Deadline day

At 11pm BST the football transfer deadline is reached and there will be no more buying and selling players in the Premiership or Football League until the turn of the year.  You can follow all the 'excitement' on sites like this one.  So, while I am supposed to be doing something else, I wondered whether it would be a good idea to run academic appointments in the same way.  Reports of the form: 'Just spotted: Dr X currently of University Y arriving at University Z for a final lecture presentation test...'  'University P is happy to let unsettled lecturer Q go provided it can lure Dr R as a replacement...'  I think it would be quite fun.  We'd probably all have to hire academic agents to get on the phone and tout us around (or pretend to tout us around in order to arrange a better deal where we are) and it might be a bit stressful to go home and announce that I've been moved to a university the other side of the country and need to be fit to give a first lecture next Saturday, but it might be worth a try...

Regrets.... I've had a few

Here is a very interesting paper by Dan Moller on 'Anticipated emotions and emotional valence' (Philosophers' Imprint 11, 9 (July 2011)'.  It's interesting to me because I am (still) wondering about the treatment of anticipation and memory in Plato, especially in the Philebus and it made me wonder what Plato might have to say about the experience of, say, regret.  In particular, I wonder whether he would welcome Dan's useful distinction between the feeling of regret and the associated sensations it provokes.  I doubt it.  Or he would perhaps claim that even absent pain and the like, the thought that one has made a mistake of the sort it is reasonable to think an object of regret is itself bad and to be avoided.  Why?  Perhaps it is just bad to be the kind of person who does such things. Perhaps regret is a sign that one is not the kind of virtuous agent one would like to be.  (I guess he would allow even a virtuous to live with 'pro tanto' regret: the thought that even the right decision had certain negative consequences.)

By the way, what is the ancient Greek for ‘regret’? I’ve done a quick search on μεταγιγνώσκω and related forms and it doesn’t quite capture it. Later, μετάγνοια/η does mean ‘remorse’ or ‘repentance’ but in classical texts I’m not sure the verb often means more than ‘change one’s mind about’ in a way that may or may well not also suggest an accompanying affective response (see e.g. Pl. Phaedr. 231a4).  Perhaps μεταμέλεια is the better bet (as in e.g. Arist. NE 1110b19...)

Anyway, on the subject of regret:

Damascian sarcasm?

I've just found this comment in Damascius' lectures on Plato's Philebus §171.  Damascius is listing the various possible forms of false pleasures.  After those experienced by people in dreams or by the insane he gives this example:

ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν ἐλπίσι κεναῖς· ὃ καὶ οἱ πεπαιδευμένοι πάσχουσιν ἀρίστας πολιτείας ὑπογράφοντες καὶ ταύταις μὴ παρούσαις ἐφηδόμενοι.

Next: those that come from empty hopes.  This is what educated types experience when they sketch out ideal constitutions and take pleasure in them although they are not real.

Westerink's note assures the reader that Damascius certainly cannot have been making a sarcastic remark about Plato himself, who may, we can suppose, have taken a certain amount of pleasure in thinking about ideal yet unrealised constitutions.  Instead, Westerink sees a reference to some otherwise unknown contemporaries of Damascius.  I don't know enough about Damascius to judge his sense of humour (I suspect he may not have had one) but I like the comment all the same.

Middle age

Here is Miranda Sawyer on being middle-aged and perhaps thinking about having a crisis about it.

I think there are two kinds of problem here and they are sometimes conflated.  That's not such a bad problem because they are also clearly related to one another.  Let's call them:

1.  The problem of lost youth

and

2. The anxiety of comfort

Grand names for pretty mundane things, but they are, I think, distinct.  The problem of lost youth arises when you realise that you are not the young thing you once were.  This means not only that you have to accept that a lot of things you once might have thought were aimed at you (fashion, new technology, music) are not in fact aimed at you but also, perhaps more frightening, that you are now more like your parents were when you were a striving and objecting youth than the current striving and objecting youth.  (Spending my life teaching and talking to people aged 18-25ish makes me sometimes forget this fact but sometimes it reminds me of it starkly and violently.  Also, as my own kids grow up I think I will be more comfortable in the thought of not being a young thing myself.)  In part, this problem is also to do with a loss of possibilities.  I won't now ever be an Olympic athlete or professional footballer.  I won't ever be the charismatic guitarist in a challenging but popular new band.  (These weren't ever genuine possibilities, but now they are definitively ruled out not only by my sheer age but also because I don't think I'd want them any more.  The loss of those desires is something that is itself a little sad.)  Anyway, wrapped up in the problem of lost youth is a connected bundle of thoughts about loss of vigour, or sexual potency, of potential and of energy.

The anxiety of comfort, on the other hand, is a feeling you get when you realise at some point in your life that you have a job, a family, a house (and mortgage or rent) a car to tax and MOT etc.  These often impinge on my thinking in the guise of problems and difficulties but they also stand together as a reminder that I have already acquired and achieved various things.  I don't think any more about what it will be like to have a place of my own for the first time.  I don't aspire to the various things that I already have achieved.  True, we can replace these with other things to aspire to (a better job, a bigger house) in a never ending chain.  And such desires might well keep away for a while the anxiety of comfort by replacing it with a different kind of unfulfillable need.  But this is only ever temporary.  No.  The problem here (and it might be odd to think of it as a problem, but I reckon it is) is that at a certain point at least in the West and in certain parts of Western societies we really do have more or less all that we ever really wanted and more than we ever really need.  We can retain ambitions and hopes but, materially, all is well.  You can go and buy a sports car for weekends and jeopardise your comfort in various ways, but all in all, things are pretty good.  I think this is itself a cause of anxiety since I at least am not very good at appreciating what is excellent about comfort.  I tend to find it dull, boring, routine.  The thought that I might be doing for the rest of my professional life more or less what I do now is strangely irritating.  But why?  I quite like it.  It's what I spent years trying to do...  Some people, eh?

Anyway, that's what I think is the problem.  The two are related because part of what we miss in youth is the very precariousness and uncertainty that is gone.  And it is removed by the attainment of those very things that generate the irritating comfort.  

In other news, here's a greeting from the excellent 'someecards'

New essays on ancient Pyrrhonism

Brill have published (or perhaps are just about to publish) a volume of essays on ancient Pyrrhonism (click on the pic for details).  I wrote one of the essays.  It's, as usual, a pricey volume (€97.00/$133.00) but you might be lucky enough to be able to get online access to pdfs of it all via this site.  I tried to log in using my Cambridge Raven account but it doesn't seem to work.  Other people might have more success.  I haven't read all the other contributions yet.

Contents:
1. Introduction Diego E. Machuca
2. A Pyrrhonian Plato? Again on Sextus on Aenesidemus on Plato
Mauro Bonazzi
4. The Cyrenaics versus the Pyrrhonists on Knowledge of Appearances
Tim O’Keefe
5. What God Didn’t Know (Sextus Empiricus AM IX 162–6)
James Warren
6. Skepticism and Everyday Life
Filip Grgić
7. Sextus Empiricus on Skeptical Piety
Harald Thorsrud
8. Sextus Empiricus’ Style of Writing
Stéphane Marchand
9. Moderate Ethical Realism in Sextus’ Against the Ethicists?
Diego E. Machuca
10. Is the Pyrrhonist an Internalist?
Otávio Bueno

Purely belter

We were discussing at lunch whether there have been any really good football films.  Escape to Victory?  Surely not.  Anyway, here was my suggestion: Purely Belter.  Perhaps it works because it doesn't make the mistake of including choreographed football in it, but it's still a football film without doubt.

Here is the trailer:

And here is the bit where they steal Alan Shearer's car.

A request

In a couple of weeks it will be time for the A level results (well, A2 results, I suppose).  There's been an unusual amount of real news recently so perhaps we will be spared the usual nonsense, but I would like you to send me any links to articles about the following:

1. How terrible it is that so many students now get the top grades and how this shows that standards are slipping.
2. How terrible it is that so many students who get the top grades did not get offers for undergraduate courses at Cambridge or Oxford.

It would be best of all if these two points were made in the same article or, failing that, the same edition of a paper.  But I'll take any examples of either.

And, as ever, do also look out for the classic photo op of (mostly girls) students 'leaping' with joy on receiving their results.  (Best illustrated here; it has already started.)  No doubt people at the Torygraph are praying for hot weather to last until the middle of the month.

Summer summer summertime (summertime)

Unlike the vast majority of jobbing classicists, I didn't go to the Cambridge Triennial last week.  I went here instead and had a lot of fun doing random things like clay pigeon shooting.  It's an interesting thought to wonder what the introduction of shot guns would have done to improve the Triennial... 

But now I'm back at the desk and face the familiar summer chores.  We need to prepare for incoming graduates and undergraduates, write or rewrite or revise the lectures for next year (I've never managed to work out how people write lectures during term; I really need to have them mapped out pretty fully before the teaching proper begins or I'd never keep my head above water), send off those articles I'd promised and badger people for chapters they've promised me (you know who you are...)  All this while trying not to miss out on the kids being home from school for the next few weeks.  And while trying to navigate a path through the hordes of tourists in Cambridge.  It was nearly impossible to move on Silver Street on Saturday and the coaches seem to think they can double park along Queen's Road to allow the backpacked ones to get on and off.  Grrrr.

Here are the Sundays. Harriet Wheeler is lovely.  And so is this song.

Conference news

Here's a plug for a conference in St Andrews in November (click the picture for a bigger version).  You can find some more information here.  If you're feeling brave, you can leave St Andrews and go straight down to London for the Keeling colloquium starting on Monday 7th...

Postcard

I'm in St Andrews to do a PhD viva.  The internal examiner has just taken me for a walking tour through the showers and sunshine and I saw this.  It's very pretty.  And it's very quiet here.  Makes Cambridge in July seem like a buzzing metropolis.

Spend, spend, spend

I spent the morning wondering what I would have done with a £165 million Euro lottery win.  Not easy.  After totting up the cost of a new house, new car (this one) and money for family, trusts for the kids etc., I reckon I'd still have a good £100+ million left at least.  Now, you need to put some of that to work so you can have a guaranteed income enough not to be worried but then there's still plenty to play with.  Probably enough to found a decent new Cambridge college and certainly enough to do a lot for a current one.  So, what else would be on the list, specifically concerning my day job and my concern for the health of my own area of research?

There would be plenty to make regular and substantial donations to various charities.  But there are some specific things that would be worth doing too.

Endow a research fellowship, probably alternating between classics and philosophy for new postdoctoral researchers.  Perhaps also endow a university lectureship (we've enough professors) provided that didn't mean the university could think it didn't need to keep funding the ones we have already.  Probably best to negotiate a B.O.G.O.F. deal here.  They promise to keep funding one, and we'll fund another.

A big chunk of hardship funding for undergraduates.

What else should go on this list?

Triennial

The Cambridge Faculty of Classics will be hosting the Triennial Conference, 'A celebration of classics', on 25-29 July.  You can find out all about it here and even read a programme of events (pdf here).  There's quite a lot of ancient philosophical stuff going on, if that's your thing.  And Cambridge will be looking nice, despite the enormous numbers of tourists and annual scaffolding boom.  Here's the poster:

Football and philosophy

Here is an interesting piece on aesthetics and football written by Stephen Mumford in the Times Higher.  (He has a book coming soon; perhaps I should wait until I've read the full account, though given its £75 price-tag I might not manage to.)  He is right to claim that there is something aesthetically pleasing and engaging about sport.  On the other hand, it seems to me that his advocacy of non-partisan viewing is problematic, at least for football.  True, I can and do enjoy watching games between two sides with which I have no particular connection.  The World Cup is great just because I can indulge myself in watching such matches.  On the other hand, it is extremely difficult not to adopt one of the two sides, often for no particular reason, and take on a supporter's role.  It is difficult to remain disengaged sufficiently to have no partisan feelings whatsoever.  Of course, it is possible simply to enjoy watching the skill on display but this is a contest after all and not a performance or improvised display.  The teams display the skills they have in order to win the game.

It is also surely the case that partisanship opens up a deeper and broader range of experiences in watching than disengaged aesthetic appreciation.  Watching sport is often a shared experience, shared often by groups who arrange themselves and display themselves as comrades.  Let's distinguish watching a football match on the sofa and home from sitting or standing among a group of supporters of a given team at the ground itself.  The reason it is worth going to the ground is the intensity of the shared experience.  It does matter, at least for those 90 minutes, whether the goalkeeper makes a save and whether a pass finds its intended recipient.  We choose to make it matter and because we surrender in that way we are able to experience the joy at a goal or the despair at losing.  

So when Mumford writes...

The purist and the partisan can see different games because one regards it aesthetically while the other sees the contest primarily as something to be won. The partisan would far prefer to see their team win a dull game 1-0 than to lose 3-4. And keenly contested tackles that are appreciated by the purist will for the partisan be either a show of superior strength when they win them or outrageous fouls committed by brutes when they lose them.

...I think I would contest the sense of the term 'purist' here.  It is a different perspective, for sure, to watch from a non-partisan viewpoint.  But it is not a purer appreciation of a game of football.  A game my team wins (perhaps because it is not a common occurrence) is not really a dull game.  A 1-0 win can be nervy (if the team scores early I then spend the time desperately willing the ball away from my team's penalty area; I applaud an almighty clearance over the stand if it relieves the pressure) or amazingly uplifting (a late goal, no matter how scrappy).  That seems a pure appreciation of football to me.

Deep Wilson

Open Days today and tomorrow.  Perhaps more on those later.  For now, here's what I listened to as I walked to work.  I think you should listen to it too.

Aristotle sets hears a-flutter

Browsing some Aristotle today I came across this in De Partibus Animalium 3.6. He is discussing the lungs and making a case that they are for the sake of respiration. As part of the discussion he dismisses the idea that lungs are there to cope with the ‘jumping’ of the heart. His argument for this is interesting because it seems to offer some evidence for his distinction between human and animal psychological capacities (669a17-23):

τὸ δὲ πρὸς τὴν ἅλσιν εἶναι τὸν πλεύμονα τῆς καρδίας οὐκ εἴρηται καλῶς· ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ τε γὰρ συμβαίνει μόνον ὡς εἰπεῖν τὸ τῆς πηδήσεως διὰ τὸ μόνον ἐν ἐλπίδι γίνεσθαι καὶ προσδοκίᾳ τοῦ μέλλοντος, ἀπέχει τ’ἐν τοῖς πλείστοις πολὺν τόπον καὶ κεῖται τὴν θέσιν ἀνωτέρω τοῦ  πλεύμονος, ὥστε μηδὲν συμβάλλεσθαι τὸν πλεύμονα πρὸς τὴν ἅλσιν τῆς καρδίας.

Here is a translation by William Ogle (1912):

It has been said that the lung exists as a provision to meet the jumping (halsis) of the heart. But this is out of the question. For man is practically the only animal whose heart presents this phenomenon of jumping, inasmuch as he alone is influenced by hope and anticipation of the future. Moreover, in most animals the lung is separated from the heart by a considerable interval and lies above it, so that it can contribute nothing to mitigate any jumping. 

 See Hippoc. Morb. Sacr. 17 (§XX in the Loeb) for the idea that the phrenes jump and cause palpitations as a result of unexpected excessive pleasure or distress (εἴ τι ὥνθρωπος ὑπερχαρείη ἐξ ἀδοκήτου ἢ ἀνιηθείη, πηδῶσι [αἱ φρένες] καὶ ἅλσιν παρέχουσιν).

This is the bit that interests me: only humans have hope (elpis) or expectation for the future (prosdokia); this is why only humans experience their heart ‘jumping’. This suggests that hope and expectation here are being understood to have some rational component or source.  What exactly distinguishes them from the kinds of forethought that non-rational animals are capable of?

In the meantime...

Phew.  Tripos examining finished.  So now there is just the PhD on my desk to read, the interminable college and Faculty meetings and I'll be completely exhausted just in time for the summer 'research period'...  And for some reason at the moment I can't sleep.  Perhaps it's the muggy atmosphere, the noisy birds outside the window or the sheer excitement of it all.  Let's hope it sorts itself out soon.  Still, all that means I have not much interesting to tell you.  So in the meantime here is Moz at Glasto doing one of his old tunes.

If you ever need self-validation, just meet me in the alley by the railway station...

And here it is from 1985, with a much better guitarist and a snazzy hat.

Formatting woes

I've just spent an hour trying to follow the 'consignes de présentation' for a journal.  I'm resigned for now to have to spend a bit of time mucking about with commas and dates and the like for bibliographical things.  I've tried using Mendeley or EndNoteWeb but each time I've tried it has been much more effort to get the stuff into a database and then put in the codes than to just type it in myself.

But this time the annoyance came from having to convert my English formatting of inverted commas and footnote references placed after punctuation to a continental European format with « and » and footnote references before punctuation.  I've probably missed some so I hope my editor will forgive me.  Is there, however, any handy automated way to do all this?  I did the Find-Replace thing for the inverted commas but couldn't work out how to differentiate between them at the end of a quotation and when they are used as a possessive in e.g. 'the Cyrenaics'...' so I had to do much of that manually too.  Groan.

Friends like these...

Well, it's good to see my old guys winning praise, but here's Tom Hodgkinson in the Independent...  He ends his article:

Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and the rest can be read with great ease by anybody, and they are just as relevant today as they were 2,300 years ago.

Lets leave the relevance bit for now and think about the first clause.  You can read them, I suppose, with ease even if not with 'great ease'.  There are good translations.  But try Aristotle's Metaphysics.  If you liked his Ethics, you'll love that.  Or the second part of Plato's Parmenides...   I'd like to think there's more to them than what an easy read can give you.  Otherwise, I'm out of a job.

Epicurus and premature death

I’ve just read an interesting paper by Kirk Sanders in a new collection edited by him and Jeffrey Fish: ‘Philodemus and the fear of premature death’. [1] In part of the article, Sanders is interested in whether the Epicureans give a satisfactory response to the fear that one might die prematurely, before one’s life is complete. I discussed this a bit in my 2004 book (ch. 4) but I think there is a gathering consensus that Philodemus certainly did address this concern and may well have said something interesting about it. 

I think there are two general questions here:

1. Did any Epicurean give an account of a complete life which shows that a person has a good reason to continue to live on once a complete life has been attained? What is that good reason?

2. If the Epicureans agree that there is a sense in which it might be bad to die prematurely (however they understood the notion of prematurity), would it not be correct for an Epicurean student therefore to be anxious about this prospect? But if the student is anxious, then he cannot attain ataraxia. And if he has not attained ataraxia then he will not live a complete life. Note that this is no mere empty fear; the student has a reason to fear premature death based on a correct understanding of what constitutes a good human life.

Regarding 1., Sanders has a persuasive case for saying that Philodemus, at least, thought we have reason to continue to live at least as long as it takes to become ataraxic, although he also perhaps thought that it was necessary in addition to live for at least some time in that state before a life could properly be called complete.

Sanders also has an interesting argument against the problem in 2.

‘In response, it should first be noted that Warren’s claim that premature death ‘is not to be feared if and only if one has attained ataraxia' is too strong. While it is true that premature death is only possible for one who has not yet attained ataraxia, not every possible evil is itself a reasonable object of fear. In order for a fear to be rational, it is required that one be justified in judging its object to be not only a genuine harm but also imminent’ (p. 231).

Since it is not the case that the young should think their death imminent they have no justified reason to fear premature death. And, Sanders suggests, this will be true for all but the very aged or infirm.

'Imminent' here does not mean 'impending' or 'near at hand'.  If I know I will be struck down by an agonizing illness in forty years time I think I might reasonably fear that.  (Sanders'  example in the bit following the section I quoted concerns it being irrational to fear dying in a plane crash because such crashes are so infrequent). In that case, the important point is whether it is likely that a person will die in the period between the present and a later attainment of ataraxia.  A young student worried that she is not yet ataraxic but might be struck down tomorrow in an accident will presumably be told that such an event is vanishingly unlikely. Yes, if that unlikely event does happen then her life will be incomplete and her death premature. So she should take care crossing the road and try not to get into dangerous situations. Fortunately, Epicureanism is something that you can work on at any time in your life. And if you’re smart then the Epicurean goal is something relatively quick to attain. This rather special fear of premature death, looked at from another perspective, is just one more reason to want to become a wise Epicurean.

[1] K. R. Sanders, 2011, ‘Philodemus and the fear of premature death’ in J. Fish and K. R. Sanders eds. Epicurus and the Epicurean Tradition, Cambridge: CUP, 211–34.

Schofest

Last week, rather than our usual Mayweek reading seminar, the B Caucus played host to a conference in honour of Malcolm Schofield.  It was an excellent meeting: lots of good papers and lots of good chat in between papers.  I got to meet up with some friends I hadn't seen for a long time and lots of philosophy was done or gossiped about.  The proceedings should make for a really good volume eventually.  (Here is a programme in case you're interested (.doc file).)

But now, after what was an exhausting week, I have to turn to the piles of exam scripts due to land on my desk.  I may be gone for some time...