Anaxagoras' Apophthegmatik?

This morning in the PhD seminar we were thinking about the presentation of Democritus in Aristotle Met. Γ 5. But this was one of the little passages which struck me as requiring a bit more thought. It’s not about Democritus at all but Anaxagoras:

Ἀναξαγόρου δὲ καὶ ἀπόφθεγμα μνημονεύεται πρὸς τῶν ἑταίρων τινάς, ὅτι τοιαῦτ’ αὐτοῖς ἔσται τὰ ὄντα οἷα ἂν ὑπολάβωσιν.

Arist. Met. 1009b25–8

There is also related a saying of Anaxagoras to his friends that things will be for them just as they conceive.

For Aristotle this is further evidence of a general trend in early philosophy for mistakenly believing that all appearances or opinions are equally true, a trend which he sees as eventually resulting in the unfortunate consequence that these otherwise serious thinkers turn out to say that one and the same thing can simultaneously be F and not-F or that two contradictory opinions or perceptions can be simultaneously true.

My question is: Why think this bit of Anaxagoras has anything to do with that set of epistemological and metaphysical questions? What puzzled me initially was the future tense: ἔσται. If the sense is broadly epistemological then this would have to be generalising: ‘things will (sc. always) be as you take them to be’. But the sense would surely just as well be satisfied with a plain present. On the other hand, Diels–Kranz include it as DK 59 A 28, the first of the section: ‘Apophthegmatik’, and that seems to me to be also quite possible; perhaps it even makes better sense of the future tense. Encountered outside of the Aristotelian frame, this little saying might easily be taken to be an exhortation to the power of positive or optimistic thinking: ‘Things will turn out as you think...’ Of course, if that’s right, then Aristotle has either misunderstood or else has wilfully included here in his catalogue of early assertions of this general view something he knows well is not absolutely apposite. Lanza’s note in his 1966 edition of Anaxagoras thinks this is intolerable (ad A 28, p. 37–8) on the grounds that (i) this would imply there was some kind of Anaxagorean ethical view, which is otherwise unattested and (ii) Aristotle would not be guilty of such ‘una voluntaria grave improprietà’. I’m not sure about either reason. Cherniss, who is cited with disapproval by Lanza, is predictably quite happy with finding Aristotle so guilty and can comfortably say that A 28 is a bit of Anaxagorean moralising. I don’t think there are easy answers to Aristotle’s propriety or otherwise, but it is certainly clear that in this passage he is on the look out for any sign in his predecessors of passages that point in the general direction of the thesis he’s proposing. And I am also not so sure of Lanza’s (i). First, a good case could be made for there being a moral or teleological aspect to Anaxagoras’ cosmology. I don't think I've made up my mind about that yet. But certainly, there are other snippets of moralising here and there ascribed to Anaxagoras, and some are found even in Aristotle himself (see DK 59 A 30 = EN 1141b3ff. and 1179a13, EE 1215b6ff, 1216a11, indeed all of the ‘Apophthegmatik’). Now, these may be meagre pickings, but I’ve no reason to doubt that Anaxagoras was also interested in matters ethical, broadly conceived.

Reading Sextus Empiricus

Apologies for not saying very much recently about ancient philosophy. This is mostly because I have been stuck doing various sorts of administrative nonsense over the first few days of term or have been tidying up things for publication so they're not the right sort of stuff to be thrown into the ether. But something I've gone back to in the last couple of days has got me wondering, and it's just possible somebody reading this might be able to help.

I am trying to think about Sextus Empiricus and about various ways of reading his work. People are interested in and have written a lot about his sources and also about the structure of PH and M. People have also sometimes been interested in the strength of the various arguments he offers and about how to account for the fact that some of them are pretty crummy, indeed so evidently crummy it's worth thinking about why they are there at all. (Sometimes, people point to the last chapters of PH (PH 3.280-81) and the idea that sometimes only a weak dose is needed to cure someone of a dogmatic ill. I think this is a bit odd, by the way: a weak dose is still an effective dose, even if its effectiveness is limited; it can tackle only mild (e.g.) fevers. I don't really see how someone with a weak commitment to a dogmatic position would be served by a bad argument while someone heavily committed to a view will need a better argument... It's rather good to think that the level of commitment to some dogmatic view or other does not vary in direct relation to one's ability to spot a decent argument.)

Anyway, what I can't find much discussion of is how we are supposed to read the text. I mean: Is it supposed that we just start at the beginning and move through to the end? Is it the sort of thing you go to to 'look up' a particular counter-argument? Are you supposed to flick backwards and forwards, adding to and supplementing the gappy arguments? (How possible was it to find particular bits of text, in any case?) Indeed, I am beginning to lament the lack in Sextan studies of the (perhaps sometimes excessive) sort of discussion you find of Platonic works. Find what looks for all the world like a crap argument in Plato and people get terrible exercised over how it is in fact pedagogical, or proleptic, or an invitation to further reflection, or some such. It's all to be made right by thinking about the interaction between the text and an active, thinking, reader. Why not try some of that with Sextus? A Pyrrhonist, after all, is supposed to be in some sense an active thinker, open to new arguments and only ever provisionally suspending judgement. In that case, I wonder if we should grant the reader a more active role in engaging with Sextus and, in turn, grant Sextus a more sophisticated notion of how his text might be read and used. I can't see much of this sort of thing in the literature on Sextus, but if there is some out there I'd be very glad to hear of it.

Now, this is all a bit up in the air at the moment and Sextus himself is not overly forthcoming with handy pointers about what we should do with him. But I'm going to see how far these thoughts take me.

Methadone

It's not easy finishing something you've enjoyed enormously. So when S and I got through season 5 of The Wire I was left with an odd combination of feelings. I have never watched anything on TV so engrossing and I suppose in a way I was sad that I had to leave that world behind. I'll watch it again, of course, but that will be a different experience.

Anyway, to help the come-down we've gone back to Homicide: Life on the street which is, as STC said yesterday, obviously a bit of a dry-run for The Wire. (In fact, I think she said it was to The Wire what Titus Andronicus is to King Lear...) It's a bit odd watching things backwards, as it were, like this and I suppose that you inevitably start viewing the earlier series is a teleological way. Still, we watched the first episode last night and beyond the shaky camera work the dialogue is recognisably sharp and witty mixed with the equally familiar grim realities of the job. And Gus from the Baltimore Sun is a cop! With a terrible haircut.

Just one another thing I noticed from the first episode. This is 1993, right? So why are they all still using manual typewriters?

So it begins...

Easter term, that is. The exam term. A term of stress and anxiety followed by a couple of weeks of equally serious parties and ceremonies. And today is one of the most frantic days as we try to see as many students and tutees as we can before the teaching begins on Thursday. (It also so happened that today was one of the rare occasions when our childcare arrangements failed, so things are even more frantic than expected. Ho hum.)

Still, the sun is shining and college only really feels right when it is full of students doing whatever it is they do. Anyway, the place feels properly alive.

Jaffa cakes

Giles Coren makes an enormous one here, inspired by www.pimpthatsnack.com (their recipe is here):

When taxonomy matters

Reading a recent post on Fairing's Parish about taxonomy I was reminded of a recent momentous legal judgement about the correct classification of the M&S chocolate teacake, which has for twenty years been classified by the tax office as a biscuit and therefore subject to VAT. That means we the cake eaters have been overcharged by 17.5% per teacake. (It was not clear whether this has also affected what I take to be the paradigm example of this species, namely the Tunnocks tea cake, but never mind.)

In fact there are two issues here. First there is the question of how to distinguish between a cake and a biscuit. Of course, some cases are very obvious: a Rich Tea is a biscuit, but a Black Forest gateau is a cake. But there are some other more difficult examples. What, precisely, is a Jaffa Cake? (It seems to be classed for tax purposes as a biscuit, and the authoritative site: A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down agrees.) Incidentally ANCOTAASD has a useful field guide for cake/biscuit identification here.

Second even once the specimen has been classified, there are some further very complicated rules about which biscuits and which cakes are subject to VAT. For example, a biscuit such as a chocolate chip cookie 'where the chips are either included in the dough or pressed into the surface before baking' is not subject to VAT, whereas 'wholly or partly coated biscuits including biscuits decorated in a pattern with chocolate or some similar product' are. The BBC offered the following useful table:

VAT ON CAKES AND BISCUITS

How various products are classified by HM Revenue and Customs

Standard rated [17.5% VAT]

"Biscuits"

All wholly or partly coated biscuits including biscuits decorated in a pattern with chocolate or some similar product

Gingerbread men decorated with chocolate unless this amounts to no more than a couple of dots for eyes

Chocolate shortbread

"Cakes"

"Snowballs" without such a base are classed as confectionary

Shortbread partly or wholly chocolate-covered

Zero rated [no VAT]

"Biscuits"

Chocolate chip biscuits where the chips are either included in the dough or pressed into the surface before baking

Jaffa Cakes

Bourbon and other biscuits where the chocolate or similar product forms a sandwich layer between two biscuit halves and is not continued on to the outer surface

"Cakes"

Marshmallow teacakes (with a crumb, biscuit or cake base topped with a dome of marshmallow coated in either chocolate, sugar strands or coconut)

Caramel or "millionaire's" shortcake consisting of a base of shortbread topped with a layer or caramel and (usually) chocolate or carob

Flapjacks

Surprising conclusions...

An article in this week's THE wonders whether universities ought to vary their methods of assessment and, perhaps, offer students a choice of different assessment methods. Perhaps that's right; I'm not sure. But one of the conclusions reached by the University Mental Health Advisors Network did make me splutter into my coffee...

A policy paper adopted by the network says: "Allowing students to know what questions they are going to be asked in an examination beforehand ... significantly reduces the fear factor associated with the unknown."

Who'd have thought?

Death wishes

I'm very much enjoying Julian Barnes' Nothing to be frightened of, partly because it is an excellently humane discussion of death, thoughts about death, grief and mortality (something of a professional interest of mine) and partly because of the occasional appearances in it of Julian's brother Jonathan. There's a nice list of reviews on the Barnes website here. I haven't been through them all but I did notice John Carey in the Sunday Times manages mistakenly to credit Seneca with the invention of the Symmetry argument: 'the time before your birth was no harm to you, so too will be the time after your death'. (Barnes' self-centred-- and surely jokey -- reply to the argument is worth a second thought, though.)

It has made me think over various things which I might come back to here now and then. First, there is an interesting exchange between the J. Barneses over the sense that can be given to the familiar funeral observation that X is 'what so-and-so would have wanted'... Is such a thought just plain silly?

It depends on what the implied antecedent of this claim is. It is certainly silly, I think, if the thought is something like: 'Had so-and-so been here [sc. at her funeral], this is what she would have wanted'. I suppose there might be some far-out view of post mortem existence which believes that it is possible to witness one's own funeral, perhaps even experience being buried or cremated, but even on this view the wish ought to be expressed not in the remote conditional form but in a plain indicative: 'It is what so-and-so wants', or '... did want', '.. said she wanted' etc. I suppose the fact that it is not in the indicative is meant to convey the idea that in fact no one can be pleased at how one's own funeral is being conducted, but once you have grasped that point then it's probably important to go on to see that given this fact then it becomes non-sensical to worry about whether the funeral would or would not meet the approval of the deceased. There are views which hold that it does indeed matter to the deceased how their interests and wishes are treated after their death but, again, holding one of these would best be served by simply saying: this is what so-and-so did want.

So the only proper sense I think that can be given to the familiar kind of wish is that it conveys the idea that such-and-such is what so-and-so would have wanted had we bothered to ask her what kind of music, say, she wanted at the funeral. That is, while she was alive, this is the sort of thing she would have requested for her funeral. Whether it is rational to have preferences about how one's remains and memory are treated after one's death is another question entirely, of course.

Plutarch in Oxford

The provisional programme and booking details for Eleni Kechagia's conference on Plutarch and philosophy (Oxford, 14-15 July 2008) have now been posted here. I'm going to be saying something about Plutarch's anti-Epicurean polemic in the Non posse.

Nostos

Good news today. For the last two years I've been squatting in what should have been one of the Fellows' guest rooms. Next week I get to return to my own office and I went to have a look around today. The room itself was locked up but the college have decided to do a makeover on the staircase with new carpets and a lick of paint. It all looks very nice; there are even new signs pointing people in the right direction around the maze of corridors. It will be good to get back. I suppose most Cambridge fellows feel very proprietorial about the offices (or 'rooms'; in my case there's only one room, so it's not so appropriate). In fact, it is the issue which generates the most envy between people in college and can generate the strongest feelings if there is ever a proposal to move someone out or rearrange office distribution... In Corpus, it is one of the few things that is at the sole discretion of the Master, and it is not a power which I would want to have.

Other good news. While waiting for the new Portishead album (Third, out April 28) I can listen to the new James album, out on Monday. I might even dig out my old t-shirt to celebrate. There's some info about it (the album, not the t-shirt) here. From a sneaky listen to the preview tracks it's recognisably the sound that takes me straight back to a Sixth Form common room and arguments over the tape player which usually ended with a compilation of 'Come Home', 'How was it for you?' and (though this is a bit hazy) something by The Wonder Stuff (possibly: 'It's yer money I'm after baby'). Heady times. But what has happened to Tim Booth's hair? I thought the silly beard was a prop for his appearance as Judas in the (cringeworthy) Manchester Passion. But apparently not. (Here he is, by the way, if you can bear it, singing 'Heaven knows I'm miserable now' (2 mins into the clip.) I can't count how many ways this is so wrong. To do this to this song... Why? Just because it mentions 'heaven'? The horror. The horror.)