefore, that mind, unlike sense, is able to know the characteristics found in physical things. He thereby affirms what was earlier implied, viz. that substances having incorporeal powers are superior to those without such powers since the former, having mind, are capable of knowing the natures both of incorporeal and of corporeal things. In a manner somewhat reminiscent of Plato56 and Plotinus,57 Augustine tries to make his point by citing mind’s ability to claim that something perceived by sense is ‘beautiful.’ But what does Augustine mean by mind’s judgement? He explains this by considering what underlies mind’s claim that something physical is beautiful. This, Augustine asserts, can depend on some mutable notion of beauty in the mind by which it judges physical things (and which is more permanent than the physical things being judged); and that notion, he maintains, depends ultimately on some immutable idea of beauty belonging to an immutable God. Therefore, since mind’s notion of beauty participates in God, cognitive agents can know something of God.

54 See Augustine’s account of the primacy of mind in general and of intelligence in particular in civ. Dei 8.5. 55 Augustine writes (City of God, op. cit., 308): “Physical beauty (pulchritudo corporalis), whether of an immobile object (in statu corporis)—for instance, the outline of a shape—or of movement (in motu)—as in the case of a melody—can be appreciated only by the mind (de qua non animus iudicet)”; “Nulla est enim … non animus iudicet” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223). In conf. 7.17.23 Augustine made a similar claim concerning mind’s judgement that things are beautiful but there he attributed this to mind’s reliance both on its power of intelligence and, ultimately, on God. In civ. Dei 8.6 Augustine only speaks of mind’s reliance on God. I will analyze this distinction later. 56 Symposium. 57 I.6 [1], On Beauty.

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Augustine arrives at the conclusion that cognitive agents can know God in a series of steps which I will enunciate in order and subsequently analyze in relationship with claims Augustine made here and in some earlier considerations of divine immutability. What are these steps? (vi)

‘Mind’s notion of beauty (a mutable form) is superior to any beautiful physical characteristic since that notion is incorporeal.’ Augustine claims that apart from mind’s notion of beauty, it could not judge physical things beautiful.58

(vii)

‘Mind’s incorporeal notion of beauty is imperfect because, as progress in understanding shows, mind’s notion is mutable.’59

(viii) ‘Recognizing the mutability of mind’s notion of beauty means that this notion must ultimately depend on there being some immutable notion of beauty.’60 (ix)

‘This is because ‘body,’ i.e. corporeal substance, and ‘mind,’ the seat of thinking in cognitive substances, are rightly understood as muta-

58 Augustine writes (City of God, op. cit., 308): “This would be quite (profecto) impossible (non posset), if this ‘idea’ of beauty (haec species) were not found in the mind (in illo), in a more perfect (melior) form, without volume or mass (sine … molis), without vocal sound (sine strepitu vocis), and independent of space and time (sine spatio … vel temporis)”; “Quod profecto non … loci vel temporis” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223). It is possible that “in illo” refers to impressed divine ideas but Augustine does not say so and his subsequent comments strongly suggest that “in illo” means mind’s mutable notion of beauty rather than some impressed idea of beauty. Of course, Augustine might think that mind’s mutable concept of beauty relies on some impressed idea thereof but, again, this is not mentioned and, further on, Augustine makes it clear that mind’s notion depends ultimately on an immutable God. 59 In his words (City of God, op. cit., 308): “But even here, if this ‘idea’ of beauty were not subject to change (nisi mutabilis esset), one person would not be a better judge of sensible beauty (de specie sensibili) than another; the more intelligent would not be better than the slower, nor the experienced and skilled than the novice and the untrained; and the same person could not make progress towards better judgement than before. And it is obvious that anything which admits of increase or decrease is changeable (mutabile est)”; “Sed ibi quoque … dubitatione mutabile est” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223). 60 Augustine writes (City of God, op. cit., 308): “This consideration has readily persuaded men of ability and learning, trained in the philosophical discipline (in his exercitati), that the original ‘idea’ (primam speciem) is not be found in this sphere (in eis rebus), where it is shown to be subject to change (ubi mutabilis esse)”; “Unde ingeniosi et … mutablilis esse convincitur” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223).

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ble beings/forms whose existing depends on immutable being/ form.’61 In other words, since mutable body and mind, and therefore mind’s notions of things, are constituted by mutable form, it follows that none of these would exist if they lacked form. Augustine’s point, then, is that mutable things, whether these are ontological or cognitive, exist because they are formed. On this basis, Augustine’s argument returns to ontology from epistemology. (x)

‘Therefore, since mutable depends on immutable being, it follows that mutable being as such—whether cognitive substances or their notions, depends on immutable notions thereof in immutable being.’62

Simply put, as mutable depends on immutable being, the being of mutable realities—whether that is a cognitive agent or their mutable notions— must ultimately depend on immutable forms thereof found in immutable being. (xi)

(xii)

Conclusion (a): Thus, ‘philosophers understand that the original or ultimate cause of the ontological and cognitive forms whereby mutable things exist and know is found in the immutable being who created all mutable things.’63 Conclusion (b): Consequently, ‘the philosophers’ insight represents well the meaning of Rom 1.19–20, viz. that the uncreated God creates all corporeal and incorporeal realities.’64

61 In his words (City of God, op. cit., 308): “In their view both body and mind might be more or less (magis minusque) endowed with form (or ‘idea’) (speciosa essent), and if they could be deprived of form altogether (si autem omni specie carere possent) they would be utterly non-existent (omnino nulla essent)”; “Cum igitur in … omnino nulla essent” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223). 62 Augustine writes (City of God, op. cit., 308): “And so they saw that there must be some being in which the original form resides (ubi prima esset), unchangeable (incommutabilis), and therefore incomparable (nec comparabilis)”; “viderunt esse aliquid … ideo nec comparabilis” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223). 63 In his words (City of God, op. cit., 308): “And they rightly believed that it is there that the origin of all things (rerum principium) is to be found, in the uncreated (quod factum non esset), which is the source of all creation (ex quo facta cuncta essent)”; “atque ibi esse … facta cuncta esset” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 223–4). 64 Augustine writes (City of God, op. cit., 308): “Thus ‘what is known of God is what he himself has revealed to them. For his invisible realities have been made visible to the intelligence through his created works, as well as his eternal power and di-

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What does Augustine mean? Is his argument in propositions (props.) vi–xii coherent? Analyzing Augustine’s teaching requires noticing the distinction civ. Dei 8.6 makes between ontological (props. vi, x-xi), cognitive (props. vi-vii, xxii), and divine exemplar (props. viii, x-xi) forms—especially that the latter are sine qua non forms (props. viii-xi) since upon them depend all ontological and cognitive forms. Moreover the above division among forms, taken in conjunction with Augustine’s bedrock claim that mutable reality depends on immutable reality (props. x-xi), helps us to see his argument’s fundamental coherence, minor flaws and how, by his own principles, those flaws might be corrected. To begin with, if mind judges that something is beautiful, e.g. ‘this dog is beautiful,’ its claim (prop./premise vi) depends on the activities of sense perception and image-making, and therefore upon sense-forms and imageforms (or phantasms) whereby some corporeal substance is brought to the power of understanding.65 But how is mind able to use images of physical characteristics to know the nature(s), and consequently ontological forms, of these characteristics and/or substances in which they are found? Augustine unequivocally asserts that mind’s activity depends on something superior (prop./premise viii) allowing it to assimilate its incorporeal images of things so it can pursue knowledge. However, whereas here Augustine’s ontological perspective maintains that mind’s notion of ‘beauty’ ultimately depends on God’s immutable ideas (props./presmises viii-x), he speaks elsewhere (e.g. conf. 7.17.2366) of the subordination (in mind) of reason to intelligence wherefrom reason receives some kind of intuition of ‘whatness.’ vinity.’ It is by him that the visible and temporal things have been created”; “Ita quod notum … cuncta creata sunt” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 224). 65 Augustine made similar distinctions in lib. arb. 2 and in conf. 7.17.23—though there he also specified the ‘inner’ or ‘common’ sense as that to which the external senses report their activities. In conf. 7.17.23, moreover, Augustine also mentioned the human operation of imagination; but that is omitted here. However, since Augustine just spoke of imagination in civ. Dei 8.5, it obviously remains an important part of his account of cognition. In his words: “Now when a material thing is thus seen in the mind’s eye, it is no longer a material object but the likeness of such an object; and the faculty which perceives this likeness in the mind is neither a material body, nor the likeness of a physical object” (City of God, op. cit., 306); “Hoc autem in … nec similitude corporis” (CCSL 47, op. cit., 8.5, 222). 66 Augustine writes (O’Donnell, op. cit., 7.17.23, 84): “Atque ita gradatim … atque inde rurusus ad ratiocinantem potentiam ad quam refertur iudicandum quo sumitur a sensibus corporis, quae se quoque in me comperiens mutabilem erexit se ad intellegentiam suam et abduxit cogitationem a consuetudine … ut inveniret quo lumine aspergeretur, cum sine ulla dubitatione clamaret incommutabile praeferendum esse mutabili

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Since Augustine’s exposition in civ. Dei 8.6 claims that all of mind’s notions depend ultimately on divine immutability, he mentions neither reason nor intelligence or tries to explain the operations whereby mind knows whatness. Does Augustine’s omission of intelligence in civ. Dei 8.6 mean he now thinks that mind has an unmediated relationship with God? No. To begin with, 8.6 obviously holds that something superior to mind functions as a kind of formal cause in its achievement of understanding. In this way, what comes to mind from above directs its judgement on external mutable realities and on whatnesses. In other words, Augustine implies that mind knows ontological forms by the medium of special cognitive forms supplied to it by something superior. By his principle that mutable depends on immutable being, Augustine justifiably claims that mind’s ultimate superior is God. Yet, since mutable substance cannot be directly connected with immutable substance, a more complete account of the matter would describe the medium by which that connection occurs. However, while Augustine’s teachings in lib. arb. 2.3–1567 and conf. 7.17.2368 identify that medium as impressed ideas, civ. Dei 8.6 makes no mention of these. As 8.6’s distinctions concerning mind’s (i) notions of beauty and of God’s ‘concept’ of beauty, and (ii) mutability show, Augustine only maintains (props./premises vii-x) that immutable being is the ultimate cause of human knowing. Why must mind’s ultimate superior be immutable? This is because, as prop./premise vii shows,69 mind’s knowledge (i) of its mutable nature and notions and (ii) that immutable is superior to

unde nosset ipsum incommutabile (quod nisi aliquo modo nosset, nullo modo illud mutabili certa praeponeret), et pervenerit ad id quod est in ictu trepidantis aspectus” (cf. conf. 10.10.17–13.20). On the one hand, Augustine makes it clear that mind’s insight depends on the mediation of divine light; on the other hand, his account of mind’s intelligence appears to identify it with divine immutability. Of course, Augustine’s prefatory claim in conf. 7.17.23 (ibid., 84) that ‘he found the unchanging truth and true eternity of truth (incommutabilem et veram veritatis aeternitatem) above his mutable mind (supra mentem meam commutabilem), shows that he does not mean to equate intelligence with divine being. Nevertheless, clarification is certainly in order. 67 E.g. lib. arb. 2.9.103 and 2.15.160. 68 Augustine does not mention impressed notions as such in conf. 7.17.23. However, when his focus on ‘beauty’ and ‘grounds of judgement’ in this context is juxtaposed with his later account of impressed notions in conf. 10.10.17–13.20, it is reasonably inferred that conf. 7.17.23 affiliates impressed notions with mind’s power of intelligence. 69 Cf. conf. 11.4.6 (~400–1 A.D.) where Augustine argues that God is immutable creator by beginning with the realities of change (mutantur … atque variantur) and

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mutable being, entails recognizing that mind’s ontological superior must be immutable substance. By Augustine’s doctrine of substance, the superior he means in 8.6 cannot be mind’s intelligence since the latter cannot produce something immutable—although it can produce something less mutable than the notions generated by mind’s reason. Hence, if Augustine were to consider mind’s powers in 8.6 he would maintain that intelligence provides reason with immutable-like notions of whatness that reason employs to develop its own mutable notions of whatness. Looked at from this perspective, civ. Dei 8.6 requires viewing intelligence as some kind of mutable intermediary between divinity and reason. Indeed, emphasizing Augustine’s doctrine of substance suggests that mind’s cognizing of divine ideas is achieved by reflecting on a superior cognitive form (i) provided to it by its power of intelligence (ii) in conjunction with recognizing the dependence of mutable being as such. Therefore, while Augustine’s claims in civ. Dei 8.6 (props./premises viii-ix) attribute mind’s mutable notions of beauty to divine agency, certain details, implied by that argument and maintained in earlier writings, are ignored. That civ. Dei 8.6 makes no mention of intelligence or reason (i) shows that Augustine wishes to uphold a decisive ontological distinction between God and mind and (ii) implies that he might be clarifying his thinking on the relationship between divine immutability and mind’s principal powers.

making (quia facta sumus) and then considers, in that light, certain pre-eminent characteristics constituting things. Since each change in something is produced by an agent of change, it follows that change as such must be the product of an unchanging, i.e. immutable, agent. Otherwise, one infers an infinite regress that obviously contradicts the dynamics constituting the reality of change noticed at the outset. Likewise, since a maker produces everything made, making as such must depend on some unmade-maker. Again, to hold differently infers an infinite regress denying the reality of making. Finally, since the changing and made things we encounter are structured by special characteristics like existing (ita sunt), goodness (ita bona) and beauty (ita pulchra), it follows that those characteristics belong to creatures because they are shared out to them by the immutable creator God. Otherwise, one denies the first two arguments as well as the facts of creature’s existing, goodness and beauty the entire argument begins and ends with (Latin is from O’Donnell, op. cit., 150). In conf. 11.4.6, Augustine argues that God is immutable and creator without any recourse to epistemology. Although it is important to consider the argument’s context, it is possible this represents (i) a criticism of the epistemology-leaning arguments for God reported in conf. 7 and lib. arb. 2, (ii) a harbinger of civ. Dei 8.6’s ontology-grounded argument, and (iii) Augustine’s subordinating the order of discovery to the order of insight concerning predicating incorporeality and immutability of God.

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The above considerations suggest, therefore, that Augustine’s presentation in 8.6 can be aided by twofold development. First, 8.6’s doctrine of substance clearly instructs that mind’s knowledge of divine ideas is mediated. Since mind is mutable while divinity is immutable, mind’s awareness of divine ideas must be gained through some kind of mutable cognitive subject and, since Augustine traditionally describes mind’s awareness of immutable reality in terms of reason’s reliance on intelligence, it is fittingly inferred that this subject is intelligence. Second if, as Augustine’s earlier writings teach, divine ideas are mediated by intelligence to reason through divinely impressed ideas then the latter, since belonging to intelligence, are properly understood as least-mutable—or as less mutable than reason’s notions. Again, if it is suggested that impressed ideas are immutable, these are best considered ‘immutable’ analogically, i.e. as having ‘created permanence’ rather than ‘uncreated eternity.’ In any event, describing impressed ideas as mutable would allow Augustine to make crystal clear that mind is mutable. Hence, applying civ. Dei 8.6’s ontological focus to this matter would permit Augustine to extinguish a significant ambiguity in his overall teaching since, in agreement with his general view of the matter, he could resolutely show that mind and its impressed ideas are mutable rather than, as the absence of clarification suggests, both mutable and immutable. Why else is this distinction important? It discloses how mind can know divine being from knowing strictly mutable realities. In other words, mind could infer there is an immutable God from mutable realities rather than from some immutable reality independent of Him. How might a developed argument look? To begin with, mind’s ability to recognize a hierarchy among mutable things, i.e. of lesser and greater mutable things, implies the existence of immutable being. How so? Whereas a teaching of ‘immutable’ impressed ideas implies that mind infers God’s existence from reflecting on its own immutable content, a doctrine of mutable impressed ideas implies that mind infers God’s existence from reflecting on its own mutable content (and therefore on mutable realities of varying degree). In both instances, mind relies on the principles of hierarchy and substance but in the latter instance, it better upholds them. The nature of ontological hierarchy, including the claim that lower being depends on higher cognitive being, implies that there exists some highest being upon whom all lesser being depends. Since primary reality is substance, mind’s inference from immutable realities to an immutable God is justified. However, whereas in the first instance Augustine’s teaching on impressed notions can imply that mind knows God in knowing its own immutability, the second instance instructs that mind knows God from knowing degrees of mutability. So, while some of Augustine’s earlier proofs for God can imply 254

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that mind knows immutable reality in and through knowing its own immutable impressed ideas, civ. Dei 8.6 implies that immutable substance is known by including impressed ideas, viewed as least-mutable (or as less mutable than mind’s notions), within a hierarchy of mutable realities that mind reflects on. Since the impressed ideas, and therefore the natures of mind and of man, would be clearly distinguished from God, this approach would better instantiate Augustine’s decisive doctrine of substance. In any event, 8.6’s fundamental distinction between divine and human substance instructs that mind cannot know God when knowing impressed realities. Rather, mind should recognize that impressed realities are ontologically inferior to God and, therefore, that it can know Him by seeing how these realities depend on something greater. If this matter is not carefully distinguished—and Augustine’s Aristotelian doctrine of substance gives him the wherewithal to make the appropriate distinction—divine being and mutable human substance are easily confused. Most important, although 8.6’s principal argument should be developed along the lines stated above, it is essentially coherent. For, as propositions viii-xi show, it maintains unequivocally that the decisive cognitive forms supplied to mind are not God but from Him. So God, for Augustine, is the immutable source of all cognitive and ontological forms— i.e. of all substances and of the decisive media whereby mind knows existing things (including God Himself); and all of these forms are in God’s ideas by the mode of His immutability. In God, therefore, is found the exemplar form of Augustine and upon this depends both (i) the ontological forms—viz. the substantial and non-substantial forms—structuring Augustine, and (ii) the cognitive forms whereby he can be known. The cogency of civ. Dei 8.6’s primary argument is also supported by several related considerations. First, 8.6 provides evidence for the claims concerning method and doctrine Augustine had placed in advance. On the one hand, 8.6’s argument has given credible proof that mind can proceed to God by the mode exteriora-interiora-superiora. Augustine’s argument begins with a distinction between kinds of substance accessible to sense perception, proceeds into the power of mind found in certain living beings, and terminates with supreme divinity. On the other hand, Augustine’s argument has provided reasonable confirmation that there is an immutable creator. Since it ascribes cognitive activity to a class of living beings and maintains their existence is from God, it follows that reflecting on their cognition can distinguish more about God. Hence, Augustine’s argument in 8.6 transitions from ontology to epistemology and back to ontology to show there is a God who is the source of knowledge because He is the source of being. 255

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Second, holding to substance-based distinctions between ontological, cognitive and divine exemplar forms makes intelligible Augustine’s claims concerning mind’s ability to know divine immutability. Regarding the cardinal distinction between forms, it is evident that civ. Dei 8.6 never claims ontological identity between divine exemplar forms or ideas and mind’s notion thereof. Rather, Augustine teaches that Platonist philosophers know that the proximate form whereby mind develops its notion of a thing’s essence ultimately depends on some immutable divine idea. If Augustine’s teaching on cognition is interpreted apart from (i) premise/prop. i’s key doctrine of substance and (ii) the argument’s subsequent related distinction between ontological, cognitive and divine exemplar forms, 8.6’s conclusion will appear pantheistic. Indeed, studying 8.6’s argument while identifying mind’s decisive cognitive forms with divine exemplar forms denies Augustine’s underlying doctrine of substance since suggesting (i) in general, that some portion of human substance and all incorporeal substance is really divine substance and (ii) in particular, that mind and God are identical rather than, by His goodness, spiritually united.70 In a related vein, if 8.6 is analyzed by a mindset maintaining that ideas are immutable self-standing realities it can appear that Augustine imposes the order of thought on the order of being to the effect that what belongs to mind and to God also has substantial existence outside of mind and of God. This would contradict Augustine’s claim that God is immutable since it implies He receives ideas from another rather than that He is the ideas. Therefore, although Augustine’s argument does not explain (i) the nature of the medium whereby mutable mind knows immutable divinity or (ii) how mind properly achieves a notion of divine immutability, it certainly upholds the essentials of an Aristotelian doctrine of substance. Third, our interpretation of civ. Dei 8.6 helps to clarify and/or correct aspects of ‘proofs for God’ Augustine offers elsewhere. We have already noted that Augustine’s presentation in 8.6 elucidates conf. 7.17.23’s teaching concerning mind’s intelligence (intelligentiam suam). Whereas in the latter passage Augustine speaks as if intelligence is immutable as God is immutable, civ. Dei 8.6’s robust doctrine of substance implies a crucial distinction between intelligence and God. Hence, to the extent Augustine believes intelligence is the highest part of mind and therefore informs reason, it can be inferred that intelligence is properly viewed as mutable in general but less mutable than reason in particular.

70 E.g. conf. 1.1–5.

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Likewise, returning to Augustine’s argument considered at the outset, 8.6’s assertion that cognition depends on immutable divine substance can clarify lib. arb. 2’s important claim identifying God as ‘whatever is higher than reason or highest of all’ (quo est nullus superior)71—underscored by Augustine’s final declaration that ‘the argument’ for God Evodius agrees with is ‘tenuous (tenuissima forma cogitationis) but secure (sed etiam certa).’72 Presumably, Augustine views the argument as ‘tenuous’ since its concern with impressed notions of numbers, happiness and wisdom structuring mind’s activity focuses on identifying reason’s superior rather than on a supreme being. Likewise, Augustine probably judges the argument ‘secure’ since, if the aforementioned notions informing reason from above are in some manner immutable then, as the higher being judges the lower,73 the being impressing them on mind must be immutable to a greater extent. In other words, Augustine recognizes that right reasoning implies a proper account of God. Still, Augustine’s qualifications show he is not satisfied that the divine nature has been sufficiently distinguished from the nature of impressed ideas. By contrast, what civ. Dei 8.6 (i) upholds about the relationship between God and mind and (ii) implies concerning the nature of impressed ideas, discloses that a coherent concept of God is not simply ‘what is higher than reason’ but ‘what is highest of all,’ i.e. the being upon which mind and its impressed notions depend. On Augustine’s terms, civ. Dei 8.6 contains a better account of the relationship between God and mind than is found in lib. arb. 2 and, for that reason, is capable of elucidating lib. arb. 2’s philosophical theology and psychology.

71 Lib. arb. 2.6.54–7; 15.153–4. 72 Ibid., 2.15.155; Latin is from CCSL (29), 2.15.39.155, 264. Some commentators disagree concerning how Augustine handles his Neoplatonic inheritance in this instance. On the one hand, Gerson (op. cit., 571–2 and 579–84) (i) judges that Augustine’s argument for Truth in lib. arb. 2 has in mind what Plotinus means by the Second Divine Being, viz. Intellect-Being, and (ii) holds that Augustine subsequently drops this kind of argument on account of its implicit ‘Arian-like’ subordination of the Second Person of the Trinity. On the other hand, Rist (A, 71) opposes this interpretation, claiming that Augustine’s account of God as “Truth or something higher than Truth” does not entail “suggestions of an ‘Arian’ subordination of the Second Person” since what he “intends to present … is a claim as to the intelligible harmony of Neoplatonic wisdom … with the authority of Scripture.” This essay gives preference to Rist’s interpretation since the latter can agree with the claim that Augustine interprets Neoplatonist philosophy, in part, through the filter of an Aristotelian doctrine of substance. 73 Lib. arb. 2.5.46–8.

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III.) Conclusion. Analyzing civ. Dei 8.6’s argument for divine immutability in league with Augustine’s (i) underlying Aristotelian doctrine of substance and (ii) related considerations of impressed ideas found in earlier arguments for divine immutability, shows that civ. Dei 8.6 is eminently worthy of scholarly consideration. Augustine’s argument has merit for three closely related reasons. First and foremost, studying civ. Dei 8.6 in conjunction with Augustine’s underlying doctrine of substance underscores and highlights the argument’s primary assertion that mutable depends on immutable being. In this respect, 8.6’s distinction between divine exemplar, ontological and cognitive forms shows Augustine’s view that divine reality is supreme reality. On this basis, Augustine’s argument is justifiable and suggests, relative to earlier passages in his corpus, that he has sharpened his philosophical theology so that immutability is firmly upheld as a more significant divine attribute than incorporeality. Whereas in passages we have referenced from Augustine’s earlier writings, and in civ. Dei 8.5, he instructs that mind’s knowing itself and the divine nature as incorporeal helps it to know divine immutability, civ. Dei 8.6’s ontological focus makes it clear that divine immutability is prior in importance to divine incorporeality. Again, it is not claimed Augustine asserts for the first time that immutability is the decisive divine attribute, but that his argument in civ. Dei 8.6 is grounded in the latter distinction. In this way, Augustine’s argument sets the order of human insight over the order of discovery.74 74 To my mind, Augustine’s determination to emphasize divine immutability over divine incorporeality is connected with his dominant career-long quest to articulate the divine vestigium, i.e. the nature of God’s presence to the human soul. Augustine originally considers this matter in sol. (~386–7 A.D.) in close proximity with mind’s incorporeal activities. He pursues the topic throughout conf. (~397– 401 A.D.) while beginning with an emphasis on incorporeality (conf. 1.1–5) but finishing with a concentration on ontology (conf. 13.11.12). Augustine prominently describes the vestigium, in ontological terms, within civ. Dei 11.24–8 (~417 A.D.); and brings his project to a completion of sorts in Trin. 14–15 (~422–6 A.D.) wherein the human soul’s ontological structure—conceived in terms of co-implicate activities of remembering, understanding, and willing/loving God (Trin. 14.4.15)—is viewed as analogous, by the mode of proper proportionality, to the Godhead. I assert, therefore, that as Augustine’s career develops his arguments for divine immutability become increasingly focused on ontology since his account of the nature of divine-human spiritual union becomes increasingly ontological. Whereas in earlier proofs for God, like lib. arb. 2 (~391–5 A.D.), Augustine attempts to uphold the primacy of divine immutability by describing the depen-

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Second, analyzing 8.6 in relationship with Augustine’s doctrine of substance and some of his earlier teachings on divine immutability, divine ideas and impressed ideas discloses how 8.6 contains two closely related, but minor, flaws that could be resolved by applying to them the aforementioned teaching on substance. What are the flaws? On the one hand, Augustine neglects to distinguish the nature of the medium whereby mind knows divine immutability. While 8.6 makes no mention of any medium between divine ideas and human understanding, its governing ontology certainly implies there is one and that it is mutable. However, in earlier contexts—e.g. in lib. arb. 2 and conf. 7.17.23—Augustine speaks of this medium as realities divinely impressed on mind (often locating them in mind’s power of intelligence and implying that this power is immutable). Hence, while Augustine’s formal teaching on impressed ideas in earlier contexts can suggest, contrary to his intention, that there is immutable reality belonging to mind (and therefore distinct from God), 8.6’s ontological doctrine requires viewing impressed realities as mutable (albeit as immutable-like). On the other hand, Augustine’s argument in 8.6 ultimately sets ontology over cognition without explaining how mind can know divine immutability from reflecting on its knowledge of mutable things. In this respect, 8.6 transitions from cognition back to ontology by simply having mind consider its intrinsic mutability (premise/prop. ix). Augustine’s fundamental claim is justified by his dictum that mutable depends on immutable being but, as will be reiterated below, clarification concerning the nature of the medium offers a more reasonable way to understand divine immutability. Indeed, studying civ Dei 8.6’s proof for divine immutability in conjunction with the aforementioned claims allows us to make two closely related points. To begin with, Augustine’s ontology mandates that he should distinguish impressed realities as mutable. Additionally, recognizing impressed notions as mutable permits one to consider how, on Augustine’s terms, mind can know of divine immutability from reflecting on mutable things. Based on the above clarifications, one could argue that a hierarchy

dence of mind’s incorporeal activities on incorporeal divine presence, in later contexts, like civ. Dei 8.6 (~415–17 A.D.), he distinguishes divine immutability by considering mind’s dependence in terms of the ontological relationship between God’s being and human substance. In other words, Augustine now emphasizes more the principal cause, rather than the mere fact and mechanism, of mind’s dependence on God. Hence, there is a greater, since more direct, concentration on ontology and, in that way, on the principal cause of mind’s dependence. Exploring that claim in depth, however, stands beyond the scope of this essay.

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among the mutable things mind knows (including itself) points to an immutable being upon whom those mutable realities depend—rather than that mind, as Augustine’s earlier account of impressed notions can suggest, knows of divine immutability from cognizing its own immutability. This result would provide mind with a way to recognize divine immutability in explicit agreement with Augustine’s governing ontology. It is obvious, then, that Augustine’s argument for divine immutability in civ. Dei 8.6 implies developments for which the tools are at hand to carry out. In this respect, Augustine’s loyalty to a doctrine of substance is akin to a double-edged sword since it both suggests the need for clarifications and provides the wherewithal to make them. Nevertheless, although these developments would benefit 8.6’s argument, we have also shown that the latter is strong as it stands and can illuminate, clarify and even correct aspects of lib. arb. 2’s and conf. 7.17.23’s arguments for divine immutability. Augustine’s proof for divine immutability in 8.6 can be improved, and juxtaposing these improvements with earlier arguments would also enhance those arguments, but 8.6’s focus on ontology means it is already quite good. In the third place (returning to this essay’s introductory comments), analyzing 8.6 according to the aforementioned factors shows that beyond lib. arb. 2.3–15, whether the latter is viewed as (i) a manuductio or proof and (ii) persuasive or otherwise, Augustine offers at least one defensible argument that God is immutable creator. In fact, 8.6’s ontological grounding makes it relatively more coherent than and, consequently, explanatory of lib. arb. 2.3–15’s proof for divine immutability—especially concerning lib. arb.’s handling of impressed notions. And recognizing Augustine’s loyalty, from the age of twenty, to an Aristotelian doctrine of substance strongly suggests that lib. arb. 2.3–15 should be studied in terms of that ontological grounding.75 Hence, setting the analyzed civ. Dei 8.6 into relationship with lib. arb. 2.3–15 shows that the latter (i) is not Augustine’s only justifiable

75 This paper strongly suggests that lib. arb. 2.3–15’s ontological dimension (implied by Teske in “Libero arbitrio, De,” op. cit., 494–5) is under-estimated so that lib. arb.’s argument for God might be, in that way, representative of Augustine’s other proofs for God. However, exploring whether that matter is overlooked by the ‘conventional wisdom’ stands beyond the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, if that thesis were established, how would it effect this paper’s argument? On the one hand, it would give greater support to its interpretation of civ. Dei 8.6; on the other, it would not change the claim that Augustine’s argument in civ. Dei 8.6 is significantly different from lib. arb. 2’s.

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proof for divine immutability, (ii) is not prototypical and (iii) should be reinterpreted on the basis of Augustine’s long held doctrine of substance. Taken altogether, this study evinces that although civ. Dei 8.6 is not Augustine’s “most famous”76 argument for divine immutability it is surely among his most important.77

76 Rist (A), 68. 77 I thank some anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this essay.

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“Socii ad participationem boni.” De Civitate Dei 19: the way of Augustine towards peace Luigi Alici, Macerata University

1. Auctoritas and ratio Book 19 represents an unicum in the development of De civitate Dei (civ. Dei). In the second part of the work, where the theoretical framework is more overt, book 19 inaugurates the last section, dedicated to the debiti fines of the two cities (books 19–22), with a profoundly different approach from the first two sections, dedicated to exortus (11–14) and procursus (15– 18). If one does not grasp the overall design that guides and orients the organization of the themes and subjects of the discussion, one can have the impression of a disorganized way of proceeding, interpreting the rightly famous pages about peace as a chance parenthesis, preceded by a useless, albeit erudite, digression on Varro. The goal of this essay is to delve more deeply into the relationship between pax and participation that emerges in civ. Dei 19, contextualizing it in the broader design of the work. The search for the closest and at the same time the furthest point between the two cities is evident from the beginning of the book 19, where the author inserts into the basic theme an analysis of pagan thought, in order to explore the credibility of teleological eudaemonism, typical of the ethical doctrines of the late and late-ancient world.1 In the foreground is the possibility of attaining a form of fulfilled happiness in the historical horizon; this challenge is the point of departure for the itinerary of the book, which posits the aspiration to happiness as the fundamental anthropological dimension, infinitely expanding the intentional openness of this aspiration and reopening on this point a dispute with the pagan world. To this end, the disputation de finibus bonorum et malorum that inaugurates the book immediately addresses the question of the summum bonum: the goal of the good is pursued for itself, while all the other goals must be

1 As G. O’Daly (Augustine’s City of God. A Reader’s Guide [Oxford 1999], 199) writes: “Augustine is critical of philosophical teleology, but not of the teleology principle as such, which he accepts.” O’Daly also offers an excellent analysis of book 19, with a detailed bibliography at 196–210.

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pursued in sight of that ultimate goal. This ultimate goal is not pursued to the point of its elimination, but is realized in its fullness.2 In a certain sense, just as the question of the initium should not be confused with the question of the principium,3 so in the same way the end in the sense of conclusion should not be confused with the end in the sense of purpose. Precisely because of its chosen theme, book 19 “marks a transition”—as O’Daly rightly notes—“from authority to reason.”4 In fact, the difference between the Christian spes and the res vanae of the pagans shines forth not only through divine revelation but also through that rationality that can be called upon in relation to the pagans (“non tantum auctoritate divina, sed adhibita etiam ratione, qualem propter infideles possumus adhibere, clarescat” [19.1]). Therefore, in the search for the purpose of good and evil, the difference between Christians and non-Christians is not the opposition between auctoritas and ratio, but depends on a different way of articulating ratio. This goal is served by Augustine’s analytical exposition of Varro’s work, De philosophia. We will not follow in detail the dual movement of Varro’s analysis. First he builds a map of all the possible ethical doctrines, listing 288 possible sectae obtained by combining six variants.5 Later he deconstructs this map, opting each time for the more inclusive criterion, held in line with the teaching of the Ancient Academy (which Augustine, in agreement with Cicero, believes to be more Stoic than Platonic), thus reaching the conclusion that the greatest good flows from the goods of the soul and those of the body.

2 “Illud enim est finis boni nostri, propter quod appetenda sunt cetera, ipsum autem propter se ipsum …. Finem boni ergo nunc dicimus, non quo consumatur, ut non sit, sed quo perficiatur, ut plenum sit; et finem mali, non quo esse desinat, sed quo usque nocendo perducat” (19.1). The Latin texts of Augustine are quoted from the edition of the Nuova Biblioteca Agostiniana (Città Nuova, 1965–2006)—also found online in the dual Latin-Italian version, www.augustinus.it. For civ. Dei, I compare the editions in Patrologiae Cursus Completeus: Series Latina, vol. 41 (PL 41) and Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, vol. 47 (CCSL 47). The texts quoted, unless otherwise indicated, refer to civ. Dei. 3 Cf. in this regard my essay, “Initium omnis operis verbum: On the semantics of opus/operari in Augustine,” Quaestio, 6 (2006), 15–35. 4 O’Daly, op. cit., 196. 5 According to this outline, the possible variants are: 1.) choose the principle of pleasure or of rest or a combination of pleasure and rest or the elementary needs of nature (prima naturae); 2.) seek the virtue in sight of these principles or in sight of itself or seek both options for themselves; 3.) opt for the individual or social point of view; 4.) prefer a certain doctrine (Stoicism) or an uncertain one (new Academy); 5.) pursue a generically philosophical or cynical lifestyle; or 6.) select a model of the contemplative or active life, or a mixed life.

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After Augustine acknowledges the crucial importance of the question, he drops, beginning at chapter 4, Varro’s bizarre map and conducts a thorough phenomenological exploration of the historic conditions of human life, inviting the reader not to underestimate the obstacles and dangers that impede the attainment of happiness in earthly life. The apologetic strategy of the author thus radicalizes the disputation on the respective goals of good and of evil: “aeternam vitam esse summum bonum, aeternam vero mortem summum malum; propter illam proinde adipiscendam istamque vitandam recte nobis esse vivendum” (19.4.1). Full happiness corresponds to the fulfilment of the good in conditions of complete and stable accessibility. Mutabilitas expresses a radicalism unknown to ancient thought for ontological and ethical reasons. In the first place, the situation not only concerns consideration of various modes of being but also strikes the notion that the universe is created ex nihilo at its very root. Secondly, the vulnus of original sin means a dramatic fragility on the moral level. Augustine had clarified, especially in De natura boni (nat. b.), that every created reality, having received being from God according to its own measure, is good, because every good, be it great or small, exists only because of the greatest good. Therefore, everything in the order of being is good because it is either God or comes from Him. However, the greatest good spoken of in civ. Dei 19 is a moral figure: it is not identified with God, but with the fulfilment of the desire for happiness in the ordered fullness of the good. This is also confirmed by the antithesis between the greatest good and the greatest evil, which expresses the maximum distance possible in the order of the moral life. This difference cannot be proposed on the ontological level, where the finite nature of creatures is not the sign of an extrinsic mingling of the two original antithetical greatness’s, but attests to an original positivity, even in the order of finiteness. Thus, it is necessary to distinguish between natura and vitium, between the condition before the fall of Adam and that after: just as there can be life without pain and peace without war, so there can be a nature uncontaminated by evil, but not vice versa. Therefore, the creaturely status of being qua being must not be confused with the defective condition of existing, which in intelligent creatures takes on moral importance. The ontological theme of participation undoubtedly marks the point at which Augustine is closest to the ‘Platonists.’ But one must not forget the point of maximum distance in the creationistic principle, which blocks a pre-Fall or degenerative interpretation of finiteness: creaturely finiteness is the result not of a Fall but of participation in the act of creation, which is part of the salvific aim of the covenant and which the “second creation” ransoms and redeems. The limit should not be confused with the wound. 265

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For this reason, according to Augustine, the thing that counts is the recte vivere, which, however, wounded humanity is no longer able to achieve alone: as Pascal will note, it is an act of reason to acknowledge this limit and open oneself to a dialectic of faith and inquiry (“oportet ut credendo quaeramus” [19.4.1]).

2. Autonomy and heteronomy In the following chapters, Augustine develops a pars destruens on the way Varro addressed the entire question, showing that all spheres of human life are vulnerable to a Damocles’ sword in which the limit of finiteness is further threatened by the wound of evil. Since the elementary needs of nature always flow sub incertis causis and pleasure can never be freed from pain, or quies from inquietudo, not even the wise person is safe from the dangers that beset the body and soul; even the tendency towards practical activity (appetitus rationis) is threatened by disorder, quando pervertitur sensus ratioque sopitur (19.4.2). The same can be said about the internal corruption to which the exercise of virtue is exposed: the wise person must always engage in an internal war that impedes happiness. The very virtues of temperance, prudence, justice and fortitude attest to an “agonized” condition of life that shows the impotence of the Stoic philosophers, who in their arrogance and effrontery were sure they knew the purpose of the good and could attain happiness by themselves, but in the case of failure were willing to cross the ever-possible threshold of suicide. More acceptable were the theses of the Peripatetics or Platonists who do not minimize these evils, though they hold that such evils do not block the attainment of happiness. Actually, Augustine objects that even if unhappiness is brief, this does not mean it does not exist, and certainly does not mean it can be called happiness. Instead, from a perspective of fullness, he claims that human life can be happy in the hope of a future world and in this way human life is saved (“ut vita humana, quae tot et tantis huius saeculi malis esse cogitur misera, spe futuri saeculi sit beata, sicut et salva” [19.5.5]).6 Varro’s third variant about the social dimension received the full approval of the author of civ. Dei, who identifies the greatest good also as vita socialis sanctorum (19.5). But how many ills threaten human society! They

6 The idea is also confirmed further on in the text: “non absurde dici etiam nunc beatus potest, spe illa potius quam re ista” (19.20).

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increase exponentially the further one looks, as in a succession of concentric circles: domus, urbs vel civitas, orbis, and mundus (“qui censetur nomine caeli et terrae”) [19.3.2]). To begin with, perils lurk in domestic life; there are errors and violence in the administration of justice, which the civitas needs, even when it is at peace. Equally difficult is the attainment of happiness on the planetary level (orbis terrae) where division is experienced already in the diversitas linguarum and explodes in wars. In this regard, it is useless to state that the wise man will only fight just wars, a source of pain precisely because they confirm the existence of injustice, which demands a reaction. Even in conditions of peace, the very relations of friendship and the spiritual bonds upon which co-existence are built are threatened by evil, beginning with natural death and the death of the soul, which consists in the abandonment of faith or upright conduct. Finally, there is a mundus that embraces heaven and earth, where the societas sanctorum angelorum suffers the hostility of evil and deceptive demons that often mask as angels of light. All citizens of the two cities thus lead an earthly life exposed to lies and iniquities. However, Christians seek elsewhere illa securitas, ubi pax plenissima atque certissima est (19.10): the ultimate happiness coincides with the goal of perfection, “the ultimate consummation, the unending end” (“Ipsa est enim beatitudo finalis, ipse perfectionis finis, qui consumentem non habet finem” [19.10]). The theme of peace, starting with chapter 10, marks the passage to the pars construens. In the enjoyment of the greatest good, the virtues will find in the absolute fullness of peace the reward for their struggle against the vices, one that will not be lacking on earth, either. Peace thus accompanies earthly happiness (“quantulacumque hic haberi potest in vita bona” [19.10]) when virtue uses its own goods in an upright way. But it is still far away when virtue faces the ills suffered by man, seeking to turn them into good (“bonis eius recte utitur virtus; quando vero eam non habemus, etiam malis, quae homo patitur, bene utitur virtus” [ibid.]). The vera virtus, however, is experienced only when peace reaches the apex of perfection, in which the fulfilment of the virtuous life reaches the ultimate purpose. In other words, in earthly life peace is a symptomatic indicator of happiness, and thus of a correct orientation of the moral life. For this reason, Augustine dedicates ample space to the theme, starting in chapter 11, developing it on a variety of levels: peace in eternal life, the onto-axiological status of peace, peace as an ordered concord and the point of encounter between the two cities. In his effort to keep together ratio and auctoritas, Augustine seeks to avoid overlapping the failure of autonomous ethics typical, above all, of Stoicism (but who could not also think of Pelagius?) with a form of extrin267

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sic heteronomy, which would in the end admit the absolute incommensurability between earthly unhappiness and celestial happiness. His attention to the figure of the civitas Dei peregrine and its continual intersections with the life of civitas terrena7 provides confirmation. In this argumentative strategy, the thematic setting is offered by the doctrine of peace, and the epistemological device by the doctrine of participation. On this basis, peace is the ordered form of participation in the order of the good, thus it is the medium that verifies the correct articulation of the virtuous life. The theme of the mediation between two worlds, the most cumbersome speculative inheritance of Platonism, which the Neoplatonists deluded themselves to have answered by multiplying out of all proportion the levels of mediation, now finds its one solution in Christ as perfect mediator and redeemer (9.15.1; 10.20; 10.28; 11.21), whose incarnation does not contradict the demand of Platonism (10.29.2). However, one can speak of participatio as communicatio to identify not the relationship of absolute similarity between the Father and the Son (De diversis quaestionibus octogina tribus [div. qu.] 23) but that between creator and creature, in which the dissimilarity in the matter coexists with a certain similarity in the form (Confessiones [conf.] 12.28.38; De Trinitate [Trin.] 1.1.2). Participation, instead, attests to an intrinsic relation between realities belonging to vertically distinct orders (“non a me mihi lumen existens; sed lumen non participans, nisi in te” [Sermone (s.) 67.5.8]) and should not be confused with an exterior form of affinity. Thus, acknowledging the ecclesia in via as corpus permixtum of the good and the bad does not mean confusing justice and iniquity, as the Donatists believed (Contra litteras Petiliani 2.40.96); in fact, only those who commit or approve of iniquity participate in it (Contra epistulam Parmeniani, 2.18.37; De baptismo, 4.13.19; Speculum, 362). The moral distance in the exterior affinity (as between the just and the unjust) is different from the analogous proximity in the metaphysical distance (as between the just and justice). According to Rist, in accepting the Platonic equation between being and good, Augustine finds it more normal to think of a metaphysics of degrees of participation, without it translating into a theory of the analogy of being.8 Accordingly, the magnificent phenomenology of peace delineated at the beginning of 19.11 shows that in the final analysis, the difference between 7 In this regard, consult my essay ““Populus” e “concors communio” nel De civitate Dei di Agostino,” in Concordia discors. La convivenza politica e i suoi problemi, (ed.) G. Cotta (Franco Angeli, 2013), 51–70. 8 Cf. J. Rist, Augustine; Ancient thought baptized (A) (Cambridge University Press, 1994), 259.

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order and disorder depends on the capacity to correctly link uti and frui. In this way, there is full correspondence to the antithesis between the two loves that Augustine sets at the origin of the two cities (19.28) and therefore between caelum and terra, which represents its symbolic place. In this perspective, one understands the perfect equation between peace, the greatest good, and eternal life (“fines bonorum nostrorum esse pacem, sicut aeternam diximus vitam” [19.11]). It is no coincidence that the nomen mysticum of Jerusalem is visio pacis and the greatest good can be called pax in vita aeterna vel vita aeterna in pace (ibid.), even if the possibility of recognizing peace in the res mortales leads Augustine to prefer the name of eternal life. Thus, peace sums up the universal aspiration to happiness (“Sicut enim nemo est qui gaudere nolit, ita nemo est qui pacem habere nolit” [19.12.1]).9 Just as there can be a disordered and blind way of tending toward happiness, so one can tend toward peace even in war; hence the legendary Cacus, in his insociabilis feritas, pursued in his own way a certain peace. The conclusion is a confirmation of the eudaemonistic thesis, articulated in a clearly Neoplatonic onto-axiological framework (“Non amare tamen qualemcumque pacem nullo modo potest” [19.12.2]). In fact, one can speak of peace in many senses. First of all on the anthropological level, where it is the ordered constitution of the parts (in the body), the ordered calm of the appetites (in the irrational soul), ordered convergence of consciousness and action (in the rational animal), and the ordered life and health of the living being (in the body and in the soul). Thus, the exploration develops vertically (from the peace of man to the peace of God) and horizontally, where the notion of ordered concord emerges, viz. in the home, in the city and in the heavenly city. In any case, pax is always tranquillitas ordinis (19.13.1). Not to be missed are the two terms that form the definition, as apt as it is misunderstood. In the first place, order is distinguished as “parium dispariumque rerum sua cuique loca tribuens dispositivo” (ibid.). In this respect, it might be considered as the form through which the manifold participates

9 In a sermon given around 416, after having attributed to caritas that is born of fides the power to lead to peace, Augustine adds: “Ipsa pax est finis omnium desideriorum bonorum” (s. 168.2.2). In choosing peace as the ultimate good, Augustine could have been influenced by the personification in many Roman monuments and, more generally, by the Roman iconographic tradition: cf. E. Simon, Eirene und Pax: Friedensgöttinen in der Antike (F. Steiner Verlag, 1988), 19–30.

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in unity.10 Tranquillitas speaks of the absence of perturbatio, which in human affairs is always relative: in fact, rightly unhappy men are even so in order. The same law of order is what keeps them from being confused with happy people (“non quidem coniuncti … sed … seiunctiIa” [ibid.]). However, inasmuch as they do not repudiate the law of order, even for them one can speak of a relative tranquillity, and thus of a relative peace, according to a tension that sets a new direction for Stoic ethics. How so? The Stoic idea of a natural impulse toward self-preservation, expressed with the doctrine of amor pondus (“Pondus meum amor meus; eo feror, quocumque feror” [conf. 13.9.10]), is reasserted in civ. Dei where love appears as a force of gravity of the soul (civ. Dei 11.28), capable of elevating and unifying desire. However, the conjunction between ontology and ethics is drawn from the principle of creation, which makes it possible to balance the ethical pessimism of many Augustinian pages with a significant ontological optimism. Hence, the parasitic pathology of sin, which opposes and threatens —even mortally—the ordered “physiology” of the virtuous life, can never deform the ontological order of creation (“Nullius quippe vitium ita contra naturam est, ut naturae deleat etiam extrema vestigial” [19.12.2]). 11 God, who is “naturarum omnium sapientissimus Conditor et iustissimus Ordinator” (19.13.2), set mortal humankind at the apex of creation, giving it also the singular prerogative of freely orienting itself in a scale of goods ranging from what is finite to what is greatest. What can result from this? Humanity’s opportunity to approach or distance itself from the ultimate good generates, in the changeableness of becoming, a moral order that has its paradigm in the ontological order. Thus, all created realities are ordered within a growing scale of participation toward the greatest being: from the not living to the living (insensate, like plants, sensate, like animals) and to intelligent ones (mortals like men, immortals like angels). Civ. Dei adds to this framework typical of Augustinian thought a further specification, drawn from the third variant introduced by Varro, about the individual or

10 Augustine recognizes the presence of ordering forms (bona generalia) immanent in all created natures, setting them in relationship with the triad of mensura, numerus, pondus (cf. nat. b. 3.3; 21.21; De Genesi ad litteram, 5.7.20; and Contra Faustum Manicheum, 21.6). 11 Not even the nature of the devil is intrinsically evil; evil belongs exclusively to the moral sphere (“perversitas eam malam facit” [19.3.2]) and cannot elude the justice of God who, in punishing, re-establishes the moral order that was violated.

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social importance of the search for the good.12 The ambivalent nature of moral life imparts a new dynamism to discourse and does not at all authorize a static and “conservative” interpretation of the tranquillitas ordinis. Thus in the doctrine of love as criterion of identification of the two cities, there is an original balancing point between the Neoplatonic idea of an ordered teleological unification of the universe and the eudaemonistic inclination, typical of ancient and late-ancient ethics, but radically purified of any illusion of self-sufficiency. The bona voluntas finds its peace precisely in complying with the ordered tension of love (“recta itaque voluntas est bonus amor” [civ. Dei 14.7.2]). Virtue is essentially a form of ordered love (civ. Dei 15.22), that consists in adhering to the truth in order to live in justice, according to the apt formula of Trin. 8.7.10.

3. Civitas Dei peregrina In this context, a further point about the relationship between uti and frui comes to the fore, which does not authorize the civitas Dei to make opportunistic use of all that attains to temporal law and peace; in the modern interpretation, far from any ontology of participation, this finalized order will be misunderstood as a form of instrumental reductionism. For Augustine, however, the peace of the earthly city depends on the use of temporal realities; in love, in particular, the uti does not indicate an instrumental devaluation of human love compared to the love of God, but a difference between absolute and relative love.13 In fact, love of God and of neighbour encompasses also love of self, correctly understood (“ille in se diligendo non errat, qui Deum diligit” [19.14]). Thus, peace with every person is part of a perspective of ordered concord that includes a minimum and a maximum (“primum ut nulli noceat, deinde ut etiam prosit cui potueritIa” [ibid.]). There is no theocratic illusion nor any demonization of the lex temporalis: with

12 Thus, the ethical-social dimension is a specification of a broader, ontological, outlook. Cf., by contrast the opinion of Curbelié: “la questione de la paix est inséré … dans la questione plus large de la béatitude sociale, elle-même tributaire de l’antithèse des deux amours” (Ph. Curbelié, La justice dans la Cité de Dieu [Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2004], 463). 13 The very way of considering love of one’s neighbour as the first step toward love of God (De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum 1.26.48; Contra Adimantum Manichei discipulum, 6) will be gradually reconsidered to the point of eliminating any dualistic residue, understanding the two commandments as the expression of one charity (s. 265.8.9).

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extreme realism, Augustine reconciles the interior and the exterior points of view, the evangelical radicalism of the converted with the versatile juridical and institutional sensibility of the civis romanus.14 Already in De libero arbitrio (lib. arb.), alongside the difference between love of external realities and of temporal realities, Augustine had introduced a further difference between two types of laws (unam aeternam, aliam temporalem)15 that nonetheless was based on a different understanding. While in relation to the two forms of love, true happiness is only attained by acknowledging the primacy of eternal law, the temporal law has the purpose of safeguarding as much as possible pax et societas humana. In fact, those who are slaves to mala voluntas, are entrusted to a different jurisdiction that substitutes the interior and freeing dynamic of love with the exterior and repressive binding force of law. Thus, temporal law is not the “ignorant” antithesis of eternal law, but a necessary regulatory mediation, that pursues at the lowest level the same logic of justice. From this relationship emerges the possibility of articulating the notion of justice (“iustitia minor huic vitae competens” [De spiritu et littera 36.65]), which now reemerges unfailingly in the different meanings of peace. To begin with, pax domestica offers important qualifications about slavery. The distinction between original creaturely status and anthropological vulnus produced by the first sin makes it possible to defend at once an affirmation of principle and one of fact, albeit with a few unconvincing concordist excesses. In principle, naturaliter no man is a slave of another man or of sin; in fact, however, the first cause of slavery is sin, and the poenalis servitus that follows must submit to the law “quae naturalem ordinem conservari iubet, perturbari vetat” (19.15). With Cicero, Augustine accepts the idea of man as a “social animal” but not as a “political animal.”16 However, he attributes a new value to this choice. In fact while God created some beasts to be solitarias et quodammodo solivagas, and others to be congreges (inasmuch as they live congregatae atque in gregibus), He originally created man with a participative vocation (“societatis unitas vinculumque concordiae”). The latter is founded not only on extrinsic similarity but, more signifi-

14 Cf. Rist (A), 225 ff. 15 Lib. arb. 1.15.31. 16 Cf. Cicero, De Officiis 2.21.73; De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (Fin.) 5.23.66. R. Markus also insists on this difference in “Two Conceptions of Political Authority: Augustine, De civitate Dei, XIX, 14–15, and Some Thirteenth-Century Interpretations,” in The City of God. A Collection of Critical Essays, (ed.) D. Donnelly (P. Lang, 1995), 104.

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cantly, on a bond of creaturely kinship (“si non tantum inter se naturae similitudine, verum etiam cognationis affectu homines necterentur” [12.21]). Therefore, it is possible to identify a ‘layer’ of human coexistence that is more original than the political one. Man’s power over man only flows from a historic deviation: man, naturaliter civis, became in history impius, instilling his own vitium into human community. Human salvation, consequently, is not attained by rising behind the back of corruption to pursue an unattainable moral autonomy, but by opening oneself through conversio to the extraordinary gift of the promissio redemptionis and, at the same time, admitting a broader criterion for identifying the populus, as we will see further on, to be plagued with injustice. Thus also, in the case of man, who is the point of departure and basic cell of the city (“initium sive particular” [19.16]), the duty to do no harm to anyone and to impede sin or punish concerns both those (i) who do not live according to faith and (ii) who, in the faith, await the promised eternal goods. On this matter, the use of the realities necessary to mortal life is common to both groups (“sed finis utendi cuique suus proprius multumque diversus” [19.17]. Convergence and divergence in the good use of temporal realities thus depend on a different configuration of the uti-frui relationship at every level for peace in the domus and in the civitas. On the one hand, the earthly city that does not live according to faith strongly desires earthly peace and places the concord of the citizens in commanding and obeying to preserve some degree of harmony concerning the issues that interest mortal life.17 On the other hand, that part of the heavenly city on pilgrimage in this world needs the same earthly peace, even though it does not attribute to it any salvific value.18 For this reason, then, the believer does not hesitate to obey the laws of the earthly city that work for the maintenance of peace. It

17 “Ita etiam terrena civitas, quae non vivit ex fide, terrenam pacem appetit in eoque defigit imperandi oboediendique concordiam civium, ut sit eis de rebus ad mortalem vitam pertinentibus humanarum quaedam compositio voluntatum” (19.17). 18 According to O’Daly (op. cit., 210): “Augustine offers no programme for the Christianization of Roman political institutions, and implies that, religious laws apart, the pre-Christian and the Christianized empire is the same kind of society.” Van Oort agrees: “For the author of the City of God there is no difference between the era following Constantine and the one preceding it” (J. van Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon. A Study into Augustine’s City of God and the Sources of his Doctrine of the two Cities [Brill, 1991], 163). In addition, Deane, writing against any “clericalist interpretation,” denies that Augustine’s work contains any sharp antithesis between pagan and Christian states (H. Deane, “Augustine and the State: The Return of Order Upon Disorder,” in The City of God: A Collection of Critical Essays, op. cit., 56).

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is in relation to the common mortal condition that concord must be kept between the two cities.19 Already in vera rel., while summarizing the Pauline antithesis between “vetus homo, et exterior, et terrenus and novus homo, et interior, et caelestis” (vera rel. 26, 48–9), Augustine had established premises to legitimize not only the permixtio but also the ‘dual citizenship’ of the Christian. Nobody can experience the condition of the new man if not in some kind of conjunction with the condition of the old man (“novum vero et caelestem nemo in hac vita possit nisi cum vetere” [vera rel. 27, 50]). The affirmation of a communis usus and at the same time of a finis utendi diversus is doubly surprising. To begin with, the positive sense of civitas terrena is startling, for Augustine does not seem to identify it with the disordered and incoherent sum of many amores privati. In the syntagma civitas terrena the adjective connotes the historical disorder produced by a perversion of amor anchored to the “earth,” while the noun represents the institutionalized form of participation in a shared purpose. The earthly city sempiterna non erit precisely because it places its good in the earth; at the end of times, the egoistic drive of disordered love will triumph, eliminating all remnants of social peace (“neque enim, cum extremo supplicio damnata fuerit, iam civitas erit” [14.4]). The problem is complex, but I do not believe one can hypothesize a terium quid between the two cities, identified with an institutional and political apparatus endowed with some kind of axiological neutrality.20 Augustine’s commentary on Sallust, Cicero and Virgil in civ. Dei 5 should not be forgotten: God protected the ancient Romans, whose amor gloriae induced them to place the homeland above all other things (5.12), in this way containing the lust for money and many other vices—even though, as Rist observes, “there is a slippery slope.”21 Certainly, love of glory is also a vice, as Horace and Cicero also admitted (5.13), and one draws closer to God the more one is free of this immunditia (5.14). However, disregarding private

19 “Ut, quoniam communis est ipsa mortalitas, servetur in rebus ad eam pertinentibus inter civitatem utramque concordia” (19.17). 20 It is interesting to note Cotta’s Retractatio, in which he distances himself from his previous interpretation, expressed in La città politica di S. Agostino (Edizioni di Comunità, 1960). In his Retractatio, Cotta rejects his earlier interpretation as the fruit of a formalistic understanding of natural law that had blocked him from acknowledging the ontological order of creation wherein justice is naturally rooted and that sin cannot cancel. See S. Cotta, “Introduzione. III Politica,” in Sant’Agostino, La città di Dio, vol. 1 (Città Nuova, 1978), NBA 5/1, 131, n. *. 21 Cf. Rist (A), 221.

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interest pro re communi, hoc est re publica (5,15), the Romans encountered avaritia, establishing the premises for attaining human glory as their temporal recompense for an earthly empire. The permixtio is present in the two groups of amatores, introducing a dynamic and perfectible criterion of identification that medieval political Augustinianism would forget. Therefore, according to a scale of approximation to the supreme paradigm of the civitas Dei, amor gloriae is recognized as a lesser evil than libido dominandi. The latter is not only the worst vice of the Roman people and the precondition of all slavery (1.30), but is also the root of all disordered love in which the alienating and self-destructive outcome of the civitas terrena is summarized (1. praef.). A second surprise concerns Augustine’s sharp position against fundamentalism. He maintains that the civitas Dei peregrina does not enjoy institutional self-sufficiency22 because it needs the ‘civil’ tutelage of a lex temporalis. Even with all of the latter’s imperfections and its inevitable externality,23 it is a necessary, albeit insufficient, defence of peace and unavoidable condition for ordered coexistence. In this respect, it represents the point of arrival in the minimum natural aspiration of Babylon and at the same time the point of departure in the maximum unifying tension of Jerusalem. Thus, Christians live in history in a kind of paradoxical citizenship: in fact, in virtue of grace, they tend toward pax aeterna but in virtue of nature, they live in the pax terrena.

4. Love and justice The last chapters of book 19 offer two important confirmations of this interpretation. The first confirmation concerns the status of the civitas Dei on its journey toward the eternal city, a condition marked by an insurmountable ambivalence: it lives in the promise of redemption apud terrenam civitatem velut captivam vitam suae peregrinationis (19.17). Because of its profes-

22 While commenting on Psalm 61, Augustine concedes that the commixtio temporalis itself can lead some citizens of Babylon to administer the things of Jerusalem, and vice versa. He writes that there are also “our citizens” engaged in the administration of political institutions, notwithstanding their ephemeral transience (magistrates, judges, warlords, kings): “Omnes iusti et boni, non habentes in corde nisi gloriosissima quae de te dicta sunt, civitas Dei” (Ennerationes in Psalmos [en. Ps.] 61.8). 23 On the difference between true justice and the justice proper to a civitas terrena bene constituta see vera rel. 26.48. For his part, Deane (op. cit., 57) insists on this distinction.

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sion of a monotheistic faith and its eschatological vocation, the civitas Dei peregrina is capable of joining cultural pluralism and evangelical universality in an outlook unknown to polytheistic faiths, nailed to an insuperable ethnocentrism by the sacralisation of bizarre territorial cults. The text is worth quoting in its entirety: While this heavenly city, therefore, goes its way as a stranger on earth, it summons citizens from all peoples, and gathers an alien society of all languages, caring naught what difference may be in manners, laws and institutions by which early peace is gained or maintained, abolishing and destroying nothing of the sort, nay rather preserving and following them (for however different they may be among different nations, they aim at one and the same end, earthly peace), provided that there is no hindrance to then religion that teaches the obligation to worship one most high and true God.24 The identification of monotheism with intolerance—not rare in contemporary debate—here is not only rejected but overturned.25 A dual condition is required for the encounter between citizens of the two cities in the name of peace. The positive condition is represented by the common responsibility to promote pax terrena (even if pagans incorrectly view it as the ultimate purpose and the Christians correctly view it as the “next to last” purpose, one would say today). By contrast, the negative condition concerns respect for what today would be called a “healthy secularism” which implies full freedom of worship (“si religionem, qua unus summus et verus Deus colendus docetur, non impedit” [19.17]).

24 “Haec ergo caelestis civitas dum peregrinatur in terra, ex omnibus gentibus cives evocat atque in omnibus linguis peregrinam colligit societatem, non curans quidquid in moribus, legibus institutisque diversum est, quibus pax terrena vel conquiritur vel tenetur, nihil eorum rescindens vel destruens, immo etiam servans ac sequens, quod licet diversum in diversis nationibus, ad unum tamen eumdemque finem terrenae pacis intenditur, si religionem, qua unus summus et verus Deus colendus docetur, non impedit” (civ. Dei 19.17; trans. by W. Greene, The City of God against the Pagans, [Harvard Univ. Press, 1964], 6, 197–9). For that matter, as already noted by the most attentive interpreters, Augustine never drew from the idea of Christianity as a universal religion the conclusion that all beings must be bound politically within one world society. This is also noted by E. Fortin, “Justice as the foundation of the political community: Augustine and his pagan models,” in Augustinus. De civitate Dei, (ed.) Ch. Horn (Akademie Verlag, 1997), 43. 25 On this point, see my essay “Differenze senza Differenza. L’idolatria nell’epoca postsecolare,” in Nuovi ateismi e nuove idolatrie (Hermeneutica, 2012), 9–36.

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For Augustine, this possible and transitory collaboration had to be verified with philosophical evidence. In this respect, book 19 offers us another surprising affirmation: membership in the civitas Dei is compatible with a relative pluralism not only of political regimes or cultural models, but also of life practices and moral doctrines. In fact, the attitude or life customs with which each person receives this faith have nothing to do with the city of God, as long as they do not oppose divine commandments and act turrite atque intemperanter. Augustine goes even further: in this city, “wherefore when even philosophers become Christians, they are not compelled to change their dress or customary fare, which are no hindrance to religion, but only their false doctrines.” Moreover, he concludes that …[o]f those three kinds of life, to be sure, the inactive, the active and the composite, although anyone might lead his life in any of them with faith impaired and attain to the everlasting rewards, nevertheless there is importance in what he possesses through his love of truth, and in what he pays out because of the claim of Christian love.26 The one limit is to respect the dynamic balance between truth and charity: “No man ought to be so completely inactive as not to think of his neighbour’s advantage, nor so active as to neglect the contemplation of God.”27 The second point with which book 19 concludes is also part of this outlook. Those who believe that the greatest good of the city of God is the pax aeterna atque perfecta28 know that, in comparison, earthly life, no matter how full of all possible goods, is miserrima. The dividing line depends on alienation,29 the fruit of a distortion of the hierarchy between usus and finis, which involves the relationship between justice and love, and permits a clarification about the relationship between populus and res publica—

26 “Nihil sane ad istam pertinet civitatem quo habitu vel more vivendi, si non est contra divina praecepta, istam fidem, qua pervenitur ad Deum, quisque sectetur; unde ipsos quoque philosophos, quando Christiani fiunt, non habitum vel consuetudinem victus, quae nihil impedit religionem, sed falsa dogmata mutare compellit. Unde illam quam Varro adhibuit ex Cynicis differentiam, si nihil turpiter atque intemperanter agat, omnino non curat. Ex tribus vero illis vitae generibus, otioso, actuoso et ex utroque composito, quamvis salva fide quisque possit in quolibet eorum vitam ducere et ad sempiterna praemia pervenire, interest tamen quid amore teneat veritatis, quid officio caritatis impendat”(civ. Dei 19.19). 27 Ibid., “Nec sic esse quisque debet otiosus, ut in eodem otio utilitatem non cogitet proximi, nec sic actuosus, ut contemplationem non requirat Dei.” 28 In his Ennerationes in Psalmos, Augustine writes: “ibi erit perfecta iustitia, ubi perfecta pax” (en. Ps. 147.20). 29 Cf. van Oort, op. cit., 149.

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whose explication is rooted in a promise Augustine had made in civ. Dei 2 and now fulfilled, over ten years later. The biblical meaning of justice (which seeks in God’s unchanging faithfulness the true fons iustiatiae),30 revisited through Neoplatonic ontology, assumes in Augustine the meaning of ordo creationis, becoming thus the precondition for an authentic ordo amoris;31 in this foundational meaning, justice has a different value from the current meaning (“Iustitia porro ea virtus est, quae sua cuique distribuit” [19.21.1]). In book 2, recalling the Ciceronian idea of justice and of res publica, Augustine clarified the difference in terms of the idea of justice founded on the supremacy of Christ: “hoc nomen … alibi aliterque vulgatum est, ab usu nostrae locutionis est forte remotius” (2.21.4). From the definition of res publica as res populi,32 which Cicero attributes to Scipio the African, Augustine derived his understanding of the people as not just any collection of persons, but as a collection associated through a juridical agreement and communion of interests (“opulum autem non omnem coetum multitudinis, sed coetum iuris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatum esse determinat” [2.21.2]). Augustine then granted that it would be necessary to return to the matter in question. On the one hand, the Roman people was never a res publica because it was never organized according to justice and, on the other hand, he admits that he wants to identify more reliable definitions that make it possible to legitimize a certain form of res publica (“Secundum probabiliores autem definitiones pro suo modo quodam res publica fuit” [2.21.4]). It is now time to pick up the question again. On the one hand, the background ambivalence is maintained: when the human creature is submitted not to God but to impure and evil demons, the order of justice is radically subverted and this disorder is reflected on the anthropological and moral level: the soul does not command the body according to justice, nor does reason thus command the passions. In this case, both the utilitatis communio and the iuris consensus are lacking, and therefore the very sense of the

30 Cf. the extensive analysis developed by Curbelié, op. cit., 31–212. 31 According to Parel, the superiority of love over justice is better understood in the context of original sin. For him, “nature needs grace to act efficaciously even in the civil sphere after the Fall” (A. Parel, “Justice and love in the political thought of St. Augustine,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 1,III [1992], 82). TeSelle, instead, sees precisely in the ambivalence of love, the teleological orientation that he does not seem to emphasize adequately, the ultimate reason for the supremacy of justice (cf. E. TeSelle, “Justice, Love, Peace,” in Augustine today, [ed.] R. Neuhaus [Eerdmans, 1993], 88–110). 32 Cf. Cicero, De Republica 1.25.39.

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populus. However, on the other hand, Augustine now explains better a possible legitimization of the Roman populus and of the res publica. The adversative with which chapter 24 opens (“Si autem populus non isto, sed alio definiatur modo”) introduces a new definition: “Populus est coetus multitudinis rationalis rerum quas diligit concordi communione sociatus” (19.24). Compared to Cicero’s definition, Augustine does not set in the foreground the pairing of utilitas/ius, which links the supremacy of justice to the Stoic notion of utilitatis communio. Rather, he emphasizes the concors communio, or in other words a deeper form of interior cohesion, guaranteed by concord,33 quae salus est quodam modo populi (19.24), unified and finalized by dilectio which, for Augustine, is the highest form of well-oriented love,34 capable of unifying the tension between the vertical and horizontal aspects of the terrestrial human community.35 It is as if the discourse took a step back from the political-institutional level to the genetic-spiritual one to frame the phenomenon in a diachronic perspective. The genesis of the populus, the foundation of any res publica, is identified in its participative dynamic rather than in its juridical formalization, permitting a glimpse at a teleological process that unlocks the binary logic (that is incompatible with the permixtio), justifying a differentiated and gradual correlation of peace and justice.36 Therefore, as long as concord assures an ac-

33 The reference to concord runs through other writings of Augustine as well, though not always specified as the elective form of love: cf. “Quid est autem civitas, nisi multitudo hominum in quoddam vinculum redacta concordiae?” (Epistula [ep.] 138.2.10); and “cum aliud civitas non sit, quam concors hominum multitudo” (ep. 155.3.9). Rist (A, 220) notes that here Augustine draws close to Plato, Republic, 5, 462b, 4 ff. 34 Cf., div. qu. 35, 2; and 36. 35 For this reason, I do not agree with those who emphasize the ambivalence and axiological neutrality of Augustine’s choice. In this regard, O‘Daly writes that “This is a value-free definition”—even though he adds right away: “or rather, it is one which depends on the objects ‘loved’ by a community” (O’Daly, op. cit., 207). Even more disputable is the thesis of Deane, according to which the new criterion introduced in civ. Dei 19.24 is “a completely amoral account of what a populus or a res publica is”; only “an elastic definition … permits us to include under it a wide variety of peoples and states with different goals and interest” (Deane, op. cit., 55). 36 “On peut dire que justice et paix doivent être articulées comme le sont raisons formelles et finales” (Curbelié, op. cit., 469). However, the right attention to the inseparability of justice and love seems to prevent the author from validating the importance of the new Augustinian definition of populus.

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ceptable degree of social cohesion, one can speak of populus and, on the political level, of res populi even in the absence of true justice.37 The idea of participation, a point of convergence between very different perspectives and doctrines, takes on crucial importance here. Augustine absorbs it from the unifying tension in the Neoplatonic world. He reshapes it in the light of recognizing Christ as perfect mediator and redeemer (9.15.1; 10.20; 10,28; 11.21), whose incarnation does not contradict the Neoplatonic categories (10.29.2); and he draws from it a concrete application concerning the sphere of public ethics. In fact, the possibility of being socius ad participationem boni (19.1.3) authorizes a courageous legitimization of the Roman civitas, albeit in an idealized and by now distant form. Augustine probably felt the beneficial influence of the notion amor civicus, which continued among the higher levels of the society,38 since it is part of a collective imagination that had profoundly influenced his education. Augustine had not forgotten what he had written many years before in lib. arb. 1—a passage which, some time ago, I identified as having a hidden source in Cicero’s Fin.39—where he attributed to human law the function of safeguarding five different temporal goods, viz. physical integrity, individual freedom, family, civitas and pecunia. The civitas, in particular (and thus the ius civile), did not appear as simply an external condition for the attainment of those goods, but occupied a place in the hierarchy to be safeguarded, a crucial junction between ius naturale and ius gentium. If one analyzes the appearances of the lemata particeps/participatio in civ. Dei, it is not difficult to find this convergent plurality of meanings. To begin with, there is the sense used by the Platonists: according to Plato the wise man is happy inasmuch as he participates in God (8.5); the Platonists, omnium philosophorum merito nobilissimi, theorized that the human soul can reach immortality and happiness only by participating in the divine light (10.1.1). On this point, Augustine remarks, Platonists and Christians are in agreement (10.2). It is by participation in the immutable and incor-

37 In addition, J. Adam underlines the importance of this more flexible and open position in The populus of Augustine and Jerome; A study in the patristic sense of community (Yale University Press, 1971), 18 ff. 38 Cf. P. Brown, Through the eye of a needle. Wealth, the fall of Rome, and the making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD. (Princeton University Press, 2012), ch. 3. 39 This is Cicero, Fin. 3.17.56–7. I compared Augustine’s text with the Ciceronian source in the essay “La città e la legge. Echi ciceroniani nel libro I del De libero arbitrio di Agostino,” Curiositas. Studi di cultura classica e medievale in onore di Ubaldo Pizzani, (edd.) A. Isola, E. Menestò, A. Di Pilla (ESL, 2002), 315–27.

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poreal light that the soul can attain happiness (8.1; 11.10.2; 12.20.1). However, participation does not abolish the metaphysical difference between creator and human creature, because we can participate in peace pro modo nostro (22.9.1); in this sense participatio is vox media (it can also be a participation in iniquity [15.22]) and analogical (for even the wild olive is grafted into the good olive, participating in its limbs [21.8.5]). However, the true turning point is decided on Christological terrain: participating in our weak and mortal humanity, through baptism (21.19; 25.1) Christ enables us to participate in His divinity (9.15.2; 21.15; 21.16). The participation does not pertain to the simplicity of God (11.10.3): “Aliud est enim esse Deum, aliud participem Dei” (22.30.3). The prevalent meaning is of a salvific order. This explains the continual references to the happy holy angels in their participation in the Trinity (9.15.2), in the immutable light of the Word (9.9), in the creating truth (16.6.1); and they enjoy its contemplation (9.22; 12.9.1), participata aeternitate perfruuntur (9.21). Likewise, the same applies to human creatures, inasmuch as they are participants in the good of wisdom (9.8) and enjoy their relationship with God (cuius sunt participatione felices [5.11]). Participating at His table means beginning to live (17.20.2), that is, participating in grace (18.47), in true piety (20.3), in the resurrection (20.9.4), in becoming created gods (14.13.2), and therefore to become like God (22.30.4) and ultimately have the gift of sinning no more (22.30.3). Participating, literally, is not an individual act, but a communal one: the multitude is happy only because of participation in the one God, while the fallen angels are unhappy because they lack this participation (9.15.2). Now that we are in the realm of grace rather than that of ontology, this authorizes a singular comparison between paradigms. The paradigm of justice, assumed in a radical sense, makes it possible to recognize on the highest level the ontological status instituted by creation and restored by the redemption. This demystifies the Roman juridical system, corrupted at its root by an unacceptable metaphysical agnosticism and by an equivocal mingling with polytheistic disorder. By contrast, the paradigm of love makes it possible to grasp the interior root of the participative dynamism, which finds in the direct relationship with peace a testing bench for measuring the degree of approximation to the pax caelestis civitatis, understood as ordinatissima et concordissima societas fruendi Deo et invicem in Deo (19.13.1).40

40 Many years before, in his sermon ‘de laude pacis,’ Augustine had clarified that love establishes an immediate relationship with the good that one desires. Unlike ma-

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In this way, the dilemma between autonomy and heteronomy is radically reformulated, rediscovering the heteronomy at the very heart of autonomy: not only on the personal level (“interior intimo meo et superior summo meo” [conf. 3. 6, 11]) but also on the communal one. In the name of the principle of participation, the supremacy of the greatest good is not an extrinsic superimposition since it orients and motivates from within the journey of the human community in history, becoming in this way the teleological and normative precondition for an ethics of the virtues. In the final analysis, in fact, the two cities are distinguished diversa fide, diversa spe, diverso amore (18.54.2). According to Rist, only a theological clarification justifies the divide between the aspirations of man and the life he leads: “Below the ‘problems’ of man lies the ‘problem’ of God.”41 In an exemplary form, we can verify here that “Augustinian attitude” according to which “theology is an advanced form of philosophy, that is, in which more data is available (even though by “belief” and “in hope” rather by knowledge).”42 Therefore …if there is any truth in Revelation, then there will be many areas of human thought—and ethics will almost certainly be one such area—in which the law written on the human heart—the natural law, if you will —will of itself take us thus far and no further.43

terial goods, which are not possessed when desired and which, in any case, we always fear losing, peace is a spiritual good—for which reason, to love is the same thing as to possess: “ama pacem, et tecum est quod amas.” Peace, therefore, is an inclusive good, which grows the more one enlarges the circle of common participation (“Si vis crescere istam possessionem, adde possessorem”). It is not like material bread, but like the bread multiplied miraculously by Jesus (s. 357.2). 41 Rist (A), 256. 42 Rist, On Inoculating Moral Philosophy Against God (Marquette University Press, 2000), 19. 43 Ibid, 23.

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Augustine’s Criticism of Philosophers in De Trinitate 4, and Its Epistemological Implications Giovanni Catapano, University of Padua

In De Trinitate (Trin.) 4.15–17. 20–4,1 Augustine criticizes some people who oppose Christians in two ways. First, those people “think they can purify themselves for contemplating God and cleaving to him by their own virtue (virtute propria),”2 since some of them “have been able to direct the keen gaze of their intellects (aciem mentis) beyond everything created and to attain, in however small a measure, the light of unchanging truth.” For this reason, they “ridicule those many Christians who have been unable to do this and who live meanwhile out of faith (Rom 1:17) alone.”3 Second, these same people “find fault with us for believing the resurrection of the flesh, and would like men to believe them even about such matters instead.”4 Augustine replies to the first criticism at the end of 4.15, with a variation on the famous theme of the Fatherland and the Way (patria-via). It is no advantage to you, Augustine argues, to glimpse your overseas country from afar if you refuse to board the “wood” that can carry you back home, and it is no harm to be still unable to see your homeland if you are nevertheless on the wood that is sailing there.5 This wood is the cross of Christ,

1 Trin. 4.15–17. 20–4 signifies De Trinitate book 4, chapters 15–17, sections 20–4. 2 Ibid., 4.15.20: “Sunt autem quidam qui se putant ad contemplandum deum et inhaerendum deo virtute propria posse purgari.” The Latin text is taken from the CCSL edition (vol. 50). My translations are from E. Hill (The Trinity, introduction, translation, and notes by E. Hill [New City Press, 1990]), with a few minor changes. 3 Ibid.: “Hinc enim sibi purgationem isti virtute propria pollicentur quia nonnulli eorum potuerunt aciem mentis ultra omnem creaturam transmittere et lucem incommutabilis veritatis quantulacumque ex parte contingere, quod christianos multos ex fide interim sola viventes nondum potuisse derident.” 4 Ibid., 4.16.21: “Hi etiam resurrectionem carnis nos credere reprehendunt sibique potius etiam de his rebus credi volunt.” 5 Ibid., 4.15.20: “Sed quid prodest superbienti et ob hoc erubescenti lignum conscendere de longinquo prospicere patriam transmarinam? Aut quid obest humili de tanto intervallo non eam videre in illo ligno ad eam venienti quo dedignatur ille portari?”.

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as a parallel passage in the Homilies on the Gospel of John makes clear.6 Moreover, Augustine devotes an entire chapter (Trin. 14.24) to showing that human minds need to be purified by faith in this life in order to reach the vision of divine Truth in eternal life. A well-known quotation from Plato, Timaeus 29C is provided there to support this claim in philosophical terms.7 Augustine’s arguments in Trin. 4.18 are beyond the scope of my paper. They are analysed in an article by Pierre-Thomas Camelot that appeared in 1956.8 In this paper, I would like to concentrate on chapters 16–17, in which the bishop of Hippo counters the second criticism to the Christian faith, regarding resurrection. These two chapters contain some epistemological remarks which, to the best of my knowledge, have no real equivalent in Augustine’s writings. First of all, it becomes clear from 4.14–16 that these critics of Christianity are Neoplatonic philosophers. In 4.16, Augustine says that they “show very truly by the most persuasive arguments and convincing proofs that all temporal things happen according to eternal reasons (aeternis rationibus)”9 —that is, to put it in Plato’s words, according to Ideas.10 They are, therefore, “better philosophers than the others (philosophi ceteris meliores).”11 In 4.17.23, these same philosophers are said to have “understood to the best 6 Cf. In Johannis evangelium tractatus 2.4: “Nam inveniuntur et ista in libris philosophorum: et quia unigenitum filium habet deus, per quem sunt omnia. Illud potuerunt videre quod est, sed viderunt de longe. Noluerunt tenere humilitatem Christi, in qua navi securi pervenirent ad id quod longe videre potuerunt; et sorduit eis crux Christi. Mare transeundum est, et lignum contemnis? O sapientia superba! Irrides crucifixum Christum; ipse est quem longe vidisti: In principio erat verbum, et verbum erat apud deum. Sed quare crucifixus est? Quia lignum tibi humilitatis eius necessarium erat. Superbia enim tumueras, et longe ab illa patria proiectus eras; et fluctibus huius saeculi interrupta est via, et qua transeatur ad patriam non est, nisi ligno porteris. Ingrate, irrides eum qui ad te venit ut redeas. Ipse factus est via, et hoc per mare. Inde in mari ambulavit, ut ostenderet esse in mari viam. Sed tu, qui quomodo ipse ambulare in mari non potes, navi portare, ligno portare: crede in crucifixum, et poteris pervenire.” 7 In Cicero’s Latin translation: “Quantum ad id quod ortum est aeternitas valet, tantum ad fidem veritas.” On this quotation, see P.-T. Camelot, “à l’éternel par le temporel (De Trinitate, IV, xviii, 24),” Revue des études Augustiniennes 2 (1956), 163–172, 167–71; and R. Teske, “The Link between Faith and Time in St. Augustine,” in Augustine: Presbyter factus sum, (edd.) J. Lienhard, E. Muller, R. Teske (P. Lang, 1993), 195–206. 8 Cf. Camelot, op. cit. 9 Trin. 4.16.21: “verissime disputant et documentis certissimis persuadent aeternis rationibus omnia temporalia fieri.” 10 Cf. De diversis quaestionibus octogina tribus (div. qu.) q. 46 (De ideis). 11 Trin. 4.16.21. Hill’s translation misunderstands this sentence.

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of their ability the eternity of the creator in whom we live and move and are (Acts 17:28).”12 For Augustine, this description fits the Platonists perfectly since he considers them the best of all ancient philosophers, just because they alone grasped the existence of God beyond all mutable things.13 Moreover, he regards Platonism as the only philosophical school to eventually survive in Christian times, hence the only to oppose Christianity.14 Finally, as Goulven Madec showed in a seminal work published in 1962, Augustine’s judgement concerning the Platonists is fundamentally based on Rom 1:18–25.15 Significantly, Augustine hints at these very verses when speaking of the philosophers in the chapters I am analyzing. Such thinkers were able to “understand the sublime and unchanging substance of God by the things that are made” (Rom 1:20).16 Nevertheless, “although they knew God by the things that are made, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks to him, but calling themselves wise they have become fools” (Rom 1:21).17 For these reasons, I think there can be little doubt that Augustine is considering Platonic philosophers, despite the fact that he never mentions the Platonists by name throughout Trin.18 A few passages in other works, especially in Soliloquia (sol.) 241 and civ. Dei 10, provide some evidence to suggest that these Platonists are Porphyry and his followers.19 In none of these other passages, however, does Augustine rebut the Neoplatonists’ denial of

12 Trin. 4.17.23: “philosophos … illos … qui creatoris aeternitatem in quo vivimus, movemur et sumus quantum potuerunt intellexerunt.” 13 Cf. De civitate Dei (civ. Dei) 8.4 – 9. 14 Cf. Contra Academicos 3.19.42; Epistula 118.5.33. 15 Cf. G. Madec, “Connaissance de Dieu et action de grâces. Essai sur les citations de l’ép. aux Romains i, 18–25 dans l’œuvre de saint Augustin,” Recherches Augustiniennes 2 (1962), 273–309. 16 Trin. 4.15.21: “praecelsam incommutabilemque substantiam per illa quae facta sunt intellegere potuerunt.” 17 Trin. 4.17.23: “per ea quae facta sunt cognoscentes deum non sicut deum glorificaverunt aut gratias egerunt, sed dicentes se esse sapientes stulti facti sunt.” 18 The only philosophers cited by name in Trin. are: Pythagoras (12.15.24; 14.1.2), Plato (12.15.24), Epicurus (13.5.8), Zeno the Stoic (13.5.8), the Academics (13.4.7; 14.19.26; 15.12.21), and Cicero (13.4.7–5.8; 14.10.12; 19.26). On Augustine’s attitude towards philosophers and philosophy in Trin., see L. Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate (Oxford University Press, 2008), 40–67, 219–31. 19 Cf. E. Dobeau (ed.), Vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique/Augustin d’Hippone; retorouvés a Mayence (Études Augustinennes, 1996), 26.36 (to be compared with Trin. 4.10.1); sol. 241.6–7; civ. Dei 10.9.27.30; J. Pépin, Théologie cosmique et théologie chrétienne (Ambroise, Exam. I 1, 1–4), (Presses Universitaires de France, 1964),

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resurrection from an epistemological standpoint, as he does in Trin. 4.16– 17. Let me now consider, therefore, the peculiar contents of these chapters. In 4.16.21, Augustine claims that the philosophers’ knowledge of eternal reasons does not make them competent to judge matters such as the final resurrection of the human body.20 The logic of Augustine’s argument is based on an implicit premise concerning the “ontological status” (so to speak) of resurrection. Resurrection is a change (conversio) which is believed to happen to human bodies at the end of time. It may be classified, therefore, as a temporal thing. Consequently, to find out rationally whether or not resurrection will take place, philosophers need to know what may, and what will really, happen to human bodies in the future. But —and this is Augustine’s objection—the Platonic philosophers were able to neither observe in the eternal reasons nor deduce from them … how many kinds of animals there are, what are the seminal origins of each, what the measure of their growth, what the cycles of their conceptions, births, life spans, and deaths, how they are moved to seek what suits their natures and shun what harms them.21

418–61 (especially 433–42); M. Alfeche, “Augustine’s discussions with philosophers on the resurrection of the body,” Augustiniana 45 (1995), 95–140; I. Bochet, “Résurrection et réincarnation. La polémique d’Augustin contre les platoniciens et contre Porphyre dans les Sermons 240–42,” in Ministerium Sermonis; Philological, historical, and theological studies on Augustine’s Sermones ad populum, (edd.) G. Partoens, A. Dupont, M. Lamberigts (Brepols, 2009) 267–98. According to G. Madec and R. Goulet (“Porphyre de Tyr: Sur le retour de l’âme. Un recueil provisoire des témoignages et des fragments avec une traduction française et des notes,” in Augustin philosophe et prédicateur. Hommage à Goulven Madec. Actes du colloque international organisé à Paris les 8 et 9 septembre 2011, [ed.] I. Bochet [Institut d’études Augustiniennes, 2012], 111–84), all of these passages include fragments from Porphyry’s De regressu animae. 20 From this point of view, as C. Tornau pointed out to me, it could be said that Augustine is resorting to the rhetorical scheme of the status causae. In particular, Augustine might have in mind the fourth “rational question” distinguished by the Greek rhetorician Hermagoras of Temnos, the so-called μετάληψις (in Latin reprehensio or translatio), which consisted in challenging the court’s jurisdiction to hear the case. Cf. De rhetorica 10, ascribed to Augustine. 21 Trin. 4.16.21: “Numquid enim quia verissime disputant et documentis certissimis persuadent aeternis rationibus omnia temporalia fieri, propterea potuerunt in ipsis rationibus perspicere vel ex ipsis colligere quot sint animalium genera, quae semina singulorum in exordiis, qui modus in incrementis, qui numeri per conceptus, per ortus, per aetates, per occasus, qui motus in appetendis quae secundum naturam sunt fugiendisque contrariis?”.

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The Platonists did not seek all this biological knowledge “via that unchanging wisdom” (i.e. by means of the divine Wisdom–the Word–in which the eternal reasons dwell), but via the “history (historiam) of places and times,”22 and consequently they believed what others had learnt by experience and written down.23 So, according to Augustine, it is even less surprising that these philosophers … have not been able in any way to investigate the unfolding of the ages that stretch out ahead of us, or the turning point of the outward course which carries the human race down like a river, and the return from there to the end that is due to each one [i.e. to mankind’s eschatological destiny]. 24 For not even the “historians” (historici) have been able to put in writing those things, among which there is resurrection, “that lie far in the future, and have not been experienced or narrated by anyone.”25 Were the philosophers able to know temporal events by contemplating eternal reasons, they would not have recourse to historians for knowing the past; on the contrary, they would also foreknow the future.26 Foreknowledge is the subject of 4.17.22. Here Augustine distinguishes between four ways of predicting the future:27 (1)

forecast and prognostication, based on conjecture from the past and made by people like doctors, farmers, and sailors;

22 Augustine here uses the word ‘history’ in the same sense as Aristotle, in his Historia animalium. By this meaning, objects of ‘historical’ knowledge (cognitio historica) are both “deeds and sayings which occur in time and pass away” and “things in nature which occur in their own localities and regions” (Trin. 14.8.11). 23 Trin. 4.16.21: “Nonne ista omnia non per illam incommutabilem sapientiam sed per locorum ac temporum historiam quaesierunt et ab aliis experta atque conscripta crediderunt?” 24 Ibid.: “Quo minus mirandum est nullo modo eos potuisse prolixiorum saeculorum seriem vestigare et quandam metam huius excursus quo tamquam fluvio genus decurrit humanum atque inde conversionem ad suum cuique debitum terminum.” 25 Ibid.: “Ista enim nec historici scribere potuerunt longe futura et a nullo experta atque narrata.” 26 Cf. ibid.: “Nec isti philosophi ceteris meliores in illis summis aeternisque rationibus intellectu talia contemplati sunt; alioquin non eiusdem generis praeterita quae potuerunt historici inquirerent sed potius et futura praenoscerent.” 27 Cf. Trin. 4.17.22: “Sed plurimum interest utrum [1] experimento praeteritorum futura coniciantur, sicut medici multa praevidendo etiam litteris mandaverunt quae ipsi experta notaverant, sicut denique agricolae vel etiam nautae multa praenuntiant; talia enim si ex longis intervallis temporum fiant divinationes putantur; an vero [2] iam ventura processerint [‘praecesserint’ in CCSL, but see the helpful remarks made by B.

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(2) (3) (4)

divination, based on the power of demons (see what Cicero says about this in De Divinatione [Div.]);28 prophecy, based on God’s revelation to angels and, through angels, to men; and direct intellectual vision in God of the causes of future things, based on the action of the Holy Spirit.

The main purpose of this classification is to emphasize the difference between the pagan soothsayers (vates), who were inspired by demons, and the biblical prophets, who were inspired by God. In 4.17.23, Augustine comes back to the philosophers. He concludes that they are not to be consulted about the succession of the ages and the resurrection of the dead, because they were not fit (idonei) to fix … the keen gaze of their intellects (aciem mentis) so constantly on the eternity of that spiritual and unchanging nature that they could see in the wisdom of the creator and the ruler of the universe the rolled up scrolls of centuries, which there already are and always are, but here only will be and so are not yet; or that they could see there the change for the better not only of the minds but also of the bodies of men, each to its proper perfection.29

Alexanderson, “Adnotationes criticae in libros De trinitate sancti Augustini,” Electronic Antiquity 4/2 (1998) http:// http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ElAnt/V4N2/a lex.html.] et longe visa venientia nuntientur pro acuto sensu videntium, quod cum faciunt aeriae potestates divinare creduntur, tamquam si quisquam de montis vertice aliquem longe videat venientem et proxime in campo habitantibus ante nuntiet; an [3] ab angelis sanctis quibus ea deus per verbum sapientiamque suam indicat ubi et futura et praeterita stant vel quibusdam praenuntientur hominibus vel ab eis audita rursus ad alios homines transmittantur; an [4] ipsorum hominum quorundam mentes in tantum evehantur spiritu sancto ut non per angelos sed per se ipsas futurorum instantes causas in ipsa summa rerum arce conspiciant.” 28 On the distinction between divination on one side and the forecast made by doctors, farmers and sailors on the other side, cf. e.g. the opinion attributed by Cicero to his brother Quintus in Div. (1.1.112: “Multa medici, multa gubernatores, agricolae etiam multa praesentiunt, sed nullam eorum divinationem voco.”) The demonic origin of divination is clearly stated by Tertullian in his Apologeticum, 22.7 ff. 29 Trin. 4.17.23: “Ergo de successionibus saeculorum et de resurrectione mortuorum philosophos nec illos…. Et cum idonei non essent in aeternitatem spiritalis incommutabilisque naturae aciem mentis tam constanter infigere ut in ipsa sapientia creatoris atque rectoris universitatis viderent volumina saeculorum quae ibi iam essent et semper essent, hic autem futura essent ut non essent, atque ut ibi viderent conversiones in melius non solum animorum sed etiam corporum humanorum usque ad sui modi perfectionem.”

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Being absolutely unfit to see these things there (i.e. in God), the philosophers “were not either considered worthy of having them declared to them by holy angels,”30 that is, of foreknowing the future in the third way listed in the previous section, the way of the prophets. The authority of the prophets is proved by miracles (signis) and “by the things they foretold for the near future coming true,” so their prophecies about the far distant future and about resurrection are credible, too.31 The implicit conclusion of Augustine’s discourse in Trin. 4.16–17 is that the position of Christian believers is epistemologically well founded. By contrast, the claim that Platonic philosophers should be trusted about resurrection (in which they do not believe) is groundless. The most interesting point, in an epistemological perspective, Augustine raises against the philosophers in Trin. 4 concerns their inability to know temporal things in or from eternal reasons, or, which is the same, via or in God’s wisdom. Throughout the rest of my paper, I shall discuss why, according to Augustine, they were unable to do so. At first glance, it might seem that the philosophers were not able to see temporal things in God merely because all that is in God is eternal, and so nothing that is temporal can be, or can be seen, in God. Although this claim is philosophically justifiable, it does not reflect Augustine’s thought. As we have seen, he says in section 23 that “there” (i.e. in God’s wisdom) the volumina saeculorum “already are and always are.”32 Augustine states his view more clearly at the beginning of the same book: So because there is but one Word of God, through which all things were made (Jn 1:3), which is unchanging truth, there all things are primordially and unchangingly together, not only things that are in the whole of this creation, but things that have been and will be; but there it is not a question of ‘have been’ and ‘will be,’ there they simply are; and all things there are life and all are one, and indeed there is there but ‘one’ and one life.33

30 Ibid.: “cum ergo ad haec ibi videnda nullo modo essent idonei, ne ad illud quidem digni habiti sunt ut eis ista per sanctos angelos nuntiarentur sive forinsecus per sensus corporis sive interioribus revelationibus in spiritu expressis, sicut patribus nostris vera pietate praeditis haec demonstrata sunt.” 31 Ibid.: “qui ea praedicentes et vel de praesentibus signis vel de proximis rebus ita ut praedixerant factis fidem facientes auctoritatem cui de longe futuris usque in saeculi finem crederetur habere meruerunt.” 32 See n. 29 above. 33 Trin. 4.1.3: “Quia igitur unum est verbum dei per quod facta sunt omnia, quod est incommutabilis veritas ubi principaliter atque incommutabiliter sunt omnia simul, non

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For a better understanding of this doctrine, it may be useful to consider what Augustine writes in De Genesi ad litteram (Gn. litt.) 5. There, Augustine claims that the existence of unchangeable reasons for everything, situated in the Word of God, is both revealed in Scripture (Prologue of John) and demonstrated by reason.34 He sums up his reasoning as follows: God would not make things … unless he knew them before he made them; nor would he know them unless he saw them; nor would he see them unless he had them with him; and he would not have with him things that had not yet been made except in the manner in which he himself is not made.35 The eternal reasons are the way in which God has and, at the same time, knows all creatures in himself (in his Word). So all creatures are already in God’s knowledge before being created by him, and in God’s Word they are what the Word himself is, one eternal life. This is, in Augustine’s interpretation, the meaning of Jn 1:3–4 “Quod factum est in illo vita est,” which he reads placing a comma before “in illo”: What was made, in him [i.e. in the Word] is life.36 The arguments in Gn. litt. 5 are helpful for properly understanding what Augustine means in Trin. by saying that temporal things (future events like resurrection included) are eternally present in God. He means that creatures are eternally known by God, and are made by God according to his prescience, which (causally, not temporally) precedes their creation during time. As Augustine asserts in Trin. 6, “all these created things around us are not known by God because they have been made; it is rather,

solum quae nunc sunt in hac universa creatura, verum etiam quae fuerunt et quae futura sunt; ibi autem nec fuerunt nec futura sunt sed tantummodo sunt; et omnia vita sunt et omnia unum sunt et magis unum est et una est vita.” 34 Cf. Gn. litt. 5.12.28–16.34. 35 Ibid.. 5.16.34: “neque enim ea faceret, nisi ea nosset, antequam faceret, nec nosset, nisi videret, nec videret, nisi haberet, nec haberet ea, quae nondum facta erant, nisi quemadmodum est ipse non factus.” Translated by E. Hill (from On Genesis, trans. and notes by E. Hill [New City Press, 2002]). 36 Cf. ibid., 5.14.31. Augustine rejects the reading: What was made (quod factum est) in him, is life, with the comma after “in illo” because he understands that although everything was made in God’s wisdom (following Ps 104 [103]: 24 and Col 1:16), not everything is alive. Augustine is aware that some manuscripts read ‘was life’ instead of ‘is life’ (cf. ibid., 5.14.32), but he seems unaware here of another way of punctuating these verses, according to which the sentence begins after “quod factum est”: without him was not any thing made that was made (quod factum est). In him was life etc.

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surely, that even changeable things have been made because they are unchangeably known by him.”37 It may be objected, however, that God alone knows temporal things in their eternal reasons, since he alone creates things. Actually, Augustine does not think so, as one can see by having a look at Gn. litt. 4. There he suggests that the sequence of morning and evening in the account of the six days of creation in Genesis symbolizes the angels’ double knowledge of creatures.38 Before knowing the world in itself (in ipsa creatura = evening), the holy angels know the whole of creation in the Word of God (= morning), “in whom are the eternal ideas (aeternae rationes) even of things which were made in time.”39 This entails that, for Augustine, knowledge of temporal things in their eternal reasons is possible not only to God, but also to finite and non-creating intellects like those of the angels. But is such knowledge possible to humans? As a matter of fact, it would seem that knowledge of temporal things comes to us only via sense experience. Augustine himself raises a similar objection to Plato’s theory of recollection in Trin. 12. There he argues that, if recollection presupposed a previous life here below (an idea Augustine wrongly ascribes to Plato),40 it would also concern sensible things, but this is not the case. “Why,” Augustine asks, “should it only be intelligible things that shrewd interrogation will get answers about from someone, answers belonging to some science he is ignorant of?” “Why,” he continues, “can no one do this about any sensible things except those he has seen in the body, or heard about by word

37 Trin. 6.10.11: “Non enim haec quae creata sunt ideo sciuntur a deo quia facta sunt, ac non potius ideo facta sunt vel mutabilia quia immutabiliter ab eo sciuntur.” Cf. Trin. 15.13.22: “Universas autem creaturas suas et spiritales et corporales non quia sunt ideo novit, sed ideo sunt quia novit”; civ. Dei 11.10.3. “Ex quo occurrit animo quiddam mirum, sed tamen verum, quod iste mundus nobis notus esse non posset, nisi esset; deo autem nisi notus esset, esse non posset.” 38 Cf. Gn. litt. 4.22.39–25.42. 39 Ibid., 4.24.41: “Quapropter, cum sancti angeli … semper videant faciem dei verboque eius unigenito filio, sicut patri aequalis est, perfruantur, in quibus prima omnium creata est sapientia, procul dubio universam creaturam, in qua ipsi sunt principaliter conditi, in ipso verbo dei prius noverunt, in quo sunt omnium, etiam quae temporaliter facta sunt, aeternae rationes, tamquam in eo, per quod facta sunt omnia, ac deinde in ipsa creatura, quam sic noverunt, tamquam infra despicientes eamque referentes ad illius laudem, in cuius incommutabili ueritate rationes, secundum quas facta est, principaliter vident. ibi ergo tamquam per diem, unde et concordissima unitas eorum eiusdem veritatis participatione dies est primitus creatus, hic autem tamquam per vesperam.” 40 According to Plato, recollection of intelligibles presupposes the pre-existence of the soul before incarnation, when a man “was not yet a man” (Meno 86A).

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of mouth or in writing from people who have known?”41 It seems therefore impossible for us to be acquainted with sensible things without having sense perception of them, or without believing other people; recollection of intelligible things is of no avail to this end. Moreover, in the same part of Gn. litt. 5 I have referred to above, Augustine affirms that our mind is not fit (idonea) to see corporeal things … where they are with God (apud deum), in the reasons according to which they were made, so that in this way we might know their existence, quantity and quality (quod et quanta qualiaque sint), even though we do not see them with the senses of the body.42 But what does it mean that our minds are not “fit” to do so? Are they unfit because knowledge of sensible things in the eternal reasons exceeds the natural powers of the human mind?, or are they unfit because all of us are in such bad conditions that now our minds are prevented from exercising their full potential? Some evidence argues for the latter explanation. In div. qu. q. 46 (De Ideis), Augustine holds that rational souls are the only ones to be able to see the Ideas or rationes, because these souls alone are endowed with reason or intellect, which is a sort of eye of the mind. Not every rational soul, however, is fit (idonea) for that vision, but only the pure, whose eye (the intellect) is morally healthy.43 Therefore, the vision of eternal reasons is within the power of our minds, but on one condition: that our minds are purified. This implies that, if a mind is still not able to fix its gaze on eternal reasons so far as to perceive the future in them, this mind is still not pure. It should also be noted that Augustine regards purification as a healing process, through which a spiritual organ (the mind’s eye) regains its full

41 Trin. 12.15.24: “Denique cur de solis rebus intellegibilibus id fieri potest ut bene interrogatus quisque respondeat quod ad quamque pertinet disciplinam etiamsi eius ignarus est? Cur hoc facere de rebus sensibilibus nullus potest nisi quas isto vidit in corpore constitutus aut eis qui noverant indicantibus credidit seu litteris cuiusque seu verbis?” 42 Gn. litt. 5.16.34: “istorum autem pleraque remota sunt a mente nostra propter dissimilitudinem sui generis, quoniam corporalia sunt, nec idonea est ipsa mens nostra, in ipsis rationibus, quibus facta sunt, ea videre apud deum, ut per hoc sciamus, quot et quanta qualiaque sint, etiamsi non ea videamus per corporis sensus.” (The translation is mine.) 43 Cf. div. qu. 46.2: “Anima vero negatur eas intueri posse nisi rationalis, ea sui parte qua excellit, id est ipsa mente atque ratione, quasi quadam facie vel oculo suo interiore atque intellegibili. Et ea quidem ipsa rationalis anima non omnis et quaelibet, sed quae sancta et pura fuerit, haec asseritur illi visioni esse idonea, id et quae illum ipsum oculum, quo videntur ista, sanum et sincerum et serenum et similem his rebus, quas videre intendit, habuerit.”

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functionality. In this case, the concept of therapeutic cleansing suggests the notion that the vision of God, and of things in God, belongs to the natural potential of the human mind, which however is affected by sin. It is, therefore, because of sin, and not of their natural limits, that our minds are not fit to see God and the things in God, as a sore eye does not see the light, although the eye is suited to light by nature. The mind is to the intelligible light as the eye is to the sensible light, as Augustine states in a famous passage of Trin. 12.44 “What is the reason then,” Augustine asks to his own soul in the epilogue to the whole work, “that you cannot fix your gaze on it [i.e. on the intelligible light], but weakness obviously; and what brought this weakness on you but wickedness obviously?”45 Looking at all these facts, I think it possible to conclude that in Augustine’s view the philosophers were unable to see future things (and resurrection in particular) in God because of sin and lack of purification. But what purification, and from what sin, exactly? Since the time of sol., Augustine has believed that the mind is purified by faith.46 It is well known that he repeatedly recommends faith in Trin. as the starting point of theological knowledge.47 Besides, it is highly significant that Augustine comes back to the subject of purification by faith in Trin. 4.18.24, immediately after the chapters I have analyzed. He is thus suggesting that the reason why the philosophers were not able to see temporal things in eternal reasons is that their minds lacked purification by faith. In the same chapter, Augustine claims that every human being needs faith to purify his or her mind from

44 Cf. Trin. 12.15.24: “Sed potius credendum est mentis intellectualis ita conditam esse naturam ut rebus intellegibilibus naturali ordine disponente conditore subiuncta sic ista videat in quadam luce sui generis incorporea quemadmodum oculus carnis videt quae in hac corporea luce circumadiacent, cuius lucis capax eique congruens est creatus.” 45 Ibid., 15.27.50: “Quae igitur causa est cur acie fixa ipsam videre non possis nisi utique infirmitas, et quis eam tibi fecit nisi utique iniquitas?” 46 Cf. sol. 1.6.12–7.14 (where hope and love are mentioned as well). 47 See e.g. this passage from Trin. 1: “So then it is difficult to contemplate and have full knowledge of God’s substance, which without any change in itself makes things that change, and without any passage of time in itself creates things that exist in time. That is why it is necessary for our minds to be purified before that inexpressible reality can be inexpressibly seen by them; and in order to make us fit (apti) and capable (habiles) of grasping it, we are led along more endurable routes, nurtured on faith as long as we have not yet been endowed with that necessary purification” (Trin. 1.1.3). On the relationship between faith and reason in Augustine’s thought, see J. Rist, “Faith and Reason” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, (edd.) E. Stump and N. Kretzmann (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 26–39.

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love for temporal things, which is common to all humans after the Fall as a consequence of their mortality.48 Furthermore, it emerges from 4.16 that, apart from this sinful love, according to Augustine philosophers (or better, those philosophers) have a vice of their own, which is pride. As mentioned at the beginning of this paper, they think they can purify themselves by their own virtue–“which means in fact,” Augustine comments, “that they are thoroughly defiled by pride.” No vice keeps man away from God more than pride, because “no vice gives a greater right of control to that proudest of all spirits, the devil.” The antidote to pride is again faith, and more precisely faith in the humble and crucified Lord.49 Not being purified by this faith and ridiculing Christian believers, philosophers are much further from being able to see in God’s Word the things God always knows. An advocate of philosophers might object to Augustine that the situation of believers in this life is not in fact better than that of philosophers. Who, among believers, was able to see the future in God with her or his own mind? Augustine’s description of the fourth way of predicting the future in Trin. 4.17.22 is, I suggest, an implicit response to this objection. There are certain men, he says, whose minds “are raised so high in the Holy Spirit that they see for themselves and not through angels the present causes of future things in that topmost citadel of all things.”50 Augustine is probably referring here to mystical experiences like the one mentioned by the Apostle in 2 Cor 12:2–4. This Pauline passage is commented on at length in Gn. litt. 12, where Augustine interprets Paul’s experience as a case of intellectual vision, which is superior to the spiritual (i.e. imaginative)51 vision typical of prophecies (the third way of predicting the future listed in

48 Cf. Trin. 4.18.24: “Quia igitur ad aeterna capessenda idonei non eramus sordesque peccatorum nos praegravabant temporalium rerum amore contractae et de propagine mortalitatis tamquam naturaliter inolitae, purgandi eramus.” 49 Trin. 4.16.21: “Sunt autem quidam qui se putant ad contemplandum deum et inhaerendum deo virtute propria posse purgari, quos ipsa superbia maxime maculat. Nullum enim vitium est cui magis divina lege resistitur et in quod maius accipiat dominandi ius ille superbissimus spiritus ad ima mediator, ad summa interclusor, nisi occulte insidians alia via devitetur, aut per populum deficientem quod interpretatur Amalech aperte saeviens et ad terram promissionis repugnando transitum negans per crucem domini quae Moysi manibus extentis est praefigurata superetur.” 50 See n. 27 above. 51 Cf. Gn. litt. 13.8.18–9.20.

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Trin. 4.17.22).52 On this assumption, intellectual vision of the future is indeed an exceptional gift granted by the Holy Spirit, but it is possible already in this life, and only to believers like the Apostle. The expression “the present causes of future things” in the just-quoted passage from 4.17.22 requires a brief comment. It is not clear whether Augustine is referring to eternal reasons or to something else in God. He may be referring, for example, to the causae which he places in God’s will and prescience, and defines as “hidden in God” (in deo absconditae) in Gn. litt. There he differentiates such causes from the causal reasons, governing the development of natural beings during time, that were inserted by God into the world at the moment of simultaneous creation.53 The causes hidden in God (provided that, although uncreated,54 they are not the same as the eternal reasons) are not the causes of all events, but only of those events that go beyond, even if not against, the natural order of things.55 Resurrection apparently belongs to such miraculous events, whose author is God alone. In any case, Augustine believes that a future event like resurrection is causally present in God and can be known as such by elected human minds in this life. To bring this paper to an end, I am now going to summarize its key points. In Trin. 4.16–17, Augustine replies to some Neoplatonic philosophers who criticized the Christian faith in the resurrection of the flesh in the name of their own knowledge of eternal reasons. He acknowledges that these philosophers perceived the existence of eternal reasons of all things in God’s wisdom, but he argues that they were unable to know sensible and temporal things without resorting to experience and history. According to Augustine, it is because of pride and lack of purification by faith that the philosophers’ minds were unfit to see future things like resurrection straight in God, in whom all things are eternally present qua known. On the contrary, both prophets and saints were given the possibility of foreknowing the future: respectively, either by revelation through angels or by peering directly into God. This shows that, in Augustine’s opin-

52 See n. 27 above. On the complex relationship between intellectual vision and images in Gn. litt.12 see K. Schlapbach, “Intellectual Vision in Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 12 or: Seeing the Hidden Meaning of Images,” in Studia Patristica, vol. 43: Papers presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2003. Augustine, Other Latin Writers, (edd.) F. Young, M. Edwards and P. Parvis (Peeters, 2006), 239–44. 53 Cf. Gn. litt. 4.17.28–18.29; 9.18.33–4. 54 Cf. ibid., 7.22.33; 9.15.28. 55 Cf. ibid., 9.18.34.

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ion, the inability to know temporal things by contemplating their eternal causes in God’s wisdom is more due to moral corruption than to the natural limits of man’s cognitive powers.

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The God of Both Testaments? Ronald K. Tacelli, SJ, Boston College

In Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, we read the following about the books of the Old Testament: “[E]ven though they contain things that are imperfect and provisional [imperfecta et temporaria], they nevertheless do show God truly at work as teacher [veram...paedagogiam divinam demonstrant]. Hence, the faithful should revere them....”1 This passage seems to imply that some of these “imperfect” and “provisional” things might tempt the faithful not to revere the books of the Old Testament. What sort of things might the authors of the Council document have had in mind? Perhaps this: When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you...seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. [I]n the cities of these peoples the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them...as the Lord your God has commanded; that they may not teach you to do according to their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods, and so to sin against the Lord your God (Dt 7:1–2; 20:16–18). Or perhaps this: [The Israelites] waged war against the Midianites, as the Lord had commanded Moses, and killed every male among them.... But the Israelites kept the women of the Midianites with their little ones as captives, and all their herds and flocks and wealth as spoil.... Then they took all the booty, with the people and beasts they had captured, and brought the captives, together with the spoils and booty, to Moses and the priest 1 “Constitutio Dogmatica de Divina Revelatione” § 15, in Sacrosanctum Oecumenicum Concilium Vaticanum II Constitutiones, Decreta, Declerationes (Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1974).

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Eleazar and to the Israelite community at their camp on the plains of Moab, along the Jericho stretch of the Jordan. When Moses and the priest Eleazar, with all the princes of the community, went outside the camp to meet them, Moses became angry with the officers of the army, the clan and company commanders, who were returning from combat. “So you have spared all the women!” he exclaimed. “Why, they are the very ones who on Balaam’s advice prompted the unfaithfulness of the Israelites toward the Lord...which began the slaughter of the Lord’s community. Slay, therefore, every male child and every woman who has had intercourse with a man. But you may spare and keep for yourselves all girls who had no intercourse with a man” (Nm 31: 7–18). Passages such as these have lately been used to great rhetorical effect by the so-called New Atheists in their concerted attack against revealed religion.2 And understandably so. But the problems such Biblical citations raise are felt far beyond the circles of fashionable unbelief, far beyond the industry of external and often ignorant negation that has come to be called the New Atheism.3 Devout Christians—who want to believe that the Bible is the word of God, who are not moved by hatred of divine authority or a blinding desire to cast off its restraints—have never needed tutorials from nonbelievers to feel confusion, distress, alarm, and even shame at the picture of God such passages seem to encourage. The people to whom the Constitution on Divine Revelation was perhaps making delicate and discreet reference are likely those among the faithful tempted not to revere, not to esteem sufficiently certain parts of the Old Testament. And their pedigree is both distinguished and venerable. It goes back at least as far as Marcion of Sinope (85–160 A.D.), and therefore practically to the beginning of Christian history. In the following paper, I intend (i) to explain why sincere Christians have found parts of the Old Testament difficult—for some perhaps even impossible—to reconcile with their religious faith; (ii) to consider some insufficient attempts to answer those difficulties; and (iii) to sketch the beginning of a truly adequate response.

2 Cf. R. Dawkins (The God Delusion [Houghton Mifflin, 2006], 31): “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction ....” 3 For a taste of how low the literature of unbelief has sunk, read almost any page of The God Delusion (op. cit.) or, if you care to dip even lower, Letter to a Christian Nation by S. Harris (Knopf, 2006).

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I: The Problem It might help us to see and feel the depth of the problem posed by passages like the ones cited above, if we try to picture those scenes of slaughter, if we try to put ourselves within one of them, and if we try to imagine what the sights and sounds must have been like. These include the terrified screams of women and children, the hacking apart of their flesh, the splintering of their bones, the splattering of brains and blood as babies’ heads are dashed against stones, and the sounds of death-agony everywhere as men, women, even toddlers and infants are dismembered. And all of this, moreover, is mingled with the war cries of the Israelite soldiers. Perhaps, they are crying loudly at first to steel themselves for what they had to do, so that they would hear their own voices and not the pleas of their victims, but then, later, after they have killed many times, and the bloodlust overtakes them, crying out in a kind of savage exaltation. Can anyone deny that scenes of slaughter committed by God’s chosen people and carried out in his name must have been something like that? In fact, can anyone really deny that the reality was far more brutally horrifying than these words are able to convey? Yet if God the Father directly willed it, Jesus must have done so, too. This I think is the source of the difficulty Christians feel. The Jesus they know from the Gospels is not a melting snowflake, to be sure; but mercy and forgiving love do seem to be at the center of his character. Certainly, he seems to have had a fondness for children (cf. Mt 18: 2–6). It is very hard for us to picture Jesus in the midst of the above scenes, taking part in them or even just urging the soldiers on. Recall the stories told by holocaust survivors about how Nazi soldiers would throw Jewish babies into the air and catch them with their bayonets. We think of these as particularly monstrous deeds, deeds against which the moral structure of the universe itself cries out. Yet things at least as bad must have been done to the babies of the Midianites (among others). But the God whose nature is goodness and love itself is said to have commanded them. Picture a Christian soldier at war, in a frenzied guerilla battle. Shots from a small hut have killed some of the men in his unit. After a protracted gun battle the firing stops. He enters the hut. He sees there, in the midst of the carnage, a baby boy, completely unharmed. That living child might embody for him the future of the enemy, the enemy that hates Christianity, that tortures and kills Christians, that has killed some of his best friends. Others would surely come for that child and teach him to hate Christianity and to make war on Christians. He raises his gun and puts it 299

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close to the child’s face. The baby grabs the barrel of the gun as if it were a toy and smiles. The soldier can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. He thinks: This kid is innocent; he didn’t do anything. I can’t kill him. What would the typical Christian attitude to this soldier be? Surely one of praise—praise for acting with moral restraint and mercy in brutal and barbarous circumstances. More than that: many would go so far as to claim that the soldier, precisely by acting as he did, had proved the reality of his commitment to Christ. And yet if an Israelite warrior had been unable to dash out the brains of a Midianite baby boy, he would have stood condemned by God the Father (and hence by Jesus too). Cast your mind back to that scene of slaughter. Picture a Jewish soldier who has just grasped a two-month-old Midianite baby boy by the feet to break its head against a rock. The baby is crying; the young soldier looks at the child’s face; he hesitates. Can we easily picture Jesus leaning over his shoulder and urging him on: Do it! Just do it! And if the soldier still hesitated, perhaps started shaking, perhaps began to weep, could we easily picture Jesus saying, “Here, give him to me!” and then, grabbing the child by the legs and with a single arcing motion, smashing its head against a rock and coldly tossing its dripping corpse away? Can we easily picture Jesus looking angrily at the soldier and saying, “You’re unworthy of the Kingdom of God”? Many of us find that impossible. And it is, I think, just because some Christians are unable to think of Jesus doing or commanding or even commending the things described above that they see a disconnect between the Old and the New Testaments; that, while loving the Son, they feel plagued by a nagging sense of alienation from his Father. But alienation from the Father and from the scriptural word recounting his relation to humankind and the history of the Jewish people is not an option for Christians. Certainly Jesus felt no such radical disconnect between himself and that history. And, in any case, if we love the Son, we believe that the Spirit makes us his brothers and sisters—which means that in a special sense the Father of Jesus becomes our Father. Thus our relationship to Jesus our brother must reflect his relationship not only to the history of Israel but also to the One he called “Abba.” A radical disconnect between the two Testaments would necessarily sever that relationship. Hence the extreme discomfiture of Christians. They embrace Jesus as brother and thus acknowledge his Father as theirs. But they find this Father, in the very Scripture he inspired, portrayed in ways that seem incompatible—and impossible to reconcile—with the qualities that move them to embrace the Son. 300

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Jesus said: “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30). How can this be, if the passages previously cited convey with truth the will of God the Father? And if they do not, how can the Scripture in which we find them truly be called his inspired word? No believing Christian would willingly grasp either horn of this dilemma. But is there another way out?

II: Dead Ends Before the New Atheists began their clamorous tub-thumping, it is surprising, even disconcerting, how few serious Christian scholars dealt in a frank and forthright manner with the difficulties sketched above. John Wenham, in his justly admired book, The Goodness of God, stands as a notable exception. In more recent years, evangelical apologist-philosopher Paul Copan has distinguished himself as perhaps the most powerfully able Christian writer who has sought to reconcile the jealous warrior-God we find in the Old Testament with the teacher, healer and savior we find in the New.4 Copan urges us to keep in mind, as we seek to answer the question why God would command the killing of children, that he “is the author of life and has a rightful claim on it as Creator. Therefore, humans can make no demands on how long a person ought to live on earth (Jb 1:21). If God is God and we aren’t, then our rights will necessarily be limited to some degree.”5 This is true as far as it goes. But surely it leaves untouched the question: Can the being pictured as commanding such things possibly be the all-perfect creator in which Christians believe? For the Christian understanding of divine perfection includes more than power; it also—necessarily—includes goodness and love.

4 Cf. John Wenham’s The Goodness of God (InterVarsity, 1974), esp. ch. 8, “The Abominations of the Heathen”; Paul Copan: “Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics,” Philosophia Christi, 10, 1, 2008, 7–37; idem, “Yahweh Wars and the Canaanites: Divinely-Mandated Genocide or Corporate Capital Punishment? Response to Critics,” in “Symposium: Did God Mandate Genocide,” Philosophia Christi, 11, 1, 2009, 73–90; and idem, Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Baker, 2011). Though I criticize Wenham and Copan in what follows, I want to stress how much I have learned and profited from their pioneering work. 5 Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? 189.

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As John Rist has so well said: Since God is normally viewed by theists as creator, power will be prominent among the divine attributes: God is omnipotent and, as psychologists early made us aware, omnipotence is a salient feature of a parent as perceived—and as resented—by a child. But if God’s other attributes are swallowed up by the emphasis on his power (as is the common religious image that views us as dust in his hands or clay in the hands of the potter), then to say that what we are commanded is right is no more than to say that the power disposed by God is right. That...seems to point towards a “morality” of obedience hard to justify as morality at all. If, however, God’s love is an attribute inseparable from his power, we can be certain that what he commands will not be right merely because he commands it (even though he will and “must” command it if it is right), but right because it is good as God is good.6 Copan himself would agree with this. He writes: “[W]e don’t need to believe in God or follow the Bible to have a general knowledge of what’s right and wrong. Like theists, atheists have been made in God’s image, and they can recognize the same sorts of virtues.... Having been made in the divine image, we’ve been designed to function properly by living morally.... Those denying that kindness is a virtue or that torturing babies for fun is wrong don’t need an argument; they need psychological and spiritual help!”7 And: “[T]he God hypothesis doesn’t force us to make a huge leap from valuelessness to value. Rather, we begin with value (God’s good character), and we end with value (divine image-bearing humans with moral responsibility and rights). A good God effectively bridges the chasm between is and ought. Value exists from the very beginning; it is rooted in a self-existent, good God.”8 But if torturing babies (“for fun” seems a superfluous qualification) is wrong, then surely bludgeoning or butchering them to death is wrong, too. Commanding such behavior would also be wrong—would be inconsistent, that is to say, with moral goodness and thus with possessing a morally “good character.” But “God’s good character,” according to Copan, is the ontological foundation of all moral value. So if God did command the

6 J. Rist, Real Ethics: Rethinking the Foundations of Morality (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 261–2. 7 Copan (2011), 210. 8 Ibid, 214.

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brutal killing of infants, then the foundation of moral value, as Copan understands it, would collapse. But what if such killing is not an intrinsically wrong kind of action—not a type of action in itself inconsistent with moral goodness? What if judging its rightness or wrongness were essentially tied to knowing or believing that God willed it to be done? In that case, Christian believers would be condemned to the most extreme divine command theory of goodness imaginable. And they would thus find themselves in various clinical waiting rooms, sitting side by side with those whom Copan rightly diagnosed as needing not an argument but psychological and spiritual help. Consider it this way. Most likely some of those Midianite women condemned to violent death were pregnant. Some of them may have been heavy with child. Does the wrongness of stabbing or beating to death an eight-month pregnant woman and the child she’s carrying fall within that “general knowledge” of “right and wrong” Copan claims all psychologically and spiritually healthy human beings possess? The “Savior of Scripture,” says Copan, “...is not safe.” He is—and here Copan quotes a fellow church member with approval—“a butt-kicking God.”9 The image has real demotic charm. And it’s hard not to smile as we picture Jesus himself applying a practiced foot to the backside of one or another obtuse, somnolent or timorous disciple. But change “butt” to “womb” and all smiles immediately cease. It is impossible to picture Jesus beating to death a woman heavy with child or swinging away at her with a bloody battle-axe, ignoring her screams of agony and terror. And this impossibility is not simply the failure of time-conditioned imagination (like an inability to picture him smoking a pipe or playing a video game). No; we find it impossible to picture Jesus doing these things because we realize these things are monstrous. No one who did them could perfectly possess a morally good character. And as such they are completely out of character with the figure we meet in the pages of the New Testament. Jesus said: Whoever has seen me has seen the Father [Jn 14:9]. If we cannot “see” or “imagine” Jesus doing or commanding or commending monstrous things, neither can we “see” or “imagine” the Father doing or commanding or commending them. And yet Scripture seems to tell us that the Father did command them. That is the problem we began with. So the question we began with remains: How can this be?

9 Ibid, 193.

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Some apologists have stressed the cultural context of violence and general depravity of life in the Ancient Near East (ANE). Clay Jones, in his article, “We Don’t Hate Sin So We Don’t Understand What Happened to the Canaanites: An Addendum to ‘Divine Genocide’ Arguments,”10 presents a riveting picture of Canaanite culture as awash in all manner of moral squalor—idolatry, faithlessness, child-killing, homosexuality, among many other depredations. Jones’ account of the ANE makes it sound almost as sordid as present-day Los Angeles! Could the Canaanites really have fallen that low? John Wenham insists, truly enough, on the element of bloodlust and cruelty in heathen—specifically Canaanite—mythology. He quotes a poem about Anath, wife of Baal, who loves war and laughs as she wades “in blood up to her knees—nay, up to her neck....” and washes her hands “in gore.”11 He notes also that the Canaanites killed children in grotesquely brutal ways.12 But how can the sins of heathen ANE culture, however gross, transform the brutal killing of infants and pregnant women into a moral good? It may be that the Israelite soldiers, carrying out their horrific orders, were not, like Anath, wading knee- or neck-deep in blood; but the blood of the smashed bodies of women and infant children must certainly have reached above their ankles. And isn’t that high enough for moral revulsion, even if the victims are heathen? Copan says that if “infants are killed by God’s command, they aren’t wronged, for they will be compensated by God in the next life.” He quickly adds, to allay fears of any who think this might be commanded again or allowed as a general practice: “In the context of God’s ongoing special revelation to Israel, God gave an unrepeatable command for a specific purpose, which the Scriptures themselves make clear; this command is not to be universalized.”13 But as with St. Denis who carried his own head two miles from the place where he was decapitated, preaching as he went, everything hinges on the possibility of the first step. And in this case that crucial first step has nothing to do with unrepeatability or compensation. It has instead to do with the nature of the “unrepeatable” actions for which the victims were

10 C. Jones, “We Don’t Hate Sin So We Don’t Understand What Happened to the Canaanites: An Addendum to ‘Divine Genocide’ Arguments,” Philosophia Christi, 11, 1 (2009), 53–72. 11 Wenham (1974), 126. 12 Ibid. 13 Copan (2011), 194.

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later “compensated”; it has to do with believing that the God of infinite goodness and love commanded those actions; it has to do with picturing Jesus himself as complicit in them—in the hacking to death of helpless infants. Many Christians see that kind of action as obviously evil in itself—part of the “general knowledge of what’s right and wrong” that Copan says theists and atheists share;14 hence they cannot imagine Jesus in any way associated with it. They also hold with St Paul (Rom 3:8) that no one may do evil, however great the good that may result; hence they feel tortured by the apparent Biblical claim that God commanded it. For them at least, assurances of “unrepeatability” or heavenly “compensation” sound with a very hollow ring. “In our time,” wrote George Orwell, “political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.” Horrible things like mass-murder “can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness.... Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.... A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details.” Thus: “Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.”15 And helpless infants are cut to pieces or smashed against rocks: this is called corporate capital punishment or (God help us) an unrepeatable prelude to heavenly compensation. The book of God’s word, like the book of Nature, should be a book that does not lie. That is why the task of Biblical apologetics is both noble and urgent. But to use arguments in the service of God’s word that blind us to harsh realities, enabling us to paint them in shades of soft, inoffensive pastel, betrays both the word and our service to it. Such arguments almost by

14 Ibid., 210. 15 G. Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” in A Collection of Essays (Harcourt Brace Javonovich, 1946), 166–7.

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necessity provoke moral outrage or, worse, cynicism; and they encourage skeptics in their belief that even the best of Christians have to harden their hearts to defend the God of Love.

III: Toward the Light In his essay, “The Psalms,” C.S. Lewis gives an account, unusual in its candor, of what it was like for a classically trained Christian scholar to encounter the Old Testament: In most moods the spirit of the Psalms feels to me more alien than that of the oldest Greek literature. But that is not an affair of dates. Distance in temper does not always coincide with distance in time. To most of us, perhaps to all of us at most times..., the civilisation that descends from Greece and Rome is closer, more congenial, than what we inherit from ancient Israel.... But no Christian can read the Bible without discovering that these ancient Hebrews, generally so remote, may at any moment turn out to be our brothers in a sense in which no Greek or Roman ever was. What a dull, remote thing, for example, the Book of Proverbs seems at first glance.... Compared with Plato or Aristotle—compared even with Xenophon—it is not thought at all. Then, suddenly, just as you are going to give it up, your eye falls on the words, “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he be thirsty give him water to drink”(25:21). One rubs one’s eyes. So they were saying that already. They knew that so long before Christ came. There is nothing like it in Greek, nor, if my memory serves me, in Confucius. And this is the sort of surprise we shall often get in the Psalms. These strange, alien figures may at any moment show that, in spiritual descent (as opposed to cultural) it is they, after all, who are our ancestors and the classical nations who are alien.... I do not mean at all that the Hebrews were just “better” than the Greeks and the Romans. On the contrary we...find in the Psalms expressions of a cruelty more vindictive and a self-righteousness more complete than anything in the classics. If we ignore such passages and read only a few selected favourite psalms, we miss the point. For the point is precisely this: that these same fanatic and homicidal Hebrews, and not the more enlightened peoples, again and again—for brief moments—reach a Christian level of spirituality. It is not that they are better or worse than the Pagans, but that they are both better and worse. One is forced to recognise that, in one respect, these alien poets are 306

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our predecessors, and the only predecessors we can find in all antiquity. They have something the Pagans have not. They know something of which Socrates was ignorant. This Something does not seem to us to arise at all naturally from what else we can see of their character. It looks like something that has been given them from outside; in fact, like what it professes to be, a revelation.16 Lewis is saying something like this: The Old Testament is indeed a record of the fanaticism, vindictive cruelty and homicidal violence of ancient Israel. But it is also a record of something else: a something struggling to break through all that hardness of heart—and occasionally succeeding; a something that set Israel apart from its neighbors; a something that finally revealed itself as a Someone. Most important, this someone is a person whose spatial-temporal life becomes the standard for judging the jagged line of sin and grace running through salvation history. The eternal, infinitely good and loving God remains eternally who (and what) he is. But how far we humans realize that goodness in ourselves, allow it to touch or transform us—that is what varies in history. In fact, this dramatic variation, sometimes so thrilling and majestic, sometimes so painful and appalling, is itself the concrete reality we call salvation history. It is a history we can trace through our ancestors or within our own selves; but in either case the touchstone, the standard, for judging the hills and valleys, the victory of God’s goodness or the triumph of sin, remains the same: the life and “character” of Christ. Hence Frank Sheed’s jarring but profoundly right claim that Christ is “the true beginning” of salvation history.17 With the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God makes all things new —among them revelation itself. Sheed comments: [N]ot only things ... but men too—new in knowledge, new in grace, new in their offering of the new sacrifice, new in all the ways of contact with God. The Old Testament was written by and for men as they were, in a situation as it was; the New Testament by and for men as Christ had changed them, in the changed situation made by him.18

16 C.S. Lewis, “The Psalms” in C.S. Lewis, Essay Collection: Faith, Christianity and the Church (ed.) L. Walmsley (HarperCollins, 2002), 219–20. 17 Cf. F. Sheed, God and the Human Condition, vol. 1: God and the Human Mind (Sheed and Ward, 1966), 126. This book has been reprinted as Knowing God (Ignatius Press, 2012). 18 Ibid., 106.

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And: [O]nly too often ... [the early Jews] simply assumed in all unconsciousness that if a course of action seemed to them right, then God willed it, so that in carrying it out they could see themselves as obeying God’s command, and could say so in total conviction. The trouble is, of course, that as civilization develops, men’s minds change upon the right way of handling other men, if only as a result of growth in understanding of human psychology. Cruelties which at an earlier stage appeared normal can come to appear revolting. But before that stage is reached, their rightness is not questioned—all the less so, because, with their total acceptance of God’s will as the law of man’s action, they had not come to the distinction between his will decisive and his will permissive.19 We need to pause and reflect on that last phrase, “will decisive and ... will permissive.” Can it be true that the Old Testament presents certain actions as positively willed by God that were in fact not positively willed by him at all, but merely permitted? If so, then things done in God’s name by the ancient Israelites may very well reflect not the line of grace, but rather that of sin and hardness of heart. This is a view that Jesus himself seems to endorse: Some Pharisees approached [Jesus], and tested him, saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?” He said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” They said to him, “Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss [her]?” He said to them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.”20 The teaching of this passage goes very far and very deep. Jesus is telling the Pharisees (and us) that something Moses commanded was not positively willed by God but merely “allowed”; and that this command was in fact in-

19 Ibid., 108. 20 Mt 19: 3–8. Copan, to his great credit, notes this passage in several of his writings (e.g. [2011] ch. 6). But he fails, I think, to appreciate its radical implications.

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compatible with the real moral requirements of marriage (what was true “from the beginning”). But if Moses commanded something incompatible with the true moral good (and thus with God’s positive will), he commanded something objectively immoral. And if God “allowed” Moses to command something incompatible with full moral truth in Deuteronomy 24, concerning divorce, why not earlier in Deuteronomy 20, concerning war and battle? After all, none of Moses’ commands in the Book of Deuteronomy are given merely as his own; all of them are presented instead as coming directly from God through him—Moses serving as God’s mouthpiece. So strictly speaking it is not Moses who commands; it is God himself who commands through Moses. And this is why Jesus’ words are so crucial. He is telling us that what is presented in Deuteronomy as God positively commanding through Moses is in reality God merely allowing through Moses—more precisely: through what Moses himself positively commanded. Why did God allow it? Jesus explains: “because of the hardness of your hearts.” But whose hearts? Obviously, not the hearts of the present-day Pharisees to whom he was speaking; nor, just as obviously, those of their direct ancestors. It seems clear that Jesus’ use of the term “your” (hymôn) extends throughout the history of the Chosen People and comes to focus in those invested with authority over them—then and there, in the Pharisees. But what about Moses? If he believed he was communicating the complete, perfect will of God, then he believed that what he said about divorce (for instance) was fully true and good. But it was not. So God’s allowing would include not only Moses’ command to the people of Israel but also Moses’ belief that what he commanded them was fully true and good. God allowed Moses’ command because of the hardness of their hearts. Is it really unreasonable to hold that God allowed Moses’ belief because of the hardness of his heart? If Jesus means “hardness of heart” to extend across the history of ancient Israel, a great but sinful people, it must be able to extend to the greatest among them, to someone who not only represents them before God, but actually embodies them. That someone is Moses. Perhaps nowadays we need a teaching authority to inform us that Moses’ relaxed rules about divorce were allowed because of hardness of heart. That may be part of the burden of the modern age. But hardness of heart in matters of war—brutal savagery, fanaticism, depersonalization, vindictive cruelty: in short, the dark dividing line of sin—that seems somewhat easier for modern people to discern. Maybe this sensitivity is one of the tattered remnants of our waning Christian culture; but at least it allows us to see something true—like the undeniable moral ugliness of many things Moses commanded; things that express a moment of concrete failure 309

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in salvation history, and not the triumph of transforming grace. Granted, God allowed and used this moral failure (as he allows and uses it in us); but no amount of eventual good can transform sin itself into victory. Sin distorts everything, including the image of God and what counts as doing his will. That is among the truths taught by the Old Testament. It is a truth taught perfomatively, discernible only in the light of revelation’s fulfilment in Christ. As Sheed writes: For the understanding of the Old Testament we need the New, for the understanding of the New we need the Old Testament. But the two “needs” are not equal. The New Testament is fulfilment, luminous in itself but yielding more light still if we know what came before. Whereas without knowledge of the fulfilment, the Old Testament has too much of its light locked up within it. One might find it a maze rather than a road.21 One might find it also a deadly snare, encouraging us to accept unworthy notions of God—notions we can use to justify and even sanctify our most hate-fueled impulses; notions—as I have argued—that God merely allowed because his people were not yet capable of taking in all that he wanted to give. That fullness he did eventually give in the gift of his Son. And that is why we Christians must specially revere the Old Testament—because God’s Son is the origin, center and culmination of the story it tells. That is also why Christ must remain its interpretive touchstone. He shows how the Old Testament’s record of grace and hardness of heart both reveals and conceals the Father; and he allows us to see where both the one and the other are really to be found in its pages.22

21 Sheed, op. cit., 126–7. 22 I owe a debt of thanks to two dear friends for help with this paper: D. Ciampa for critical comments on an earlier draft, and S. Schwarz for many challenging conversations over the past years.

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Part 4. Ethics

On Teaching And Reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Robert Sokolowski, The Catholic University of America

My essay in honor of John Rist’s life and accomplishments is not meant to be a simple exercise in pedagogy. Discussing how Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (NE) can and should be taught requires that we also describe the nature of the book itself and the truth that it presents about human being. NE is probably studied in college courses more than any other book in moral philosophy. It is, however, not just what one might call an “ethical” treatise; it also offers us a philosophical anthropology. It describes what human beings are at their best and their worst, and it shows how they can be defined by their attempt to achieve happiness or eudaimonia. We cannot understand what a thing is without knowing how it can be successful as what it is; as Rist puts it, “To know what a shoe is is to know what a good shoe is.”1 Therefore, success in human being means having attained some share in happiness, which is the name we give for the end or telos of human life; eudaimonia is what human life is all about. In his NE Aristotle spells out what such success is and in doing so he implicitly spells out what we are; the work is an ontology as well as an ethical study. It also provides us with an abundant assortment of words, a vocabulary that we can use to understand ourselves, our activities, and our successes and failures in living. Each of these words—virtue, vice, wishing, deliberating, pleasure, pain, friendship—harbors a concept and signifies a thing. But I would rather work with the word than the concept and referent, because if we can clarify our use of the name we will certainly have taken care of both the conception and the thing that are the “contents” of the word, however such “containing” may be philosophically understood. We cannot philosophically separate a thing from its name, nor the name from the thing and what it is understood to be. If our students and we can learn to use these words well, we become able to think more clearly about human conduct. As my remarks have implied, when I speak of teaching Aristotle’s NE, I mean teaching it as the truth about human conduct as it is presented to natural human reason; I do not take it as presenting just Aristotle’s opinion

1 J. Rist, Real Ethics: Rethinking the Foundations of Morality (RE) (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 145. Translations from Aristotle in this essay are my own.

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about human action. The NE is one of the great successes in philosophical writing and it thereby shows what such writing should be. NE, furthermore, is not meant to stand alone. It is a philosophical prelude to the Politics (Pol), which discusses the various forms of the polis. Pol defines the city and distinguishes the various forms it takes, the good and the bad, the best and the worst; it also explains how and why they are successes or failures. Political life is evaluated in view of the human happiness that has been presented in the NE, which is thereby made normative for the political treatise. Pol spells out the essence and properties of the specifically human community. The transition to politics is expressed in the final three chapters of NE 10. 10.7–9 describe respectively three aspects of human being: the theoretic life, the practical life, and the life lived under law, three ways human reason can be activated and men can become real as men, as human beings. These dimensions of life are embedded within a political community and cannot be understood except in that comprehensive setting, and so Aristotle, toward the end of NE 10.9 (1181b12–15), says that we must now go on to reflect on legislation “and in general about polity.” The aim of such an expansion of ethics into politics is to “bring to completion,” as much as we are able, “the philosophy about the human things.” This remark implies that the NE as a whole has been, in fact, the study of human being, and not just “ethics” in a more restricted sense.2

1. The order of the books Book 1 is the logical beginning of the NE but it is not the best place to start teaching the work. It is better to start with 7.1–10, which offer a phenomenological, as opposed to a logical, beginning. Aristotle introduces book 7 by saying that we are now to “make another beginning” (1145a15), so he himself recognizes a distinct inception at this point of the work. It is best to begin teaching NE at book 7 because there Aristotle displays the various kinds of moral agents. In particular, he shows us the differences

2 NE 10.6 should not be overlooked. 10.6–9 deal with happiness, with 10.7 treating the theoretic life, chapter eight the life of action, and chapter nine law. 10.6, however, deals with amusement or play (paidia), which is a strange introduction to the highest good. In fact, it serves as a foil and allows Aristotle to make a distinction. Amusement is done for its own sake but it could hardly be the end of human life, even though many people take it as such. Aristotle may have placed this topic here in order to differentiate the theoretic life from it; to many people the bios theōretikos might well seem to be little more than amusement.

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among four kinds of agents: the weak (akratic), the self-controlled (enkratic), the vicious and the virtuous. The presentation of this array of characters gives us an intuitive and concrete understanding of moral action. Any reasonably mature human being will have encountered such agents in his own experience, but Aristotle makes it possible for such an observer to explicitly distinguish and identify them. Making such distinctions takes us into the heart of moral conduct and makes it obvious that we are dealing with real human life, not with theoretical constructs or formal imperatives. This part of NE articulates the moral landscape; it does not try to uncover hidden springs of moral behavior. In particular, the distinctions give us a clear grasp of what is meant by virtue and the virtuous agent, who is described as the man whose moral thinking and emotional desires are in harmony (in contrast with the continent and incontinent, in whom they are in conflict). Through these concrete descriptions and contrasts, virtue is shown to be a human possibility, and it is acknowledged as admirable in contrast with the way most people lead their lives. It is not an abstraction, not a separate form. In 7.1–10, Aristotle gives us a marvelously detailed and colorful description of these various characters. Armed with this knowledge and confident that we are dealing with real human agency, we can, in our teaching, turn from book 7 back to book 2, which describes and defines virtue and the virtuous agent, as well as the kinds of vices and vicious agents that flank it and him. NE 2 provides an important complement to NE 7; it spells out the triadic structure of the middle versus the extremes of excess and defect that can be experienced in the continuum of emotion and action. This analysis shows what it means to be either good or bad as a human agent. Having specified what virtue is, we can then move forward through NE 3, 4 and 5, which cover various virtues of practical life along with their associated vices, and go on to NE 6, which deals with the intellectual virtues. It is noteworthy that no fewer than five out of the ten books of NE, books 2 to 6, deal with virtue. Virtue is rare in human life but it is given more extensive coverage than any other topic in the pages of the work. This large-scale treatment is appropriate; virtue is rare but it provides the point of orientation for all other human conduct, both good and bad. It is the pros hen of our ethical vocabulary. Our moral definitions take their bearings from virtue, just as our conduct in practical life takes its bearings from what the virtuous agent would do. He is the measure (metron) of human action. The topic of virtue deserves the lengthy examination Aristotle gives it in these books. At this point, at the conclusion of the discussion of virtue, we find that we have returned to NE 7 and the “other beginning” that served as the original beginning of our course. We have come back to our starting point. 315

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We then continue moving forward through the rest of NE 7 and its treatment of pleasure and pain, we learn about friendship in NE 8–9, and we finally study NE 10, where, after another discussion of pleasure and pain Aristotle deals with eudaimonia itself. Then, and only then, should we turn to NE 1. NE 1 is not a good starting point for teaching NE. It is too complex, inconclusive, and promissory. It raises questions but only hints at answers. It describes methodology but does not yet use it. It contains wonderful philosophical passages, but their full and tangible meaning can only be appreciated after the rest of NE has been covered. If the teacher were to begin the course at NE 1, he would need to keep assuring the students that they will understand this or that point later on; he would need to sketch the answers that will follow later but he would not be able to treat them comprehensively. Such constant interruptions and anticipations would leave the minds of the students in disarray. If, however, NE 2–10 have already been covered, the remarkable passages in NE 1 become intuitively obvious and can be easily discussed. It is easier to understand a question after its answer has been given; only then do we know what we were looking for.

2. Kinds of agents in NE 7 NE 7 is the phenomenological beginning of NE. We can begin discussing its expository logic by considering the following four kinds of agents: the virtuous the self-controlled (enkratic, continent) the weak (akratic, incontinent) the vicious. Each of these kinds is defined by the manner in which practical reason is related to the middle part of the soul, the part that can be modified by the choices we make. In both the self-controlled and weak, the desires and aversions in the soul are in conflict with reason; the self-controlled agent is able to master them but the weak agent cannot. The virtuous person has achieved harmony between reason and pathos, which are both ordered toward good action, while the vicious agent’s reason has itself become disordered. Due to previous choices, he thinks he should be acting at the bad extremes of emotion and conduct instead of the rational middle (although he would not put it that way, because his moral thinking has been spoiled). The parts of the soul used in these definitions were articulated earlier by Aristotle in NE 1.13, where he distinguishes between the rational and the 316

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non-rational parts, and distinguishes the non-rational into the part that can be modified by reason and the part that cannot. These four kinds of conduct make up what we could call the short list of moral agents in NE. In NE 7, however, Aristotle expands this list; he doubles it into eight categories, stretching it both vertically and horizontally to generate the following array:

the godlike the virtuous the continent

the enduring

the incontinent

the soft

the vicious the brutish. In this more detailed listing, the continent and incontinent are specified as dealing with desirable and pleasurable things while the enduring and the soft deal with the painful or burdensome. If continence and incontinence are ranged between temperance and self-indulgence, the enduring and the soft come between courage and cowardice. The brutish is defined as the human agent whose reason has been disabled, whether because of illness, degradation, excessive vice, or natural deficiency. The brute is different from the vicious agent in that his logos does not function, while the vicious person does think, deliberate, and choose, but wrongly. The category of the brutish is important because it marks the lowest limit of human conduct. It is a human possibility; it can occur in a human being, but it occurs when the specifically human agency has been extinguished. Such people are human beings but do not act humanly. The brutish is that beyond which there is nothing further; it is an ultimate in human being that is analogous to the featureless underlay that is the extreme instance of substance-as-substrate in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Met) 7.3, where all the cat-

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egories are stripped away and only indeterminate and unqualified matter remains. Such extremes are philosophically important; they determine the bottom margin in one of Aristotle’s arrays; they secure the perimeter for his analysis. At the other extreme of human agency is the godlike, that which is beyond virtue. There is nothing higher in human action. Aristotle does not explain what he means by this category, but a passage in 10.9 may help us understand it. There he lists three ways people are said to become good: by nature, by habituation, and by teaching. He then says, “That which is by nature evidently does not depend on us, but through some divine causes (dia tinas theias aitias) occurs in those who are truly fortunate” (1179b22– 23). Virtue is normally acquired by habituation; we will usually be able to say why a good agent has turned out the way he is; his upbringing, opportunities, and choices help us understand why he stands out. Our passage in NE 10, however, says that in rare instances morally excellent people arise even without such explanations. They seem to come from nowhere. They are gifts of nature or the gods, which will on occasion spontaneously present us with examples of what we should be like, even when the circumstances are not propitious. NE 7.1–10 cover a very wide range of moral phenomena. Some of them are colorful and amusing, such as the soft agent “who drags his cloak so as not to suffer the pain of lifting it” (1150b3–4), while others are grotesque, such as the brutish behavior Aristotle describes in 7.5. By far the main theme of these chapters, however, is weakness or incontinence. Virtue may be the point by which we take our bearings in ethics, but incontinence is the moral phenomenon that is ‘first for us.’ It is the most tangible experience of the human ethical condition because it involves a conflict between reason and passion; here the elements of the definition of moral action visibly sort themselves out for us. It is also the most problematic philosophically, because in it the most important human ability, reason, the strongest thing in us, shows up as almost ludicrously helpless in the presence of a desirable object. Socrates, Aristotle tells us, denied that such a humiliation could occur; he said such action was done not with knowledge but in ignorance. In 7.2–3 Aristotle shows that incontinence is indeed possible but he also admits that Socrates is not entirely wrong. He says that in the presence of the desirable object the practical reason of the incontinent agent becomes watery or diluted, not overcome, and the agent no longer seriously sees the object as an instance of what he should avoid. At the moment he really does not know but only talks; he says the words but they are spoken vaguely; he talks “as a drunkard recites Empedocles” (1147b12). Aristotle’s description of this condition clarifies human agency, but it also brings 318

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to light an important possibility in our use of language. Not all speaking is thoughtful; some of it may harbor incoherence or inconsistency, and when we hear someone talk we need to take into account whether or not the spoken words truly express an understanding.3

3. The range of human wishing and responsibility As part of his ontology of human being, Aristotle presents an array of terms in NE 3.1–5 that articulate human agency. He begins in 3.1 with the voluntary (to hekousion) and the involuntary (to akousion), which serve as

3 The phenomenon of akrasia has been the subject of much analysis in recent decades, both in commentaries on Aristotle and in the analysis of weakness of will. A fine survey of this issue, with a treatment of many authors and an important contribution of its own, can be found in J. Moss, “Akrasia and Perceptual Illusion,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 91 (2009), 119–56. This is also a chapter in her book Aristotle on the Apparent Good: Perception, Phantasia, Thought and Desire (Oxford University Press, 2012). Moss shows how what Aristotle calls phantasia can help explain the akratic agent’s temporary ignorance in the presence of the attractive object. She also shows in the book how phantasia functions in the rational activities of both wish and choice, and how the theme of the apparent good is at the center of Aristotle’s philosophy of moral agency. (Aristotle describes how the good or bad, the pleasant or the repellent, show up to the human agent, even concerning ethical matters and the kalon). I disagree with her analysis of akrasia on two points. First, I would say that the conclusion of the practical syllogism is not an imperative or any other proposition (which she seems to allow) but an action, whether a doing or a deliberate refraining. Second, she claims that in akrasia the rational agent’s intellect “is not merely clouded but actually covered over” and “appetite wins out over rational desire precisely by knocking out the rational cognition” (ibid., 132–3); but I would say that the akratic agent’s rational cognition is not deleted but rather diluted or disqualified. There is an intermediate possibility between fully cognizing and being ignorant, namely, a vague or indistinct kind of thinking. ‘Clouded’ may not be a good metaphor but ‘befogged’ might do, and it would account for the fact that the agent might verbally express a prohibition while doing what violates it. A particularly valuable point made by Moss concerning the apparent good is that for Aristotle the experiencing of a good or pleasant object is itself good and pleasant; he “has in mind a form of cognition that is itself pleasurable or painful” (ibid., 26). That is, the agent is not a neutral or detached spectator of what shows up as desirable; he does not simply judge intellectually that this object is somehow good for him. Rather, his very perceiving of a good thing is itself good and enjoyable, in a manner correlated with the thing desired. This is the case not just for things given to bodily sensibility but also for things given to reason, whether practical or theoretic.

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the widest genus for the distinctions he will make. These terms should not to be taken as signifying “acts of the will.” They designate overt behavior, not internal decisions. They name the thing or conduct that is done and express how it is done, either ‘wantingly’ or ‘unwantingly.’ The terms that Aristotle uses to designate willing and the willed are adverbs or adjectives (hekōn, akōn), or adjectival nouns. If what we are doing is what we want at the moment to do, our actions are voluntary, and if what we are doing is not what we want to do, they are involuntary. The distinction applies to the activities of mature human agents, but it also applies, as Aristotle twice remarks, to the conduct of the other animals and children (1111a24–5, 1111b8–9). If Rover is happily eating his food, what he is doing is voluntary, but if he is being dragged along by the leash, his motion is involuntary. He is in fact moving; the motion is real but it is involuntary. It is important to recognize that these adjectives that have been made into nouns (‘the voluntary,’ ‘the involuntary’) designate public, identifiable doings or happenings and not internal acts of the will, and that they apply to any sentient beings. Aristotle says that the involuntary can be brought about either by an overriding force or by ignorance of something relevant to the performance. In the former, the action is really being done by someone or something else and yet the ‘agent’ is caught up in it and somehow bodily ‘does’ the thing in question. In the latter, the person in question is doing it but his agency is spoiled by the fact that he does not truly know what he is doing; as far as he is concerned, he is doing something else. The limitation of excuses to these two kinds is an important philosophical clarification of the possibilities of human agency. Within this wider context of the voluntary and the involuntary, Aristotle differentiates a subclass of the voluntary that is proper only to living things that are able to think; this subclass of conduct is called the chosen (to proaireton). Children cannot bring about the chosen, nor can animals other than man do it. Both are unable to achieve it because the chosen is equivalent to the-having-been-deliberated (to probebouleumenon), and animals and children do not have the ability to deliberate. They cannot carry out that kind of thinking. Choice (proairesis) is the last step in the process of such deliberation; the conclusion of the practical syllogism is not a further proposition but an action. Thus, when in our thinking we arrive at something that is immediately within our power, we simply start to do it: we make an appointment with the admissions office, we go out and buy gardening tools, we call a lawyer, and the like. We perform; we crease the world in some way. When we choose, we do not merely make a decision or make a resolution; rather, we do something. Our deliberation would have been merely make-believe if we did not start acting when we come upon 320

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something that we can in fact do here and now. If at this point we do not move into action, there must be some internal defect in our agency; we may, for example, be incontinent, and instead of acting at the conclusion of our thinking we collapse and do not do what we know should be done and what we really want to do. If we lapse at that moment, we show that we are unreliable in the domain of action and unable to choose. Our choice is our doing, not a mere resolution to do something; it is not the case that we first choose internally and then externalize our internal decision by swinging into motion. The chosen is that into which we have deliberated ourselves. Among the voluntaries, then, there is the chosen, which is the deliberated; it is contrasted with the simply voluntary, the kind of spontaneous, notthought-out behavior that humans as well as children and animals are capable of. But deliberation, choice and the done-but-not-chosen do not exhaust the components of human action. In our account of human agency, we need to acknowledge something else, another kind of thinking or wanting, before we can philosophically clarify what deliberation and the deliberated are. The insert that comes before the deliberated and the chosen is what we might rather clumsily call ‘the wished’ or ‘the wishable’ (to boulēton; 1113a17) and the activity corresponding to it is wishing (boulēsis). Aristotle devotes the whole of 3.4 to wish, but he makes a very important analysis of it earlier in 3.2, while he is examining choice. Wish is rational wanting. It is wanting at a distance. We want that which we cannot immediately perform, and we know that we cannot immediately perform it. In 3.2 (1111b20–30) Aristotle distinguishes choice from wish and lists three things that we can wish for. 1. We can wish for the simply impossible, that which cannot be achieved by anyone. Aristotle gives just one example of such a wished-for impossible thing, immortality, but we could propose others, such as wishing that something had turned out differently in the past (that Carthage had been victorious over Rome), or that we could be in two places at the same time. As rational agents we can formulate such impossibilities and even wish for them. This is how far our power of thinking can expand our desire; we can ‘reach for the stars.’ In fact, the issue of impossibility can become controversial; are we correct in thinking that certain things are impossible? Perhaps we are not imaginative enough. And the opposite error can occur; we might be deluded and think that certain things are possible when they are not. The possibility of thinking the impossible introduces deep unrest into our spirit.

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2. We can wish for things that are possible but that cannot be achieved by us. Such things can only be achieved by other people: that a certain actor or athlete should win in a competition, that a sick relative finally do something about his health, that the government simplify the income tax. This kind of wishable is closer to us than the purely impossible, but it is still very far from any agency of ours, quite beyond our reach, and yet we can worry about it and wish that it would be. Here we focus not just on what we wish for but also on the other agents by whom it can be accomplished. This category of the wishable shows how intersubjective our desires are. 3. We can wish for things that can indeed be done by us, but not here and now. If I want a drink of water, I just reach out and bring the glass to my lips; I do not need to deliberate about how I will do so. It is a simple, non-deliberated voluntary. But if I want to lose weight, I need to do something else than simply lose weight. Losing weight, painting a portrait (at a time when I have not yet become a painter), swimming (when I still do not know how), cannot be done straightaway, and yet I can wish to do them. This kind of wishing is like the previous two because it reaches beyond what is possible here and now. Like them, it covers a distance, but it is different from them because I myself can traverse the distance, I can bridge the gap, and I do so by first thinking about how I can get from here to there. I deliberate in the space opened by my wish; I am enabled to deliberate by that space. If such deliberation is successful, it in turn brings me to choice. When a wish of this kind begins to govern our deliberating and then our overt conduct, the wish has turned into an intention; it is why we are doing what we are doing, it is the purposed that we have in mind. Such wishing still involves a distance; it is not as far-reaching as the wish for the impossible or for what can only be done by others, but it is still far enough, sometimes covering years of deliberation and choices. Reason allows us to escape our immediate environment and inclinations and enables us to want at a distance that, in turn, enables us to engage in the kind of voluntary that we call choice. Our choice is an action that creases the world, an action that is done in view of something that is beyond what we are doing at the moment. In Aristotle’s Greek text the words used in discussing wish, deliberation and choice, as well as the words used for the voluntary, are frequently the nouns that designate the objective correlative of the agent’s thinking and action; they designate the thing or conduct wished, deliberated, chosen, or done wantingly. He writes about to boulēton, to bouleuton, to proaireton, to

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hekousion. Of course, he also speaks about the agent’s thoughtful activity, the wishing, deliberating, and choosing, but he does not turn only or primarily to the subjective action. In our standard reading of Aristotle, we tend to highlight the activity—the wishing, deliberating, choosing and doing. But philosophically it is important to put the greater weight on the objective correlatives, on the wished, deliberated, chosen and done, because they are the more visible and verifiable phenomena, and we reach the subjective act more effectively by starting from the visible thing that this act has done than by trying to focus on the act by itself. We can better identify wish, deliberation, and choice by looking first to the wished and wishable, the deliberated, the chosen and the done. We do not get far philosophically if we try to show how it feels to make a choice; we get much farther by pointing out how something chosen shows up to us as having been chosen. We should look to the deed rather than the internal doing. It is true that the objective phenomena would not occur unless the subjective actions constituted them, but in fact they do occur and are constituted, just as pictures are pictures, words are words, hammers are hammers, and tables are tables, even though they would not be what they are if we were not there to let them be. Aristotle does not philosophize about what the world would be like if we were not there; he thinks of the world and about ourselves as a centrally highlighted part of the world, a part that can give a certain look to certain things by the kind of activity that we carry out. He thinks about the world in its human involvement and not just about the world in itself. We misread and misteach NE if we approach it with Cartesian or Kantian interests. There is one more sequence of terms to be considered in Aristotle’s discussion of human responsibility and action. In NE 3.3 he examines deliberation and begins by asking, “Do people deliberate about everything, and is everything deliberatable (kai pan bouleuton estin), or are there some things about which there is no deliberation?” (1112a18–19). He goes through a list of things about which we do not deliberate. But before doing so he makes a remark about the kind of person whose deliberations we, even in our philosophical stance, should pay attention to; we do not analyze the things deliberated about by a fool or a madman, but only the things thought about by “someone who has a mind” (ho noun echōn; 1112a21). This initial exclusion is important. It shows that Aristotle is talking not about a transcendental ego but about a serious man, and even as a philosopher he recognizes the difference between a purely formal self and a qualified human agent. When Aristotle engages in philosophical reflection— when he adopts the transcendental attitude—he does not leave behind his

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prudential judgment; that is one of the great strengths of his manner of thinking philosophically. After he has made this important exclusion, Aristotle goes on to list the things about which a serious man would not deliberate. These are: first, eternal and changeless things, like the cosmos itself and geometrical relationships; second, things that change but always the same way, like solstices and the rising of stars; third, things that change in unpredictably different ways, such as droughts and rains; and fourth, chance events, like finding a treasure. In these initial four steps, Aristotle moves from the farther to the nearer. The first domain is the metaphysical and mathematical, the being of the cosmos and the necessities in mathematics, the ultimate and changeless settings for everything. The second is the celestial, with its unending, inevitable, and perfect motions. The third is the meteorological, which comes much closer to the world of human agency and provides the conditions within which it occurs, the storms and sudden sunshine that permit things to be done. And the fourth is the domain of chance, which is within the human sphere and affects us individually, but is entirely out of our control, even though some people may think they can manage it by finding lucky numbers for the lottery or dabbling in astrology (they presumably would be among the fools Aristotle mentions at the outset). Luck, good and bad, is entangled with us, but it is not by us or from us. After this sequence of things beyond our control, Aristotle moves on to a fifth category, to things that are within the scope of human agency but not yet our own agency; Spartans do not deliberate about how the Scythians should live. This progressive narrowing of the scope of deliberation finally brings us, sixth, to what is within us and doable (tōn eph’ hēmin kai praktōn, 1112a31). But even here Aristotle makes a qualification, because there are many things that we perform that we must do according to established science, and so we do not deliberate about them; we cannot write the letters of the alphabet in any way at all, and the more established the science the less room we have for deliberation. For example, because of modern meteorology, airline pilots need to make fewer of their own prudential decisions about flight plans. What Aristotle has done with this elegant survey of that which is beyond the scope of deliberation and that which is within it is to articulate for us the cosmic background within which human choices are nested. The domain over which our choices hold sway is of immense importance for us, but its scope is very small. It covers a minuscule range of things. The existence of the whole, the celestial and the natural orders, the weather and chance events, are all beyond human agency; we cannot do anything about them, and yet they surround us and we are aware of them and think about 324

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them. They are given to our intellects for our consideration, but they are given as being beyond our agency. Because we can think about them we are also able to wish about them and perhaps imagine that they could be otherwise, but we ought to be sober and not foolish even in our wishes, let alone our deliberations.

4. The Aristotelian array Aristotle does not discuss topics in isolation. As we have been showing, he defines and clarifies things in constellations. Neither the virtuous nor the incontinent man could be treated apart from the other kinds of agents described in NE 7, nor could human responsible action be described without the setting of the voluntary, wish, deliberation, and choice. Aristotle proceeds by making distinctions, but in clusters and not simply between two items. I would like to express this grouping of topics by using the term ‘array.’ An array is correlated with the many ways in which a thing is said. In Met, for example, we have the four senses of being (the accidental, the true, the schemata of categories, the potential and the active), as well as the three senses of ousia and the three ways of being a substrate. Pol speaks of the six kinds of polity. Met 5 is a dictionary of such arrayed terms, but it is not merely a listing of words and their dictionary uses. The dictionary deals with the way things are said and not just with the way words happen to be used. Things and words are inseparable in their own way, which philosophy can explore. Each chapter in Met 5 is also a listing of things and their involvements with one another. Things are said in many ways because they are in many modified ways and in relation with one another. Such an array, furthermore, will usually have a paradigmatic instance, from which the others get their entity and understandability, as well as their nameability. The virtuous agent is the first in itself in the list of human characters, and being as the actual is the first in itself in the list of the ways being can be said. An array is Aristotle’s modification of the Platonic ladder of divisions, which deals primarily with dialectics and argument, that is, with the forms in themselves and not with their embodiment; Aristotle presents not a ladder but a cluster, and it deals primarily with kinds of actualization. ‘Study of an Array with a Paradigm’ would be a good title for an Aristotelian composition. Because he deals with energeia, Aristotle’s descriptions are realistic and not abstract, hypothetical or dialectical. The concreteness of his work is confirmed by the fact that he analyzes not a single phenomenon but an array. As we have noted earlier, he does not describe the virtuous agent alone, 325

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but the virtuous in contrast with the continent, incontinent and vicious. He describes real agents, and in his discussion of human responsibility he describes actual choices, which are embedded within the wider contexts of acting voluntarily, wishing, and deliberating. An Aristotelian array serves in the logic of manifestation and not the logic of syllogistic argument. Aristotle, furthermore, takes pre-philosophical experience and thinking seriously, as truly manifesting the way things are. In NE 7.1, while setting out what he wants to show concerning human agency, he says, “We must... present the phenomena and, after first discussing the difficulties, go on to exhibit, if possible, all the common convictions (ta endoxa)... or, if not, the greater number and the most authoritative” (1145b2–6). He does not intend to dissolve the endoxa but to ratify them and to remove the snags in our understanding that seem to endanger them. He does not intend to establish or prove the common beliefs, as though they needed proof; we have them from our pre-philosophical experience as things that are taken as true. Clarification and defense are needed. In conclusion, he says, “... For if the difficulties have been resolved and the common convictions remain standing, the matter will have been sufficiently explained” (1145b6–7). Philosophy is preservation of what is under threat, as well as the contemplation of the way things are. A similar acceptance of common conviction is expressed in NE 1.4, where Aristotle distinguishes between moving toward the first principles (archai) and moving away from them; he says that we attain such principles by becoming habituated to good actions, through which we come to grasp the ‘that’s’ of ethical thinking, which are the starting points for argumentation. The discussion of friendship in NE 8 and 9 is an example of an Aristotelian array. Perfect or true friendship is defined not simply by itself but in contrast with useful and pleasant friendships. Useful and pleasant friends really are friends, but not in the primary sense, because their advantageous and enjoyable features only incidentally belong to them; they might lose the attributes, or a more useful or pleasant person might come along, and these friendships would cease, without any sense of betrayal. In perfect friendships the friends could not imagine themselves having become what they are without the others. They think and act and accomplish things together, they are actualized as human beings, but they could not fully achieve this without the engagement of the friend. The mind of each of the friends is enlarged to wish not just his own good, but the good of the other as well as his own, and to be capable of engaging in such an expansion is an ethical excellence. At the start of NE 8 Aristotle says friendship is a certain virtue or involves virtue (1155a4), and in 8.8 he says that befriending, as opposed to being befriended, is the specific virtue (aretē) of 326

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friends (1159a35). Perfect friendship is a good in itself, beyond the useful and the pleasant, analogous to the common good that is possible for a community of agents. The features that make perfect friendship possible are intrinsic and not merely incidental to the friends, not detachable and replaceable by someone else. But if Aristotle had attempted to discuss perfect friendship without the contrast of the useful and pleasant friendships, his treatment of it would float free and we might even question whether the thing he described was real or just a phantasy. It is precisely through its distinction from the other two kinds that we know that something like perfect friendship can be actualized. Useful and pleasant friendships are obviously real, and true friendship is real because it can be differentiated from them; indeed, as friendship it is more real than they are, and they derive their natures and their names from it, but we could not see its nature without contrasting it with them. Because we see that perfect friendship necessarily is not the other two, we also see that it has a necessity in itself. It is definable, it has properties, and it is capable of being. It is not imaginary except in the judgment of a person who is incapable of it. Another interesting and complex Aristotelian array can be found in the list of what are sometimes called ‘social’ virtues (and their associated vices) in NE 4.4.1–2 examine a pair of virtues dealing with wealth, the virtues of generosity and magnificence. Generosity deals with the disposition of goods on a moderate scale, magnificence with great wealth and great uses of it. 4.3–4 discuss another pair of virtues, those that deal with honor, but in them the order of grandeur is reversed: the great-souled or magnanimous man is treated first and the moderately ambitious man second. Aristotle draws an analogy between these two pairs, saying that the ambitious man is to the magnanimous as the generous is to the magnificent. He obviously sees the two pairs as ordered in their presentation. A character that stands alone follows these two pairs of characters: the man who is able to deal virtuously with the passion of anger. There is no standard name for this virtue so Aristotle calls it good-temper or gentleness (hē praotēs) and the man good-tempered (ho praos). This single personage is then followed by a triplet, in which Aristotle discusses three kinds of people concerning how they behave in our ordinary engagements with others: the amiable man, the person who is truthful in the way he talks about himself, and the man who is decent and witty in conversation, neither a buffoon nor a boor. All three of these characters are especially concerned with speech or conversation; this is obvious in the truthful and the readywitted, but even the amiable man avoids being obsequious at one extreme and churlish or contentious in what he says at the other. A chapter follows the full list of eight characters on shame, which is not a virtue but more 327

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like a passion. It is a visible bodily recognition that we have done something dishonorable, and Aristotle compares the blush of shame with growing pale in the face of death. The two bodily reactions, he says, involve fear: of dishonor and of death, each of which involves its own kind of existential extinction. When we die we cease to be there bodily at all, and when we dishonor ourselves we extinguish ourselves as agents. Shame is not praiseworthy in the mature agent because he should not do things that deserve it, but it is laudable in a young person because it shows that he spontaneously recognizes a difference between the honorable and the dishonorable. If a young person has no shame, he will be dissuaded from bad conduct only by fear of punishment, not by the recognition that (hoti) some deeds are honorable and others are not. As Aristotle says in NE 1.4 (1095b6), “For the that serves as principle” (archē gar to hoti) for moral reasoning. I would like to comment further on Aristotle’s treatment of good temper, the virtue that deals with anger, and to make some remarks about how it fits into the array of virtues examined in NE 4. Good temper is an outlier in this list; it stands alone, just as it does in the list of virtues in NE 1.7. All the other virtues in NE 4 are paired or tripled. Good temper, because it stands by itself, seems to break up the array and to have no connection with any other virtue. It seems, however, that good temper fittingly follows the pair preceding it, viz. magnanimity and ambition that are virtues concerned with honor. Magnanimity is the virtue of the prominent, virtuous, and confident man who has achieved an exalted status and who even looks down on honors; he is beyond honor. The ambitious man is the one who is trying to accomplish honorable things and to reach a position where he will be recognized and honored. In contrast with both of these persons, the justifiably angry man, the one who feels anger in the proper measure, is the man who has been unjustly slighted; he is considered by others to be of no account at all. By their words and actions toward him they show that in their opinion he not only does not deserve to be honored but is not even worthy of dishonor. He is held in contempt. He is excluded from the ‘game’ of honor, and this very exclusion is a particularly virulent kind of dishonor, which may be why Aristotle treats good temper by itself instead of aligning it with magnanimity and ambition. Aristotle describes anger in Rhetoric (Rhet) 2.2 as the passion that flares up when we (or our friends) have been undeservedly slighted; it makes us desire revenge. Anger, therefore, does deal with honor in a way, by dealing with its negation or denial. Being slighted is a kind of dishonor. In Rhet 1378b28–31 Aristotle describes insult as a form of slighting and says that the young and the wealthy are inclined to insult (hubrizein) others. He 328

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then says that dishonoring (atimia) is part of insult (hubris), and “one who dishonors slights (ho d’atimazōn oligōrei)” and, he continues, “for that which is worthy of nothing possesses no honor at all, whether as good or bad (to gar mēdenos axion oudemian echei timēn, out’ agathou oute kakou).” The person slighted is taken as not worth the trouble of dishonor. He is treated as insignificant, not important enough to be shamed. The passion of anger is a spirited emotion that moves its bearer to strike back and to assert himself as there to be recognized and not overlooked. Because the passion of anger deals with honor in this way, the virtue of good temper is appropriately treated after magnanimity and ambition. The good-tempered man can also be compared with the three characters that follow, the amiable, truthful, and witty. In his treatment of good temper, Aristotle gives a marvelous description of two kinds of people who cannot control their anger, the hot-tempered and the sulky. The great problem with anger is that we often think we have been slighted when no such injury was intended, and our anger rises up and strikes when it ought not (or it retreats in sullen resentment), and even when we have really been slighted we often overreact or become angry with someone else. Anger needs to be tempered so that the reaction is realistic and appropriate. Good temper, therefore, does not deal directly with honor as do magnanimity and ambition, so it cannot be joined with them; yet it deals with honor in a way, so it is appropriate that it be listed right after them. It is also appropriate that good temper be treated before the three virtues that deal with sociable conversation, for which it is an essential prerequisite. An angry man, whether hot-tempered or brooding, has little chance of becoming amiable, truthful, and witty.4 Good temper is the hinge between the virtues that precede and follow it in the elegant array presented in NE 4. It stands between the first four and final three of the characters treated there. We have discussed several structural and substantial topics in Aristotle’s NE in order to show how the work might be more effectively taught. The 4 H. Curzer, in Aristotle and the Virtues (Oxford University Press, 2012), says that the three final virtues of amiability, truthfulness and wit are themselves intrinsically involved with honor. He says, for example, “Churlish people slight others” and “Truthfulness governs the way in which people present themselves to each other with respect to matters involving honor.” Also, “Buffoons engage in inappropriate put-downs” (ibid., 147). He claims that if these final three virtues are taken to be related to honor, it follows that Aristotle devotes six chapters of his treatment of virtue in book IV to honor, which suggests that he “devotes more time and effort to honor than to any other good except friendship” (ibid.). Since shame deals with fear of disrepute or disgrace (adoxia), which affects honor, one could add its chapter to the total and make it seven.

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final section of my essay will comment on some of John Rist’s interpretations of Aristotle’s ethics.

5. How Rist reads Aristotle Rist’s RE discusses and endorses what Aristotle says but finds it insufficient: “Aristotle assumed, and thereby diminished, the ‘realist’ elements in his master’s ethical thought, leaving to Aquinas via Augustine, Ps-Dionysius and others, the ‘replatonizing’ of the Aristotelian tradition.”5 Rist says that in Aristotle the force of moral obligation is inadequately explained; Aristotle’s ethics lives off its Platonic inheritance without explicitly developing it, just as Kant’s ethics draws its substance from a Christian heritage: “Aristotle’s kalon remains a wandering ghost of the Platonic Good.”6 Aristotle accepts the world of ethics and does not establish it philosophically: “He feels no need to attack people who deny morality as such, although Plato... had devoted much effort to rebutting them in the Republic.”7 Rist finds Aristotle inadequate because RE is written with a purpose different from that of NE and of Aristotle’s other moral treatises. His book is engaged in a different kind of philosophical thinking. Rist does not set out to describe ethical conduct in its details; his book intends to validate moral realism in the face of widely accepted modern and contemporary opinions that there is no such thing. Plato addresses this problem in his debate with the Sophists and specifically with Thrasymachus, but Aristotle takes his teacher’s victory for granted and goes on to the next task, the philosophical articulation of moral conduct. He criticizes part of Plato’s solution—the doctrine of separate forms and the separate good—but obviously does not ally himself with the Sophists except on occasional points; rather, he assumes moral objectivity and obligation. The scope of Rist’s book is, therefore, different from that of Aristotle’s NE and more like that of Plato’s dialogues. We might put Rist’s objection this way: there is nothing in Aristotle’s ethical works that corresponds to his refutation, in Met 4.4, of the speaker who denies the principle of noncontradiction. Rist would claim,

5 Rist, RE, 282. Rist thus recognizes the Platonic heritage of Thomism, the theme of participation in metaphysics. 6 Ibid., 148: “Aristotle’s divinizing of “the fine” (kalon), viewed as final cause of moral actions, bypasses foundational questions in evoking Platonic ghosts.” For Kant and Aristotle, see ibid., 150: “Like Kant, Aristotle had a project for separating ethics from metaphysics and, like Kant’s, his project failed.” 7 Ibid., 146.

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however, that this absence is not a minor flaw in an ethical treatise but a serious deficiency: “Plato is right that in ethics at least foundational questions, however settled, cannot be avoided....”8 I would suggest that some justification of moral objectivity can be found in Aristotle’s metaphysics of dunamis and energeia. The human moral agent is brought to full activation by virtuous conduct, which is not virtuous unless it stems from a virtuous character. In matters dealing with skill and making (technē, poiēsis), a man might make a product that exceeds his skill because it is the product, apart from the producer, that is judged as good or bad (a carpenter of average ability might ‘by accident’ make an exquisite table). Yet a moral agent could not perform a virtuous action unless he is virtuous in character, because an action is the agent being activated. The less-than-virtuous agent might perform a good action but not a virtuous one.9 A virtuous agent, then, is someone who by the nature of his being wants to do what is good and in the appropriate circumstances does do it. His wanting is not primarily a matter of feeling this desire; it is how he is. It is an ontological issue, not a psychological one. It is an ability and an activity that is studied in metaphysics but that occurs here in ethical being and conduct. Because virtuous action is the energeia of the human being, it is a thisworldly ontological reflection of the highest energeia in the whole of being, the still point of cosmic order that moves other things without being moved itself. It is true, as Rist points out, that “Aristotle’s god... is not a moral or prudential agent; indeed he is not an agent at all, except in the sense of final cause,”10 but this ‘inability’ of the god to carry out an action, a praxis, is not a deprivation. Action is second best in being; simple understanding is ontologically better. Action, no matter how admirable, is less admirable in its being than is simple understanding. Moral conduct remains an activation drawn out, located in time, and held together against the vicissitudes of change and chance. We palpably get a sense of its finitude and limitations when we compare it with a part of the cosmos that we can perceive; the complacent activity and motion that we can actually see in the heavens shows us that being can be better than what we need to deal

8 Ibid., 150. 9 On the contrast between skill and virtue and the difference in evaluating what is done through them, see NE 2.4. 10 Rist, RE, 148: “Aristotle’s God is neither moral nor an agent.” Also (ibid., 147): “God himself is no morally active substance.” It is also true, however, that the Platonic forms are no less impersonal, and the gods who contemplate them are hardly as reliable as we mortals might wish.

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with. This higher entity, the firmament and its steady motion, gives our minds an inkling of something that is even better than what we can see, a cause that exceeds even the celestial motion that proceeds without disturbance. This higher kind of mover is not presented to our perception but it is given to our minds. Kant speaks of “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me,”11 but for Aristotle the gradations of energeia are not “within” as much as above, around, and outside us; we are obliged to act virtuously because of the way things are at their best. There is, therefore, something in the nature of energeia as understood by Aristotle that can serve to confirm metaphysically the virtuous agent’s understanding that the actions required of him belong to the way things ought to be, even by “divine” ordering. Aristotle’s god is not a moral agent but he is a metaphysical one; his way of acting is superior and analogous to what we know as praxis. In Aristotle’s ethics, the virtuous agent wants to perform the good action, but this wanting is of a special kind; it is not trivial, not just what I happen to want. It is compatible with understanding the thing to be done as obligatory and myself as obliged. This way of being obligated must be distinguished from the way that the akratic and enkratic agents feel themselves to be constrained by moral rules that they experience as alien to their desires. The virtuous agent is not a variant on akrasia. He is obliged by the nature of things. There is, however, still another source of moral obligation, viz. the involvement of other people in the virtuous agent’s actions. The agent is not a “moral atom.”12 We cannot act without the engagement of others in what we do, and this presence of others palpably obliges us just as much as the metaphysical pull of energeia; we ought to act well because others depend on us to do so. This involvement with others can appropriately be discussed under the rubric of friendship. Rist does so in RE; he brings friendship into his analysis of moral conduct and sees it as one of the remedies for our moral fragmentation: “Eros must be molded by friendship (philia).”13 To see this, we must take friendship in a very broad sense, to include not only the highest and primary form of perfect friendship described by Aristotle in NE 8.3, but also the useful and pleasant friendships, the concord that is political friendship, and the general benevolence of human beings as such toward one another. Rist says that the po11 I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. M. Gregor and A. Reath, (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 133. 12 Rist, RE, 216. 13 Ibid., 109. The title of RE 4 is “Division and its remedies,” and a subsection is entitled “Towards integration: love and friendship” (108).

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litical understanding of the common good can also be seen as a form of friendship; both Plato and Aristotle evaluate good or bad political constitutions by the criterion “of whether or not rulers take on responsibility and rule for the sake of others as well as (but not excluding) themselves.”14 The expansion of what we want to what others need and want is an expansion and a perfection of our reason, and it is both obligatory and desirable. To fail to amplify our rationality in this manner is to fail radically in being human. Another criticism made by Rist is that Aristotle does not sufficiently explain how moral virtue perfects human being: “To say that man is specifically rational... will not bridge this gap; we need to know more about the proper use of reason.”15 I would respond that Aristotle does provide an illuminating description of the use of reason; he does so in his analysis of virtue as the ability to attain the middle between extremes in both emotion (pathos) and action (praxis). Aristotle introduces this triadic structure of moral insight in his definition of virtue in NE 2.2.5 gives the genus for virtue. Aristotle says it is a hexis, a disposition or a way of being, and not a simple passion or an ability to have a passion. No one praises or blames us for simply having an emotion or just having an ability to undergo an emotion. Rather, we are praised or blamed because of how we act in response to passion. This is the genus for virtue. The specific difference for virtue is given in chapter six, where Aristotle points out that emotions are a continuum between two extremes (too much or too little), each of which are bad; but as agents we can also identify and accomplish the appropriate middle, which will vary depending on the circumstances and on the agent himself. This determination of the middle against the extremes is something like a logical form and it is an achievement of reason. We might call it the logical form of virtuous action. It is deeply embedded in the particularities of a situation, but so is the logical form of predication when we succeed in articulating a perplexing perceptual situation, when we sort out the subject and what is to be said of it. I claim that Aristotle’s (i) analyses of the structure of the middle and the extremes, and of the practical syllogism in NE 7.3, (ii) distinction between choosing means and wanting ends, and (iii) study of the difference between what is first for us to what is first in itself, spell out the kind of reasoning that occurs in moral life. The expansions of reason in friendship, justice and the common good, which we have discussed earlier, are further examples of the proper use of practical reason.

14 Ibid., 216. 15 Ibid., 150.

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Rist says that Aristotle does not adequately identify the kinds of actions that are wrong in themselves and should never be performed, whether as means to ends or as forced on us by other agents. In his words: “It is true that Aristotle insists there are actions which the good man will never commit (he cites matricide), but although he thinks such acts objectively wrong, he spends no time identifying any range of acts which are always wrong, nor discussing the problem of exceptionless moral norms in any general way....”16 In response to Rist’s critique, I would ask whether it is the task of the philosopher to identify such actions. Is such discovery not done through the moral intelligence of the good man? The philosopher does not take the place of the virtuous agent, except insofar as he is himself a virtuous man; in that case he acts as an agent and not as a theoretician. He engages his practical and not his theoretic intelligence. As a philosopher, he is able to show how the good agent is different from the self-controlled, weak and vicious, and he brings out philosophically the essential elements of moral agency, but he respects the practical wisdom and autonomy of the agent in determining the actions that are good or bad, even those that are unexceptionally bad. Analogously, the philosopher as such would not solve a mathematical problem, but he could differentiate the mathematician from the physicist and the ethical agent, and describe the components of each of these pre-philosophical doers and thinkers. He could show what makes them be what they are, but he respects their intelligence as different from his own. The philosopher could help the virtuous agent to clarify the actions that he considers to be wicked, but if someone does not know through his character that such actions are bad, the philosopher will not be able to convince him by giving reasons. As Aristotle says in NE 1.4, the “that” (to hoti) is first for us and the ability to see such “that’s” is given to us through upbringing and practice; and if someone knows the “that,” the “why” (to dioti) will be not be needed in addition (1095b6–7). The relationship between Aristotle and Plato is, in Rist’s words, “allegedly antagonistic but more properly complementary.”17 We cannot understand Aristotle without understanding Plato, nor can we understand Plato without Socrates. It is always like this. Each thinker draws on but also adjusts his teacher and the words he uses, whether he does so in spoken or written conversation. Aristotle would be nothing without the Platonic eidos, which is the specification of the thing, the look for the mind, and the

16 Ibid., 146. 17 Ibid., 141.

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meaning of the name.18 Aristotle corrects Plato and so comes closer to the truth, but he would not have come closer without Plato, and each correction also runs the risk of letting something slip. John Rist, in his comments on Plato and Aristotle, continues these adjustments, and we who write about him in this volume do so in our turn.

18 Regarding the Greek word eidos, T. Prufer refers to “that display of unity and definition and necessity for which there is no better term than eidos.” The philosophical word eidos designates not just the ontological unity, definition, and necessity, but also their display, that is, the involvement of being with truth. See Prufer, “Providence and Imitation: Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Aristotle’s Poetics,” in Recapitulations: Essays in Philosophy (The Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 17.

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In Plato’s Moral Realism (PMR), John Rist argues that Plato’s case against nihilism and for moral realism rests on the existence of separate forms.1 Since Aristotle rejects separate forms or, more precisely, separate forms of the virtues and of sublunary entities, and since he clearly advocates some type of moral realism, it is interesting to ask: How does Aristotle make a case for moral realism? Can he make a compelling case without separate forms? My aim here is to show that Aristotle’s moral realism rests upon immanent forms of virtues. Since what is virtuous is relative to the agent and the circumstances he faces, it is not obvious that immanent forms of virtue could be the basis for moral realism. Whereas Aristotle’s immanent forms of physical substances exist in the world unchanging, even if they are not intrinsically eternal (Metaphysics [Met] K.2.1060a20–7); acts of virtue do not exist until the agent acts. How could what is non-existent serve as a standard? Furthermore, Aristotle identifies a special faculty, nous (mind or intelligence), that is capable of grasping immediately what cannot be otherwise. In his masterful, The Mind of Aristotle: A Study in Philosophical Growth (MA)2 John Rist shows that nous has a dual nature,3 grasping both immanent forms of substances and what is divine. Both are grasped without matter. In contrast, Aristotle’s virtues are manifested by action in the world. Acts of virtue are, thus, intrinsically material and mutable. This difference poses yet another obstacle to recognizing an Aristotelian moral realism.

1 John Rist, PMR, (The Catholic University of America Press, 2012). 2 Rist, MA, (University of Toronto Press, 1989). 3 Rist (MA, 171) argues that, at different periods of career, Aristotle locates nous both (a) within the human mind, as the divine part of us, and (b) outside the human mind, as something genuinely divine that causes movements of the soul. This latter nous is more Platonic than the former, but it is the former nous that is found in Aristotle’s logical works and is at work in his Nicomachean Ethics (NE) 6. The former nous is the faculty that grasps, without mediation, the first principles that serve as the middle terms of the demonstrative syllogisms that are central to theoretical sciences.

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This paper aims to show that the Aristotelian immanent forms of virtuous acts do provide a basis for moral realism. My central claim is that Aristotle models his discussion of phronēsis on his accounts of nous and epistēmē (scientific knowledge) in Posterior Analytics (An. Post) 2 in order to show that the former faculty sufficiently resembles the latter two that it can grasp forms of moral action in such a way that they can serve as attainable standards. One nice feature of my analysis, as well as a point in its favor, is that it clarifies the organization of NE book 6, Aristotle’s principal discussion of phronēsis. Like the rest of the Ethics, book 6 has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Many scholars see Aristotle’s account of moral reasoning as an ancient version of contemporary moral non-cognitivism.4 These scholars deny that moral reasoning can speak about the good or needs to do so; hence, they see moral reasoning as more of an enthymeme (without the major premise) than a syllogism. Alternatively, other scholars add unstated premises to construct more complete syllogisms that seem less serviceable for moral decision-making.5 I argue here that all of this literature errs fundamentally about the direction of the practical syllogism in the same way that the literature on Aristotle’s scientific reasoning goes astray:6 in both cases Aristotle describes how to use the syllogism in an inquiry, rather than 4 J. McDowell, Mind, Value, and Reality (Harvard University Press, 1998), 73, and the entirety of the “Virtue and Reason” chapter, expounds non-cognitivism as an account Aristotelian ethics. Looking closely at Aristotle’s text, S. Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle (Oxford University Press, 1991), 218–32, does an excellent job of setting out Aristolte’s method of practical reasoning by contrasting it with theoretical cognition. But she undermines her achievement by trying to reconcile it with the (incompatible) non-cognitivist notion of reasoning as a dynamic and revisable weighing of assessments of what is salient (232–60). To strengthen her case, Broadie argues against what she terms the “Grand End” view, the notion that a moral agent needs to have an overall conception of the good as her end, on the ground that such a conception would require her to be a philosopher. She aims to confirm McDowell’s point that the major premise of the practical syllogism (an assertion about the human good) plays no effective role in practical reasoning. The American Army recruitment slogan, “be all you can be,” along with the tacit implication that joining the Army is a way to realize one’s human potential is, I suggest, proof enough that non-philosophers understand the loose conception of the human end that Aristotle sketches in NE 1.7 and use it to motivate action. Even so, Broadie does have a point because, as we will see later, Aristotle often replaces the internal end (human goodness) with an external end. 5 P. Gottlieb, The Virtue of Aristotle’s Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 160–9, constructs a much fuller syllogism by adding multiple, tacit minor premises. 6 This assumption stands behind the claim that Aristotle’s sciences do not follow the scientific method of his logical writings; see G.E.L. Owen, “Tithenai ta Phain-

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in a deduction. This misconception about moral reasoning is spurred by the notion that reasoning is simple or even unnecessary because Aristotle’s phronimos is a person of “ordinary moral decency” who quickly sees what is salient and acts accordingly.7 I contend here that the literature has identified the wrong person as the phronimos. A sign of what is wrong is that the tradition would see Squire Allworthy, the good natured, but comically ineffectual figure of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, as a phronimos. Allworthy generously takes on the responsibility to raise a foundling he had discovered in his bed, and he is kind to the presumptive mother; but he is easily duped about the child’s origin and, later, the boy’s character.8 In contrast, Aristotle insists that the phronimos is a person who deliberates well and actually attains the good (6.9.1142b20–2).9 In an important passage, not often discussed, Aristotle claims the phronēsis that belongs to an individual and to a statesman is the same, though its scope differs (6.8.1041b23–4). Just as the statesman uses phronēsis to achieve the good for the city (cf. Politics [Pol] 1.1.1252a1–7), the phronimos uses it to gain the human good.10 Phronēsis must not only be the knowledge of the good but the mode of strategic reasoning that attains it. We will see that its job is to discover a form and bring it into existence. It is because this form has or, rather, can have an objective, real existence that Aristotle can be said to expound a version of moral realism. To reason to this conclusion, I need to set aside a number of sacred cows. There is not the space to answer all objections, but I will show that a straightforward reading of Aristotle’s text yields a surprisingly coherent and powerful account. Let me summarize conclusions that will become

7 8 9 10

omena,” in Aristote et les Problèmes de Méthode, (ed.) S. Mansion (Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1961), 83–103. As J. Barnes, Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Clarendon Aristotle Series (Clarendon Press, 1975), x-xi, notes, the deductive syllogistic Aristotle presents in book 1 is not intended for research but to expound the results of scientific research. Book 2 is for research. Broadie (1991), 38, gives one articulation of this very common view of the phronimos but she goes on to say that Aristotle challenges ordinary notions of decency when he advances contemplation as the best mode of life. H. Fielding, Tom Jones, bk. 1, chs. 2–4. In contrast, Tom, through his troubles, acquires prudence and, with it, Sophia Western (literally and metaphorically). This is not the place to defend my reading of the novel. So, too, P. Aubenque, La Prudence chez Aristote (Presses Universitaires de France, 1963), 63, 136. The difference in scope is important, Aristotle insists in the rest of the first chapter of the Pol and, indeed, throughout the first book, because different things must be governed quite differently.

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clear later: (1) Book 6 elucidates the faculty of phronēsis by modelling it on the accounts of both nous and epistēmē in the logical works.11 In particular, (2) just as theoretical inquiry aims to discover a middle term of a syllogism, phronēsis uses the practical syllogism strategically to discover the middle terms of a practical syllogism. Whereas the theoretical syllogism constitutes demonstrative knowledge, the practical syllogism signifies an action or, more precisely, a sequence of acts that attains an external end, like victory in war, justice, etc. (cf. 10.7.1077b4–26). Its middle term signifies the first step in the sequence. (3) This middle term is also the mean in two ways: it is the internal mean of thought, that is, the mean that phronēsis arrives at through deliberation (using the practical syllogism) as well as the mean of feeling insofar as the phronimos desires what thought judges to be best, and it is an external mean of action. Were the agent to feel or, correspondingly, to do more or less, he would not attain his external end. (4) The reasoning process as a whole, that is the entire practical syllogism, constitutes a kind of form of the concrete action that attains the external end. Hence, (5) Aristotle’s moral realism lies in the capacity of phronēsis to discover a sort of form that it can then make come to be through concrete action that successfully attains an external end. Parallel to the form grasped by nous, this ‘practical form’ exists within matter in concrete action and without matter in the agent’s phronēsis. My strategy is to show, in the first section, that Aristotle’s account of the individual intellectual virtues in 6.1–7 depends on parallels between phronēsis and theoretical science. The second section elucidates the account of deliberation that Aristotle gives in 6.7–11 by, again, drawing out the parallels that Aristotle is making between the practical and theoretical syllogisms. We will see how the former works strategically and how Aristotle incorporates external ends into the procedure. Section 3 examines phronēsis from an internal perspective, that is, by considering its connection with the other parts of the soul, as Aristotle shows us in 6.12–13 and in the account of incontinence in book 7. Section 4 aims to give a sense of how phronēsis functions in practical deliberations. Section 5 explains Aristotle’s moral realism and briefly compares Aristotle’s and Plato’s versions of this

11 Analogies between instances of different genera and primary instances within individual genera are important features of Aristotle’s scientific method, as I explain in E. Halper, “Aristotle’s Paradigmatism: Metaphysics I and the Difference It Makes,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 22 (2007), 69–103 (published, mistakenly, under the title “Metaphysics I and the Difference it Makes”). In contrast, so-called “focal meaning” (pros hen) is confined mostly to Met.

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doctrine. As far as I know, there is no precedent in the literature for the interpretation to be advanced here.

I Phronēsis is not only an intellectual virtue, but also the intellectual part of moral virtue. This role is apparent in Aristotle’s famous definition of virtue as, “a habit of choosing the mean relative to us, a determinate mean that the phronimos would delimit” (2.6.1106b36–1107a2). Since the phronimos is someone with phronēsis, this latter faculty has the function of finding the mean. That Aristotle describes the mean as what the phronimos would choose is a sign that not only is the mean relative to circumstances, but that in any particular circumstances the mean cannot be precisely articulated. The phronimos will know what it is, but will not be able to give a precise mathematical formula (1106a25-b7). In this respect the phronimos differs from someone with theoretical wisdom, the sophos; for the latter grasps the form of, say, an animal and can articulate its essential definition and demonstrate its essential attributes. The phronimos is closer to a craftsman in that the latter can recognize, say, how to make a cabinet from wood, but can neither articulate this insight precisely nor teach his craft with words alone. Nonetheless, Aristotle counts phronēsis as an intellectual virtue. We cannot infer from the phronimos’s inability to articulate the mean precisely that he does not have knowledge, no more than we can infer the same from the craftsman’s inability to articulate his craft. Proof of the craftsman’s knowledge lies in what he produces. In contrast, theoretical knowledge, as Aristotle conceives of it, has no external end; it must be grasped to be appreciated. Phronēsis occupies a kind of middle ground. First, someone exercises phronēsis in an act of moral virtue, and both phronēsis and the act of moral virtue are their own ends. Yet, like craft, phronēsis and acts of moral virtue also have external ends. Indeed, Aristotle complains that they are unleisured because they are required by the circumstances (10.7.1077b4–26). Thus, when attacked by a foreign city, courageous acts in battle are likely to be necessary to secure victory. No one displays courage unless he supposes that it contributes to victory in war. So, too, the just action of the political leader, though done for its own sake, is made necessary by the conditions in the state, and it serves to preserve the state and the happiness of its citizens. Someone might attain these external ends without virtue (2.4.1105a27–33) or perhaps, Aristotle suggests, through a virtue that lacked phronēsis (6.12–13). However, consistently attaining these external ends requires that one possess moral virtue and 341

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phronēsis, we will see. Therefore, phronēsis, practical wisdom, is like sophia, theoretical wisdom insofar as each is its own end, but phronēsis is also like the crafts insofar as it produces external ends (cf. 2.6.1106b14–16). Since someone who is morally virtuous will exercise his intellectual faculty of phronēsis in performing acts of virtue, a person who lives a life of virtue lives in accordance with reason and, thereby, qualifies as living a happy life (1.7.1098a7–20). This life is less happy than the life of contemplation (10.8.1178a9–23) because, as just noted, it is unleisured to the extent that it must attain practical ends in response to pressing circumstances. In general, then, a life of moral virtue has both internal and external ends: The internal end is the exercise of the properly human faculties, especially reason, that Aristotle terms happiness. The external end or, rather, ends are what the exercise of these human faculties accomplishes: victory in war, harmony in the city, and so forth. These latter ends are necessary to sustain states and individuals and, thereby, to make possible the exercise of the human faculties that is the internal end. Importantly, though, these ends are not merely instrumental: they are precisely what reason dictates under the circumstances. To exercise reason well is to attain those ends that allow the continued exercise of reason. Thus, both external and internal ends are attained together and can only be attained together. That phronēsis is the link between them becomes clear in book 6. Whereas NE 3–5 focus on the those irrational feelings that can be trained to accord with the mean that “right reason” (ὁ λόγος ὁ ὀρθός) dictates and on the actions that are characteristic of someone governed by right reason,12 NE 6 considers how someone determines what right reason is. Ultimately, book 6 identifies right reason as phronēsis, but the opening chapters begin more broadly. Central to the discussion is the interplay between inner and outer ends. That book 6 elucidates the sort of knowledge that phronēsis is by contrasting it with theoretical knowledge and, to a lesser extent, with craft knowledge becomes clear from an overview of its first seven chapters. There are, Aristotle claims in 6.1, two parts of the rational soul, (1) one that grasps what cannot be otherwise, and (2) another that grasps what can be otherwise (1139a6–8). Since the object of scientific knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) is what cannot be otherwise, scientific knowledge belongs to (1). Since we deliberate only about things that can be otherwise (1039a13–

12 I have called these, respectively, “psychic” and “proper” virtue, in E. Halper, “The Unity of the Virtues in Aristotle,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 17 (1999), 121–5.

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14), deliberation or, equivalently, calculation belongs to (2). Importantly, we deliberate about how to act; specifically, about what to do in some particular set of circumstances. In 6.2 Aristotle argues that there is a virtue of part (2) of the rational soul, the part that concerns things that can be otherwise, and that there is a truth in it, just as there is a virtue and truth in part (1) of the rational soul (1139b12–13; cf. 1139a15–17). (I will look at the argument in the next section.) 6.3–7 describe more specific rational faculties: scientific knowledge (6.3), craft (6.4), phronēsis (6.5), nous (6.6), and wisdom (sophia) (6.7). Scientific knowledge, nous and wisdom grasp what cannot be otherwise; hence, they must belong to part (1) of the rational soul. Phronēsis and craft, or, at least the rational part of each (ἡ μετὰ λόγου ἕξις), belong to part (2) (6.4.1040a1–5). Aristotle’s discussion of these faculties makes clear what we would expect from the overall context of book 6: they are all specific intellectual virtues. What is surprising and even awkward, though entirely in line with 6.2, is that all these faculties are also, somehow, true. We know that scientific knowledge is a virtue because Aristotle contrasts it with mere belief; the former is a state of soul that arises from demonstration, the latter a state that is not based on demonstration (1139b31–5). Since only what is always true can be demonstrated, scientific knowledge is always true, whereas belief may or may not be true. Likewise, nous does not admit of error because it is a grasp of what is simple, and the third faculty, wisdom, is the combination of nous and scientific knowledge (epistēmē—6.7.1141b2–3). So, all three faculties are always true or, at least, never in error. When these faculties are used to grasp their proper objects, they are modes of knowledge and, thereby, intellectual virtues. In 6.4–5 Aristotle describes phronēsis and craft as virtues of part (2) of the rational soul and stretches the notion of truth to apply to them. He explains that the making that is true is craft (1140a9–10), in contrast with the making that is false (also a state of part [2] of the rational soul) is the lack of craft (1140a20–3). The difference would seem obvious: someone with a craft can make, say, a house; someone lacking it cannot. Here ‘true’ signifies only that the craft achieves its end, the made object: we can surmise that the state of the rational soul somehow corresponds to the state of the object it makes. Insofar as this state enables someone to make this object, it is a virtue. Phronēsis is a virtue of this same part of the rational soul, part (2), because the phronimos deliberates well about the good and the bad, and there can only be deliberation about what can be otherwise (1040a25–8). The implicit contrast is with someone who lacks phronēsis and consequently deliberates poorly. One deliberates well if he attains the good and deliberates 343

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poorly if he does not. It follows that someone with phronēsis must always attain the good through his action. Whereas the end (good) of making is some object that (usually) exists apart from the process of making, the (internal) end (good) of acting is just acting well (εὐπραξία) (1139a35-b3; 1040b7). So, phronēsis is the intellectual virtue that enables someone to act well. Phronēsis is also, it emerges, the truth of acting well; for Aristotle claims that acting is ‘true’ when it is a rational acting that attains its end, namely, some good; and, again, the good that is the end of acting is just acting well, and phronēsis is what makes an action rational and makes it acting well (1040b4–7). In other words, someone with phronēsis deliberates well about how to act and, consequently, attains the (internal) good, namely, acting well. Phronēsis is at once the virtue of action and the rational part of the action, the part that is true because it corresponds, as it were, to the good action, that is, to the action that attains the good sought. Both phronēsis and craft deliberate, but they differ in two ways. (A) Someone with phronēsis deliberates well about “what is good and beneficial for himself, not in part about what sorts of things are conducive to health or to strength, but the sort of things that are conducive to living well as a whole” (1040a25–8)—whereas someone with a craft deliberates well about how to achieve health (the doctor), strength (the trainer), or some other particular end. Inasmuch as the phronimos knows what is conducive to living well, and living well or happiness is the ultimate end of everyone (1.7), she could not intentionally choose to do what is contrary to this end, whereas someone with a craft could choose something that is contrary to the narrow end of his craft (cf. 1040a22–4). Hence, (B) although a craft is good in itself, it can be used for good or bad; but phronēsis can only be used for good. Further, someone with a craft could be better or worse at it, whereas the phronimos could not be better or worse; he is assumed to be perfect (cf. 1040b21–2). Inasmuch as phronēsis is always good, it is the virtue of part (2) of the rational soul (1140b25–7). The counterpart of deliberation in part (1) is demonstration, and the knowledge that results from demonstration is scientific knowledge (epistēmē). If the premises from which demonstrations begin were themselves demonstrated, then regress would threaten. Hence, some premises, the basic principles, must be grasped without demonstration. This is the role of nous (6.6). Nous together with epistēmē constitute (theoretical) wisdom (sophia). Since someone with phronēsis not only deliberates well about how to attain the good, but must first grasp the good he seeks to attain, and since the good is the principle from which deliberation begins, phronēsis is exactly parallel to (theoretical) wisdom. Thus, it is rightly called practical wisdom. Again, just as sophia uses a noetic grasp of indemonstra344

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ble principles to demonstrate scientific truths, phronēsis grasps the good immediately and deliberates about how to reach it. One important difference between them is that the former concerns universals exclusively, whereas the latter aims at action and must, therefore, grasp some particulars (1141b14–16). In sum, whereas part (1) of the rational soul begins from necessary truths grasped by nous and demonstrates universal and necessary conclusions, part (2) begins from an immediate grasp of the human good and deliberates about how to attain it through practice using particulars. With this, we are ready to consider the argument of 6.2. But before doing so, let us note the ways in which phronēsis is modelled on sophia: (1) both belong to the rational soul, albeit to different parts of this soul; (2) each is the virtue and, thus, the perfection of its respective part; (3) each has truth, though this property seems more at home in theoretical wisdom. (4) Whereas sophia is knowledge, phronēsis manifests itself in action and its (internal) end is just good action (εὐπραξία) (1140b1–7). (5) Sophia demonstrates; phronēsis deliberates. (6) Sophia grasps universals; phronēsis uses both universals and particulars. (7) Sophia includes a faculty that grasps truths immediately (nous) and a faculty that reasons from them with a syllogism (epistēmē); phronēsis includes a part that grasps the principles and another part that reasons, that is, deliberates, about how to attain them. There is no doubt that sophia is the preeminent faculty of the rational soul. Aristotle models phronēsis on it. Even though phronēsis deals with what can be otherwise and even though it can only be true in an extended sense, it is still somehow a kind of knowledge by virtue of having some features that approximate sophia.

II Understanding the argument of 6.2 is essential for appreciating Aristotle’s account of deliberation in 6.7–11. As I said, this chapter shows how the second rational part, the part that grasps what can be otherwise, can be ‘true’ (2.1139b12–13), and we have seen what truth in craft and action is. We still need to look carefully at 6.2’s justification for this very strange extension of ‘truth.’ In its usual meaning ‘truth’ pertains to the first rational part of the soul, the part that grasps what cannot be otherwise, the theoretical part: assertions and denials are thoughts that are true when they correspond to what is

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in things and false when they do not (Met E.4.1027b20–3).13 What does truth mean for the practical part of the intellect? Aristotle models his answer on the theoretical part: “what affirmation and denial are in thought, pursuit and avoidance are in desire” (1139a21–2). That is to say, desire can be directed toward or away from an object. Clearly, desire ought to pursue what is truly good and avoid what is bad, though oftentimes it errs grievously in its judgments about these objects. Aristotle is saying that just as thought can agree or fail to agree with its object, so too desire can be directed toward what is good or toward the opposite. So, just as thought can be true or false, desire can be right or wrong. Like theoretical truth, practical truth is a kind of agreement. There is, though, one important twist to Aristotle’s account. Whereas theoretical truth lies simply in thought, practical truth lies in action, the pursuit of the good. It is not enough for desire to be directed towards an object that happens to be good: thought must recognize that this object is good and desire it because it is good. Thus, Aristotle identifies a practical truth as the soul’s desiring and, thus, pursuing what thought judges to be an object that is beneficial and avoiding an object thought judges to be harmful. The thought that so judges is the thought of what can be otherwise because whether an object is good often depends on the circumstances. Nor is Aristotle talking about a fleeting desire, but one that is cultivated to the point of being habitual, that is, a virtuous desire. Thus, a virtuous desire is “practically true” because it is a desire for what is truly good (1139a21–7). It might be objected that there could also be an agreement if thought were to judge something truly bad to be good and if the desire were directed toward pursing this bad object. But such an “agreement” arises from joint defects, each element being at odds with itself insofar as it intends the good but settles on what is not good. I think this must be why Aristotle sanctions practical truth only when desire is correct and reason is right (1139a28–31). Having shown that part (2) of the rational soul also admits of truth, Aristotle turns immediately to its virtue. Again, he uses part (1) as his model:

13 Theoretical truth is broader than Aristotle suggests here. A noetic grasp of a simple object is true if it exists at all (Met Θ.10.1051b30–1052a1). I have argued that there is a sense in which scientific knowledge (that is, knowledge through demonstration) is true through a kind of correspondence, “The Metaphysics of the Syllogism,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, 33 (2018), 31–60, esp. 49–52.

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In respect of thought that is theoretical but neither practical nor productive, the good and the bad are true and false (for this is the function of the entirety of this type of thought); but in practical thought, the good is the agreement of truth with right desire. Choice is the principle of action—for action begins from choice, not from the end— but the principle of choice is desire and reason for the sake of some end (1139a27–33). Aristotle seems to be assuming that whenever thought performs its function, it is good. Since the function of theoretical thought is only to arrive at knowledge, it is good simply by being true. The function of practical thought is not merely knowledge, but to pursue and attain its proper end, the good. The quoted passage identifies the good of practical thought as “the agreement of truth with right desire,” but it explains that desire and reason are the principles of choice and that choice is, in turn, the principle of action. Aristotle’s point is that when thought and desire are aligned toward what is good, they cause the choice that sets in motion a sequence of actions that actually do lead to what is good. In short, practical thought is true when the object of a rationally cultivated desire is also the object reason judges to be good; practical thought is good when the rationally cultivated desire makes a choice that initiates an action that succeeds in bringing about the end that is truly good and beneficial. What is this end? Aristotle answers the question later in chapter 2 by making a comparison: the end of productive thought lies in the product that the craft produces, but “the end of practical thought is acting well (εὐπραξία), and desire aims at this” (1139b1–4). “Acting well” refers to some specific action that is appropriate under the circumstances. But what makes it appropriate? We saw that someone with phronēsis deliberates well about what is conducive to the ultimate end, living well as a whole (τὸ εὖ ζῆν ὅλως) (1040a25–8). It is acting well in this comprehensive sense that is the ultimate aim of the properly cultivated and, thus, rationally infused desire, that is to say, a desire that has been habituated to follow reason and is, thereby, virtuous. This discussion has identified two poles, virtuous desire, and its end, acting well or living well. A motion connects these poles: the soul must act to attain the good, the living well that it desires. The issue in 6.2 is what moves the soul between these two poles. Thought by itself does not move anything (1039a35–6), and desire by itself is not directed to the proper end. Aristotle’s solution is that the soul is moved by choice and the latter is some sort of amalgamation of the two, “a desiring intellect” (ὀρεκτικὸς νοῦς) or a “thoughtful desire” (ὄρεξις διανοητική) (1039b4–5). Choice is the

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principle of the motion through which virtuous desire attains the object that is its end. It is the first, initiating step of this motion. In other words, choice is the efficient cause of an act or sequence of acts that leads to acting or living well. Just how does the soul make this choice? 6.2 does not mention phronēsis, but we know from my previous section that this faculty enables someone to deliberate well about the ultimate good. Since we do not deliberate about the end, about the past or, in general, about what cannot be otherwise (3.3.1112a29–30, b2–4, b11–12), the deliberation must focus on the steps we can take to arrive at the end and, thus, about what we should choose to start this motion. To deliberate well is to determine those concrete steps, under the circumstances, that enable one to reach the end, and one who has deliberated well does, in general, reach this end. It is clear that in order to deliberate well, one must know the end sought as well as the concrete particulars necessary to use in the circumstances in which one finds oneself. Deliberating concerns what can be otherwise, but someone with phronēsis knows how to attain the human end in the best possible way. That is why it is a virtue of the soul’s second rational part. That is also why it is both true and good: it is true because it knows both the human end and the steps to attain it, and it is good because it does attain this end. How exactly does phronēsis determine these steps? Aristotle answers this question in 6.9–11, but before we can appreciate his answer, we need to notice two problems with 6.2. The first is how to distinguish the acting well that is the end from the steps that attain it. Inasmuch as these steps are the best way to attain the end, they themselves count as part of the acting well that they bring about. Indeed, the difficulty of distinguishing end from the way it is reached is not so much a problem as a feature of action. The choice that is the very first step in the pursuit of the good is already an instance of acting well. Aristotle makes this point by comparing making and acting; the end of the former lies in the thing made but acting or, rather, acting well is its own end. Nonetheless, before any action can be undertaken, the phronimos needs to deliberate about the best path to attain the good. Insofar as it is necessary for the action, this deliberation is also part of the action, but as an activity of the rational soul, it can be distinguished from the practical action it engenders. The second problem is that acting well or living well is so inclusive as to render it difficult to use as a goal. Just what does one do to attain living well? If living well includes performing both acts of justice and acts of courage, how does one choose which to aim for? Acting well or living well is the human end, but as I noted earlier it is an internal end. Someone is living well when he is acting according to rea348

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son and, thus, when his soul parts are functioning properly, but what is he actually doing? The answer to this question depends on which sort of polis he inhabits and on the particular circumstances in which he acts. When his polis is under attack, he must act to protect it and, thereby, himself. As Aristotle complains, in a passage to which I referred earlier, acts of moral virtue are unleisured because they are required by the circumstances (10.7.1077b4–26). Acts of courage may be good in themselves, but no one exercises this virtue unless he has to and, even then, he does not deliberate about how to act courageously but about what he can do to secure victory. The same is true generally: circumstances create not only the need for virtuous actions, but also the specific ends to be accomplished if human life is to flourish. It is essential to grasp what counts as good, under the circumstances, and to be able to determine how to attain it. Such a good is an external consequence of action. In general, we deliberate about how to attain some particular external good. However, the actions through which we attain it are precisely the optimal exercises of our faculties, especially our faculty of practical reason, which constitute living well. That is to say, in the course of attaining an external end like victory in war, we must exercise phronēsis and perform acts of courage and other virtues that are internal ends. The exercise of our faculties is, thereby, its own end insofar as it is our way of exercising our human nature well, but also because it sustains the conditions in which we can continue to exercise so our nature. One indication of the role of external ends is Aristotle’s claim, in the seemingly intrusive 6.8, that phronēsis and politics are the same soul state, though they differ in their essences (1041b23–4). Like ethics, politics aims at the greatest good (Pol 1.1.1252a1–7), and political leaders do or should aim for the happiness of all. Yet, as Aristotle describes them, their overall aim is to produce “good order” (ἐυνομία) (3.3.1112b14), and the really pressing decisions they make concern concrete measures to avert threats to the state from factions and disputing parties within and from conquest from without, all of which are external ends. These external ends are achieved by the statesman’s and citizens’ exercising their human faculties well. Instituting measures that diminish factions and so preserve the state, the statesman acts with justice: he attains his internal end precisely by attaining an external end. In general, the external end is the more concrete point of reference that deliberation aims to attain. This last idea helps to explain Aristotle’s discussion of moral reasoning. The principal tool for deliberation is the so-called “practical syllogism” because, as we will see, Aristotle uses it to bridge the gap between virtuous desire and the good that is its object. There are very few direct or indirect references to the practical syllogism: there is an example at the end of 6.7 349

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that illustrates the claim that particulars are important for practical reasoning; another example is implicit in the following chapter; 6.9 refers to its middle term; and NE 7 has additional illustrations. In all of these passages, the good sought by desire is an external end, not the internal end we might have expected from 6.2. Aristotle relies on the external end in moral reasoning not because he is unconcerned about “grand ends,” but because he is convinced that we attain the “grand end,” that is, happiness, by attaining external ends. This point becomes clear when we consider his examples of practical syllogisms, provided, I contend, that we appreciate how these examples are modelled, in turn, on scientific syllogisms. Aristotle’s example in 6.7 is someone who knows that light meats are easily digested and healthful. As usually understood, this person sees something that he identifies as light meat—“this is light meat;” since he knows “light meat is healthy,” he draws the conclusion that he should eat what is before him (7.1141b18–21). This interpretation of the example is not compelling or even coherent, nor is it consonant with the text. As often noted, an injunction to eat the meat is not supported by the assumptions. Rather, the conclusion should be “this is healthy.” But the latter is a matter of fact and, thus, not something we could deliberate about.14 A more serious problem is that knowing “this is healthy” is not enough to decide whether to eat it. It might be inappropriate in present circumstances (immediately after a meal), harmful to me (in the emergency room), a drain on the food supply (in a famine), and so forth. This objection can be overcome by adding additional minor premises.15 Suitably reconstituted, a syllogism could support the conclusion that the meat should be eaten, but such a syllogism does not represent the process of thought

14 We deliberate about what can be achieved in action (3.3.1112a30–1), and we deliberate because there is some indeterminacy in an outcome (1112b8–9). The meat’s being healthy is not something that is realized in action, nor is it indeterminate. 15 Gottlieb (2009), 160–9. Alternatively, C. Natali, The Wisdom of Aristotle (State University of New York Press, 2001), 97–8, appreciates that deliberation enables desire to attain its end, but sees the initiating action as the conclusion of a non-rigorous syllogism, in contrast with rigorous scientific syllogisms. See also C. Natali, “The Book on Wisdom,” in Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, (ed.) R. Polansky (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 194–5. On the other hand, G. von Wright (“Practical Inference,” The Philosophical Review 72 [1963], 159– 79) skirts the problem by making the premises of practical inferences universal, though he thinks Aristotle believes the reasoning to rely on a subsumption under a universal.

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through which an agent would come to decide to eat the meat. A course of action is not deduced but discovered. Indeed, Aristotle does not speak of deliberation as a syllogism demonstrating a conclusion; rather, he says that someone who deliberates well finds what is conducive to his end (1040a25–8). That is to say, one who deliberates starts from the end he wants to achieve and tries to discover a way of achieving it. Eating the meat is not an end. It is not a good pursued by rationally habituated desire. The issue for one deliberating well is, rather, whether eating the meat contributes to his living well. More precisely, is it an act of moderation? Pertinent to this question is whether the meat is healthy. It would be extreme to say that foods that are not healthy should never be eaten, but they should surely be consumed in lesser quantities than healthy food; and the latter, too, have optimum quantities for consumption. The deliberation is not so much about whether to eat the meat as it is about how to be healthy and live well. What is at stake here is the meaning of deliberation. Is it a way to demonstrate a course of action or a way to determine what action will lead to a recognized good? Is eating the meat the conclusion deduced from premises or is it a possible step in a process that attains some specific good, like health or moderate action? The literature just assumes it is the former; what Aristotle describes is the latter. At first glance it hardly seems to matter because the three claims that constitute a syllogism can usually be reordered to yield another valid syllogism. Thus, the claims of a scientific syllogism can be rearranged to produce a so-called “syllogism of the fact,” a valid syllogism that is not a scientific syllogism because the middle term is not causal (An. Po. 1.13.78a22–3, 36–8; 78b32–4). However practical deliberation differs from scientific reasoning because it aims only to find some way to attain an end. Because there might be multiple ways, all equally good, we cannot demonstrate the path from the end. Hence, the premises of practical syllogisms cannot be reordered. It is significant, then, that 6.2 presents reasoning as a way to reach an end. We start with a desire for some end and the true thought that that end is good; the initial desire and thought and the final end they seek are two poles. Between them, there are two processes. The first is the process of deliberation. Since to deliberate well determines the way desire can realize its end, one deliberates by working backwards from the end to discover some act Z that must be done to attain the end, and, then, what act Y must be done to attain Z, and so forth, until deliberation discovers an act that can initiate the sequence of acts that yield the desired end. Once deliberation reaches this point, it only remains for desire to choose this act and, thereby,

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set in motion the second process, that is, the sequence of actions through which the end is actually attained. The poles and the choice (and subsequent actions) that connect them fit nicely into the three term structure of syllogism: the poles are the two extremes, and choice and consequent actions constitute collectively the middle term. In the practical syllogism, these terms are linked causally: desire causes the choice, and the choice causes the end. So understood, the function of deliberation is to discover what amounts to the middle term of the practical syllogism. In this capacity, deliberation in practical reasoning closely parallels, indeed, is modelled upon inquiry in scientific reasoning. The second book of the An. Post identifies four scientific questions, and it argues that inquiry into each of them seeks to discover either whether there is a middle term of a scientific syllogism or what it is (2.1–2; see 90a5–6).16 Aristotle tacitly compares deliberation to scientific inquiry when he identifies it as a kind of inquiry (τὸ γὰρ βουλεύεσθαι ζητεῖν τι ἐστίν—6.9.1142a31–2; see also 3.3.1112b21–3) and when, later in this chapter, he notes that deliberation could go astray by using the wrong middle term. Someone might attain an end even if he chose to act in a way that would not ordinarily lead to that end, but he does not attain it “through the middle” (1142b20–6). Evidently, just as scientific inquiry seeks the middle term of a syllogism, deliberation is an inquiry that seeks a middle term. This understanding is confirmed by the conclusion of 6.9: “Since deliberating well belongs to phronimoi, good deliberation (εὐβουλία) is correctness (ὀρθότης) about what is beneficial with respect to the end that phronēsis grasps truly (1142b31– 3).”17In other words, someone with phronēsis grasps the end and, then, through deliberation, arrives at the middle term that is correct because it serves to attain this end. Whereas the middle term that scientific inquiry seeks is some nature’s essence, that through which an attribute necessarily belongs to this nature, the middle term that practical deliberation seeks is

16 On scholars who assume that Aristotle seeks a science that is able to deduce necessary truths, see n. 6. Confusion about scientific reasoning has obscured practical deliberation of which it is the model. 17 Note that R. Louden, “What is Moral Authority? Εὐβουλια, Σύνεσις and Γνώμη vs. Φρόνησις,” Ancient Philosophy, 17 (1997): 111–12, thinks that good deliberation is a separate faculty, rather than, as I think, the same as deliberating well (5.1040a25–8). A craftsman deliberates about how to achieve a qualified good, but not about how to achieve good (2.1039b1–3 with 1142b31–3), and his being able to deliberate well is part of his having that craft. So, too, deliberating well about the human good is part of being a phronimos.

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some particular action through which the deliberator can achieve the beneficial end. The scientific syllogism is a relation of universals, for knowledge is of the universal; the practical syllogism is a sequence of events. Someone with phronēsis is able to use the practical syllogism to discover what event he can initiate to arrive at what he recognizes as the end. Phronēsis knows both the end and the process that brings it about. If this is right, then 6.7’s example of a practical syllogism can be understood in just the way that Aristotle presents it: Some people who do not have knowledge and, among others, those who have experience are more adept at action than others who do have knowledge; for if someone knows that light meats are easily digested and healthful, but is ignorant of which meats are light, he will not produce health, but someone who knows that poultry is light and healthful will produce it more (1141b16–21; Sachs trans.). The external end, health, is the starting point of the deliberation. How can one maintain his good health? By eating healthy food. Having found this cause of health, deliberation seeks an action that will bring it about: what food is healthy? One good answer is light meat, and someone who recognizes that light meat is healthy has knowledge of some sort. However, he cannot use it in a practical syllogism until he can recognize some particular meat as light meat. In contrast, the person who does not know that light meat is healthy but recognizes from that poultry is healthy is better able to make a practical syllogism because he grasps a particular that he can use to attain an end. The point is that deliberation does not use a practical syllogism to draw an inference but to discover an action that attains a desired end. This strategic use of the practical syllogism parallels the use of the scientific syllogism to discover the essential nature that is its middle term, only there the connections between the terms are necessary and universal, whereas here the connections are causal sequences of events that lead to the end.18 Of course, eating this dish or even eating light meat is neither necessary nor sufficient for health, though it may be the best path in the circumstances. On my reading, the agent is not considering whether to eat some dish, but looking for a dish that will promote his health and discov18 Natali (2001), 99–100, nicely describes the parallel between scientific and practical syllogisms, and he notes (2014), 194, that deliberation is about “ways and means to achieve the supreme human good.” He misses that both types of syllogism are used to find middle terms and that the end that the practical syllogism seeks is, first, the external end.

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ering that some particular dish will do this, discovering, perhaps, that some particular gyro is actually made from turkey. The starting point of his reasoning is the desired end, health. This latter is exactly what Aristotle says in 6.12: “For practical syllogisms have this beginning, ‘since the end, that is, the best is of this sort’ (let it be whatever, for the sake of argument)” (1144a31–3). Practical deliberations begin from a desired end, such as health, and seek light meat or whatever else can be used to attain the end. Aristotle explains that this end will not appear to one who is not virtuous (1144a34–6). Excessive desire corrupts the choice of ends (7.3.1147a29–34) and, thereby, obstructs reason from discovering the correct middle term. Additional support for this interpretation lies in Met’s account of the doctor’s similar reverse reasoning: Someone comes to be healthy through the following thinking: Since this is healthy, it is necessary, if someone is to be healthy, that this be present, for example, even temperature, and if this is to be, there must be heat; the doctor continues thinking in this way until he reaches an end that he can do. Then, the motion for this act onward toward health is called “making” (Z.7.1032b6–10). The doctor reasons from the end to the beginning and then initiates the motion: he rubs the patient to warm the cold parts of his body (1032b21– 6). Compare this passage with Aristotle’s discussion in NE 3.3: We deliberate not about ends, but about what is in respect of the ends, for the doctor does not deliberate about whether he will cure... nor does the statesman deliberate about whether he will make good order.... Rather, positing the end, they consider how and through what it will be. If it seems to come through many, they consider which is the easiest and most beautiful; if from one, they consider how the end will be through this and how this will be through something else, until they come to the first cause, which is the last to be discovered. For the one who is deliberating seems to be inquiring and analyzing... and the last in the analysis is the first in the generation (1112b11–24). Deliberation is the same whether it is done by the doctor or by someone who aims at the human good. It works backwards from the end. This is the basis of Aristotle’s comparison of virtuous action with craft production and why he declares “it is this kind of thought [that is, thought concerned with action] that initiates production, for the maker makes everything for the sake of an end” (6.2.1139a35-b2). The sequence of actions can be formulated as a syllogism or a sorites whose extremes are the rationally cultivated desire for an end and the end it attains, and whose middles are the 354

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action that initiates the sequence and the series of intermediate actions caused by this action. Some of the strongest evidence for this strategic understanding of deliberation comes from 6.8. There Aristotle declares that phronēsis and politics are the same ability, even if they are not defined the same way (8.1141b23– 4). There is no doubt that politics is strategic. When the Persian forces approach Athens, the salient features of the circumstances are apparent to all, but only the person who plans an effective strategy to save the city could be a phronimos. Importantly, Aristotle emphasizes that the phronimos recognizes the good end and, by deliberating well, that is, by using the framework of the practical syllogism, is able to achieve it (6.9.1142b20–33). He is thinking of the great military strategists and the great leaders. These people achieved the good. To grasp what is salient and to have the right feelings but to fail in effectual action—as Fielding’s Squire Allworthy often does— is to fail to have what Aristotle calls virtue.19 Since the best examples of deliberation are from politics and military strategy, it might seem surprising that book 6’s single example of a practical syllogism is about moderation. Perhaps, the reason is just that the former cases are obviously strategic whereas deciding on what to eat for dinner hardly seems so. Additionally, the external ends are obvious in other cases, whereas the external end of acts of the virtue of moderation are not obvious. Health might have seemed to be an internal end. Finally, moderation is the key virtue for cases of akrasia in book 7; hence, it is important for Aristotle to explain how phronēsis deliberates well or poorly in respect of this virtue. Aristotle completes his discussion of deliberation in two brief chapters, 6.10–11, that are rarely discussed and have not been well understood. These chapters introduce two seemingly new faculties, insight (σύνεσις) and comprehension (γνώμη). They are sometimes supposed to be political virtues, but this would make the political phronēsis that uses them different from individual phronēsis, whereas Aristotle says they are the same.20 In my view, Aristotle’s comparison of phronēsis to sophia is the key to making

19 McDowell (1998), 73, and the entirely of the chapter titled, “Virtue and Reason.” 20 See M. Gifford, “Nobility of Mind: The Political Dimension of Aristotle’s Theory,” in Aristotelian Political Philosophy, (ed.) K. Boudouis (The International Center for Greek Philosophy and Culture, 1995), 51–60; and Louden (1997), 103–18. Aristotle claims that insight enables someone to judge what another is saying (1143a12–15), a skill that is necessary in any assembly, and that comprehension is a judgment of appropriateness (τοῦ ἐπιεικοῦς) or, as Gifford and Louden render the term “equity,” an important concept for law. However, the theme throughout

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sense of these faculties. Aristotle claims these faculties, along with phronēsis and nous, are ascribed to the same people because all concern particulars and extremes (1143a26–9). (Apparently, Aristotle is using nous to refer generically to whatever can be grasped immediately, including sensibles.) An action is a particular, and it could be an extreme; all four faculties deal with actions, though Aristotle singles out nous as concerned with both definitions and extremes (1143a35-b5). Importantly, he says that someone with insight and comprehension makes judgments about the same actions (τὰ πρακτά) about which the phronimos is concerned (1143a29–35). As I noted earlier, in order to avoid a regress of demonstrated assumptions, scientific demonstrations (ἀποδείξεις) depend ultimately on premises that are not demonstrated. The individual terms in these demonstrations, that is, the two extremes as well as the essential definition that is the middle term, and the premises in which these terms appear are all grasped by nous. Aristotle seems to be saying here (1143a35-b5) that nous plays something of the same role in the practical syllogism. It grasps the contingent particulars of the minor premise, and “these are the beginning of the ‘that for the sake of which’” (1143b2–4). Someone adept at deliberating well, that is, the phronimos, needs to grasp the particulars and, therefore, must have nous—obviously, not the nous that grasps scientific premises, but a type of nous that makes judgment about particular actions. Making such judgments is the function of insight and comprehension. Hence, I propose that these two faculties play a role in practical syllogisms that is analogous to the role of (scientific) nous in scientific syllogisms. They supply the undemonstrated terms and premises that are necessary if not everything is to be demonstrated. Aristotle’s brief descriptions of them support this interpretation. He explains that whereas both insight and phronēsis are concerned with the same things, they are not the same because phronēsis orders what must be done, whereas insight merely judges (κριτικὴ μόνον) (10.1143a6–10). So, too, he claims that comprehension is “right judgment (κριτική ὀρθή) of what is appropriate” (11.1143a23). Phronēsis commands an action because it deploys a practical syllogism, but neither of the premises of this syllogism command anything alone. They are mere judgments, though they are the judgments necessary to determine action. One sign that these faculties are the practibook 6 is an individual deliberating about the best action. Comprehension and insight would seem to be out of place if they do not contribute to this sort of deliberation; and, in any case, Aristotle would need to set out other faculties that recognize the truths about individuals that constitute the premises of practical syllogisms.

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cal counterparts of nous is that Aristotle identifies them with their perfectives: insight and good insight are the same (1143a11–12); good comprehension and comprehension are said, indifferently, to belong to the phronimos (1143a30–1, 34). Nous, too, is perfect in that, because its object is simple, it cannot err (Met Θ.10.1051b35–1052a3). Aristotle’s descriptions of insight and comprehension are so similar that we need to ask, what is the difference between them? Having seen that both are types of nous, we can surmise that they differ because of the difference in the two premises of the practical syllogism: the first is more universal, the second particular. The Greek term σύνεσις that I am rendering as “insight” comes from a compound that means literally “sending together” (συνίημι).21 This term describes what the middle term does. So, it is most plausible that Aristotle thinks of it as the grasp of a middle term. That is, presumably, why he distinguishes insight from phronēsis: since the middle term is crucial for the action, someone might think that a simple judgment that some action is the middle term would be tantamount to phronēsis. However, there is no action until the judgment is seen, by phronēsis, as a link in a chain of causes. The faculty of comprehension, I suggest, judges the extremes or, more properly, the outermost extreme. The inner extreme is a desire, and in the virtuous person it is directed toward the object thought judges to be good. We know from 1.7 that the human good is living well and that that is using our human faculties in the best possible way. However, to put this general end into practice, we need to choose some particular external end that, under the circumstances, is the best one attainable.22 We saw that health serves as the end in Aristotle’s example of a practical syllogism; indeed, one does need to be healthy to use his faculties well. This notion is too obvious

21 In Cratylus 412a-b, Plato derives the term from συνιέναι “come together.” In An. Post Aristotle uses a form of nous to designate the faculty that finds the middle term of a scientific syllogism, ἀγχίνοια (1.34.89b10–13). 22 The difficulty of putting the grasp of the general end into practice is surely behind the claim that 1.7’s end is either entirely empty or too diffuse to play a role in making concrete decisions, McDowell (1998), 66–8; and Broadie (1991), 198– 201; see n. 4. In my view, without grasping our highest end, we would never have a legitimate reason to act. At best, our lives would be governed by convention. Even so, McDowell is right to think that the best end is often obvious, but he ascribes this to an ability to grasp what is salient, rather than to the faculty of comprehension. Then, he reduces moral reasoning to the application of insight. Without the rest of the reasoning process of phronēsis, McDowell’s agent is deprived of the mechanism to find the bold and creative actions that characterize the phronimos.

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to require a syllogism. The faculty of comprehension simply grasps that health belongs to a good life. That some quantity of light meat sustains good health could be argued if scientific claims about health are assumed; but most of us recognize from experience that light meat is easily digested and, thus, healthy. Therefore, that light meat is healthy is something we grasp by the faculty of comprehension without argument. However, when the Persian army is about to attack the city, it is foolish to worry about long term health issues. In such a circumstance, comprehension should grasp immediately that an independent city that allows its citizens to develop and exercise their rational faculties is good and more immediately important than health, and phronēsis should begin its process of reasoning. Comprehension’s dependence on circumstances is, I propose, why Aristotle describes it as “the right judgment of what is appropriate (ἐπιεικοῦς)” (11.1143a20). A contentious person might insist on an argument proving that health or victory is better than the alternatives, but these ends are just too obviously beneficial to debate. We can appreciate comprehension’s function when we see it go astray. Among book 7’s explanations for akrasia is the case of someone who comprehends that sweets are harmful (and therefore should not be eaten often) but also that what is sweet is pleasant (and therefore ought to be tasted) (1147a29–35). Both these judgments concern the human end, and someone who judges (with the faculty of insight) a particular thing to be sweet could invoke either. The job of comprehension is to insure that “sweets are harmful” is the pertinent premise; for just as comprehension recognizes health as good, it also recognizes that what is inimical to health should be avoided. Like nous, comprehension is always right, but desire that has not been trained to follow reason could prevent it from operating. Another sort of akrasia stems from a failure of insight. Aristotle’s example is an agent who comprehends that dry food is beneficial, but cannot determine whether the food in front of him is dry (1147a5–7). Since this failure is quite different from the previous one (6.8.1142a20–3), it is clear that comprehension and insight are distinct faculties. Both are necessary to use the practical syllogism. Since the phronimos uses the practical syllogism to deliberate about what to do, he must have both insight and comprehension. These two faculties must be, accordingly, included in phronēsis. It is through them that phronēsis knows the particulars (1142a23–7). Just as sophia includes a part that grasps through reason (epistēmē) and a part that grasps the starting point of reasoning (nous), phronēsis includes a part that

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reasons, namely, good deliberation (εὐβουλία),23 and a part or, rather, two parts that grasp principles of this type of reasoning, comprehension and insight. To summarize this section, we have seen that, drawing upon 6.2’s account of practical truth, 6.7–11 present an account of deliberation that is modelled on scientific reasoning. Let us, again, note the points of comparison between sophia and phronēsis, continuing from the seven comparisons set out at the end of the previous section. (8) Whereas the theoretical part of the soul is true when its beliefs correspond with things, the practical part is true when the object of properly cultivated desire corresponds with the object reason recognizes as beneficial; that is, a conditioned desire for an object reason knows to be good is true. Whereas the virtue of the theoretical part of the soul is simply its being true, the virtue of practical part lies in its attaining its object. (9) Just as the scientific syllogism is the primary tool for scientific inquiry, the practical syllogism is the tool for practical deliberation. (10) Scientific inquiry begins from the extreme terms of the scientific syllogism and discovers the middle term; deliberation uses the extreme terms of the practical syllogism strategically to discover a middle term. (11) In a scientific syllogism, the terms are all universal, and they are unified by an essential definition that serves as the middle term; in a practical syllogism the middle term is an action that initiates a series of actions that attain the object of cultivated desire. (12) Whereas a scientific syllogism requires nous to grasp its universal terms and the truth of its premises, the practical syllogism requires the faculty of comprehension to judge the immediate end and, thus, the truth of its major premise and the faculty of insight to discover the individual action that brings about the end. (13) The scientific syllogism expresses a cognitive relation of universals that constitutes scientific knowledge; the practical syllogism expresses a causal sequence of actions that begin from a cultivated desire for what is good under the circumstances and eventually attain the good sought. Sophia knows a thing’s essential nature and, through this, its attributes; phronēsis grasps both the end that is the best under the circumstances and the path to realize this end.

23 See n. 17.

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III The first part of NE 6, chapters one to the middle of chapter seven, is concerned with the two parts of the rational soul and their various virtues. The second part of this book, from the middle of chapter seven through chapter eleven, elaborates an account of moral reasoning that shows how phronēsis can secure an external end through a series of actions. The two concluding chapters of the book are concerned with the way that phronēsis functions with the other soul parts. Instead of considering how to attain external goods, these chapters focus on the internal good of psychic harmony. Ultimately, Aristotle argues that phronēsis is responsible for what we could call the moral unity of the soul. He proceeds with a thought experiment: can phronēsis exist without the appropriate feelings or, vice versa, appropriate feelings without phronēsis? We see such a separation in Plato’s Republic (Rep.): artisans and soldiers have desires and spirit that have been conditioned through appropriate art works, while the guardians contemplate the forms, seemingly without desire or spirit. Although the artisans and soldiers lack their own reason, they rely on the reason of the guardians. In order to consider such a separation, 6.13 introduces the phrase “natural virtue” (1144b3) to signify desires and feelings that respond appropriately in situations without continuing guidance from phronēsis, and 6.12 uses “moral virtue,” uncharacteristically, to signify properly conditioned desires without phronēsis. Aristotle broaches the question of separation by raising aporiai. There are three: (A) Phronēsis would seem to be useless for moral virtue, for if one has moral virtue, what need is there for phronēsis? On the other hand, if one lacks moral virtue, then phronēsis will not give him moral virtue, no more than knowledge about health, in itself, will make him healthy. (B) If we suppose that phronēsis is useful in directing the acquisition of moral virtue, then one who is already virtuous does not need it. But neither does someone without moral virtue, for he might just as well rely on the advice of someone else with phronēsis. (C) If, on the other hand, the task of phronēsis is to help produce theoretical thought, then it would be superior to theoretical thought; but if the latter is superior, as it is, and concerned only with what cannot be otherwise, how could it direct phronēsis? To resolve these aporiai Aristotle makes three points. First, theoretical and practical wisdom are each valuable as the virtues of a different parts of the rational soul. Second, theoretical wisdom does make a person happy; however, this is not because it is an efficient cause of happiness, but because the person who possesses it has exercised his intellectual faculty and 360

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happiness just is the full exercise of the best faculties. Third, “moral virtue” (as he understands it here) and phronēsis are both necessary for virtuous action: one needs moral virtue to grasp (and desire) the correct end and phronēsis to find (strategically) the way to attain it. Putting these points to work, Aristotle imagines three states. First, there is the state of the continent man. He has what looks to be phronēsis but lacks the properly habituated desires of the virtuous man (1144a13–17). If he had virtue, he would be able to choose the proper end. However, since, as we saw earlier, deliberation begins from the end, that is, from the good, and reasons to a middle term, if someone without virtue does not grasp the correct end, he is unable to deliberate well and, thus, cannot have phronēsis (1144a29–36). He may succeed somehow in recognizing something that is good and reason back through the steps to attain it, but Aristotle calls his reasoning mere “cleverness” (δεινότητα) (1144a23–6). If cleverness and phronēsis were different only because the latter’s end is always good, then cleverness would be the more versatile of the two insofar as it could also be used to pursue the good (1144a26–7); and, it would be better. To avoid this conclusion, Aristotle must assume that they never reason in the same way. The phronimos desires the good and takes pleasure in it, as well as in the steps that bring him closer to his end. I think that this pleasure helps him to evaluate properly the end and the right steps toward it. In contrast, the clever person grasps an end and undertakes a set of steps to achieve it, but for him they are merely means: he never enjoys and never assesses their value properly. If this is right, then a clever person can be continent, but he does not have phronēsis or take pleasure in much of his life. After the continent person, Aristotle considers a second case, the person presumed to have natural virtue (13.1144b1–6). His natural desires always lead him to the right actions, and he never needs to develop phronēsis. He always does the right action, but he does not use the rational part of his soul. For him, a life of moral virtue, were it possible, would not be a life of action from reason nor, consequently, a life in which he used all his faculties in the best possible way. This is the reason Aristotle rejects natural virtue: “nonetheless, we seek something else, the properly good, and to possess these [virtues] in a different way” (1144b6–8). It is only when acts of virtue are acts of reason that performing them is part of a life of reason. Further, Aristotle says that without the guidance of thought (nous), natural virtues could be harmful (1144b8–14). Therefore, someone with only natural virtue would not always act virtuously. In short, the hypothetical cases of (a) someone with phronēsis but without properly conditioned feeling and (b) someone whose feelings do some361

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how expresses themselves appropriately, though he lacks reason are both undermined. The former only seems to have phronēsis; he is just clever. The latter person seems to be truly virtuous, but he lacks the virtue of the intellect (phronēsis) and, without this, his good nature is easily diverted from the good. It is clear from these two cases that in the best life properly habituated feelings are conjoined with phronēsis. Only feelings habituated to follow phronēsis are appropriately expressed, and phronēsis relies on properly habituated feelings to make correct assessments. Hence, phronēsis and habituated feelings, that is, phronēsis and moral virtue must necessarily exist together (1144b14–17; b30–2). This conclusion undermines the Socratic dictum that virtue is knowledge (phronēsis) even while it affirms Socrates’ larger point that one who has phronēsis must also be morally virtuous and, indeed, have all the virtues.24 Clearly, Socrates does not mean by “phronēsis” what Aristotle does. He thinks it is a purely theoretical faculty, either epistēmē or sophia (epistēmē with nous) (1144b28–30; cf. Meno 87c and Rep. 428b with NE 1142b31–3). Either is too universal to grasp the particular actions that are necessary to attain their ends. But even if they could come to a theoretical conclusion about what is best to do under the circumstances, the conclusion will be derailed by non-virtuous desires. Hence, Aristotle concludes that phronēsis and virtue work together. It follows that a person with moral virtue continues to rely on his own phronēsis. This resolves the aporia (A). Further, the exercise of phronēsis is itself an end because it is the virtue of a part of the soul. Hence, even if one could somehow become virtuous by means of someone else’s phronēsis, he ought to cultivate his own phronēsis. This resolves aporia (B). As for the final aporia, (C), since phronēsis is a necessary concomitant of moral virtue, and since moral virtues must be present in order that a person develop his mind, phronēsis does indeed lead to theoretical intellect. But it does not constitute the theoretical intellect because that belongs to a different part of the intellect or, at least, to a different use of the intellect, as 6.1–11 has made clear. Hence, phronēsis leads to nous without governing it. In sum, 6.12–13 argues that the cultivated desires and the rational parts of the soul work together harmoniously under the guidance of phronēsis. Yet, phronēsis is not a faculty that is entire unto itself, as is contemplation. 6.1–11 make clear that it is constantly judging ends and contriving to at-

24 On the unity of the virtues, see my (1999), 121–4, I distinguish there between virtue as the arrangement of the soul’s parts as the disposition for some paradigmatic act, such as proper comportment in battle.

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tain them. The point of 6.12–13 is that this intellectual activity unifies the non-fully rational parts of the soul, the feelings, and the result is a human being actively engaged in the pursuit of ends, both external and internal. The external ends are pressing needs; the internal ends are the fulfillments of rational desires (1139b4–5) that count as acts of moral virtue. The harmony of phronēsis and moral virtue is strikingly similar to the unity of an ousia’s form and proximate matter (Met H.6.1045b17–22). The proximate matter comprises the organs, but they are capable of functioning only when they are united with other organs in the composite ousia. Since an ousia’s form is itself the potential for the parts to function together, it is, ‘in a way,’ the same as the proximate matter. So, too, the cultivated desires are themselves directed to the gooḏ—that is why they seem not to need phronēsis—and phronēsis is directed toward the good—that is why it seems not to need the desires. Hence, they are, in a way, one. However, the actual pursuit of the good requires both. Importantly, phronēsis is the rational form of a human being as a moral entity. The activity that so defines us is virtuous action, and phronēsis is its rational form. This is a form existing in the series of actions attaining the good and, separately, in the mind that plans those actions. The conclusion that phronēsis and virtue are both necessary for each other is challenged in book 7 by the existence of akrasia, for akrasia is assumed to arise when a person who has phronēsis does not act virtuously. According to 6.12–13, this is impossible because anyone who knows an act is harmful would not do it; on the other hand, there are cases observed where a subject does something he knows to be harmful. Aristotle resolves this aporia by denying that the assumption that generates both sides, that someone who knows an act to be harmful but does it anyway has phronēsis. We have seen two ways in which someone could recognize an act as harmful and still do it. In the first place, he might know that a type of act is harmful but not realize that a particular act is an instance of this type. Alternatively, in the second place, he might know what type of act it is and know that acts of this type are harmful, but also know that acts of this kind are pleasurable. In the former case, he cannot make a practical syllogism; in the latter, he makes the wrong one. Either way, he does not have phronēsis. Since supposed examples of a person who has phronēsis but is not virtuous turn out to be examples of someone who lacks phronēsis, the attempted refutation of the claim that phronēsis and virtue go hand in hand fails. If all the challenges to this claim are defeated, the claim is established. Akrasia deserves more attention than I can give it here, but the point is that it does not represent a failure of phronēsis nor of the harmony of function that phronēsis brings to the soul’s parts. 363

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6.12–13 and the discussion of akrasia in book 7 make clear that phronēsis is an internal principle of virtuous action and, thereby, the form that properly cultivated, reasoned desires take. This inner form manifests itself in outer bodily activities that achieve external ends.25 That is to say, phronēsis exists externally as the actions a phronimos takes to achieve an external good.

IV As we have seen, phronēsis has both an inner and an outer dimension. The agent grasps the ultimate human good, activity in accordance with reason, but also what is most pressing to achieve in order to bring about or preserve this ultimate good, such as victory at war, peace in the city, and health in his own body. Having grasped an external end, such as these latter, the agent reasons backwards to find the action that he can perform to initiate a sequence of acts to attain it. Although, as I said, the external end brings about or preserves the internal human end, it would be a mistake to think of the sequence of actions bringing about the external end as mere means having no intrinsic value to the internal end. Quite the contrary, insofar as the human (internal) end is to act in accordance with reason, the entire sequence of actions, all of which are dictated by reason, are included within the internal end. The external end is a reference point against which phronēsis can delimit appropriate actions, but all these actions are or are part of the overall virtuous action. This is, I think, why Aristotle says that practical action is its own end (2.1139b3–4): insofar as it is action in accordance with reason, it is always complete. Importantly, though, insofar as the activity of attaining the external end is in accordance with reason, the agent who engages in it is using his faculties in the optimal human way, under the circumstances, and, thereby, living the best human life. That is to say, in the process of realizing the rationally sanctioned external end, the agent realizes the highest human inter-

25 In Halper (1999), 133–5, I argue that ‘psychic’ virtues can manifest themselves in actions that are not the ‘proper’ defining actions of the virtue. The first part of book 6 explores the psychic dimension of the intellectual virtues; since the account of deliberation in 6.7–11 is based on external ends, it stands in lieu of a treatment of “proper” phronēsis; 6.12–13 returns to the internal perspective with an emphasis on the interactions of diverse faculties. See also, E. Garver, Confronting Aristotle’s Ethics: Ancient and Modern Morality (University of Chicago Press, 2006), 3–7. He argues that inner, psychic virtue results in virtuous actions.

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nal end. Again, the phronimos grasps the external end, deliberates on how to realize it, puts those steps into action, and realizes his goal. In the process, he has not only achieved the external goal, but he has undertaken precisely the sort of activity in accordance with reason that constitutes the best human life: in realizing his external end, he has realized his inner end. Indeed, it is clear that the two are inseparable. To follow up Aristotle’s own comparison with the arts, the doctor who seeks a strategy with which to treat his patient is also considering how he can best practice medicine, and this involves reaching some particular good, such as this healthy patient. We are apt to miss this personal dimension because the doctor who thinks too much about himself is not paying proper attention to his patient. Ironically, when he is concerned exclusively with helping his patient, he is best at exercising his art. The phronimos, likewise, deliberates to find a strategy to reach a perceived external end, and effecting this end, he does what is best for himself. Imagine someone on the way to his job who hears children crying in fear from the third story of a burning building. He or, his faculty of comprehension, makes an immediate judgment that rescuing the children is good and, indeed, better at this moment than proceeding on to work. This judgment might be derived by argument, but this is not something he should need to think about; and, besides, there is no time for reflection. Desiring the correct end, he needs to find a way to achieve it. Since the entrances are locked, he needs to reach the third floor from outside the building. The window is too high to reach, nor can he jump high enough. He needs something to stand on, ideally a ladder. But there is no ladder there, nor, it seems, anything else that will serve the purpose. Seeing a tool shed next door, he runs to it and finds not one but two ladders inside. However, neither is long enough by itself to reach the third floor. If, though, he could attach them together, they might reach. So how to do that? He takes off his belt and wraps it several times around both ladders so that they form one long extension. This is not a permanent binding, but it may do under the circumstances. Our hero climbs the makeshift ladder and rescues the children. The crucial link between desiring the particular good, the rescue, and effecting it is binding the two ladders together. Had he bound them together with a string, they might not have been able to bear his weight; had he tried to weld them together, the children might have died before he finished. In the former case, the chosen act is defective; in the latter excessive. Choosing the act that is in the mean, the agent initiates a causal sequence that culminates in the rescue. To choose this act, our hero deploys the faculty that Aristotle calls insight. It becomes possible because he could rea365

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son backwards from the end, and because various inappropriate emotions did not derail him. We can understand now why Aristotle emphasizes the agent’s success. Tying two ladders together with a belt is not intrinsically good. It is only good under the circumstances if it allows the causal sequence to be completed. Success proves the correctness of the reasoning. The end defines this causal sequence, just as the doctor’s end dictates what he does to attain it. Similarly, Aristotle declares in the Physics (Phys) that if a ship came to be by nature it would come to be by the same steps as is comes to be by art (2.8.199a11–15). He is saying that the end, the fully realized natural substance, determines the process through which it is realized. Whether the process is by nature or by art, it would occur the same way if the end is the same. Practical action differs because there might be more than one way to achieve an end or, often, no way to achieve it with available resources: all the more reason to celebrate someone who devises an ingenious plan to rescue the children. There is another difference: whereas physical science seeks to understand the process of development through the form realized in the composite nature, the phronimos seeks to act to set in motion the sequence of events that will realize the end. What we understand as the practical syllogism is an action or, in the case of a practical sorites, a series of actions that link desire with the end. A final difference: The scientific syllogism seeks a middle term that is an essential nature, and this term explains the developmental process which latter is an extreme in the syllogism and more apparent to us than is the middle. By contrast, the practical syllogism seeks a middle term that is an initiating action bringing about an end, and the end is an extreme term of the syllogism and better known to us than the middle. Despite these differences, both syllogisms are tools for discovery. Some of what we could call background knowledge is required to use them. A biologist needs to know an animal’s course of development. The phronimos, in the examples discussed, needs to know the health benefits of light meat and something about the tensile strength of belts. Yet, the phronimos does not need degrees in nutrition or engineering, nor need he be a MacGyver. But neither is phronēsis merely the right way of looking at things: the phronimos gets things done. He has what the French call savoir faire. Depending on what needs to be done, he may need specialized knowledge of military strategy, weapons training, or material sciences. Phronēsis should be widely shared (cf. 1.9.1099b13–20); but because it requires the adroit use of one’s faculties, it is so rare that its exemplars, often generals and statesmen, are celebrated as heroes.

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V We are, at last, in a position to appreciate Aristotle’s moral realism. By means of phronēsis, the moral agent is able to formulate a sequence of steps to connect his reasoned desire with a concrete end that he has judged (comprehended) to be the best under the circumstances, an end like rescuing children. This sequence exists, first, in his mind as a grasp of a practical syllogism or, equivalently, a causal sequence. Phronēsis in this internal sense is the form of the agent, the rational principle of the moral action he undertakes. This action is realized in the sequence of physical events that he initiates and that culminate in the external end. As we have seen, the mental grasp of the sequence starts from the end, whereas the events unfold from the agent’s choice. Nonetheless, the sequence is the same, and the phronēsis through which the agent grasps them is also the phronēsis that is the rational principle of their unfolding. Again, since the phronimos is able to grasp with his reason the causal sequence of events that will lead to his desired end, the sequence must be rationally intelligible, and it can be so only if it has a rational form. That form is the practical syllogism that the phronimos grasps. The dual existence of practical action, both as mental and as physical, parallels the existence of the substantial form; on the one hand, with matter in nature, on the other, apart from matter in the mind of the person who knows this nature. However, the form of a natural substance is simple and grasped by nous, whereas the sequence of steps that produces the end of a practical action is not simple. Practical action is more closely parallel to the process of development through which a natural form comes to be realized in a matter. Both are determined by the end. Insofar as the developmental process of a natural substance is a regular, ordered, repeated sequence that is intelligible through the form that is realized, it itself is a kind of form.26 The form is the scientific syllogism that shows the path of development to be a consequence of the essential nature.27 So, too, just as the sequence of practical actions through which a practical end is attained is regular, orderly, and intelligible through the attained end, this sequence

26 See my “Aristotle on Knowledge of Nature,” reprinted in E. Halper, Form and Reason: Essays in Metaphysics (State University of New York Press, 1993). 27 So, Aristotle writes: “Nature (as generation) is the path into nature” (Phys 2.1.193b12–13). See E. Halper, “Aristotle’s Scientific Method,” in Reading Aristotle: Argument and Exposition, (ed.) W. Wians and R. Polansky (Brill, 2017), 90. On the way that the scientific syllogism exists in nature and in our minds, see E. Halper (2018), op. cit.

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should count as a kind of form. The form is the practical syllogism, that is, the sequence of events in the order that the phronimos grasps before initiating any action. This “form” exists in his mind apart from matter, in something of the way that form of a sensible substance exists in the mind of the sophos or, better, in the way that the sequence of developmental stages of some particular substance exists, without matter, in the mind of the physicist. The same sequence that the phronimos grasps in the rational part of his soul exists with matter when the phronimos puts it in action. This particular parallel between sophia and phronēsis is not among those that Aristotle explores in book 6. However, it is implicit in Aristotle’s (i) comparison of deliberation with the scientific syllogism because the latter is tool through which a nature’s development is grasped and (ii) his distinction between deliberating well and the physical process through which the agent’s action actually attains his end. Indeed, there are so many parallels between sophia and phronēsis in book 6 that it is hard to imagine that Aristotle does not see that the sequence that the phronimos grasps, that is, the practical syllogism, is much like the scientific syllogisms that are grasped by the other portion of the rational soul. One positive reason to think that Aristotle does indeed draw this conclusion is that, again, he insists that phronēsis is successful in attaining its end. What unifies the sequence of actions into a single form is the end; and the thought of the sequence that attains this end can only correspond to the sequence of physical actions if the latter do actually attain the end. In short, there is a sequence of actual events, initiated and sustained by the phronimos, that attains what is the best under the circumstances, and this sequence has a kind of form that the phronimos grasps apart from it. The form here is immanent in the actions. The concrete actions are a real path that produces the good. This sequence of events is, I suggest, Aristotle’s moral realism. Like Plato’s moral realism, Aristotle’s is based on form. Of course, Plato’s forms are separate and unchanging. Therefore, they are appropriate fixed point upon which to define morality. Aristotle’s forms are immanent, and one might suppose that there is too much variation among sensibles and too many sensible forms for Aristotle to have objective moral standards. We have seen that this is not so. Ultimately, Aristotle’s basis for moral realism lies in human nature, and the fulfillment of this nature is our highest end. Except for contemplation, we fulfil that nature by using our faculties to sustain the conditions in which our natures can continue to flourish, that is, we seek and procure necessary external ends. The concrete processes by which we attain these ends are also activities in which we fulfil our human natures. Morality is real insofar as the good ends are at368

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tained through real sequences of real events, a sequence whose “form” can not only be grasped but also be brought into existence.28

28 The paper was improved by comments from audiences at Marquette University and in Savannah and especially by written comments from E. Garver and L. Goodman.

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Plato’s Republic and Its Contemporary Relevance in the Ethics of Rist and MacIntyre Thomas M. Osborne, University of St. Thomas (Houston, TX)

1.) Introduction: John Rist is, to some extent, a Platonist and an Augustinian. He is largely known for his work in ancient philosophy, which combines philosophical acumen with detailed scholarship. Alasdair MacIntyre is, to large extent, an Aristotelian and for the past few decades a Thomist. Although he is primarily known for his work in ethics, his scholarship has covered not only strictly philosophical issues, but also sociology and politics. Moreover, while both are converts to Catholicism, Rist at times directly appeals to religion as an answer to philosophical problems, whereas MacIntyre’s use of religion can be indirect. Despite such obvious differences in style, intellectual tradition, and philosophical allegiance, their philosophical stances are closer to each other than they are to their philosophical contemporaries. In general, both Rist and MacIntyre think that philosophical views are intrinsically connected with a narrative about the history of philosophy and culture. In particular, they hold that the ancient Greeks faced problems with their moral discourse that are similar to the problems that we face in advanced modernity. Moreover, they think that contemporary philosophers are generally incapable of addressing these problems, and that someone who does address these problems will have difficulty in engaging successfully with contemporary philosophers.1 Perhaps most importantly, they think that Plato’s Republic (Rep.) addresses the Greek problems in a way that is relevant to our contemporary situation. I will argue that the contrast and similarity between Rist and Macintyre can be better understood if we take into account their different interpretations of Rep., especially their 1) descriptions of the primary problem faced by Plato, 2) their interpretation of Plato’s response to the problem, and 3) their evaluation of the contemporary relevance of the problem and his re-

1 See the recent exchange, J. Rist, “MacIntyre’s Idea of the University: Theory and Practice,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 67 (2013), 157–68; A. MacIntyre, “Replies,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 67 (2013), 215–7.

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sponse. Why focus on Rep.? It has played a central role in the philosophy curriculum since the nineteenth-century, but in other cultures and periods it was not regarded as Plato’s best or most important work.2 Nevertheless, Rist and MacIntyre throughout their careers have emphasized its importance for understanding Plato and thinking about ethics. Both Rist and MacIntyre gave colloquia on the Rep. at the Boston Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy: Rist’s 1998 “The Possibility of Morality in Plato’s Republic” and Macintyre’s 2007 “Yet Another Way to Read the Republic.”3 Rist’s colloquium in large part preceded and prepared the way for his more developed work, even though Rist had mentioned the relevant issues in his early work on ethics, namely Human Value (HV) (1982).4 Rist’s main argument is set out in his recent books Real Ethics (RE) (2002), which argues for the superiority of an Augustinian Platonism to contemporary ethical theories, and Plato’s Moral Realism (PMR) (2012), which gives a more extended treatment of Plato’s development as a whole.5 In contrast, MacIntyre’s colloquium was given after he had published his central work on Rep., and he corrects to some extent the earlier work. He devoted a chapter to Rep. in his early (1966) A Short History of Ethics.6 In 1990, his Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988) has a lengthy section on Rep. and its historical context, which supplements the shorter discussion in After Virtue (1981).7 Although he published a discussion of book 5, namely “The Form of the Good, Tradition, and Enquiry” (1990) after the discussion of the same book in Whose Justice? MacIntyre in his 2007 colloquium states that the earlier work’s in-

2 J. Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2000), 19–36. 3 Rist, “The Possibility of Morality in Plato’s Republic,” in (edd.) J. Cleary and G. Gurtler, S.J., Proceedings of The Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 14 (1998), (Brill, 1999), 53–72; A. MacIntyre, “Yet Another Way to Read the Republic?” in (edd.) J. Cleary and G. Gurtler, S.J., Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 23 (2007), (Brill, 2008), 205–24. 4 Rist, Human Value: A Study in Ancient Philosophical Ethics (HV) (Brill, 1982), 11–41. 5 Rist, Real Ethics: Rethinking the Foundations of Morality (RE) (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 10–45; idem, Plato’s Moral Realism: The Discovery of the Presuppositions of Ethics (PMR) (The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 106–64. 6 MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century, 2nd edn. (University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 33– 50. 7 MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 12–87; idem, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd edn. (University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 131–45.

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terpretation of book 5 is “less unsatisfactory” than his other treatments.8 I will refer to MacIntyre’s earlier works, but it should be remembered that MacIntyre has changed his mind on some issues, and that the later colloquium gives his most recent treatment.

2.) Comparing Rist and MacIntyre 2a.) Description of the Problem Rist, who is more of a classicist than MacIntyre is, identifies the central problem faced by Rep. as a relativism that has an appeal in every age. MacIntyre, who has greater prominence simply as a philosopher, focuses on Rep.’s cultural and historical context. Rist thinks that ancient Athens provided the right conditions for a perennial philosophical problem, namely the choice between relativism and objective standards. MacIntyre thinks that the cultural forces at work in Athens caused a distinction to be made between different kinds of goodness and virtue, namely the virtues of character and the virtues of excellence. Consequently, ancient Athens presented a problem that needs to be faced by every philosophical tradition, namely the relationship between these two kinds of virtue, although in the beginning this problem developed in a local cultural context. According to Rist, relativism arose in ancient Greece because traditional values had been questioned. Before Plato and Socrates, the citizens of ancient Athens were like members of other traditional societies, who are very much like pre-philosophical individuals or cultures in or at the fringes of our society. In HV, Rist mentions what seem to me to be three stages of relativism’s development.9 In the first stage early Greeks evaluated acts and person in accordance with a tradition that belonged to their class or group. Gods guaranteed the importance of these traditions. His point is not that belief in gods is supposed to answer questions about the reliability of the traditions, but that at this first stage the questions are not even asked. The second stage was when Sophists and their educational program gave rise to a kind of relativism about moral rules. This relativism took two basic but related forms: either the rules themselves were relativistic in the sense that

8 MacIntyre, “The Form of the Good, Tradition, and Enquiry,” in (ed.) R. Gaita, Value and Understanding: Essays for Peter Winch (Routledge, 1990), 242–62; idem, “Yet Another Way,” 207, n. 3. 9 Rist, HV, 20–2.

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they applied on in certain places, or such rules, although the same everywhere, are ultimately based on human decisions. In either case, moral rules are largely conventional. Callicles, in Plato’s Gorgias (Grg.), prefigures the role that Thrasymachus plays in Rep. Callicles holds that the ordinary rules are conventional and should be discarded in the favor of a true morality based on force. In PMR, Rist argues that although earlier Greeks had used poets such as Homer and Hesiod to illustrate and explain their traditional views, the Sophists showed that such poets could also be used to undermine the traditional moral order. 10 The third stage comes about with Socrates and Plato, who attempted to justify at least some of the traditional moral rules that had been put into question by the Sophists. Socrates searched for the good even though he seems not to have made claims about what it is. Nevertheless, the very search implies that something could be found. Plato in his early dialogues presented and addressed Socrates’ problem, and he gave his first full answer in Rep. when he discussed the Form of the Good. According to Rist, Rep. indicates a dilemma between relativism or nihilism and a moral realism that requires that there be both a standard and motive of action existing outside of the agent. Thrasymachus and Socrates in Rep. 1 most clearly and dramatically represent these two options. This dilemma for Rist is the fundamental issue in moral philosophy both in ancient Athens and in the contemporary world.11 Thrasymachus represents nihilism. The other dialogues raise problems that indicate the dilemma between nihilism and realism, but they do not present it as starkly as the Rep. does. For instance, in Plato’s Grg., Callicles argues for a morality that replaces conventional notions of justice with pure self-assertion.12 The only criterion for the evaluation of force and fraud involve whether the agent achieves what he wants. Natural justice is with the powerful. Consequently, conflict often arises between what is conventionally just and what is naturally just. Whereas Callicles embraces “natural justice” in opposition to conventional justice, Thrasymachus takes an extreme position by discarding any notion of justice.13 Rist writes, “...

10 11 12 13

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Rist, PMR, 123–124. Rist, RE, 23. Ibid., 23, 31; idem, HV, 22. Rist, PMR, 114; idem, “The Possibility of Morality,” 64–5. For a criticism of Rist’s account, see especially R. Barney, “Commentary on Rist: Is Plato Interested in Meta-Ethics?” in Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium (1998), 73–82. Barney’s own position is developed in “Socrates’ Refutation of Thrasymachus,” in The Blackwell Guide to Plato’s Republic, (ed.) G. Santos (Blackwell, 2006), 44–62.

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[book 1] via the views of Thrasymachus presents a powerful account of the nihilism that Plato believes is the basic threat to morality and ethical politics (and the logical last stage of all ‘non-Socratic’ accounts of morality) and that, he will argue, can only be escaped by resort to a substantive and objective metaphysics of morals.”14 Thrasymachus’s nihilism is not about the best way to obtain happiness (eudaimonia).15 Thrasymachus questions if there are any values that exist outside of an agent’s desires. Rist is particularly interested in what Thrasymachus’s nihilism reveals about the meaning of moral terms.16 Thrasymachus holds that words such as justice refer to acts or evaluative terms concerning acts as these are either commanded or prohibited by laws and customs. Consequently, the reference of these terms depends on the will of those who make the laws and set the customs. However, the rulers fix the meanings in a way that will be to their own advantage. Therefore, moral notions such as justice are a tool used by the rulers to achieve their own ends. Rist thinks that many who are not openly or clearly nihilists share Thrasymachus’s nihilism. Rist in particular sees a connection between Thrasymachus’s understanding of justice and that of the Athenians who are presented in Thucydides’s Melian dialogue as holding that justice is what is in the interest of the stronger. Moreover, Rist draws attention to the moral degradation of language such as is recorded by Thucydides’ account of what happened in Corfu during a period of civil conflict: Men changed the ordinary accreditation of words of things at their own discretion. Mindless audacity was considered to be the courage of the true party-man, thoughtful hesitation to be specious cowardice, restrain an excuse for lack of virility... Careful planning a plausible pretext for failing in one’s responsibilities... The political leaders on each side took up pretty slogans, one speaking of equal civic responsibilities and obligations for the people under the law, the other of a moderate aristocracy.17 Rist’s point is that the reference of the moral terms is determined by the ruler’s choice. The resulting nihilism does away with external standards and motivations.

14 15 16 17

Rist, PMR, 106. Rist, “The Possibility of Morality,” 54; idem, RE, 19. Rist, “The Possibility of Morality,” 58; RE, 16; idem, PMR, 111–13. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 3.82.4, translated by Rist in “The Possibility of Morality,” 62. See also Rist’s discussion of the Melian dialogue in PMR, 113–4.

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Whereas Rist is concerned with the tension between a received moral tradition and rational criticism of it, MacIntyre is concerned with inconsistencies within what he describes as a tradition, which roughly is an agreement about rational justification.18 Although there can be constructive conflicts between different modes of rational justification, there can be internal debates that clarify agreements and constitute tradition. But sometimes internal and external conflict cannot be easily resolved. Macintyre thinks that Plato’s Rep. addresses conflicts within the tradition of the Athenian city (polis). This tradition included Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, which reflected an earlier social order that at least existed in the imagination. Moreover, it involved the practices of a particular group of Greeks in the fifth-century and their understanding of problems raised by external wars with other Greeks and internal political conflict. According to MacIntyre, although there were many conflicts in Athens, Plato and Aristotle were concerned primarily with the conflict between effectiveness and excellence. MacIntyre thinks that the meaning of moral terms is fixed to some extent by social roles. For instance, in the society described by Homer, the word that we normally translate as “justice,” “dike,” indicates a social order even though in this society there is no clear distinction between the social and the natural.19 The focus is on the exceptional king or hero. This justice requires that someone does what his role requires and does not interfere with someone else’s performance of his own role. The good person (agathos) is someone who fulfils his role well. Virtue (arête) is about those qualities that enable one to fulfil the role. Although MacIntyre unlike Rist gives an account of moral reference by appealing to social roles, he would agree with Rist that the meaning of moral terms in such societies is generally unquestioned. Practical reasoning in such societies is not about what kind of life is good, but about curbing one’s contrary inclinations or obtaining a means to the end.

18 MacIntyre, Whose Justice? 12. See C. Lutz, Tradition in the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre: Relativism, Thomism, and Philosophy (Lexington Books, 2004). For more critical accounts, see J. Porter, “Tradition in the Recent Work of Alasdair MacIntyre,” in (ed.) M. Murphy, Alasdair MacIntyre (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 38–69; J. Annas, “MacIntyre on Traditions,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (1989), 388– 404. Annas, who is a classical scholar, passes over MacIntyre’s account of ancient Athens and focuses instead on the Scottish Enlightenment. 19 MacIntyre, Whose Justice? 12–29. See also idem, After Virtue, 121–30. For a discussion, see C. Lutz, Reading Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (Continuum, 2012), 108–15.

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MacIntyre thinks that the conflict between excellence and effectiveness is at least implicitly in the Homeric texts, and that it becomes apparent in Athens.20 In After Virtue, MacIntyre noted that there is a variety of seemingly incompatible descriptions of Greek and even Athenian moral terminology. For instance, A.W.H. Adkins argues that the virtues are divided roughly into competitive virtues and cooperative or quiet virtues, and that justice (dikaiosunê) is cooperative.21 In contrast, Hugh Lloyd-Jones argues that justice is an “order of the universe” established by Zeus.22 MacIntyre writes: [Such classical scholars] all present largely coherent picture of the Greek moral outlook; each coherent view differs from each of the others and all seem to be largely right. What none allow for adequately is the possibility that the Greek moral vocabulary and outlook is a good deal more incoherent than we find it easy to recognize...23 For MacIntyre, it is not that Homeric ethics falls apart under questioning, but that the very language itself is inconsistent. For instance, virtue is considered as an effective quality when fulfilling one’s role is about success. If such were the case, then the good for the agent would be identified with the extrinsic good of winning, and one’s own virtue would enable one to achieve success. On this account, justice is primarily about effective cooperation. On the other hand, when fulfilling one’s role is seen as perfecting the agent, then virtue is a quality that is intrinsically good for the agent. In such a case justice involves merit and desert. The unjust agent primarily harms himself. He should be punished not only because of the harm done to others, but because the agent by his action has deserved harm. According to MacIntyre, these two notions of virtue reflected incoherence in Athens when Pericles showed how Homeric evaluative language could be used in the context of the common project that was the Athenian city insofar as this language was about effectiveness rather than excellence.24 According to MacIntyre, Thucydides primarily describes this appropriation of language from a heroic culture. This new use of language itself brought about the need to defend the notion of virtue as excellence.

20 MacIntyre, Whose Justice? 30–46. 21 A. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values (Clarendon Press, 1960), esp. 172–94. Lutz, Reading After Virtue, 142, note 6, mentions an additional article, A. Adkins, “Aristotle and the Best Kind of Tragedy,” The Classical Quarterly, n.s., 16 (1966), 78–102, at 79. 22 H. Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus (University of California Press, 1971), 161. 23 MacIntyre, After Virtue, 135. 24 MacInytre, Whose Justice? 47–68.

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According to MacIntyre, the aristocrats could not defend this aspect of Homeric language because they lacked the resources: Those who respond to periods of rapid and disruptive change by appealing for a retention of or a return to the ways of the past, to the customary, to the traditional, always have to reckon with the fact that in an established customary social order those who follow its ways do not have and do not need good reasons for acting.25 They used the Homeric language but were forced to look for new justification that could not be found in the traditional poems. MacIntyre thinks that Plato was faced with a fundamental incoherence in his society between two notions of virtue, namely effectiveness and excellence. Although MacIntyre develops this view most thoroughly in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? it seems to me that this interpretation of fifthcentury Athens is a permanent theme of his work. In After Virtue, MacIntyre had more briefly argued that Plato should be read as responding to the incoherence of the contemporary Greek moral vocabulary.26 Athenians, unlike Homeric heroes, could think about themselves as being good in two different ways, namely as being good citizens and good men. Moreover, the absence of a fixed moral vocabulary among the Athenians is a central theme in the much earlier Short History of Ethics. In this early work, MacIntyre mentions the very same text of Thucydides that Rist focuses on, namely the description of moral language at Corfu. MacIntyre writes about this text, “It is often impossible to distinguish two separate phenomena, moral uncertainty, and uncertainty as to the meaning of evaluative predicates.”27 MacIntyre consistently traces the philosophical problem to the way in which language becomes incoherent. Since moral language is shaped by social practices, conflicting practices lead to conflicting language. These conflicts mean that the current practices require a rational justification that was previously unnecessary. MacIntyre holds that the conflict was not only for philosophers, even though perhaps philosophers could best deal with it. For instance, Sophocles accurately described this conflict in plays such as the Philoctetes, but he attempted to resolve it only by appealing to a god.28 Hercules at the end of the play intervenes. The tradition of Pericles and Thucydides was in Plato’s

25 26 27 28

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day continued by the teachers of rhetoric, who agreed with the separation of virtue and intelligence, the subordination of conventional justice to selfinterest, and the importance of rhetoric as a nonrational skill for increasing the citizen’s own effectiveness. Plato’s Rep. is a response to this attempt to provide a nonrational answer to the incoherence in Athenian accounts of justice, and to those who would subordinate virtues of excellence to virtues of effectiveness. Whereas Rist sees the conflict in ancient Greece primarily as an ontological conflict between nihilism and objective moral standards, MacIntyre describes it as an epistemological conflict between competing notions of justice and fairness. Rist thinks that the problem arose because the traditional standards were questioned. By contrast, MacIntyre holds that the standards were questioned because they had become internally incoherent. Consequently, Rist and MacIntyre seem to disagree over the nature of relativism and the role that questioning plays in threatening a traditional order. Nevertheless, they agree on two fundamental points. First, they concur that Thrasymachus’s view that the conventionally just agent harms himself through injustice reflects a deeper view that goodness is more about success in obtaining external goods than it is about excellence. Second, they explain that this overall view results from the social problems of fifth-century Athens. Even if it is not meant to reflect the work of Thucydides, it reflects the situation that Thucydides describes.

2b.) Plato’s Response The difference between Rist and MacIntyre becomes clearer if we consider not only the difficulty represented by Thrasymachus, but the nature and adequacy of Plato’s response. According to Rist, Rep. is a first step towards providing the metaphysical framework that moral philosophy requires. Plato’s response is to show the necessity of a Form of the Good. Aristotle failed insofar as he did not recognize or take into account Plato’s response. According to MacIntyre, Rep. does not give any clear answers, but it does clarify the issues. Aristotle’s ethical theory is at least a partially adequate response to the questions raised by Plato. According to Rist, Plato responds to Thrasymachus through the mouth of Socrates. Thrasymachus presents his view in book 1, but Socrates only adequately responds to Thrasymachus in the middle of Rep. Rist remarks

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that Rep.’s structure resembles nested Russian dolls, boxes, or rings.29 The outer ring, books 1 and 10, raise and address some of the central difficulties. The middle ring, books 2–4 and 8–9, presents the rise and the fall of the ordered states and souls. The central ring, books 5–7, address the Form of the Good, which is the philosopher’s motive and standard of action. Consequently, Plato’s theory concerning the Form of the Good is ultimately a response to the problem presented by Thrasymachus. Rist holds that Plato never demonstrates the falsity of Thrasymachus’s position, but instead attempts to show that it cannot be reasonably defended.30 At the end of book 1, Thrasymachus is defeated but remains unconvinced. His character and lack of philosophical education make it impossible for him to identify what his mistakes might have been.31 In book 2, Glaucon and Adeimantus defend a version of Thrasymachus’s theory by arguing for (but not assenting to) the thesis that conventional notions of justice are only instrumentally valuable.32 Rist notes the perennial attractiveness of this view that, nevertheless, can ultimately be reduced to Thrasymachus’s nihilism. On their view, if it is advantageous to do something unjust, then it is reasonable to be unjust. On Rist’s reading, although Plato never demonstrates that there is a Form of the Good, he does establish that the Form of the Good is necessary to ground the truth of our moral vocabulary, including the meaning of language about justice.33 If there is no Form of the Good, then moral goodness depends on humans and not on an objective and independent standards. Moral values are based on contingent circumstances such as when and where one is born. We do admittedly speak as if they have some sort of independent grounding. But such speech is ultimately deceptive. Rist states, “if morals cannot be defended by metaphysics, ‘bourgeois’ society may have to be defended by systematic self-deception and probably by outright lying about moral ‘truths.’” 34 On this interpretation of Plato’s argument, the incoherence in moral language results from a mistake about the source of moral meaning. If the meaning of moral terms is based on human thought and decision, then incoherence will necessarily follow. Conventional morality is necessary for political society, and in order to ful-

29 30 31 32 33

Rist, “The Possibility of Morality,” 55; idem, RE, 15; idem, PMR, 106–7, 118. Rist, “The Possibility of Morality,” 66; idem, RE, 17, 30. Rist, PMR, 114–18. Rist, “The Possibility of Morality,” 63–7; idem, PMR, 119–20. Rist, HV, 22–6; idem, “The Possibility of Morality,” 67–71; idem, RE, 18–20; and idem, PMR, 142–52. 34 Rist, RE, 35–6.

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fil its necessary role it must be spoken about as if it depended on something other than human thought and decision. Plato argues that we are faced with an alternative: either Thrasymachus is right or there is an objective standard and motive for morality. His argument in the Rep. is that there is no third alternative. The Form of the Good has on Rist’s description at least three different roles.35 First, it explains the existence of Forms that are needed for moral knowledge and indeed all knowledge. The Form of the Good even explains the existence of the other Forms. Rist notes that it does not seem to be a creative cause even though it is somehow necessary for their existence. Second, the Form of the Good provides a basis for moral knowledge. Rist thinks that Plato was in large part concerned with his contemporaries’ inability to defend traditional moral notions. The Form of the Good is an unhypothetical first principle that can be used to explain moral notions and itself requires no explanation. Third, the Form of the Good provides moral motivation. The philosopher is, as the name indicates, “a lover of wisdom.” The love for the Good explains why the philosopher is motivated to act on moral motives. Although the discussion of the Form of the Good plays the key role in Plato’s response to Thrasymachus, the rest of his Rep. completes the response.36 Books 7–8 show the decline towards tyranny, and the misery of the tyrannical man is demonstrated in book 9. Book 10 provides a helpful myth and ties up some loose ends. Even though the argument of these books is integral to the work as a whole, it lacks the centrality of the Form of the Good in terms of both Plato’s main argument and Rep.’s structure. Rist thinks that Plato’s later dialogues corrected and developed his central insight that there must be some objective and external moral standard. In contrast, Aristotle did not even attempt to address the problem that Thrasymachus presents.37 Aristotle assumes that our moral terms have objective reference, but he never argues that they are necessary. Rist claims that this unquestioned assumption of ethics is shared by contemporary Aristotelian virtue ethics.38 Aristotle’s failure to argue explicitly for an objective standard indicates why on Rist’s view Plato and Augustine are better guides in moral philosophy than Aristotle is.39 Augustine recognizes that the Jewish personal God, 35 36 37 38 39

Rist, PMR, 137–50. Ibid., 150–62. Rist, RE, 29, 142–51. Rist, PMR, 264–5. Rist, RE, 38–44.

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a giver of the law, has affinities to the Form of the Good and to the Aristotelian Mind. The Forms of moral values, and especially the Form of the Good, are identical with the divine nature. The forms of material objects are simply the divine ideas. Augustine’s philosophy shows how moral philosophy needs God for the reasons that Plato indicated, namely as an objective standard, explanation, and motive. Moreover, Augustine adds some features that Plato only vaguely hinted at in later dialogues, namely that there is a need for God as an end and as an efficient cause. According to Rist, later moral philosophers are more or less successful insofar as they incorporate Plato’s understanding of the need for a Form of the Good, and Augustine’s philosophical understanding of God. Consequently, Rist thinks that Thomas Aquinas’s moral philosophy is superior to that of Aristotle precisely because his philosophy is more or less Platonic.40 Rist writes, “As for Aquinas’s version of natural law, it will stand or fall with the Platonic realism with which it is linked (and with the related and improved ‘Aristotelian’ account of man as more than rational agent)….”41 Thomas uses Aristotle’s anthropology to supplement his Augustinian Platonism even though Thomas himself is fundamentally this kind of Platonist. MacIntyre never thought that Plato gave an adequate response to the problem raised by Thrasymachus. In his 2007 colloquium, “Yet Another Way to Read the Republic,” MacIntyre explicitly rejects two assumptions that he previously shared with Rist and most other contemporary readers of Rep., namely that Socrates’ arguments can be identified with those of Plato, and that there is one correct interpretation to Plato’s text.42 In his early works, and even in his more favored and lengthy treatment of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, MacIntyre had argued that Plato attempted to use the Form of the Good to respond to Thrasymachus, but that Plato later had seen the inadequacy of his own response for providing an account of justice.43 The attack on Thrasymachus was more successful than the development of an alternative view. In the later colloquium, MacIntyre argues that Rep. is intentionally incomplete. It forces the reader to recognize the aporia and think through the problem himself. Because of the shift in interpretation, it is difficult to give one account of MacIntyre’s understanding of why Rep. is inadequate. Nevertheless, I 40 41 42 43

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Ibid., 151–6. Ibid., 156. MacIntyre, “Yet Another Way,” 205, 207–8. MacIntyre, Short History, 53–6; idem, Whose Justice? 78–84; idem, “Form of the Good,” 252–3.

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think that there are important continuities in his reading, especially if we compare the 2007 colloquium with Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and even the more problematic “The Form of the Good, Tradition, and Enquiry.” First, MacIntyre consistently thinks that the Form of the Good plays a central role in Plato’s attempted response to Thrasymachus. Second, he claims that the Form of the Good inadequately responds to Thrasymachus. The change is primarily over whether Plato intended for it to be an adequate response (“Form of the Good, Tradition, and Enquiry”) or at least a program for an adequate response (Whose Justice?). With these caveats in mind, it will be helpful to focus more or less the reading of Plato that we find in Whose Justice? and then consider some corrective remarks from the “Yet Another Way.” MacIntyre, like Rist, thinks that Rep. addresses a central dilemma, although he describes this dilemma slightly differently: “either the life of the reasoning human being can be shown to have its archē in the sense defined earlier or the sophistic and Thucydidean view of human reality prevails.”44 Plato agrees with the Thucydidean description of actual politics, but he thinks that there is a genuine justice even if it is not followed. Moreover, Plato thinks that the virtues of effectiveness are in fact less effective than the virtues of excellence. MacIntyre, like Rist, thinks that the response to Thrasymachus primarily occurs in books 5–7. But, according to MacIntyre, Plato’s response consists only in pointing to the kind of education and rational refutation that is needed. In book 1, Socrates fails to refute Thrasymachus’s presentation of the sophistic and Thucydidean view.45 There are two problems with Socrates’ approach. First, generally speaking, establishing the truth is impossible so long as Socrates attempts to follow the same kinds of refutation (elenchus) that is displayed in the early dialogues. In the elenchus, Socrates attempts to show an inconsistency in the interlocutor’s beliefs. The best belief is the one that withstands refutation. This process might successfully show that a belief is rationally warranted, but it fails to show that a belief is true since it might be refuted. Second, the elenchus fails with Thrasymachus because there are no shared standards concerning what might count as knowledge of the good. At the end of book 1 Socrates has shown that he disagrees with Thrasymachus’s account of who benefits by the skill of politics, but he has failed not only to convince Thrasymachus but also to provide an ar-

44 MacIntyre, Whose Justice? 83. 45 Ibid., 72–3.

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gument by which Thrasymachus could be convinced from Thrasymachus’s own standpoint. According to MacIntyre, books 2–4 attempt to resolve the way in which Glaucon and Adeimantus show how the view of justice as instrumental can provide a rational justification for a particular kind of justice, namely the justice of effectiveness.46 Plato’s discussion of the ideal state in books 3 and 4 in particular attempt to show how the well-ordered polis and soul both require a different kind of justice if they are to function well. These arguments quiet Glaucon and Adeimantus but are not decisive, and in Whose Justice? MacIntyre is unsure whether Plato recognizes the argument’s defects. On MacIntyre’s view, in books 5–6 Plato attempts to develop a new theory of dialectic that does not depend on shared assumptions.47 Socrates’ argument in book 1 failed precisely because he lacked the rational resources that are necessary to respond to Thrasymachus, who like the Sophists denied that statements about justice could be true apart from a temporal and political context. In his Rep. Plato shows that only someone with the knowledge of the Forms, and especially the Form of the Good, can rationally refute Thrasymachus. Plato thinks that the Forms are needed to ground knowledge of moral truths because they are eternal and immaterial, and knowledge of them does not depend on the changing objects of sense or even on the adoption of mathematical hypotheses. However, such knowledge of the Forms requires education in a community ruled by philosophers who themselves form a city. But none of the participants in the dialogue themselves received such an education. As MacIntyre interprets the matter, Plato responds to Thrasymachus only by stating that the virtues of excellence belong to another and ideal city.48 Plato through Socrates seems to agree with Thrasymachus that in this world and in actual city-states the virtues of effectiveness prevail.49 In Whose Justice? Which Rationality? MacIntyre’s interpretation of the central argument is strikingly close to Rist’s statement that Plato does not demonstrate the Form of the Good but only shows that there is a necessary choice between nihilism and Platonic realism. MacIntyre thinks that Plato’s description of this dilemma is merely an indication of the path that should be followed.

46 47 48 49

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Ibid., 73–8. Ibid., 78–82. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 141; idem, Whose Justice? 90–1. MacIntyre, “Yet Another Way,” 212.

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MacIntyre’s recognition that the dialogue participants require an education that they themselves do not have in the dialogue by itself would seem to indicate that Plato himself thinks that there is something lacking.50 It seems to me that MacIntyre’s earlier reading leads to his later reading of Rep. in “Yet Another Way,” in which he argues that Plato himself recognized the deficiency in the argument while writing it, and distinguishes between Plato’s understanding of the argument and the understanding of the participants, including Socrates. MacIntyre notes that there is a problem not only for the dialogue participants but also for the reader.51 Neither the participants nor the reader can reasonably claim that they know the Forms. Anyone who does not know the Form lacks the criterion for distinguishing between knowing and not knowing, and indeed the dialectical justification described by Socrates in the Rep. Therefore, the reader himself should recognize that there is a problem. The reader himself lacks the resources with which to reject Thrasymachus’s account of justice. In “Yet Another Way,” MacIntyre thinks that some of the resources are supplied by character.52 Although throughout his career MacIntyre recognizes the importance of particular character and motivation in Rep., in this later colloquium MacIntyre assigns them a more central role. The Form of the Good, and in some way the other Forms, is itself not only a principle of justification but also an object of desire. The different characters in the dialogue are ruled by different desires, such as money and victory. Only the philosopher uses the elenchus in order to purify his notions of the Good. Consequently, progress towards the good requires an initial desire for the Good insofar as it is grasped in a fragmentary way. Not only the characters of the dialogue but also the reader need to be transformed from lovers of particulars to lovers of the Forms, and primarily lovers of the Form of the Good. According to MacIntyre, the mythical parts of Rep., and especially book 10, are meant to show the importance of images in this initial grasp. Moreover, a similar function is served by the myths of the Line, the Cave, and the Sun. Plato does not show how the reader should improve his fragmentary knowledge, but Plato clearly describes the beginning of the inquiry in partial truths and its ultimate goal in a universal and timeless truth. 50 See also MacIntyre, “Form of the Good,” 250–1. 51 MacIntyre, “Yet Another Way,” 217. 52 Ibid., 209–15, 221–3. For Aristotle’s emphasis on this point, see especially idem, “Rival Aristotles: Aristotle against some Renaissance Aristotelians,” in Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays, vol. 2 (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3.

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In “Yet Another Way,” MacIntyre does not indicate in any detail what this timeless truth might be. In Whose Justice? he argues that Aristotle completes and corrects the project that Plato indicates in Rep.53 According to this reading, Aristotle defends Plato’s basic account of the virtues and also generally accepts Plato’s criticism of the democratic city. The difference is that Aristotle also recognizes that the practices of the ideal city are to some extent implicit in the actual practice of cities, including Athens. Consequently, Plato fails because he moves to an ideal city that does not have roots in actual practice. MacIntyre does not argue that Plato is a revolutionary whereas Aristotle merely defends the existing social order. His point is that Plato’s abstract ideals can only be defended or developed the context of an existing order and its social roles. Moreover, in Whose Justice? MacIntyre states a view that he denied in After Virtue, which is that Aristotle’s understanding of teleology in human affairs is necessarily connected to a still defendable understanding thereof in the world as a whole.54 Furthermore, he defends the view that this order ultimately must have a philosophical foundation in God. MacIntyre writes: Plato was wrong in supposing that ‘justice’ named a form existing independently and self-sufficiently; he was, on Aquinas’s account, right in thinking that ‘justice’ names the archē to which all other attributions of justice have to be referred as their exemplar.55 This recognition of a need for a theological foundation is reflected in MacIntyre’s later interpretations of Rep. Moreover, at times MacIntyre seems to resemble Rist in holding that the requirements of ethical theory can justify, on their own, beliefs about human nature and cosmology.56 However, whereas MacIntyre’s “Form of the Good” and “Yet Another Way” might be read to imply that Plato shows the importance of the Form of the Good as an otherworldly being, MacIntyre generally follows Aristotle in emphasizing the connection between rational justification and practices in existing societies, and perhaps a wider order in nature.

53 MacIntyre, Whose Justice? 85, 88–102. 54 Ibid., 101; idem, After Virtue, 148, 162–3. For discussions, see Lutz, Tradition, 133– 40. 55 MacIntyre, Whose Justice? 198. 56 K. Reames, “Metaphysics, History, and Moral Philosophy: The Centrality of the 1990 Aquinas Lecture to MacIntyre’s Argument for Thomism,” The Thomist 62 (1998), 419–43. See especially A. MacIntyre, “Bernstein’s Distorting Mirrors: A Rejoinder,” Soundings 67 (1984), 30–41, at 39–40.

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The nature of the disagreement between MacIntyre and Rist over the success of Plato’s response to Thrasymachus reflects not so much their somewhat different accounts of the nature of Plato’s response and more their view of the role of philosophy and their understanding of moral goodness. Rist thinks that Plato shows that if we want to avoid Thrasymachus’s position we need to have something like a separate Form of the Good. Moreover, Rist sees this Form or something like it as playing a helpful explanatory role with respect to the justification of moral knowledge and the motivation of agents. Augustine’s corrections to Plato, based in large part on Christianity and some elements from Aristotle, fill out Plato’s fundamental picture. MacIntyre in general thinks that it is a mistake to move directly to something separate like the Form of the Good. Aristotle was right to see that the answers to Plato’s questions can be seen as in some way present, if only implicitly, in actual social practices, and even in the roles that are played by the parts of the universe. Only in his very late “Another Way of Reading” does MacIntyre’s reading of Rep. directly suggest the need for something like an otherworldly, separate Good.57

2c.) Contemporary Relevance Rist and MacIntyre both agree that Plato’s Rep. deals with issues that are directly relevant to the present situation. Rist seems to think that Rep.’s dilemma between Thrasymachus and Socrates reflects a perennial option for philosophers. MacIntyre thinks that the issues addressed by Plato have become problems that need to be considered by all subsequent philosophers. According to Rist, one of the most significant features of contemporary moral philosophy is that both God and traditional moral views have been questioned and in large part rejected. He writes, “We are like the classical Greeks after the Sophists, for whom, as Plato saw, there was no going back.”58 Consequently, contemporary writers are faced with two ultimate options, namely some sort of Platonic and probably theistic ethics or a kind of nihilism. Augustine showed that God not only serves the needs that were filled by the Form of the Good, but does so in a more coherent and defensible way. Consequently, the contemporary rejection of Chris-

57 He does argue for something like this in some of his earlier treatments of Augustine and Aquinas. See Lutz (2012), 120–32. 58 Rist, RE, 280.

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tianity is also a rejection of the only real alternative to Thrasymachus’s position. Rist recognizes that most contemporary philosophers attempt to avoid nihilism. It is impossible in the confines of this essay to indicate his taxonomy and criticisms of contemporary ethical theories, but it will be helpful to consider some of his more general remarks. 59 Rist thinks that Plato’s fundamental dilemma holds even for contemporary philosophers; they either have an unacknowledged dependence on the Platonic and even Christian Platonic position or their theories are ultimately reducible to that of Thrasymachus. According to Rist, many assume unargued Christian beliefs. For instance, Kant’s ethics is a kind of “undercover Christianity.”60 These philosophers need to adopt a version of Augustinian theism in order to be consistent. Others develop versions of Thrasymachus’s understanding of justice that are more sophisticated. These philosophers are ultimately nihilists. For instance, a Hobbesian contract theory is more or less a more sophisticated version of the view found in Thucydides that justice is only an instrumental good. Kierkegaard’s emphasis on personal choice is really just an irrational individualism and a rejection of any meaningful autonomy. Rist calls other non-realist theories as “as if” theories, because they attempt to justify the use of moral statements that function as if there were objective and realist standards. If moral statements are merely expressions of attitudes, then they lack the objective meaning that they seem to have. According to Rist, the realists who reject theism in doing so reject the only standards that they could use to respond to the nihilists. The scales are weighed against them once God is removed from the discussion. According to Rist, Plato did not so much argue that the Form of the Good exists as he argued that it must exist if there is to be any alternative to nihilism. Similarly, Rist does not argue so much against contemporary philosophers that theism and Platonism are true as he argues that they must be assumed to be true if one wishes to give a coherent account of ethics. In particular, some appeal to God is necessary not to define the good as that which is commanded by God, but in order to account for the commands that ultimately justify moral statements.61 If God is indeed good, as the Christian tradition holds, then God will only command what is right. The lesson of Rep. for contemporary philosophers is that moral 59 Rist, “The Possibility of Morality,” 53–4; 60–3; idem, RE, 156–77; and idem, PMR, 252–64. 60 Rist, RE, 170. 61 Ibid., 260–2. See also idem, On Inoculating Moral Philosophy Against God [OI], The Aquinas Lecture 2000 (Marquette University Press, 1999).

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philosophy requires an objective standard if nihilism is to be avoided. By removing God from moral philosophy contemporary philosophers have also removed their objective and eternal standard. It is no wonder that contemporary ethical theories are either incoherent or ultimately nihilist. The failure of contemporary theories shows the need for a kind of Augustinian theism in which the Form of the Good is identified with God’s nature. MacIntyre agrees that the problems faced by Plato largely resemble problems faced by contemporary society, although he gives a different account of how this is so. According to MacIntyre, the modern bureaucratic emphasis on corporate effectiveness manages to set aside questions of truth much in the same way that Isocrates’s emphasis on rhetoric provided a practical alternative to Plato’s questioning.62 A system of education and practice has been developed that no longer considers the rationality of the ends and goods themselves, but merely the way of achieving these ends. Isocrates’ educational outlook is in large part shared by many contemporary institutions and educators. According to MacIntyre, the similarity of the contemporary crisis to aspects of the crisis in ancient Athens is also reflected in the intellectual realm, especially in the works of three general groups. These are: (i) analytic philosophers who appeal to shared intuitions, (ii) utilitarians and pragmatists who base standards of action of individual preferences and (iii) modern Nietzcheans and pragmatists who think that truth is relative to a perspective. First, contemporary moral philosophers often appeal to intuitions, which are un-argued assumptions.63 This appeal to intuitions is similar to the use of shared beliefs by ancient rhetoricians. The problem, as Plato saw, is that there is no way to resolve disagreements when there are no shared beliefs, as happened in the case of Thrasymachus and Socrates in Rep. 1. Second, modern utilitarians, pragmatists and positivists think that wants and preferences are pre-social and consequently can provide an empirical standard for human action.64 Consequently, they cannot appeal to nature in order to criticize wants and preferences. The Sophists were similarly unable to appeal to nature in order to evaluate wants and preferences themselves. Third, some modern Nietzscheans and pragmatists deny that universal and timeless truth can be the goal of inquiry.65 As we have seen,

62 63 64 65

MacIntyre, Whose Justice? 48, 86–7. Ibid., 71. Ibid., 77. Ibid., 79.

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Plato saw that only the search for such truth can effectively refute Thrasymachus’s subordination of excellence to effectiveness. In After Virtue, MacIntyre argued that only an Aristotelian virtue ethics could address both the problems that Plato recognized in the incoherence of contemporary Athens and the similar conflicts and incoherencies present in contemporary thought and culture. Plato’s attempt to justify the virtues of excellence can only succeed if we recognize the virtues that are at least implicit in the city (polis) and those relevant parts of the polis that exist in later cultures. In Whose Justice? Which Rationality, MacIntyre gave a more comprehensive account of Aristotle’s superiority to Plato, while asserting the importance not only of the city (polis) but also of a wider teleological universe. In “The Form of the Good, Tradition, and Enquiry,” MacIntyre writes: It is notable that so many recent attempts to re-introduce Platonic or Aristotelian theses into the debates of contemporary moral philosophy have edited out from those theses their relationship to the metaphysical theologies of Plato and Aristotle; my own work in After Virtue exhibits this defect to a significant degree.66 In this same essay, he approves of Thomas’ recognition of their importance and inclusion of them in a greater synthesis. Finally, in his “Yet Another Way of Reading the Republic,” MacIntyre shows that Plato recognized not only the necessity of something like the Form of the Good, but that this Form of the Good must be desired somehow implicitly at the beginning of inquiry.67 MacIntyre’s progress in his interpretation of Rep. reflects an increasing convergence with Rist’s view that the Form of the Good, understood as God, plays a central role in ethics, and that contemporary attempts to justify ethical standards and the rationality of ethical enquiry require an end and principle that is much like Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of God.68 The contemporary attempts fail precisely because they lack such a standard. Although their criticism and rejection of the contemporary views is similar, they argue for the alternative view in different ways. Rist thinks that Plato’s Form of the Good in many ways provides a sufficient answer to the challenge presented by both Thrasymachus and contemporary philosophers. Later Neoplatonists, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, filled out and

66 MacIntyre, “Form of the God,” 257; cf. 259–61. 67 MacIntyre, “Yet Another Way,” 233. 68 Lutz traces these themes in MacIntyre’s other writings in Tradition, 113–60.

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completed an already largely adequate theory. MacIntyre doubts not only that the Form of the Good immediately provided an adequate response to Thrasymachus, but also, at least in his 2007 colloquium, whether Plato himself intended it to be an adequate response. MacIntyre himself seems to have thought first that social practices could do much of the work, although he quickly saw that these practices themselves were insufficient in that they required a broader teleological view of the universe. In his later article and colloquium, he suggests that the insights of both Plato and Aristotle need to be combined in the way that they were by Thomas Aquinas. Rist and MacIntyre not only arrive at Thomas Aquinas in different ways, but they provide different readings of how Thomas Aquinas improves Aristotle and Plato. Rist seems to think that Augustine’s God sufficiently accounts for the Form of the Good. Thomas improves on Augustine by working in Aristotle’s moral psychology. However, the fundamental dilemma remains. We should accept a theistic ethics because any other ethics leads to nihilism. MacIntyre thinks that this dilemma itself leads to a more complicated understanding of how to justify moral terms. This further justification leads us to think about the way that evaluative terms are used in a cultural and political context, and the relationship of this context to an ordered universe. Ultimately, some sort of further justification is possible. But MacIntyre himself focuses on the intermediate steps.

3.) Conclusion The differences and similarities between the views of MacIntyre and Rist on Rep. reflect a much larger difference and similarities on the fundamental nature of moral philosophy, the problem of relativism, and the importance of God for ethics. I have illustrated these similarities and differences in the context of their understanding of the problems faced by Plato, the nature and adequacy of his response, and the relevance of the response of later ethics. With respect to the context, Rist and MacIntyre disagree to some extent about the exact nature of the problem. Rist thinks that Plato faces a straightforward relativism or nihilism that is a perennial problem for philosophers. MacIntyre thinks that Plato faces competing views of virtue, namely virtue as excellence and virtue as effectiveness. Nevertheless, they both think that the problems faced by Plato require from him an attempt to find some sort of motive or standard for ethics that is independent of merely individual wants and preferences.

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Concerning their responses, Rist gives a far more straightforward reading than MacIntyre does. According to Rist, Plato (through Socrates) argues that there is a simple choice between nihilism and the existence of an external and objective standard, namely the Form of the Good. According to MacIntyre, although Plato correctly recognizes the problem, he gives only an outline of the response, and moves too quickly away from actual political practices to an otherworldly Form of the Good. MacIntyre seems to have more sympathy for Plato’s theology in his later works, but he never argues that it is in the beginning apparent to all inquirers that ultimately the only two options are between, on the one hand, Thrasymachus’s position and, on the other, a Platonic realism or even Augustinian theism. Both Rist and MacIntyre think that ethical positions can be used to justify those metaphysical theses that are necessary for their truth. In this way, ethical concerns can be prior to metaphysical concerns. With respect to Rep.’s contemporary relevance, MacIntyre and Rist agree that Thrasymachus’s challenge is relevant, and that, given the current practice of philosophy, mainstream contemporary philosophers are unable to meet it. In some ways, Rist seems even more optimistic than MacIntyre, in that he thinks that the incoherence of the contemporary ethical theories can be easily shown, and the need for God almost immediately recognized. In contrast, MacIntyre is concerned about the inadequacies of both the philosophical and cultural traditions, and emphasizes the need for a metaphysical background that is now unavailable to most contemporary philosophers. Both are pessimistic about the present and future well-being of academic philosophy. Further evaluation of the merits of their interpretation of Rep. would be a worthwhile inquiry in itself, but it presupposes work like that attempted in this article, namely an account of what their interpretations are, and how they are related. Rist, the Augustinian Platonist, directly argues that God is the required external standard for ethics. MacIntyre, the Thomist, focuses more on the natural order and human institutions. Macintyre the philosopher is much more concerned with the historical and social context, whereas Rist, who is more of a classicist, is directly concerned with the ideas themselves. But Rist and MacIntyre both think that in many ways Plato and Aristotle are correct and working on the same project, and that this project is improved in significant ways by engaging Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.69

69 Special thanks to C. Lutz and J. Macias for their comments on earlier drafts.

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Augustine and Codes of Life Miles Hollingworth

1.) There was a popular soldier’s song in the Great War. The first line from it went ‘I want to go home.’ But no one is quite sure anymore how the tune of it went. Let me give you its first stanza: I want to go home, I want to go home. I don’t want to go in the trenches no more, Where the whizz bangs and the shrapnel they whistle and roar. Take me over the sea, Where the Alleyman can’t get at me. Oh my, I don’t want to die, I want to go home. The poet Ivor Gurney is alleged to have written home of it in a letter—‘a very popular song about here. Not a brave song, but brave men sing it.’ I am going to leave it like that until the end part of this essay; where I am going to return to this insight to deliver the full force of what I want to say here about St. Augustine of Hippo and the subject called ethics. On many occasions, it will be seen that my voice stands in for Augustine’s. That will be because he is not here anymore, and I am curious to revivify his attitude for a present-day application—rather than merely sift and query his remains. I also want to be clear from the outset about something. The point of this essay is to attain to the perspective from the point of view of which all codes of life can be seen to be equivalent. By ‘codes,’ I mean methods, or moralities, by means of which you can answer in the affirmative that in such-and-such a future scenario you would do this rather than that. I attain to this perspective with Augustine; and claim it for him. I take no responsibility for anything else. In that sense, you might call this essay a ‘thought experiment.’ If it helps, the separation that I am by this means seeking is exactly the separation that Augustine sought between his ‘two cities.’ In other words, the most extreme kind of separation conceiv-

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able; if indeed it can be ‘conceived.’ The separation between the supernatural height of unbidden, unpredictable Grace and mundane Rational Life. Or as Philosophy calls it, The Good Life. The problem with codes of life, when you think about it, is how they take care of themselves. They do not actually need you, save to play the ‘active part.’ And they certainly don’t then need a ‘God.’ Ludwig Wittgenstein was someone else who believed that logic, and therefore mathematics, and therefore codes of life, take care of themselves, and therefore do not need us, or God. And for him that was just fine, it was not even contentious; given that we really do live in a material world in which bullets kill and medicine heals (and to ‘play the active part’ is the greatest psychological satisfaction that there can be). It is just that there is so much of the human being that seems to reside on the opposite side to all that—and even in outright rebellion to it. When Wittgenstein said to one of his friends, ‘Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only,’ he was touching the exact same live-wire that Augustine was touching whenever he pointed out that we simply cannot know what is going on inside another human heart. According to Augustine, however, we might all the time know what the other was thinking—but only under the condition that bundles of us were to sign ourselves up to codes of life that we then religiously obeyed. But that situation Augustine would always flatly defer to the City of God in Heaven.1 And in any case, even as that, it was an image that he constructed counterfactually from out of how it would look here—viz., some kind of dictatorship after God’s voluntarist will, some kind of positive liberty.2 Meanwhile, he meant it that positive liberty and all such ‘cities of God’ on earth were to be avoided. So, I think you can see now what I mean. But if you would like to know more, then you will find the full working out of this in the sequel to my biography of Augustine, which is my biography of Wittgenstein.3 There, I go into detail on the meaning of the revolving door that is ‘Science & Religion.’ For if bullets really do kill and medicine really does heal, then Science is the code of life of which Religion has always dreamed—chapter

1 See De civitate Dei (civ. Dei), 22.29: “The thoughts of each of us shall then be made manifest to all…” (my translation). 2 I have written an entire book to this point; see M. Hollingworth, The Pilgrim City (Bloomsbury, 2010). 3 M. Hollingworth, Ludwig Wittgenstein (Oxford University Press, 2018). See especially ch. 5, “Sex and the Last Stand.”

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and verse on the whole of everything and always, the true version of the event. So whatever Augustine meant by Christianity must have been whatever was left over after that. And on the question of the extent of the that, there has been no better investigation than the body of work which Wittgenstein produced. No one denies that. Nor does anyone deny that were it not for his card-carrying membership of the Church, or his professional contributions to doctrinal formulations, or the extensive historical efforts to recruit him for this or that constituency, Augustine’s ‘Christianity’ remains a strange and strangely personal affair when it counts. It is utterly dismissive of the usual, objective requirements of ‘truth in life’ and written, therefore, to his single mysterious Reader (different each time). Surely I myself—And I speak this fearlessly from my heart—If I were to write anything for the summit of authority, I would prefer to write in such a way that from my words would speak differently to each reader, rather than that one single thought would be stated with such clarity as to exclude all other thoughts.4

2.) One of the things that Augustine did very early in his life, it seems, was to make the artist’s discovery that the human animal has one supreme advantage over all other creation. In fact, that this advantage is essentially what we mean whenever we wish to speak in the idiom of what it means to be human. The human animal can be a mystery to others of its kind. More than that, it can even be a mystery to itself. So complete is its capacity to be able to live within its invisible places that two people who have known each other intimately their whole lives long may suddenly be at a loss to know precisely what is going to in each other’s hearts. I am talking of something that we take for granted. But look out for a moment to the world of the non-rational animals to take in what I mean. Can the beasts ever be a mystery to themselves? It seems not. Everything that we admire in them of efficiency and coordination is derived from their total manipulation by instinct; which in turn matches each of them to the other in those gigantic set-piece extravaganzas of the savannah or the jungle. A dog, too, is man’s best friend. He is man’s best friend because he

4 Confessiones (conf.), 12.31.42.

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has to be. He has to be because he has to love you with his moving parts; with his tongue lolling and his tail wagging. This is the instinct in him. It means that he has to know you through his end game all of the time. This would be embarrassing for humans. For the end game of our moving parts really has been set apart and reserved to be the end game for us. Early Church fathers like Augustine fell quickly to surmising that childbirth must be it. For childbirth alone fitted with the criterion of something, the opposite to coeval. They meant how the miracle of human life is not the eternal flame of the laws of nature. Nature may be a perfectly calibrated mechanism in which the ‘tick’ of each part is at precisely the same instant the ‘tock’ of some other. As sure as gravity, it can be assumed that the beasts are breeding. Yet when we turn from that to think of the straight lines of human generation, we think of a specific wilfulness conducted from within time, and against this scheme. The essential truth of the matter is to say that only the human line has the power to extinguish itself. Or that the beasts protect their young, whereas we love and invest in ours.5 Whenever our members move sexually, we find ourselves in the twist and flame of something overpowering. We so want it: and yet we know that to be living so completely in our moving parts is to be abnegating ourselves and, yes, living like animals. As this essay unfolds, I want to focus more, however, on what the artist in Augustine was being drawn to in the contrast between our instinctive and moving parts and, on the other side, our wilful and invisible parts. This is between, perhaps, what Virginia Woolf once called ‘the facts of history, of law, of biography’ and then ‘the still hidden facts of our still unknown psychology.’6 There has always been a popular school of thought to promote the idea that there is a serious kind of kudos in wagging your tail with someone and moving on as though it hardly meant a thing. But I have never been convinced by that—and in any case, I think that the accelerating pursuit of the sex-act in modern societies cannot (logically) prove what it thinks that it proves in the ‘moving on.’ There will always be a kind of childish pride in pretending to be hard-hearted and iconoclastic, I grant it. But the real vice at play is nothing even so ominous or epic as that. It is, I believe, the basic thrust to get by the shortest means to an obvious good. It is the shirking of 5 See Sermo (s.), 118. 2: “Fire, for example, engenders a coeval brightness. But among men you only find sons younger, fathers older; you do not find them coeval. But as I have said, in this example I have shown you a brightness coeval with its parent fire. For fire begets brightness, yet is it never without brightness” (my translation). 6 V. Woolf, Three Guineas (Harcourt, 2006), 126.

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proper hard work and suffering and care. So it is really rather tragic than anything else; which, of course, is what you should be expecting from real evil. And for heaven’s sake, if I may: can we please (therefore) stop calling evil ‘cunning’ all the time? I know that to do this is somehow attractive to our revisionist selves. I know that after a certain period, it can seem like the smartest sort of realism to turn over evil and see how crafty it was all along being. Bloodthirsty tyrants turn out, always and eventually in the history books, to have been political geniuses of one sort or another. But the human predicament since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden remains as simple and exquisite as ever it was. We want to snatch at the obviously good without the requisite effort to reach it. Yes, Adam and Eve wanted the knowledge of good and evil just like that; they wanted it like something they could put up on the mantelpiece. Yet the knowledge of it was never to be like that—immediate and, in one place, unchanging. Augustine speculates that they might have known evil without even having committed it (let realism try to get its head around that!). While the nature of goodness would have come home to them on the wing, as the ever-unfolding present-knowledge of God’s will. This, then, is what evil really works with: our weakness for the shortest distance to the finish line. This, too, shows something else that it was one of Augustine’s first acts to grasp: evil has no existence in itself, and can do nothing ex nihilo. In the case of my example, then, the human weakness is a real thing as much as the finish line is a real thing—as well, of course, as the distance between them. Evil is just the suggestion that you could reach out and taste ‘at once,’ without running the race. Evil becomes evil once you will it. As such, when evil declares in a moment of pomp that Christianity does not get sexuality; that it stokes a hoodoo about it that is superstitious and retarding; do not believe it. Historical Christianity entered the fray once upon a time to preach that sex was a substantial, supernatural thing. Not, then, the short stroll to the slave market to buy a girl. No, that was the very kind of thing that it took it upon itself to work against. And in doing this it reckoned on being able to coordinate with the scintilla in each of us that teaches interiorly that when you go looking, you go looking for ‘the one’ and ‘your true love.’ And by ‘the one,’ you discern (by that scintilla) that you want her to be yours and yours alone; not shared out. You simply do not learn possessiveness like that from the quantities and equalities of materialism. You only learn it from internal revelation. In a jar of sweets it is acceptable and expected that every example of a certain flavour taste the same, or your money back. But around the sex-act, this craven logic of satisfaction runs out. 397

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This is the same thing as to say that we have found a million-and-one ways to commoditize sex, but never once in all the earth’s time have we ever actually succeeded in commoditizing it. That it has been commoditized, is, and will always remain, evil’s proudest boast. But consider this. There may well come a time when people marry their dogs, or their goldfish, or even trees. But mark my words and consult your own insights: so long as these people are humans, they will do this and still want it to happen under the language and banner of a marriage. I mean with rings, vows and a priest. That is to say, they will still want the sensation that it was presided over and predestined. That it was meant to be. Which is why I feel emboldened to conclude that the sex-act never has, nor never will be, commoditized. A Christian ethics need not believe nor respond to that hype. And an Augustinian ethics may even decide that it can contribute something substantial to the problem of why evil does not therefore get away with its worldwide claim and clarion call of ‘casual sex.’ I think we need to start considering whether our drive for propagating sex and multiplying its varieties proves only that it is the crowning thing— that it is the super-metaphor and muse over everything that we do. I mean how Augustine would gaze upon the Church as the bride of Christ and all at once find his fluency and his words. The definition of an animal that can be a mystery to the others of its kind as much as to itself is an animal that can project from its soul outwards. Can project emotions from itself outwards. Emotions that may land on other people, or dogs, or goldfish, or trees. I repeat, only the animal that can do this so completely hopelessly, and indiscriminately, can get itself into the fix of ‘not knowing its own mind.’ Of not knowing its mind on the activity which is the dearest to it; the activity of loving. The supermetaphor may work because we are always in an embarrass de choix; and what a fix that is to be in. Yes, we are the animals who build great ships to conquer the seas. And yet we are also the animals who give women’s names to those ships and mature afterwards a genuine bond of thankfulness to them. The Academy calls it ‘personification,’ but I do not want to be so neat.

3.) In order to explain more about the way in which sex was for Augustine the super-metaphor, let me join an event from his early life to a perspective he had developed by its end.

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At one of the lowest ebbs of his famous journey to Christianity, Augustine took himself off one day with some close friends, and soon they found themselves wandering the streets of Milan. The irony was that he had come to that city to take up everything he could have wished for: the Imperial Chair of Rhetoric. A resounding public honor and what should at last have been a full and final vindication for the brilliant boy from the provinces. But Augustine was in deep ennui and his limbs were dragging. He was severely depressed and had not been able to raise a cheer since arriving in the city. To some extent I would hazard that we have all known a variation on this feeling. At some point or other, we have all drunk from this well. Maybe not as deeply as Augustine was drinking then; but we have all been there. What I mean is, we have all had the formative experience of raising up some steepling tower of expectation in our minds. Maybe it was over a job, like with Augustine’s example here. Or maybe it was over a marriage. But whatever it was over, we all know how that tower was raised. Every little brick of it was taken from our heart and our soul; and taken from those deep places, every little one of those bricks was next packed hard with the great unrequited of our life. Where what I mean by the ‘great unrequited,’ is every single inconsistency and betrayal that we might have experienced consciously and unconsciously along the way. Maybe, as in Augustine’s case, our teachers were slower than us. Maybe we had seen and wondered at things that they had never dreamed of; and we were misinterpreted on our sincerity in this; and we chose instead to keep silent. Maybe we bided our time and found our solace in the building of that tower. Maybe brick by brick, we raised its vision of what would make everything fine in the end. Augustine had raised that tower like every human has to raise it sooner or later. He had raised it past and above the various disappointments of his mother’s Christianity; then following that, of philosophy, astrology and Manichaeism. Now, like all towers of the mind have to do sooner or later, it had come crashing down around him. He had staked everything and lost. Again, let me stress how this is always how it has to be. On the one hand, the ordinate response of a thinking animal to a fallen world and a doomed planet must be a complete nervous breakdown and the darker arts of sanity. Logic tells you that. But on the other hand, not everyone is capable of this response. Not everyone is an Augustine or a Wittgenstein, say. Therefore, by tracing back from this extremity degree-by-degree, we get the full spectrum of human life we know so well. The reason why the spectrum always has to start with complete nervous breakdown is because we always have to stake everything and lose. As humans, we always have to love and lose. We cannot do what the non-rational animals do and have in399

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stinct pull our strings. No, we always have to love and lose. We always have to be self-determining. Of course, it is understood that the crashing down of everyone’s tower is nonetheless an entirely unique and original event, so that it belongs to the authority of the first-person testimony. I could go on about it for another thousand pages in theory and it would not mean a thing—unless you were pulling back into the reaches of your own experience and laying yourself along my page. Let us then cut straight to having it all in Augustine’s words: While going along the streets of Milan, I noticed a poor beggar; he was, I believe, already drunk, as he was making jokes and feeling high. I gave a groan and spoke to the friends who were with me of the many sorrows arising from our own madness. For from all such efforts as I was then exerting, while under the good of my desires, as I dragged along the burden of my unhappiness and made it worse by dragging it along, what else did we want except to attain sure joy, which that beggar had already gained ahead of us, and which perhaps we would never come to? For what he had grasped, the joy of a temporary happiness, by means of a few coins that he had gained by begging, I was scheming for by many a troubled twist and turn. It was not true joy that he possessed, but by my ambitious plans I sought one much more false. Certain it was that he was in high humour, while I was troubled; he was free from care, while I was full of fear. If anyone had asked me whether I would prefer to be joyful or to suffer from fear, I would answer, ‘To be joyful.’ Again, if anyone should ask whether I preferred to be like the beggar, or such as I then was myself, I would prefer to be myself, charged with care and fear as I was. But I would speak perversely, for what is true? I ought not to have preferred myself because I was more learned, since I took no joy from that. I sought only to please men, not to instruct them, but only to please them. For that reason You broke my very bones under the rod of Your discipline. Let them depart from my soul who say to it, ‘It makes a difference where a man finds his joy. That beggar found joy in drinking wine, but you find it in glory.’ Lord, in what sort of glory? In a glory that is not from You. For just as his was no true joy, so was mine no true glory, and it did the more to overthrow my mind. During that very night he would get rid of his drunkenness. But as for mine, I slept and got up again, and I was to continue

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to sleep and get up again with it for, see how man days! It does indeed make a difference where a man finds his joy.7

4.) Let us analyse this testimony of Augustine’s from the point of view of modern ethics. Or more to the point, let us try to set off against modern ethics, a distinctively Christian voice—remembering all the time, of course, that modern ethics in the Western setting is all the time vectoring its modernity on Christianity’s antiquity. At its worst, this attitude may seek to imply that Christianity, when people take it seriously, is really just the last outpost of the land of Make-Believe. It is Narnia; if you believe that Narnia is corrupting your children as I write with valueless fables and empty comforts. Christianity is the brave new world’s last irritating itch. Actually, as it turns out, the attitude of modernity towards Christianity is fast becoming even less benign than all that. I say ‘benign,’ because chiding children for living in the land of Make-Believe is benign. It assumes that they will grow out of it. It is indulgent and remedial. Far less benign is this. Instead of finding your angle by subjecting the Infant-Religion to historical criticism, to demand that it points to its God, then to sit back and smile when it cannot, you supplant it altogether with a new religion. I want to think about what this means for the next short while. Once upon a time it was materialism’s self-appointed task to simply and flatly debunk Christianity. Ludwig Feuerbach proclaimed that ‘all theology is anthropology’8 and Karl Marx wrote tirelessly on what were the real forces at work in the world. The joined-up understanding was that religion and God were clearly to die off one day. And from the ashes was to rise the

7 Conf., 4.6. 9–10. 8 See L. Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums, 28: “We have shown that the substance and object of religion is altogether human; we have shown that divine wisdom is human wisdom; that the secret of theology is anthropology; that the absolute mind is the so-called finite subjective mind. But religion is not conscious that its elements are human; on the contrary, it places itself in opposition to the human, or at least it does not admit that its elements are human. The necessary turningpoint of history is therefore the open confession, that the consciousness of God is nothing else than the consciousness of the species; that man can and should raise himself only above the limits of his individuality, and not above the laws, the positive essential conditions of his species; that there is no other essence which man can think, dream of, imagine, feel, believe in, wish for, love and adore as the absolute, than the essence of human nature itself” (translated by G. Eliot).

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phoenix of the new man, self-sufficient and emancipated from all his ghosts. This kind of thing was what C. S. Lewis took it upon himself to face down in the 1940’s. In his three lectures on the future of education delivered at Durham University in 1943, he argued that the death of God in (humanities) education will come to mean the slow and steady phasing out of the role once played in judgements of value by the traditional lights of conscience. These lectures are now better known as his short book, The Abolition of Man: The stars lost their divinity as astronomy developed, and the Dying God has no place in chemical agriculture. To many, no doubt, this process is simply the gradual discovery that the real world is different from what we expected, and the old opposition to Galileo or to ‘bodysnatchers’ is simply obscurantism. But that is not the whole story. It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real. Little scientists, and little unscientific followers of science, may think so. The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost.9 The difference nowadays is that it is no longer the case that Christianity is studied in order for it to be debunked; it is rather that it is made to meet its more reasonable and open-minded self in the humane religion of the professional Academy. God is exciting again: He has become a particle. And the philosopher A. C. Grayling has even written a self-styled humanist bible called The Good Book.10 This is a far more serious situation. It is a far more serious situation because when two religions collide head-to-head like this, all hell tends to breaks loose. Two does not go into one. It is true that we are still essentially talking about the super naturalness in Christianity opposing the materialism in this new Religion of the Good Life. But yes, what you could once call the condescending attitude of the Enlightenment to Christianity is fast disappearing to be replaced with this new repli-

9 C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (HarperCollins, 2001), 70–1. 10 Something from its first chapter, written specifically by Grayling, and called ‘Genesis’: 9.11–14: “Hence in biochemical spontaneous birth rose the first specks of animated earth; / From nature’s womb the plant or insect swims, and buds or breathes, from microscopic limbs. / In earth, sea, air, around, below, above, life’s subtle weft in nature’s loom is wove; / Points joined to points a living line extends, and touched by the light approaches the bending ends” (A. Grayling, The Good Book: A Secular Bible [Bloomsbury, 2011], 6).

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ca religion. And it competes for the same patch of ground. This, I repeat, is what is new and ominous. It is no longer adequate to talk and think as though the debate were between the religious life and the secular life. That debate has truly enough happened: but it seems now that its longer purpose was to reveal the sense in which all conceivable human life is, at heart, some form of religious life. And my point from earlier is that nothing shows this quite so starkly as the human handling of sexuality. Once upon a time, a thinker like Bertrand Russell could proselytize as though the traditional respect for sexuality and life was merely the last hurrah of primitive fatalism. ‘Liberate sexuality,’ he said, ‘and the human race will finally have snapped the elastic of its age-old thrall to nature and thunderbolts.’11 But now it looks increasingly like secularism of his sort was merely the clearinghouse to something else. Think about it like this, if it helps. The devils never wanted a purely secular world at all; because, of course, there is nothing in a purely secular world that they can work with. It has become commonplace for religionists of all stripes to talk as though ‘belief’ is the stumbling block and dividing line between their outlook and the secularists. You have to pitch everything at getting people to believe in God, it goes. Or short of that, to feeling more spiritually involved in things. However, belief is the very thing that the devils have always wanted and needed from us. And do not for one second imagine that belief in even THE God presents a problem for them. You just need to remember Augustine’s privation theory of evil that I mentioned earlier. Evil cannot create itself ex nihilo, so it needs goodness to be in existence first. The serpent did not mind that Adam and Eve believed in

11 Take the following example from his stunning essay ‘A free man’s worship’: “This is the reason why the past has such magical power. The beauty of its motionless and silent pictures is like the enchanted purity of late autumn, when the leaves, though one breath would make them fall, still glow against the sky in golden glory... Its beauty, to a soul not worthy of it, is unendurable; but to a soul which has conquered Fate it is the key of religion. The life of man, viewed outwardly, is but a small thing in comparison with the forces of nature. The slave is doomed to worship Time and Fate and Death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour. But, great as they are, to think of them greatly, to feel their passionless splendour, is greater still. And such thought makes us free men; we no longer bow before the inevitable in Oriental subjection, but we absorb it and make it a part of ourselves... And this liberation is effected by contemplation of Fate; for Fate itself is subdued by the mind which leaves nothing to be purged by the purifying fire of time” (B. Russell, “A free man’s worship,” in [ed.] P. Edwards, Why I am Not a Christian [Simon & Schuster, 1957], 114–15).

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God (and in a way none of us are ever going to achieve it now anyhow, by the way). It was actually his raison d’être and first-tee shot.12 But most of all, remember this. YOU may struggle with your belief in God. YOU may find it difficult sometimes because you cannot see Him and times are tough. Yet the devil does not. In fact, so much does he not, that it becomes pointless altogether to talk about belief in relation to him and God. God is his waking breathing nightmare; and that is the end of it.13 Essentially, the devil wants what God has, so he wants you to worship him. I repeat: the devil does not want dry as ice secularists. Where is the fun in that? He wants all the trappings of power and majesty (as he sees them). He wants massed ranks of people like you, clapping and weeping and eulogizing at the medals and braids on his chest. He wants a ludicrously large service cap. And for all of that he needs believers. He needs fervent believers. So at some point along the line, it was always his intention to change gear from secularism into his new super-religion. That is to say, it was always his intention to rouse up the idea that the Religion should begin to become worked upon by sincere believers with the confidence of the knowledge of good and evil in (the imagination of) their hearts. Oh yes, if belief is not a problem for him, then neither is sincerity, I am afraid. It is his old-school strategy from Eden. Actually, it is his only strategy. But in these post-secularism days, it looks really set to fly. The red and urgent faces are not any longer saying, ‘Get rid of the Bibles!’ That same energy is now being directed into saying, ‘For Heaven’s sake, why hasn’t this book been updated yet!’ Because this is how it is, and always has been. In the real story of their words, no one ever said and meant, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ What they said and meant was, ‘I am a better god than You, Lord.’ Incidentally, it might please you to know that I am directly paraphrasing Augustine there. Coming at it from the other side, he told his parishioners one day:

12 See how Augustine explains this at De Genesi ad litteram 10.23.13: “We shouldn’t blame the gifts of nature for evil behaviour; and seed doesn’t fail to produce crop merely because it was sown by a bad hand” (my translation). 13 As Augustine would put it himself, with a weather eye on the sixteenth century, it is ‘works’ that really spook the devil: “And look: you have before you Christ as your end: you do not need to be seeking anymore. When once you have believed this, you have recognized it too; however, this is not to say that it is merely a matter of faith, but of faith and works. Each is necessary. For, as you heard the Apostle say, ‘the devils also believe, and tremble; [Jam 2.19]’ but their believing brings forth nothing. Faith on its own is not enough; it must be joined to works [and therefore to acts of will]: ‘faith which worketh by love, [Gal 5.6]’ as the Apostle put it” (s., 16 (A). 11—my translation).

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You do not say to God, I am just, and You are unjust: but you say, I am unjust, but You are more unjust.14

5.) The question for post-Hegelians like Feuerbach was the question of the origin of the impulse to religion. Like everything else, they reckoned on finding it as some out of control derivative of human nature. The question for an Augustinian ethics today that wishes to be critical on the development that I have been describing over the last few pages is rather: ‘What kudos does the Religion of the Good Life seek for itself? For the answer to this (and the start of the ‘way home’), let us get back to Augustine’s example from Milan. The reason why Augustine made such a point of including this example at the decisive time in his book is because it really was—it really is—an example that goes to the heart of the Western sense of self-esteem. I use the denomination ‘Western’ here only in the sense of ‘Western philosophy’; viz., its orientation on the intellectual sort of happiness, or Sophia; and the personalism that has been indistinguishable from that form of wisdom since Socrates. Or think of it more instinctively, more stereotypically, if you prefer. Where else do you find the broody, moody intellectual like Augustine then was at Milan, except in Western literature? Think of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. These sorts of characters just will not leave themselves be. So much so that in our frustrations over them, we might actually think that a skin-full would be the trick to snap their tension for them, and the end of their introspection. Certainly, Raskolnikov tried that. But the reason why we also love these characters, and admire them, and admire our literature in which they figure, is because in their very paranoia they exhibit (albeit at full stretch) what we in the West like to think we have the special possession of. This is that thing that we call ‘self-determination.’ It works in this way. The mechanism that allows anyone such as Augustine’s beggar to ‘drink their troubles away,’ is the mechanism by which alcohol releases your mental state into its less discriminating self. You will settle into a happy acquiescence in the natural order of things around you. You will laugh at anything. In the morning, however, you will return to your more discriminating self. You will look back and scorn how you were the evening before. You will scorn how you were the evening before be-

14 Ennerationes in Psalmos, 70.14.

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cause in some deep place, you just know that it is better to be discriminating and made miserable by it, than drunk and carefree. This was the insight that Augustine was leaning on in his example. And yet it is uncomfortably true that Augustine’s drunk beggar, as much as Sherlock Holmes in his cocaine, or the man in the brothel, are happy. These institutions simply would not exist if they did not make us happy. Now you are welcome to climb at this point into your higher self and speak to me about addictive states and too much of a good thing. But you will not then be talking about what I am talking about. You will not because this criticism that you form of these heedless behaviours is a criticism that is based in self-determination linked to Sophia. This linkage is powering your critical common sense back at me. For example, the reply you want to make to me is something like this: ‘You may be able to show me the brothel, and point to the line of soldiers that is out the door and round the street corner to prove to me that money can buy happiness (again and again without fail). But I will say to you now that it matters more what, ontologically speaking, that happiness is.’ And on this we come to the West’s real problem; its problem of teenagers and their parents; its problem of permissiveness and order. As Augustine well knew, Western civilization has enlarged itself on the idea that certain kinds of happiness are morally superior to other kinds of happiness. If you want to know what those ‘other kinds of happiness’ are, you ask the teenagers of any age. Augustine’s own account of his teenage years in his Confessions contains some of the best insights into this. If you want to know what the morally superior kinds of happiness are, you ask their parents. We think we know what happiness morally and ontologically is. Yes: following the serpent and our fall, we think we now have the knowledge of good and evil—knowledge sufficient to have written, and be operating out of, our very own secular bible. But there are the Christian Scriptures to tell us that this is all a lie. And then there is how in support of them, we do actually discover that what we call happiness in everyday life bears no logical relation at all to what the Christian Scriptures say that our final happiness shall be. The final happiness of the Christian is Christ. What we call happiness in everyday life is of a categorically different kind of happiness altogether. We still use the word ‘happiness’ for it (and there is the trouble), but what we are really talking about is our freedom from care. In other words, what we are really talking about is a negative state of being. Whereas to have one’s final happiness in Christ would be the dictionary definition of a positive state of being. Indeed, as I will claim at the end of this essay, Christianity may be the only spring of this positive state of being 406

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in the Western psyche. I, certainly, can see no empirical way that it could have come in to us from affairs in the world. Anyway, the difference between these two states of being is insurmountable; and I can show you how in a few strokes, and with the help of some eminent thinkers. That I can use only a few strokes is because I can begin from something that is now well understood. This thing is moral pluralism. Moral pluralism sets out from the truth that humans are essentially ethical beings. That is to say, we do not just do things and leave it at that. We do things and then try to interpret that doing morally and eschatologically. Or to continue in Augustine’s example: we do not just get drunk; we wake up the next morning and get all twisted around ourselves again. We leave the brothel then feel secretly ashamed; even if we later laugh it up with the lads. Moral pluralism accepts that an obvious way out of this cannoning back and forth would be to shut up and do what someone cleverer and morally superior instructed us to do. But moral pluralism at the same time accepts that even if this were the only solution to our problem on its terms, it would look an awful lot like having to be a child all over again. Furthermore, the historical examples of whole societies that chose to address the problem through dictatorships are not good examples. What to do? Moral pluralism says that you look for the apophatic means of getting what you can from this situation. In other words, if we prefer, each of us, to be the authors of our own destiny; if we would rather have the thrill of publication than the final truth; then we should simply celebrate this and embrace what Sir Isaiah Berlin famously termed ‘negative liberty.’ We should strive to create societies in which the dividing line is between the public and the private spheres; and we should strive again to make the latter spaces as big and untrammelled as we reasonably can. This should be the dividing line and the focus of our humanitarian efforts—not qualitative judgements about how people should conduct their lives. From Berlin, his own thesis: Pluralism, with the measure of ‘negative liberty’ that it entails, seems to me a truer and more human ideal than the goals of those who seek in the great, disciplined, authoritarian structures the ideal of ‘positive’ self-mastery by classes, or peoples, or the whole of mankind. It is truer because it does, at least, recognize the fact that human goals are many, not all of them commensurable, and in perpetual rivalry with one another. To assume that all values can be graded on one scale, so that it is a mere matter of inspection to determine the highest, seems to me to

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falsify our knowledge that men are free agents, to represent moral decision as an operation which a slide-rule could, in principle, perform.15 It turns out that the discovery and promotion of moral pluralism by Berlin and others from within the British tradition of intellectual history was more or less coterminous with how others were finding, psychologically and mythically, the guilty birth pangs of Fascism and Totalitarianism. It was said that these phenomena were simply how moral pluralism (or another vacuum) learnt to meet itself coming down the road. Let me give you something, this time from Ernst Cassirer and his The Myth of the State: If a man were simply to follow his natural instincts he would not strive for freedom; he would rather choose dependence. Obviously it is much easier to depend upon others than to think, to judge, and to decide for himself. That accounts for the fact that both in individual and in political life freedom is so often regarded much more as a burden than a privilege. Under extremely difficult conditions man tries to cast off this burden. Here the totalitarian state and the political myths step in. The new political parties promise, at least, an escape from the dilemma. They suppress and destroy the very sense of freedom; but, at the same time, they relieve men from all personal responsibility.16

6.) The great disappointment of Christianity—as Augustine and his beggar friend illustrate—is that it really does belong to another world from the one we were born into. This world Augustine calls the Earthly City, and that other world he calls the City of God. This means that what none of us therefore has, ethically speaking, is a rational way of pronouncing finally on the business of human happiness. There used to be ways for Christians to get around this. Once upon a time, Christian values meant more or less the same thing as Western civilization. Christians could argue, rationally, that they were the best-informed guardians of that particular tradition of life. But if the majority of people decide that they no longer want to aim for that tradition, then the need for the Christian guardian-class starts to fade. By much the same token, Augustine and his beggar friend illustrate

15 I. Berlin, “Two concepts of liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford University Press, 1969), 171. 16 E. Cassirer, The Myth of the State (Yale University Press, 1963), 288.

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that the achievement of ‘happiness’ may truthfully and sincerely be predicated of anything we wish. There is simply no truth that would allow any ethicist to say to the man in the brothel that he is, in his moment, ‘unhappy.’ You would, in Augustine’s words, ‘speak perversely’ to try that; for the man in the brothel would be precisely as happy as the drunk is happy; or as the winner of a chess tournament is happy. Is Augustine meaning that it does not matter where a man finds his happiness? Yes and no. Yes it does not—But only because, no, this City is not the only city. In the City of God, as once upon a time in the Garden of Eden, God rules men in a perfect dictatorship of positive liberty. The memory of this engraved on our hearts makes it possible for us to have the predicate ‘happiness’ at all. But because it is just that, a memory, it is gravely problematic for the time when, as Christians, we want to speak to the normative ends of life which the idea of happiness covers. As Christians we can rationally recommend God’s grace and mercy and talk of the category of difference that keeps the two cities apart. But what we cannot do is start being like Pelagius. Let me quickly interrupt with the obvious. I am writing from the perspective of ‘Augustine and ethics.’ If you want to be a Christian engaging in ethics with a more positive kind of energy than my essay has displayed, then there are other Christian theologians of good standing to help you to do that. I have written this essay as I have because Augustine has suffered at the hands of those who have taken his language of the ‘two cities’ too literally, trying to extract from it a practical manual. Augustine’s genius-eye was for the tragic. However, as I have also indicated here, the rise to prominence of the Religion of the Good Life now means that the Augustinian sense of the tragic can do something important for Christian ethics. I also promised to join Augustine’s example from Milan to a perspective from his mature thinking. Let me do that now.

7.) As Augustine grew older, and went further into his professional life as a Christian intellectual, he became more interested in human sexuality, not less. In his City of God, he spent a pivotal time refuting those who wished to argue that sexual generation per se was a consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin; to the effect that it would not have entered the human condition otherwise. To him, this was flatly contradictory on the fact that sexual generation was always in God’s plan—if only to provide for the eventual numbers of saints required for the City of God. It was inconceivable, therefore, that 409

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an act of sin should be the cause of this paramount good. At the same time, he perceived that there would be those in the future who would campaign relentlessly to make sexuality into non-fiction’s special subject and pièce de résistence. Earlier in this essay, I highlighted the commonplace that there is an instant kind of kudos in ‘wagging your tail with someone and moving on as though it hardly meant a thing.’ Augustine went into painful detail to recollect his youthful battles with this power of suggestion in his Confessions. And he did not do it because he was obsessed with sex: he did it because he was a magnificent writer, with the magnificent writer’s sensitivity to where the mundane will look to focus its maximum efforts. For example, we do not say that D. H. Lawrence was obsessed with sex: we say that he was a magnificent writer, cruelly censored by the mundane. Therefore, Augustine understood from his own experience that where the mundane looks to focus its maximum efforts is on sexuality; and primarily through the mechanism of peer pressure. That it does this, is because only the sex-act is capable of running our soulful self so close to our mechanical self. So close, indeed, that we hardly know which is which. So close that at the climax of the event, we know we shall experience an overriding of our normal self-consciousness—of our normal shame—that otherwise describes our day-to-day equilibrium in life. We all know what comes next in ethics. The Russell camp says that it is the easy, lazy and craven choice to take the Christian point of view and handle sexuality reverently, and fearfully, as the wondrous business of Life Itself. The Russell camp says that the brave man realizes, instead, that sex, like everything else, is just movements of atoms in the void. And for a human being to have a hoodoo about inanimate atoms in the void is poppycock. Sex becomes their case, of this, in point. It becomes like the initiation rite for their New Religion. The apple becomes the fruit you can pick over and again. What the Augustine camp say comes next is ‘shame’; shame following upon lust; because that is how it truthfully has to be in the case of the human animal. They mean in the case of the animal that has, for its special calling, to live out a fictional rather than a non-fictional life. The Russell camp says that sex is just, at bottom, the biology textbook, so help yourself and fill your boots. The Augustine camp says that sex is the activity that finds us at our fictional, conflicted best. For unlike the non-intellectual beasts, we are able to live in our inner parts, in a continuous sensation of our past, present and future. We are able to live in time. Try as we might, we cannot just sleep with people and then move on from them like they were smoked cigarettes. We cannot because each of our lives, in their isolations and their interactions, is a story. They each of them have a beginning, 410

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middle, and end. Moreover, the time we spend with each other is therefore just too precious. As Augustine writes: You are men, so you have got beyond the cattle. You are superior to the cattle; for you are able to understand what great things He has done for you. You have life, you have sensation, you have understanding: you are men! And to this benefit, I ask you, what can be compared? Well then, how about that you are Christians? For just think how things would be had we not received this additional possibility. What then would it profit us that we were men? Would we be more truly happy than the cattle or only more agitated than them? So then we are Christians, we belong to Christ. And for all the world’s rage it does not break us, because we belong to Christ. For all the world’s caresses, it does not seduce us, because we belong to Christ.17 Those who propose that various degrees of Naturalism will open up the essence of the human condition to us will continue to try to grade and plane sexuality until it is as unfeeling and automatic as a rainstorm. Magnificent writers like Augustine will continue to be drawn to it because they will divine that it is our most potent experience of shame. The cattle do not know shame. Shame is the coming and going of every story. And every story is a human story. Science cannot tell stories. Science cannot tell the fantastic and the supernatural. Sexuality is our most potent experience of shame because it takes our most anxious fictional self, with its itching uncertainty about its story’s end (with its itching uncertainty about its happiness; the example from Milan), and resolves it in our paradigm case of instinctive living. Augustine would catalogue sex’s instinct as the greatest of all bodily pleasures, because, so possessing is it, that when it is consummated, all mental activity is suspended. Additionally, we know that every human story is a love story. It is the story of our love for our heavenly home being told over and through our particular collections of hopes and regrets. The objectification of sex is the tragic foreshortening of this story, over and again. Shame reproves us on this fact, and we burn with it. However, it does leave it that, if you are a magnificent writer like D. H. Lawrence was, and you demand to be free and uncensored to write from the heart of the matter, then it is to sexuality that you must go. And as Augustine knew most of all (and how a Christian ethics might now learn from this): what the world claims to be able to objectify and

17 S., 130. 4.

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commoditize in sex does not, in fact, have any existence at all. The postlapsarian intellectual animal takes the emotions at disposal to its mind and unites them with the electrical energy of its flesh. Before the fall, when Adam and Eve were already living in their home, what we call ‘sex’ might have passed unnoticed between them, as they would not have had these emotions of loss to unite to their flesh. Now, there is of course no such chance of that. Lust has become our paradigm case of homelessness. As Augustine said: There are, then, lusts for many things; yet, when the word ‘lust’ is used without any addition signifying the object of lust, the only thing that usually occurs to the mind is the lust that arouses the impure parts of the body. This lust triumphs not only over the whole body, and not only outwardly, but inwardly also. When the emotion of the mind is united with the craving of the flesh, it convulses the whole man, so that there follows a pleasure greater than any other: a bodily pleasure so great that, at the moment of time when he achieves his climax, the alertness and, so to speak, vigilance of a man’s mind is almost entirely overwhelmed. Any friend of wisdom and holy joys who lives a married life but knows ‘how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour’, as the apostle admonishes [1 Thess. 4.4] – surely such a one would prefer to beget children without lust of this kind, if such a thing were possible. For the parts created for this purpose would then be the servants of his mind even in the task of procreation, just as his other members serve it in the various tasks distributed to them. They would act at the command of his will, and not because incited by the urging of lust.18

8.) Human sexuality is the super-metaphor (and nothing else) because it is the bliss of homecoming and union. The Religion of the Good Life calls selfdetermination ‘brave,’ and has made it the brave song of its brave new world. But if we pursue sex and drunkenness, and other things, it is because they are the shortest route to our blessed relief from care. We do not pursue them because by doing this we defeat the essence of Christianity. To ‘live in our moving parts,’ in their frictions and their hydraulics, is as near

18 Civ. Dei, 14.16. Translation is by R. Dyson from Augustine; The City Of God Against The Pagans, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, trans. R. Dyson, (Cambridge University Press, 1998)

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and sure a thing as the physics of an explosion. And our cares, because they are postlapsarian cares, are very real indeed. Our desire for urgent relief from them is normal. Normal again, is to seek out the path of least resistance. Yet to seek out the path of least resistance is also, as I put it at the start of this essay, the very thing that evil first spoke out aloud in the Garden of Eden. There has been no going back since; nor can there be now. When it came to talking about the Pilgrim City in sojourn on earth, Augustine and others like him fell most naturally into talking about grace and the ‘running of the race.’19 The race is hard because the positive happiness that we desire is Christ, and the Heavenly Jerusalem that awaits us at the race’s end. As with all endurance feats, only the mind and its tricks (of suggestion) can make us give up: the soul and its body, on the other hand, go on forever. That is the good news of Heaven as much as it is the bad news of hell. It is tough to keep running, but through grace we can will it. We can will the resurrection of the body and eternal life. We can will to be homesick to the very last gasp.

9.) ... Take me over the sea, Where the Alleyman can’t get at me. Oh my, I don’t want to die, I want to go home. Yes, these may not be brave words. These may not be the smooth verses that we would choose to reflect well on us in our secular bibles (after we have been cryogenically preserved). But Ivor Gurney had noticed that they were the words that brave men sang. Brave men fighting and singing, singing and fighting, ‘I want to go home.’ God. Christ. Heaven. When you are brought by your circumstances to the outer margins of life, it is comforting how They prove to be the only realism that there is. And comforting, too, is how brave men can spring up

19 Cf. s., 141.4: “And so you will find men who live well but are not Christians. However, though they run well, they do not actually run in the Way. And in fact, the more they run, the more they go astray; because they are out of the Way. But if such men as these come to the Way, and hold on to the Way, how great will be their security, because they will both walk well, and not go astray!” (my translation). See also how Augustine calls Paul athletam Christi, i.e. “Christ’s athlete,” in civ. Dei, 14.9 (my translation).

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of their own volition to sing the words of the law that they find in their hearts. Despite Naturalism’s hell-bent project to homologate us.

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