An allusion in Non posse?

This might be something of a stretch, but I wonder what others make of the following suggestion.

I'm thinking again about Plutarch's Non posse and how he criticises the Epicurean theory of pleasure and happiness from a Platonist standpoint. (I gave a paper on this last year at a conference in Oxford on Plutarch and philosophy and have been revising the paper for --  I hope -- publication in the proceedings.)  I think Plutarch has two general lines of attack: first, the Epicureans mistake the intermediate state of freedom from pain for pleasure itself. They do not see that there is a distinction between being free from pain and experiencing pleasure.  And second, by failing to stress the true pleasure to be had from the workings of the rational soul they therefore reduce humanity to the level of mere beasts.

Both of these criticisms, it seems to me, are driven by Plutarch's understanding of Plato Republic IX.  Some of the points of contact between Non posse and Republic IX are clear and obvious.  But I wonder how far the influence penetrates through the work.  For example, I have been wondering if I can make something of Plutarch's choice of vocabulary at 1091F. At that point of the text he is expanding on the notion that the Epicureans restrict pleasure to mere absence of pain and connects this with the idea that Epicurean pleasure is somehow sub-human; they put joy into a tiny and closed pen where it is forced to twist and turn (ἐν ᾧ στρέφεται καὶ κυλινδεῖται).   I am particularly interested in κυλινδεῖται.  Although this verb is not uncommon in Plutarch, this is the only time he uses this form. Is it perhaps meant as an allusion to the nature of the ‘many beautiful things’ at Plato Rep. 479d4 which 'roll about' between being and not-being?  

The allusion would at least be relevant since one of Plutarch's complaints is that the Epicureans are concerned only with perceptible or bodily objects of pleasure, to be contrasted with the proper objects of true pleasure which are the intelligible objects only accessible by reason alone.  Furthermore, the discussion of pleasure in Rep. IX seems to me to be rather like the famous passages at the end of book V in so far as in both there is both a dialectical argument aimed against some misguided, indeed 'sick', opponents which attempts to reveal their respective mistakes about pleasure and knowledge combined with another argument which makes use of the developed metaphysics of what we can for convenience call 'Forms and particulars' - very roughly: unchanging intelligible objects grasped by reason and changing perceptible objects grasped by perception.

I suppose I am wondering whether there is any other evidence of Platonists of about Plutarch's period getting as interested in the argument at the end of Rep. V as more recent modern interpreters of the work.  In that case, could Plutarch be casually alluding to it here?  On the other hand, the argument with the lovers of sights and sounds is now a staple of our Classics second-year ancient philosophy paper.  So, has the fact that I have spent many weeks every Michaelmas term for the last ten years or more (plus summers spent reading examination answers on the same topic) going through that argument led me to spot possible allusions to it everywhere?

Yet another interesting Cyrenaic claim

Here is another interesting bit of Cyrenaic doxography, from Diogenes Laertius 2.90:

λέγουσι δὲ μηδὲ κατὰ ψιλὴν τὴν ὅρασιν ἢ τὴν ἀκοὴν γίνεσθαι ἡδονάς. τῶν γοῦν μιμουμένων θρήνους ἡδέως ἀκούομεν, τῶν δὲ κατ' ἀλήθειαν ἀηδῶς.

They say that pleasures do not arise from mere sight or hearing alone. At any rate, we listen with pleasure to those imitating a lament but without pleasure to those who are doing it in truth.

The idea seems to be as follows: proof that pleasure is not generated by mere perceptual experience alone is provided by the fact that two identically sounding performances of a song of lament can produce different hedonic results. We might enjoy listening to someone merely performing a song of mourning, that is: someone who is not in fact themselves in mourning. But we do not take pleasure in listening to someone singing who is genuinely in mourning.

This is an interesting claim in itself and is also interesting given other Cyrenaic views. It seems that a lot of weight is carried by the distinction between someone merely 'pretending' to lament and someone doing so 'in truth'.

One question not addressed explicitly here is whether the distinction between the enjoyable performance and the not-enjoyable performance is that the audience is believes that one is being performed 'for real', as it were, and the other is a mere imitation. Presumably so, since the conclusion would seem to depend on the premise that the performances sound identical in order to rule out the possibility that the different hedonic effects are indeed due to hearing alone. There is therefore no difference in the mere audible nature of the performances being compared that might be responsible for one appearing an imitation and another appearing to be genuine.

I imagine also that the compressed report here is not meant to claim that an audience is always either well-informed or even correct in its assessment of the singer. By this I mean that we can imagine someone being mistaken and imagining that a lament is an expression of genuine grief although in fact it is merely an imitation or, conversely, someone imagining that a performance is a mere imitation when in fact it is generated by genuine grief. It would be odd to think that the claim here is that we take pleasure in listening to imitations of lament whether or not we in fact believe the performance to be an imitation or that we do not take pleasure in listening to genuine laments whether or not we think that they are genuine. That would be odd because it would allow the possibility of taking pleasure in something we take to be a genuine expression of grief (but which is not).

In that case, the difference must lie in the fact that one's enjoyment or not of a performance is affected crucially by one's conception of the mental state or perhaps even intention of the performer. In a way, that is rather helpful because given the general framework of Cyrenaic epistemology it would be difficult if not impossible to have an accurate and reliable grip on another person's affective states. Nevertheless, it is an interesting aesthetic claim and perhaps even a true one.

Another Cyrenaic titbit

I'm still puzzling over Plutarch QC 705 A-B mentioned in the last post. Not much progress so far, although I am beginning to suspect that there is an interesting connection between the claim found there that pleasures are somehow circumscribed ('with walls running round') and the metaphor of the Cyrenaics retreating within themselves like besieged townspeople that I discussed before.

But while I mull that over, I found this in Cicero Tusc. 5.112:

Etenim si nox non adimit vitam beatam, cur dies nocti similis adimat? Nam illud Antipatri Cyrenaici est quidem paulo obscenius, sed non absurda sententia est; cuius caecitatem cum mulierculae lamentarentur, 'Quid agitis?' inquit, 'an vobis nulla videtur voluptas esse nocturna?'

Moreover, if night-time does not take away a good life why should a day that resembles a night do so? That is indeed the point made by the Cyrenaic Anipater (admitteldly, he did so a bit too coarsely but the claim is not outrageous.) When some young women were lamenting his blindness he said 'What is the problem? Have you never come upon any night-time pleasure?'

Cicero has been trying to persuade us that blindness is not an insurmountable obstacle to happiness. People don't suddenly lose their good life when it gets dark at the end of the day so why should the permanent darkness of blindness be any different? The Cyrenaic Antipater obviously thinks a good life should be accounted for in terms of pleasure and therefore makes the good point that there is plenty of pleasure to be had in the dark. So his blindness does not prevent him living a good life. This still falls short of the claim in Plutarch that the pleasures of sex are best or more profitably enjoyed in the dark, but I wonder if this anecdote and Plutarch's report may well be connected. It is possible that this bon mot from Antipater became useful to those like Plutarch interested in drawing sharp distinctions between the two Hellenistic hedonist schools, to the detriment of the Epicureans. And since Epicurus appears to have gone into some detail in his Symposium about the right time to have sex (before dinner, it seems) then a handy anecdote about a Cyrenaic who has plenty of fun in the dark would be rather hard to resist.

Cyrenaics do it with the lights off

I've found a curious report about Cyrenaic attitudes to sex and desire in Plutarch's Non posse:

ὅρα δ’ ὅσῳ μετριώτερον οἱ Κυρηναϊκοί, καίπερ ἐκ μιᾶς οἰνοχόης Ἐπικούρῳ πεπωκότες, οὐδ’ ὁμιλεῖν ἀφροδισίοις οἴονται δεῖν μετὰ φωτὸς ἀλλὰ σκότος προθεμένους, ὅπως μὴ τὰ εἴδωλα τῆς πράξεως ἀναλαμβάνουσα διὰ τῆς ὄψεως ἐναργῶς ἡ διάνοια πολλάκις ἀνακαίῃ τὴν ὄρεξιν.

Consider how much more measured are the Cyrenaics although they have drunk from the same wine-jug as Epicurus: they think that one ought not to have sex in the light, but rather prefer darkness so that the mind, taking in the images of the act vividly through the eyes, should not time and again rekindle the desire.

Plutarch Non posse 1089A (= SSR IV.A.207)

The Loeb points also to:

(1) Plut. QC 654D (= Us. 61) where, although the text is perhaps corrupt, we are apparently told that Epicurus rather wantonly encouraged lights-on sex (σκοπῶμεν οὖν, εἰ δοκεῖ, πότερον ἐμμελῶς καὶ προσηκόντως ὁ Ἐπίκουρος <ἢ> παρὰ πᾶν δίκαιον ἀφαιρεῖ τὴν Ἀφροδίτην τῆς νυκτός·) This is part of a longer discussion of Epicurus' Symposium in which Epicurus advised that the best time for sex is before dinner so that digestion should be disturbed as little as possible.

(2) Plut. QC 705A–B (not in SSR): ὅθεν οὐδεμία τῶν τοιούτων ἡδονῶν ἀπόκρυφός ἐστιν οὐδὲ σκότους δεομένη καὶ τῶν τοίχων ‘περιθεόντων’, ὡς οἱ Κυρηναϊκοὶ λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ στάδια ταύταις καὶ θέατρα ποιεῖται, καὶ τὸ μετὰ πολλῶν θεάσασθαί τι καὶ ἀκοῦσαι ἐπιτερπέστερόν ἐστι καὶ σεμνότερον, οὐκ ἀκρασίας δήπου καὶ ἡδυπαθείας ἀλλ’ ἐλευθερίου διατριβῆς καὶ ἀστείας μάρτυρας ἡμῶν ὅτι πλείστους λαμβανόντων.

The kind of pleasures being discussed here under the topic 'That the pleasures of kakomousia should particularly be guarded against, and how', are the pleasures from watching and listening to musical performances.

The message in the first two passages seems to be that the Cyrenaics had some idea that sex in the dark was preferable while Epicurus took a more visual approach in order, Plutarch wants to insists, to ensure that there were some useful memories of the event stored away for repeat enjoyment at a later time.

Clearly, however, the Non posse 1089A passage is a little odd – or, at best, very compressed – since it is surely not at all plausible that the Cyrenaics' view was based on the very Epicurean-sounding eidōla theory of perception which is invoked there. So I am a little confused.

There is something rhetorical about the passage, no doubt, and Plutarch is enjoying making the Cyrenaics into the more sober hedonists in comparison with the Epicureans. But I am finding it a little hard to imagine why the Cyrenaics would have been so keen on turning the lights out.

Robert Brown comments: 'Presumably, the Cyrenaic recommendation was based on the hedonistic reasoning that sex in the dark affords more pleasure (cf. Eur. fr. 524 N).' [1]. Maybe. That's an empirical matter, of course, and may vary from person to person. And there is no sign of that sort of justification in the Non posse passage which refers only to the apparently unwanted re-kindling of desire. It is also not clear why the Cyrenaics would have been particularly averse to rekindling desire unless the implication is that remembering the act via the visual memories might at a later time (perhaps time and time again, if that is the sense of πολλάκις) set off a desire which might be hard to satisfy and therefore painful. On the other hand, that would be a sort of prudential rationale on the Cyrenaics' part for which in general they seem not to have had much time .

Any ideas?

[1] R. D. Brown, Lucretius on love and sex (Leiden, 1987), 109 n.23.

Old fools and symmetry arguments

Since I started thinking about the Epicurean arguments against the fear of death I have been collecting 'symmetry arguments': arguments that make a point about the proper attitude to take towards post mortem non-existence on the basis of some account of our attitude to pre-natal non-existence. Yesterday I found another interesting example in Philip Larkin's 'The old fools' (in his High Windows (Faber and Faber, 1974). The second stanza begins:

At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here...

So, to bulldozer through the poetry for the philosophical argument, Larkin denies the symmetry between the two periods of non-existence on the grounds that the first - pre-natal non-existence - is tolerable because it will end while the second - post mortem non-existence - is to be feared or hated because it will go on for ever.

Horrible histories

The CBBC programme Horrible Histories is still making me laugh. There's a good collection of sketches here, but I'll link directly to a couple of my favourites:

Stone age tool-set ad:



Helen of Troy as a teen photo-love-story:



And not on YouTube yet, the lovely song 'I'm a Greek (part II here)' sung by Aristotle and Archimedes: 'I'm a Greek! I'm a Greek! We're all so magnifique!'

Surprise appearances

I still find it a bit surprising when I see people I know or work with mentioned in non-academic sorts of things. There usually are a couple in the Saturday paper here and there, and I'm beginning to get used to them. But then there are the very unusual sightings.

For example, I recently discovered the excellent Professor Oliver Rackham (pictured here alongside his recent portrait) cited approvingly in Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur's The best of Is it just me or is everything shit? He appears in the entry s.v. 'Carbon offsets'. Oliver is praised for comparing 'the practical effect of carbon offset tree-planting to drinking more water to keep down rising sea levels'. (I think the thought comes originally from his wonderful book on Woodlands but it seems to have become a favourite observation, judging by a quick Google search.)

Defending ‘Socrates’

Last year I wrote a response to an interesting paper by Constantine Sandis. His piece, in Think 17/18, 85–98, was entitled ‘In defence of four Socratic doctrines’. (That volume of Think is not available on-line but you can find a pdf of an uncorrected proof here.) My response, ‘On defending Socrates’, was in the same volume, pp.99–101. (A pdf of a draft of that piece can be read here.) Now Sandis has replied to my response (and to John Shand’s – whose response to Sandis was published in that same volume, pp.103–7) in Think 22, 101–5. If you have the right access to CUP's online journals, you can read that 2009 piece, ‘Contextualist vs. analytic history of philosophy: a study in Socrates’, here.

Responses to responses are not always necessary or welcome. But Sandis raises two points that I think are worth pursuing. The first, more local one, concerns a thought about the reasons that we might find offered in some Platonic work or other for the notion that there are ‘Forms’, for example the Form of beauty. Sandis writes (2009, 102):

Warren objects that it is ‘far from necessary to make the leap from the recognition of some common property of ‘beauty’ which we can identify in such diverse instances as Helen of Troy, the sunlight on a college lawn, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and an elegant mathematical proof to the assertion that there must be some further thing, ‘beauty itself’, distinct from and separate from all these instances.’ He suggests, instead, that (i) concepts such as that of beauty may be a family resemblance concept besides which (ii) even if this is not so, there remain alternative accounts that are metaphysically more plausible than that of Plato. I could not agree more with both of these last two remarks, but I fail to see how they support his view. For any concept X of a thing Y, the fact: that X is a family resemblance concept does not demonstrate that there is no such thing as Y. If anything, we might say that there must (at least in some relevant sense) be such a thing as Y for there to be a family resemblance concept of it in the first place.

I merely meant to claim that the fact that a variety of items might all reasonably be said to be ‘beautiful’ is no reason to think there must be Beauty distinct from and independent of these various beautiful items. There might, in fact, be no particular quality or qualities that all these items share. I had no view on the matter to support or not to support; I wanted to say that there is insufficient reason to think that this Platonic argument is at all plausible. Perhaps I should have stressed the insistence on what I take to be the distinctly Platonist notion of a Form of Beauty, namely that it is ‘separate’ from the various items that might truly be said to be beautiful. [1]

Still, as I now understand Sandis, his aim was to suggest that a less ontologically committed view can be a defensible version of the ‘Socratic’ thesis of Forms and that a complementary, but similarly deflationist, Wittgensteinian account of ‘recollection’ can be offered in which ‘recollecting justice’ amounts to ‘recollecting the multifarious ways in which words such as ‘justice’ and ‘knowledge’ are used’ (2008, p.90). Again, I suppose it might and it is an interesting idea. But at this point the deflation seems to me to have gone so far as to let all the Platonic air out of the thesis. What is left is not a Socratic view, to my mind, with or without scare quotes, nor a recognisably Platonic one. (In fact I wonder whether the Socrates of the Meno more or less explicitly says that this is not at all the right way to proceed: Meno 72b–d.) This is what troubled me most: if the price of making a ‘Socratic thesis’ more ‘relevant and plausible’, indeed ‘defensible’, is to drain it of the recognisably Platonic substance, then I don’t see why we begin by wondering about a Socratic thesis at all.

This brings us to the second and perhaps more interesting point in Sandis’ 2009 piece. I had previously not sufficiently appreciated the sense in which his 2008 piece is avowedly ‘anachronistic’ (2008, p. 90). Still, I imagined that the reason the journal editor asked my to reply was because I was thought to be someone who would do so from a background of work in ancient philosophy. So I did. Still, Sandis now helpfully makes clear his view (2009, p.103):

My central task was ... to offer a Wittgensteinian reading of certain Socratic doctrines in the hope that this renders them more relevant and plausible than standard interpretations do (though the latter may well be correct from a historiographical point of view). Indeed I write of my own account that ‘such a linguistic reading of Plato may seem ridiculously anachronistic, and I certainly wouldn’t want to put it forward as the correct interpretation of his methodology’.

I am not sure that a Wittgensteinian reading makes a Socratic doctrine more relevant or plausible. Perhaps it does; for now, let us leave that question aside. I am certainly not objecting to the idea, as Sandis puts it, of an ‘analytical’ (which later he glosses as ‘non-historiographical’, 2009, p.104) rather than ‘contextualist’ (for which Sandis – I imagine with a smile – offers ‘antiquarian’ as an alternative title) approach to the history of philosophy generally. I suppose I see myself more as following the latter course while Sandis on this occasion chose the former. But we should be clear: ‘contextualism’ does not preclude critical evaluation or analysis. And, I would suggest, analytical approaches cannot be entirely innocent of context. Sandis asks:

If determining what a historical figure or set of figures actually thought is an aim not shared by the analytic approach, then where exactly does its value lie? (2009, p.104)

To my mind, it is sometimes part of my job to try to work out what some historical figure or other actually said or meant. Sometimes, I suppose they thought what they said, but that is not always the case and for the most part I am interested in ancient texts rather than long-dead people. In the case of Plato, for example, the interpretative job is importantly complicated by the fact of the form of his writing and the range of ideas in the different works tto such an extent that it is usually prudent to work rather with the question: What does this dialogue actually have to say about this philosophical question? The context for the contextualist approach can vary. (In the case of Socrates I confess I am inclined to give up on wondering what the historical Socrates actually thought.) [2]

Sandis goes on:

The consideration of a philosophical text in (varying degrees of) contextual isolation allows us to focus on the most charitable formulation of arguments and ideas which it has inspired or anticipated. (2009, p.104)

I suppose I see much less of a disjunction between the two approaches. Charitable interpretation (informed by philosophical analysis) has an important role in contextualist approaches (since the context is often of itself insufficient to determine a single clear interpretation, both for complete texts and to a larger extent in incomplete or fragmentary ones). And at this point Sandis and I may simply be involved in a verbal disagreement; the bracketed ‘(varying degrees of)’ in the last quotation is perhaps significant. For me, for there to be much sense in calling a thesis under scrutiny ‘Socratic’, it ought to have a fighting chance of being a thesis we might reasonably think could be ascribed to Socrates, whether by this we mean the historical figure or the figure in some Platonic work or other. Otherwise, I see no reason to invoke the name; let’s just get on and wonder what we now ought to think about beauty, expertise, and such like. It may, of course, be true that Wittgenstein, say, thought that his own view of some matter or other could be ascribed to or was in some way inspired by a reading of Platonic works. But that is itself a question for contextualist interpretation.


[1] ‘For any concept X of a thing Y, the fact: that X is a family resemblance concept does not demonstrate that there is no such thing as Y’. Of course. And I suppose this is true on either of the following construals of X and Y. If X is supposed to stand for e.g. beauty and Y of some thing, e.g. a sunset, then of course the notion that beauty is (or may be) a family resemblance term does not demonstrate that there is no such thing as a sunset, or even a beautiful sunset. (I did not claim it did.) If X is supposed to stand for e.g. a concept of beauty and Y of some thing, e.g. beauty, then of course the notion that the concept of beauty is a family resemblance concept does not demonstrate that there is no such thing as beauty. (I did not claim it did; I do claim that the ‘beauty’ that would be consistent with the hypothesis is not recognisably a Socratic or Platonic idea of beauty.)

[2] There are some helpful thoughts about this in J. Barnes, ‘La philosophie entre guillemets’ in M. Canto-Sperber and P. Pellegrin eds. Le style de la pensée: recueil de textes en hommage à Jacques Brunschwig, Paris 2002, 522–47, at 529ff. Barnes is reacting to the two pieces, by Brunschwig and Aubenque, I mentioned in an earlier post here.

Goths in hot weather

A wonderful blog with terrific pictures of some very committed goths. And even some music:

Tradotto!

For the first time something of mine has been published in translation. An Italian edition of my 2007 Presocratics book has now arrived. Here's the cover, not perhaps as nice as the English original but bright and breezy all the same. Click on it for the link to the publishers. I haven't seen a copy yet so if someone does, they will have to tell me how I sound in translation.

Children's laureate

The new Children's laureate is Anthony Browne. I love his Voices in the park and, of course, My Dad.

In other news, I managed yesterday to smash my favourite cereal bowl, one of the Kellogg's 'footbowls' they gave as free gifts during the Japan/Korea 2002 World Cup (which had some games on at our breakfast time because of the time difference, geddit?). I loved that bowl because somehow it was proportioned just right -- except it was no good for Weetabix (vita-bix?): for those you need a bowl with a broader more or less flat base otherwise the biscuit doesn't soak up the milk evenly and you get a soggy end and a dry end. Still, today S bought me a FC Barcelona cereal bowl to replace it. It made my day.

More Brown idiocy

Lucky us: the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) has been scrapped (report here) and replaced by a new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills under Lord Mandelson. Universities and other tertiary educational institutions do not merit their own department and, it seems, are now viewed by this government as a subsidiary arm of business. Hopeless. The goals of the new department, we are told, are as follows:

• Advocate the needs of business across government, especially of UK small businesses;
• Promote an enterprise environment that is good for business and good for consumers;
• Design tailored policies for sectors of the UK economy that represent key future strengths and where government policy can add to the dynamics of the market;
• Assess the changing skills needs of the UK economy, especially the intermediate and high skills vital in a global economy and design policies to meets them through public and privately funded life long training;
• Invest in the development of a higher education system committed to widening participation, equipping people with the skills and knowledge to compete in a global economy and securing and enhancing Britain's existing world class research base;
• Continue to invest in the UK's world class science base and develop strategies for commercialising more of that science;
• Continue to invest in skills through the Further Education system to help people through the downturn and to prepare Britain for the future;
• Deliver on the government's ambitious objectives to expand the number of apprenticeships;
• Encourage innovation in the UK;
• Defend a sound regulatory environment that encourages enterprise and skills;
• Collaborate with the RDAs in building economic growth in the English regions;
• Work with the EU in shaping European regulation and European policies that affect the openness of the single market and the competitiveness of
• European and British companies;
• Continue to work to expand UK exports and encourage inward investment to the UK.

So that's what universities are meant to be for... Any sign there of a commitment to the very best research and learning, scholarship and education in, say, the arts and humanities? No. I am instead apparently tasked with generating business leaders and entrepreneurs. The crass instrumentalist attitude this government has to education (it's not new: remember this?) knows no bounds.

Thanatological explosion

There seems to be a rash of books about the philosophy of death being published at the moment. The following have all been published in the last couple of years, and three of them in 2009. I wonder why. It's an interesting subject, of course, and in the last twenty years there has been a steady flow of articles on the topic and an increasingly tangled set of views. Perhaps the subject has just got to a point now at which it is thought profitable to take stock and present a general overview of the various options and also it has perhaps now made itself on to university course provisions, thereby generating a market for publishers to aim at.

I had a crack at this general area from a more historical perspective, but I have tried my best to keep up with the increasing literature. I wonder whether the topic has reached something of a staging point; propelled initially by reactions to Nagel's 1979 article (in his Mortal questions) and then Parfit's challenging work on temporal asymmetries in Reasons and persons, the current publishing boom is in many ways following the example of Feldman's 1992 Confrontations with the reaper. What next? It seems to me that what is needed now is something innovative to set the discussion off in a new direction. It's not clear precisely where that will come from: empirical psychology, perhaps?

Fragments

There is a wonderful passage in Glenn Most's article on collecting philosophical fragments[1] which I think is worth sharing. It was pointed out to me by a graduate student earlier in the year, but I've just got hold of a copy of the volume and found it again.

[T]here is a seduction to working on fragments which is often neglected in scholarly discussions of the subject but which nevertheless seems to exercize a powerful subliminal fascination, especially upon scholars. Closed, finished texts can sometimes seem to rebuff us. They are already perfect: what can we add to them besides our own misunderstandings? But a text upon which time and fortune have unleashed all their destructive fury can present itself to us in the form of fragments: wounded, incomplete, crying out for out help if it is to speak once more its words which have almost been silenced. Curiosity, and even a kind of piety, urge that we gather such relics; but so too does a deeper, more mysterious urge, which makes us want to render less incomplete the many imperfections of our own experience and to redeem to some degree the dominion that chance and disappointment have over our own lives. Perhaps, if we can succeed in rescuing the broken fragments of some long dead Greek philosopher, then might not the shattered hopes of our own existence somehow be restored? (Most 1998, p.14)

Does this ring true for anyone?

[1] G. W. Most, 'À la recherche du texte perdu: on collecting philosophical fragments', in W. Burkert, L. Gemelli Marciano, E. Matelli and L. Orelli (eds.) Fragmentsammlungen philosophischer texter der Antike / Le raccolte dei frammenti di filosofi antichi (Aporemata 3), Göttingen, 1998, 1-15.

A personal statement

Today's Guardian had an unhelpful article on the attitude of Cambridge admissions to an applicant's 'personal statement', a box on the UCAS form that allows the student to say something in joined-up prose about why they are applying for what they are applying for, why they are interested, what they've done in terms of preparation for the course and the like. The article offers the headline: ' Admitting defeat. So, universities don't read personal statements, A* grades aren't to be trusted and A-levels are routinely denigrated. Just what are students meant to make of it all?'

Students would do best not to take the alarming claims in the headline too seriously. Yes, there may have been a slightly clumsy statement recently on this issue, but the university's clarification (to be found here) is, well, pretty clear. We do read personal statements. Carefully. More than once.

What follows is my own view, not endorsed by any admissions tutor or the central admissions office, but since I do play a small role in the admissions process then I think it might be worth my saying how I view things.

The article begins:

Spare a thought for those poor year 12 students who, as they traipse around university open days this summer, will be wondering just what they have to do to get into the course of their choice.

Should they concentrate on beefing up their volunteering, work experience and extracurricular activities in order to have lots to put into their Ucas personal statements in the autumn? Or should they set all else aside and focus exclusively on trying to achieve the new A* grades at A-level?

The second paragraph offers a false dilemma. No, for my part I am not particularly interested in what volunteering work someone has done. But that is because I take my role to be one of assessing applicants for an academic course studying, say, philosophy. Some aspects of what the applicant has been up to - however important in other ways - are irrelevant as far as that goes. It might be interesting to hear that the applicant has been able to manage a number of different demands on his or her time, but that is still at best a minor consideration. But it is also true that I am not solely concerned with examination grades. I do want to read the personal statement because I want to know something about why the applicant is interested in coming to study this particular kind of course. They will have that commitment sorely tested when they get stuck in to the demands of the work, so I want to be assured that it is no passing interest and that they have done something to see if it is indeed a subject they will enjoy studying.

And in all of this, in the assessment of academic qualifications so far and in our reading of the personal statements, we do our best to take into account the applicant's educational background.

The article then claims:

Cambridge has said it does not use personal statements when deciding whom to interview, but it does want students who achieve at least one A*.

Again true, but only in a rather narrow sense. Worse, to put the point like this is again potentially misleading. Personal statements do not determine who is invited to interview, true, but that is because as far as possible we call all applicants to interview whom we think have a sufficiently strong background in prior qualifications to have a shot. They are not however left unused so far as the admissions process goes.

Like the interview, they are one of the ways in which we try to get as full a picture as possible of the candidate from which we can then begin to make an assessment of their suitability and aptitude for the course. It's not particularly mysterious.

Mawkishness

Have you ever been stuck for a compilation CD to play at a funeral? Fret no longer:

(I came across this on the excellent Popjustice...)

Cutting and burning

I’m now looking at the section on the Cyrenaics in Aristocles ap. Eusebius PE 14.19. Here is 14.19.1 (F5 Chiesara):

Ἑξῆς δ’ ἂν εἶεν οἱ λέγοντες μόνα τὰ πάθη καταληπτά· τοῦτο δ’ εἶπον ἔνιοι τῶν ἐκ τῆς Κυρήνης. οὗτοι δ’ ἠξίουν, ὥσπερ ὑπὸ κάρου πιεζόμενοί τινος, οὐδὲν εἰδέναι τὸ παράπαν, εἰ μή τις παραστὰς αὐτοὺς παίοι καὶ κεντῴη· καιόμενοι γὰρ ἔλεγον ἢ τεμνόμενοι γνωρίζειν ὅτι πάσχοιέν τι· πότερον δὲ τὸ καῖον εἴη πῦρ ἢ τὸ τέμνον σίδηρος, οὐκ ἔχειν εἰπεῖν.

This is Chiesara’s translation:

Next will be those who say that the affections (pathē) only are apprehensible; some of those from Cyrene affirm this. As if oppressed by a kind of torpor, they insisted that they knew nothing at all, unless someone standing by struck and pricked them; they said that, when burnt or cut, they knew that they were affected by something, but whether what burnt them was fire, or what cut them iron, they could not tell.

The point I’m interested in is at the end: ‘...whether what burnt them was fire, or what cut them iron, they could not tell’. This seems unusual. It does not say, for example, ‘...whether fire burns or iron cuts, they could not tell’. The difficulty, in other words, is not in assigning certain properties to particular kinds of external object – the familiar sceptical worry about whether fire burns ‘by nature' – but is rather the difficulty of identifying just what external item it was that caused a particular pathos.

Compare the report in Anon. in Plat. Theaet. 65.18–39 (Bastiniani–Sedley):

Ἔ]στιν τι τὸ ποι|ῆ̣σ̣[αν, ἔσ]τ̣ιν τι τὸ πά|[σ]χ̣ο̣ν̣· ε̣ἰ̣ δ̣ὲ̣ ὑπεναντί|20[α ὑ]π̣[ὸ τοῦ] α̣ὐτοῦ πάσ|[χ]ο̣υ̣σ̣ι̣, [ὁ]μ̣ολογήσου̣|[σ]ι μὴ εἶναι ὡρισμέ|ν̣ην τὴν τοῦ ποιή|σ̣α̣ντος ἰδιότητα· οὐ|25κ ἂν γὰρ τὸ αὐτὸ ἐν τῶι | α̣ὐ̣τῶι χρόνωι διάφο|ρα [ε]ἰργάζετο πάθη̣. | ὅθ̣εν οἱ Κυρηναϊκοὶ | μ̣όνα τ̣ὰ πάθη φασὶν |30 κ̣α̣ταληπτά, τὰ δὲ ἔ|ξωθεν ἀκατάληπτα.| ὅ̣τι μὲν γὰρ καίομαι, | φασίν, καταλαμβά|ν̣ω, ὅτι δὲ τὸ πῦρ ἐσ|35τιν καυστικόν, ἄδη|λον· εἰ γὰρ ἦν τοιοῦτο, | πάντα ἂν ἐκαίετο ὑ|π’ αὐτοῦ.

The interesting lines for comparison are 32–9: ‘For that I am burned, they say, I grasp, but that the fire is something that burns is unclear, for if it were such, then everything would be burned by it.’ [1]

There are, as expected, some very useful comments in Voula Tsouna’s book (pp. 68–72). It is certainly true that Aristocles – and other critics of the Cyrenaics – want to insist that they are wrong to refuse to move from pathē to pathē-causing properties in external objects. And it is certainly true that the Cyrenaics will likely insist that the pathē of pleasure and pain alone are what is necessary from practical decision-making. But I still wonder if Aristocles’ criticism is somewhat different; after all, he notes not that they refuse to say that fire is has the property of burning but that they refuse to say that this thing that burned them is fire. Is this a significant difference?

If it is, then my next question is: Has Aristocles garbled things here? Perhaps not, at least not unwittingly, since he goes on in PE 14.19.4 to point out the absurdity of a person not knowing what he is affected by. People know one another, roads, cities, food; craftsmen know their tools and so on. Generally, this way of casting the Cyrenaics’ position makes them appear even more absurd. Perhaps it also makes the Cyrenaics more like the absurdly sceptical Pyrrhonians of PE 14.18 – who don’t even know whether they are cut or burned (14.18.24) – whose general metaphysical outlook, says Aristocles, would prevent them from identifying, naming, and indeed saying, anything determinate.


[1] Commentary ad loc. ‘Il confronto con i Cirenaici è limitato al loro uso della prima premessa (ὅθεν, 29), cioè che lo stesso oggetto taloro impressione contemporaneamente in modo differente due soggetti percipienti. Cfr. S.E. M. VII 191–193. Per il principio (cfr. Pl. Phdr. 263s) che una cosa è F in sé dove esserere F per tutti, si veda Polistrato, De contemptu XXIII–XXIV.’

Income and investment

There's an interesting piece in this week's THES about fundraising from alumni, written from the perspective of one of us academics who is both in the position of needing donations to help to fund a present employer/institution but also, as an alumnus, is on the receiving end of regular such requests. It makes the obvious but important point that how someone feels treated as a student will determine their reaction to later approaches for donations. The last paragraph sums it up very nicely:

The best way to ensure that current students will turn into generous donors of the future is to treat them well when they are there. This does not mean dumbing down, lowering standards or making things easy. But it does mean not being petty, discourteous or worse, seeing students as easily fleeceable paying customers. If you want customer/scholar loyalty, start by treating them as adults from the day they arrive. They may even reciprocate.

Something worth bearing in mind.

Ask a philosopher?

Have you ever wondered what Mary Warnock would have done if she had been in Didier Drogba's flip-flops at the end of the second leg of this year's Champions' League semi-final, reacting to a poor refereeing performance from Tom Henning Ovrebo? Well, wonder no longer because The Observer can reveal all...

I would try not to swear. That would damage me, not the referee. I would look daggers, in hope that the scene was caught on camera, so millions could share my outrage. Afterwards, I would blacken the name of the referee as widely as I could. But revenge is impossible. The referee (like the umpire) is omnipotent. Whereas one may sometimes appeal against a wrong judicial verdict, there is no appeal against these tyrants; as well to pray to God to make something that has happened not have happened, or seek vengeance against the Almighty. What a hope.

• Mary Warnock is a philosopher and crossbench peer

Plut. Adv. Col. 1120C

An eagle-eyed reader noticed that in the original of an earlier post I accidentally missed out an important bit from my quotation of a Loeb translation of part of Adv. Col. 1120C. It's fixed now, but it might be worth looking again to see precisely what the Greek does mean. The phrase in question is:

...ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν πολιορκίᾳ τῶν ἐκτὸς ἀποστάντες εἰς τὰ πάθη κατέκλεισαν αὑτούς...

Einarson and De Lacy give:

... [the Cyrenaics] withdrew as in a siege from the world about them and shut themselves up in their responses...

The translation in the Appendix to Voula Tsouna's The epistemology of the Cyrenaic school (Cambrige, 1999, p.144) gives:

Instead, distancing themselves from external objects, they shut themselves up within their pathē as in a state of siege...

I suppose their might be a subtle difference between 'withdrawing from something' and 'distancing oneself from something' but otherwise these are pretty close. Tsouna perhaps rightly chooses not to translate pathē since much of her preceding discussion has been devoted to sorting out in detail just what these are.

Does this help in deciding whether the Cyrenaics are interested principally in avoiding conflict with the claims of other perceivers about the 'external things' or whether their primary aim is to ensure that their own claims are subject to no possible doubt or qualification? The two points are linked, of course, since the proposed reason for doubting one's own claim e.g. that this honey is sweet is that someone else claims that this honey is not sweet. Still, the idea of a siege suggests that some sort of conflict or attack is being imagined. The image of a siege, by the way, seems to be a relatively common in philosophical writing of about this time. By that I mean that it crops up with some frequency in Sextus (see e.g. the beginning of M 9), often to show how it is possible to undermine the dogmatic edifice constructed by some school or other. I have not, however, seen it used in precisely this sense of the relationship between a perceiver and the world or between competing claims of two perceivers.

Can anyone help me out with other examples?