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Overview
A variety of new modes of thought was introduced at this time or, if known before, was applied with delight in experimentation. Among those that Friedrich Solmsen examines are new methods of argumentation: persuasion aimed at the control of man's emotions; Utopian speculation; experiments with language; and the emergence of a secular psychology and its use in the reconstruction of human motives and historical events.
Concentrating on the work of nonphilosophical authors such as the historian Thucydides and the tragedian Euripides, the author presents a portrait of a restless and spirited age engaged in an adventure of reason.
Originally published in 1975.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691618005 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/08/2015 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #1593 |
| Pages: | 276 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Intellectual Experiments of the Greek Enlightenment
By Friedrich Solmsen
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1975 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07201-2
CHAPTER 1
ARGUMENTATION
Central in importance as is argumentation for the vigorous new use of logos, an exhaustive account of its varieties seems impossible, and, even were it possible, would disturb the proportions of our study. On the following pages, we shall examine briefly one and, somewhat more fully, another type of argumentation. Instances of these types might be found in earlier days; but in the period of the Enlightenment they became appreciated and an object of conscious manipulation.
It seems expedient to start at a point where arguments run riot. Gorgias in his treatise On Nature or Not-Being uses arguments that are in content and form indebted to Parmenides and, among other Eleatic thinkers, probably most to Zeno. As is well known, he tries to prove three theses, and his method of reasoning changes as he moves from one to the other. The analysis of a relatively short passage taken from the proof for the first thesis will furnish samples of the two kinds of argumentation that we have selected as particularly rewarding for our study.
The demonstrandum is "Nothing is" (or "exists," 66), but to demonstrate it, several other propositions must be established. "Neither Being nor Not-Being nor again Being as well as Not-Being can have existence." We may skip the reasons for Not-Being (67), but the arguments against Being (68-74) claim our attention because they exhibit the same pattern as the proof that Nothing exists. For here, first the one and then the other of two opposites is shown to be impossible, and, having shown this, Gorgias still examines the possibility of their simultaneous truth. If Being existed it would be eternal or temporal or eternal as well as temporal. If eternal, it would have to be without a beginning (arche), and having no beginning it would have to be infinite; yet if infinite, it would be nowhere (70). The last assertion is again supported by an argumentation moving both ways — we may as well now call it by its technical name in utramque partem disputare. Something infinite would be either in another entity or in itself; but the entity encompassing it would have to be larger than the infinite and thus render the infinite impossible; on the other hand, the infinite, if supposed to be in itself, would at once be the body and its place, which seems absurd. Ergo it is nowhere; and being nowhere it is not (70). This is the conclusion reached from the supposition that it is eternal. The altera pars, scil. the possibility that it is temporal and has come into being, still needs discussion. Here Parmenides had provided enough ammunition, especially if (as we prefer to think) he disproved genesis from Being as well as from Not-Being. For this is in essence what Gorgias does, even if he does not follow Parmenides in every detail. Next, having disposed of Being as eternal and as temporal (70), he still turns against their combination by the simple argument that the one half of this proposition would invalidate the other (72). This should suffice to undermine Being; yet, Gorgias' resourcefulness having no limits, he adds an alternative procedure ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 73): Being might be either one or many. But if it is one, it would have to subsist as a body, a quantity, or something else that is divisible and thus would no longer be one; and if many, we must regard the many as a sum of ones, but as the one has been disproved, the many cannot exist either.
Even in paraphrasing Gorgias, we have had occasions for pointing out the care he takes to eliminate every conceivable possibility. In the section just studied, this device repeatedly takes the form of "neither the one nor the other nor a combination of both," but this pattern should not be regarded as a typical one. Gorgias evidently considered it appropriate to the thesis he here wished to establish, yet in the Helen and in the Palamedes he uses basically the same method in entirely different ways. Helen may have left Menelaus and preferred Paris because she yielded either to the will of the gods (82B11.6), to force (7), to persuasion (8-14), or finally to love (15-19). One after another of these four causes is taken up, and Helen, cleared of each, emerges blameless. Palamedes' defense carries this procedure even farther; there are more conceivable motives to be refuted, and at times subdivisions are introduced. How, he asks (among other questions of the same type), could a desire for tyranny have prompted me to commit treason? Would I have wished to rule over the Greeks or over the barbarians, i.e. Trojans? If the latter, did I base my hopes on force or on persuasion? Or would they have voluntarily accepted me as their ruler (82B11a 13f.)?
Such presentations of possibilities followed immediately by their refutation recur in the orator Antiphon as well as in Euripides. Although this is never stated in so many words, we are left with the impression that all conceivable motives have been ruled out. In Antiphon's speech (Or. 5) "About the murder of Herodes," a Mytilenean must clear himself of the charge that he killed Herodes when traveling in the same boat. After pointing out inconsistencies in the accuser's strategy and having confirmed his own statements by witnesses, he asks, "For what reason would I have killed the man?" and proceeds to consider four possible reasons (57-60). They are hostility of long standing, the wish to oblige some third person, fear of suffering the fate that he is alleged to have inflicted, and finally the prospect of enriching himself. One of these motives, the wish to oblige someone else, had actually figured in the accusation. It might therefore seem imperative to give it the greatest attention and spare no effort to refute it. Rather surprisingly Antiphon does the opposite. He disposes of this point simply by asking: Who has ever committed this as a favor for someone else ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 57)? Next, answering the question blandly, "No one, I think," he passes at once to another motive which, in principle, might carry conviction. This substituted motive is hostility. It had been the first on Antiphon's own list, and when dealing with it he thought it sufficient to declare that there was no hostility between himself and the victim. Coming back to it now, he repeats this peremptory declaration. At this critical point, the assertion gains strength from having been made once before. Still it is astonishing that a mere affirmation, unsupported by either argument or witnesses, should suffice. And yet Antiphon must have been convinced of its effectiveness. For he resorts to it also in the celebrated defense of himself against the charge of plotting to overthrow Athenian democracy. Small as is the piece that has come to light on papyrus, we are yet able to discern here even more motives (coll. 1-3) brought up and refuted than in the speech for the Mytilenean. Again, sometimes a simple denial is considered sufficient, and there are even instances where the mere mentioning of the motive (in the form of a question: "or because you had deprived me of some property?") is all that Antiphon thinks necessary. Did he count on everybody's knowing that it had not happened? Or, on the contrary, would a closer examination have reminded the audience of something that had happened? I am inclined to think that he expected sheer bluff to carry him over the hurdle of an awkward situation. Still there also are motives that Antiphon refutes by showing them devoid of intrinsic probability.
Turning to Euripides, we see his characters use this type of argumentation in a number of the preserved plays, and we also find it in fragments. Perhaps the best illustration is Hippolytus' defense when he is confronted with Phaedra's dead body and finds himself accused of seduction. Proud of his exceptional purity, he thinks Theseus ought to show how he Was Corrupted ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], v. 1008). Still, he immediately tries to satisfy this requirement himself (vv. 1009-1020). Three reasons why he could have so drastically departed from his normal chastity present themselves to his mind. Was Phaedra a woman of exceptional beauty? We have in our analysis of Antiphon learned to content ourselves with simple negations proffered without argument or evidence. This time we are given even less, yet Hippolytus has the best of excuses. To deny that Phaedra was beautiful while her body lies on the stage and Theseus is in a highly emotional state of mind would be the extreme of tactlessness, and even Hippolytus, hater of women and innocent in the ways of the world, has sense enough not to damage his case still further. He therefore turns at once to the second possible reason. Would a relationship with Phaedra have put him in the possession of Theseus' "house" (v. 1010)? This, he briefly but vigorously declares, would have been a most foolish hope. It would indeed, and an Athenian audience could be counted upon to realize this. A third reason would be the prospect of becoming the ruler or "tyrant." Here Hippolytus bursts into an emphatic declamation about the wrong-headedness of preferring such a life to being "second" in the city and enjoying some scope and freedom for action. The reason why Hippolytus here waxes so eloquent may be Euripides' own delight in arguing for a rather unconventional point of view, but variation in the response to the three motives suggested would also have seemed to him worth his effort.
Elsewhere in Euripides the argument is cast in the same mold. Two passages in the Hecuba are less forensic than the self-defense of Hippolytus: "Why," Hecuba asks Odysseus, "should my daughter (Polyxene) be sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles?" None of the reasons that might be advanced could pass critical scrutiny (vv. 258-270). Toward the end of the play (vv. 1197, esp. 1201-1207) she similarly reduces ad absurdum any motive why Polymestor, when murdering her youngest son, should have had the interest of the Greeks at heart. Andromache, in the play bearing her name, employs the same pattern of reasoning to clear herself of a vicious accusation. The charge is that she, the concubine of Neoptolemus, tries to monopolize his favor and is plotting against his legitimate wife. This charge, from whatever point of view it may be considered, Andromache declares absurd; Hermione has only herself to blame if she no longer enjoys his love. Turning from the preserved plays to the fragments, we recognize this type of defense in the Cretans, where Pasiphae, having lain with the bull, declares her unnatural passion an "involuntary evil" (frg. 82.10-20); it lacks all probability ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]); point by point she makes clear that nothing conceivable could have induced her voluntarily to commit the crime.
Finally, lest Thucydides, whose work includes examples for many other types of argument, be considered a stranger to this, we may look at the words of warning spoken by Archidamus at the convention in Sparta, where pressure for war against Athens had become very strong (I 80.3-81.6): "On what would we base our confidence for victory?" is the question he urges the impatient convention to ponder. On our boats? We fall far short of the Athenians. On our financial resources? On our weapons? Our superior manpower? One after the other of these possible sources of confidence is shown either not to exist or to be of limited effectiveness (80.3-81.6).
The second form of argumentation, which the section in Gorgias' "On Nature" illustrates, will engage us longer. Neither Being nor Not-Being can exist; Being can be neither eternal nor temporal; something eternal and infinite could not exist in itself yet no more could it if enclosed in another body. This is one variety of the in utramque partem disputare. Both alternatives are disproved, and therefore the proposition that could be true in the one way or in the other is definitely refuted (in fact the in utramque partem disputare if used in this manner produces a reductio ad absurdum, but this is a type of argumentation we have excluded from our study). The consideration of alternative possibilities occurs as early as Homer, where it ends in a formula like [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. But in Homer such passages call for a decision between two practical possibilities, and one of the two alternatives is eventually preferred. In other words, if the Homeric "form" has any place at all in the ancestry of the philosophical and sophistic in utramque partem disputare, the offspring has certainly gone its own, perfectly independent way. A safe pedigree based on genuine resemblances cannot be traced beyond Parmenides. Unfortunately we cannot say with confidence that the argument: Being cannot have originated from Being nor can it from Not-Being (both of these negative statements receiving further argumentative support) is common to Parmenides and Gorgias; for in Parmenides the crucial passage remains a problem and the text uncertain. Still, where Parmenides upholds his thesis of Being as perfectly balanced, he argues both against the possibility of a "more" (higher degree) of Being and of a "less" (lower degree) of it. This passage and another of very similar argumentative complexion should qualify as instances of in utramque partem disputare, although the precise description would be ex utraque parte disputare.
In the history of strict and cogent argumentation, the Eleatic thinkers are epoch-making. But, if in Parmenides progress in this sphere remains of secondary importance, overshadowed by his startling discovery of a new philosophical dimension, in Zeno the argumentative devices are no less intriguing than what he achieved by means of them. Again and again a student of Zeno has reason to wonder whether his chief interest was in his conclusions — which are provocative and puzzling enough — or whether the invention of new arguments interested him per se. Whatever the answer, our evidence, direct and indirect, agrees in associating his name with contradictory conclusions. Thus with Zeno conclusions frequently took the form that Parmenides at times had chosen for the arguments supporting his conclusions. Also, if in Parmenides such arguments disproved the opposite of his thesis, and thus formed a reductio ad absurdum, in Zeno the conclusion itself has this function and purpose.
According to Plato's Parmenides (127el ff.), Zeno arguing against the existence of "the many" proves that if there are "many" they are similar as well as dissimilar to one another. Elsewhere we find reports or actual quotations of his proofs that the many were limited and were unlimited in number, that they were large, in fact so large as to be infinite, yet also small and without any size at all. In the Phaedrus Plato suggests a different purpose for Zeno's in utramque partem disputare. His audience, he reports, received the impression that the same objects were similar and dissimilar, were one and many, at rest and moving (261d6). Against movement some specific contradictory statements and conclusions are attested: "The moving object can move neither in the place where it is nor in the place where it is not." Moreover the famous paradoxes about movement, although not preserved in Zeno's authentic wording and the subject of much controversy, may be cast in the form of an in utramque partem disputare, and one suggestion to this effect seems so congenial to Zeno's spirit that I cannot refrain from recording it: "Either motion will be stopped by the ever increasing fractions of the traversed space or it will wreck the continuum of space by splitting its units." If this suggestion is close to the truth, Zeno may well have advanced these paradoxes with the intention of discrediting the common-sense belief in movement or, to put it somewhat differently, to perplex people by showing that this concept, although commonly taken for granted, bristled with difficulties. Whether he in addition pursued the ulterior object of defending the "unmoved" Being of Parmenides is another question. An improvised theory in Plato's Parmenides, welcome for this dialogue and duly parroted by Simplicius, turns Zeno into a dogged champion of the Parmenidean theories. It is true that he operates with some concepts and develops — among others — some methods of Parmenides.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Intellectual Experiments of the Greek Enlightenment by Friedrich Solmsen. Copyright © 1975 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- Frontmatter, pg. i
- Contents, pg. v
- Preface, pg. vii
- Bibliographical Note, pg. ix
- Abbreviations, pg. xi
- Introduction, pg. 1
- I. Argumentation, pg. 10
- II. Persuasion, pg. 47
- III. Utopian Wishes and Schemes of Reform, pg. 66
- IV. Experiments with the Greek Language, pg. 83
- V. Empirical Psychology and Realistic Generalization, pg. 126
- VI. Rational Reconstruction, pg. 172
- Conclusion, pg. 241
- Subject Index, pg. 251
- Index, pg. 253